Raw materials

In recent years, digitalization has become the spearhead of a globalized economy, seemingly immaterial and ubiquitous, but dependent on a series of tangible processes, such as the extraction of raw materials, the transport of goods, or the maintenance of servers, which are much more fragile than they appear in a world with finite resources. To build an alternative to these digital utopias, how can we generate a new material imaginary that connects us with the world around us and its limitations? As Gaston Bachelard says in Water and Dreams, the second of his books dedicated to the four elements, «the meditation of a matter educates an open imagination».

This program takes up Bachelard's bet and brings together philosophers, researchers and artists to promote a new imagination about the most material aspect of life on the planet: from the materials needed to make possible the world where we live to the role that the elements (air, water, earth, fire, ether) have in our immediate future. How to make tangible what unites us materially in the world? What role do the humanities and art have in fostering a new material imagination?