Dr Lars Schmeink: How we became posthuman - Explorations of Cyberpunk and Biopunk. A talk hosted by the CSFF

Leverhulme Professor at the University of Leeds, Dr Lars Schmeink, will be visiting ARU and the CSFF to talk about his research into cyberpunk and biopunk: "In the 1980s science fictional imagination, the future was saturated with invasive technology. Bodies were invaded by mechanical and electronic prosthesis, overcoming physical biological limitations and creating cyborg hybridity. ... Cyberpunk imagined a world in which bodies and minds were extended, transformed and hybridized with cybertechnology. Some thirty years onwards, we have--in a sense--become the posthuman beings that cyberpunk imagined: constantly connected with a virtual realm through visceral technology, able to replace the limited body with 3D-printed parts, and challenging the concepts of what it means to be human. ...

The talk will trace our technoscientific imagination, delving into what makes us posthuman, what makes us become-other, moving from the cybernetic and prosthetic transhumanist fantasies of 1980s cyberpunk to critical posthumanist interventions in hybrid and liquid subjectivities in our contemporary SF, or what I call Biopunk Dystopias.".