Reflexionen

Beyond Gravity Reflexionen is part of the Beyond Gravity Festival 2025 which is a cooperation between Theater im Depot & Academy for Theatre and Digitality in Dortmund as well as Kulturforum Witten. Together with the residency program it forms the thematic core of the 2025 festival under the title Decolonizing the Digital.

Across panels, keynote lectures, and lecture performances, the symposium will open a pluriversal space for dialogue at the intersection of postcolonial theory, digital humanities and artistic research. The aim is to reflect and articulate (artistic visions for) possibilities for pluriversal digital futures.

How are colonial structures mirrored in digital tools – or create new dependencies and power imbalances, and how can these very tools be used to reflect on colonial legacies within digital societies? How might digital cultures challenge extractive and hegemonic paradigms rather than reproduce them? What types of knowledge and knowledge transfer become possible when digital technologies are approached as relational, affective, and situated rather than universal and abstract? How can indigenous knowledges become a foundation for building diverse forms of digital platforms and artificial intelligences? How can we use digital contexts and tools to create new forms of exchange between various knowledge forms? Which conceptual frameworks do we need to think and enact a digital pluriverse?

These guiding questions frame the program of the symposium Beyond Gravity Reflexionen. Whether in games, in data, in code, in hardware, or in digitally mediated emotions, colonial structures remain inscribed within the very societies that shape and are shaped by digital technologies. The symposium takes these entanglements as a starting point to interrogate not only the histories embedded in technological infrastructures but also engages in bringing together voices from South and Central America, Australia, Asia, Africa and Europe. These international perspectives will be placed in dialogue with artistic and scholarly practices of the Festival and the topics of the artists in residence.

The three residency-projects of Beyond Gravity 2025:

Viviane Maghela, Eric Takukam & Enya Obert - KAM / noble

Laura Cugusi, machine yearning / Nada Zanhour, Federico Zurani - Everything is Computer

María Luisa Angulo & Marlon Barrios Solano + Guests - Pangea AI

Angie Abdilla, Wakanyi Hoffman, Souvik Moukherjee und Esteban Morales

Angie Abdilla, Studio Oleomingus, Marc Mushiva & Vanessa Ramoz Velasques

Studio 2
Kulturort Depot
Immermannstrasse 29
44147 Dortmund

Akademie für Theater und Digitalität
Speicherstrasse 17
44147 Dortmund