On 6-10 May 2025, Christoph Haffter is invited to the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater in Vilnius:

Seminar/Workshop: The Vocaloid and the Sirene.

In this workshop we’ll discuss an electroacoustic work by Olga Neuwirth: Le Encantadas (2014/15) for ensemble and electronics. This work features centrally a song for a synthetic voice, the Vocaloid Hatsune Miku. 

We’ll discuss different ways of understanding the subjectivity expressed in this song. One line of interpretation connects the Vocaloid with the mythological figure of the Sirene. Following the interpretation of this figure by Adorno/Horkheimer in the Dialectics of Enlightenment, the Sirene is the counter-part of bourgeois subjectivity. We’ll discuss whether this model can be applied to Neuwirth’s technological voice and what kind of subjectivity would be its contemporary counter-part.

Talk: Materialist Philosophy of Contemporary Art

In contemporary discourses of art theory and culture studies, new accounts of materialism abound. They are in general opposed to the historical materialism of the Marxist tradition: they understand cultural production within a naturalist framework. The history of Marx-inspired art theory, in contrast, was highly prolific in articulating sophisticated connections between artistic forms and their material conditions – their social, political and economic contexts. In this talk, I would like to criticize the potentials and the short-comings of this tradition in order to actualize its kernel for a contemporary philosophy of artistic production. 

30 May 2025: In the frame of the festival Musikinstallationen Nürnberg, Christoph Haffter will give a talk on Moormother entitled: Sonic mapping. The political art of Black Quantum Futurism. It is part of a one-day conference on Exhibiting Music, organized by Christian Grüny with keynotes by Shannon Jackson and Doug Barrett.

https://www.musikinstallationen.com/de/projekte/konferenz-musik-machen-ausstellen

Christoph Haffter will give a talk on Materialism as Critical Theory

Radikales Denken im Anthropozän
Theorien und Konzepte Kritischer Theorie
Internationale Konferenz, 26.-28. Juni 2025, Universität Graz

Critical theory is more than a scientific theory that criticizes social injustice. According to its historical definition in the Frankfurt School, it rather describes a peculiar, self-critical form of theory. This makes it compatible with a certain conception of philosophical materialism: a theory that scrutinizes theoretical claims in light of their material conditions. Such critical materialism does not denote a world view or a fundamental theory of reality, but a certain type of theoretical self-reflection.
In this light, I would like to look at theoretical currents that have been associated in recent decades under the umbrella term New Materialisms (Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Donna Haraway) and have been particularly well received in art theory and environmental politics. Contrary to a widespread misunderstanding, these are not theories in the classical sense, but rather fusions of social criticism and theoretical self-reflection. At their center lies a critical account of the entanglement of theory with the domination of nature. Nor is the affinity to art a merely external feature of these theories but is based on methodological peculiarities that transcend the norms of the scientific community.
Despite these similarities, the New Materialisms appear have a naturalistic trait that runs counter to the Marxist core of Critical Theory. In this lecture, I would like to work out the main features of these theoretical endeavours in order to answer the question whether the New Materialisms can nevertheless be understood as a contemporary form of Critical Theory, or whether they can at least be integrated into such a theory. The decisive factor in this question will be how the vague expression of the "material conditions" on which Critical Theories reflect can be contoured.

24.9.2025: Christoph Haffter will give a talk at the conference "Music and Action" in Strasbourg which is organised by Daniel Feige and Alessandro Bertinetto in collaboration with the festival Musica Strasbourg.