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self-model-making

An artistic research group on how self-models are made, materially

how: discussing texts and doing artistic research
for: artists, researchers, and anyone interested
when: a monthly evening1 (March-August)
where: Extra Practice, hosted by Gijs
1feel free to join for one session, or some, or all, based on your interest and availability

The Question

There's this question I keep running into. At each stop on my journey from design to philosophy to artistic research, I learned to recognise that humans are always relational: that how we act, see, think, and are, is deeply entangled with the things and beings around us.

Why was this something I had to learn in the first place? What made me believe the dominant self-models of the modernist, liberal, humanist subject that would be fundamentally separate from others?

Especially as these myths of separation seem so central in today's crises. Such self-models work to justify many forms of oppression and exploitation of those bodies who are cut off from them. Qualities like rationality may be claimed as universally human, but have often only been granted to one side of divides such as human v. "stupid" animal; white v. "barbaric" black; man v. "emotional" woman (Wynter; Braidotti).

So that's when I meet the familiar question. It always looks similar, but slightly depends on where I encounter it:


If 𓂉 is always already 𓊲,

then what 𓏊𓎿 make 𓂉 often feel 𓈝,

and how could 𓂉 instead be made to feel more 𓊲?


In short, it's a question about the gap between how we are (ontology1) and how it feels (phenomenology2), and how our surroundings (situatedness) influence (mediate) the experience of this gap. Specifically, I suspect material culture (technology) to be complicit, and I invite you to join me in finding out.

1the philosophy of the nature and basic structure of reality.
2the philosophy of human experience.

The research group

I've started working on this question in a project I call subject matter, but so far I've been doing it mostly by myself, retreated in the shadows. Now I'm curious if others might share this interest.

The self-model-making group opens to whomever wants to think self-models though philosophy and creative practice, in a series of monthly research-with-me sessions at Extra Practice (on site & online).

The aim is to explore through different disciplines how material culture could contribute to a transition to relational self-models. We'll visit what this transition could look like on the levels of self (way of being), self-model (way of thinking), and material culture (influence of things made).

essentialist → relational
self isolated → ?
model autonomous → ?
making modernist → ?

In six sessions we'll explore A) how current dominant self-models might restrict and oppress ways of being, B) how material culture might be complicit, and C) how it instead could invite relational ways of being:

    A. The Role of Self-Models
  1. Self-models (topic) - March
  2. Isolated selves (problem) - April
    3. B. The Role of Technology
  3. Material conditioning (lens) - May
  4. Modernist technology (critique) - June
    5. C. Toward Relational Self-Tech
  5. Relational selves (opening) - July
  6. Relational technology (proposal) - Aug

More details in the overview of sessions➪ below.

Each 2,5h session combines discussing readings➪ and creative exercises. They are meant as a space to approach each topic through different ways of knowing (theory, practice, conversation, reflection, etc) so we can find a way to enter depending on our practice and desires. Sessions can have an accompanying 'shadow session' which expands the topic, e.g. go deeper into a text, try out an exercise, make a trip.

A rough outline of a session:
time activity
19.00 introduction of theme
19.15 discussion of text(s)
20.00 break
20.15 exercise to do / make
21.00 round of sharing
21.30 end

We will share lessons from the group in a publication, which will be updated online throughout the process (tbc), and printed at the end. After six sessions, in Aug/Sep, there will be a launch event: a place for people who join to show works they made, share readings, and discuss ideas and questions.

Newsletter

Interested? Sign up for the newsletter where I share info about the sessions, insights and resources:



Sessions

Below a plan for the coming six sessions. I see the journey as something to adjust along the way. If you have ideas for texts to read or things to do, let me know via DM or .
(click session to see more details)

Mar 18 2025, 19.00-21.30 101. Self-models
What are they, what do they do?

aim: get a better sense of self-models and their influence on ways of being
topics: genres of being human, posthumanism, diagrams
text: Braidotti on the posthuman
action: visualising self-models we want


A self-image can be quite limiting. If I think of myself as 'smart' it gets harder to admit I don't know something. Does that happen on a cultural level as well? Just like our worldview structures what seems possible and plausible (Campagna), what about our self-model?

In many fields people try to move beyond a modernist / humanist / essentialist model of the self as separate from the world – which grounded many forms of exploitation (Wynter; Braidotti) – towards ways of recognising our entanglement with social and material contexts.


