Sascha Pohflepp | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 30 January 1978 Cologne, Germany |
| Died | 17 June 2019 (aged 41) Berlin, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation(s) | Artist, designer, writer |
Sascha Pohflepp (30 January 1978 – 17 June 2019) was a German artist, designer, and writer whose work focused on the role of technology’s influence on the environment, often collaborating with scientists and other artists to explore this theme.[1]
Born in Cologne, Pohflepp received his diploma at the Berlin University of the Arts in 2006 under media artist and designer Joachim Sauter, after studying during a guest term at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD) in Paris with Brice Dellsperger.[2] In 2009, he received is Masters of Arts in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art in London, UK, where he worked with Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby, Noam Toran.[3]
In 2015, Pohflepp began his doctoral work with Benjamin H. Bratton in the PhD Program in Art History, Theory and Criticism with a concentration in Art Practice in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego.[4] In Fall 2018, he advanced to candidacy with dissertation research on a new theory of "post-rational design", which interrelates discourses on the inhuman with the assemblage theory of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and a rethinking of the Anthropocene. This project was influenced by his participation in the graduate specialization track in anthropogeny at the Center for Academic Research & Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA) at the University of California, San Diego, where he was an Annette Merle-Smith Fellow and worked with the anthropologist Pascal Gagneux.[5]
As an artist and designer, Pohflepp explored these ideas in such works as Growth Assembly (2009, with Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, illustrations by Sion Ap Tomos); Spacewalk (2017); Deep Unlearning (I) (2018, with Chris Woebken); and Those Who (2019).[6]
Pohflepp created work on the subjects of synthetic biology, geo-engineering, artificial intelligence, and space exploration, and been credited with extending the framework of Critical Design into the realm of elaborate Counterfactuals and other modes of narrative.[7]
His work has been included in numerous international exhibitions, including Talk to Me: Design and Communication between People and Objects at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Grow Your Own: Life After Nature at The Science Gallery in Dublin; Hyperlinks: Architecture and Design at The Art Institute of Chicago; and New Order at the Mediamatic Fabriek in Amsterdam.[8] He received two Honorary Mentions from the VIDA Art and Artificial Life Awards and was an Eyebeam resident in 2013.[9] In 2015, he was shortlisted for the Berlin Art Prize.[10]
His essay "Living Machines," co-authored with Sheref S. Mansy, is part of the 2017 book, Synthetic Aesthetics: Investigating Synthetic Biology's Designs on Nature published with MIT Press.[11]