"We have never been modern." – Bruno Latour
"We have never been human." – Donna Haraway

How to make sense of these ideas of the self and their influence? We'll start with a discussion of Rosi Braidotti's critique of current dominant self-models and Sylvia Wynter's concept of 'genres of being human'.

We'll take a moment to reflect on what we each want from a self-model, based on the texts, or just our own life and things we've noticed. Then we'll try visualise a self-model that resonates, e.g. by diagramming them (Savva will give a short intro), personifying them (think Haraway's cyborg) or through metaphors.

Apr 1 2025, 19.00-21.30 @ Extra Practice shadow session (101)
Explorative diagramming towards other genres of being human.

aim: dive into Sylvia Wynter and beyond through diagramming
topics: genres of being human, Man(1), Man(2), naturalisation
text: Sylvia Wynter - The Ceremony Found
action: explorative diagramming


A session hosted with Savva Dudin, to dive deeper into both Wynter’s genre’s of being human and exploratory diagramming. While explanatory diagrams communicate existing knowledge, exploratory diagramming are a tool for expression, discovery and experimentation, to move beyond current understandings towards other ones.

We'll start with an attempt at an explanatory diagram of Wynter’s genres of being human that have been dominant in the West, which we'll have some time to discuss. Then Savva will continue guiding a proper explorative diagramming session, towards other genres of being human.

Note: it will be an on-site session because of its emphasis on working on paper, but we’ll share outcomes and insights afterwards.

Apr 17 2025, 19.00-21.30 102. Isolated selves
Which self in self-help?

aim: finding the models behind current idea(l)s of ways of being
topics: self-design, dandy, freelance, coldness, transhumanism, etc
text: Foucault on the dandy, a transhumanist dream from Böstrom, Kohpeiß on coldness
action: self-model-portraiture and compass-making


In this diagnostic session we’ll look for which self-models to unlearn. If our desires and repulsions are shaped by how we understand the human (Wynter), how are we limited by ruling ideas of the humanist / modernist / liberal / autonomous self? What are the self-models behind phenomena like self-help, self-employment, self-expression?

After a short intro on self-practices and we will try to self-model-diagnose: a) recognise a situation where dominant models may affect how we relate to the self or other. b) visually analyse which model is at work as a mould (self-model-portrait). c) re-orient for ways to reclaim self-practices outside isolated selves.

May . . 2025 shadow session (102)
tbc


tbc

May . . 2025 103. Material conditioning
How does tech make selves?

aim: exploring models of the influence of things on self-models
topics: agential realism, McLuhan, mediation
text: e.g. Karen Barad on agential realism, Peter-Paul Verbeek on mediation theory, cybernetics
action: subjective portrait of a thing?


Technologies, as things that humans made, don’t only express our ideas and values, they also structure and shape them. They mediate our relationship to the world (Verbeek), but how do they mediate the relations to our selves?

Technological mediation of the world-relation.
Self-technology's metamediation of the self-relation.

tbc

"Everything is technology." – Ursula Le Guin

June . . 2025 104. Modernist technology
Did design invite the separable self?

aim: exploring the complicity of design in making modernist subjects
topics: modernist design, colonial tech, neutrality
text: e.g. speech by Dieter Rahms, Learning from Las Vegas, critique of transhumanism.
action: discipline jumping? retroengineering self-design?


How did the things we use and surround ourselves with make us think of ourselves as separate from these surroundings? And act accordingly?

Modernist design movements and manifestos expressed desires for clarity (knowledge) and usability (control). Did the products that grew out of this focus on the Eye and the Hand produce a certain subject? How did it affect our relationship to the world and other bodies?

Other topics: the production of neutrality, the manufacturing of consent, the illusion of objectivity.

tbc

July . . 2025 105 Relational selves
Where and when are we already relational?

aim: get a sense of dwellings of relational selves
topics: unselfing, transindividuality, raves
text: . . .
action: somatic exercises? roleplay?

Aug . . 2025 106 Relational technology
How to make conditions for relationality?

aim: sketch ways that material culture could invite relational selves
topics: . . .
text: . . .
action: speculation in story or material

Readings

This is a working list of readings, made with Ianis Dobrev from the Chimerical Intelligence Lab. It will be updated for each session and lead to a reader of extracts.



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