16:45 - Charlie Gere (UK) teaches New Media Research at the Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University and is Chair of the group ‘Computers and the History of Art’ (CHArt). He’s interested in the cultural effects and meanings of technology and media, in relation to art and philosophy. His book Art, Time and Technology (2006) explores artistic responses to the increasing speed of technological development. In his talk he will look at some apocalyptic and messianic understandings of time, especially in relation to ecology. “I start with John Ruskin’s apocalyptic vision of the ‘stormcloud of the nineteenth century’ and show how it relates to the eschatological messianism of Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida and then, via Jacob Taubes, St Paul and Giorgio Agamben. I will discuss Agamben’s concept of ‘messianic time’ in relation to Benjamin’s concept of ‘dialectics at a standstill’. I attempt to think this in relation to our current ecological catastrophe. Finally I relate this to a work exhibited in the 2009 Venice Biennale, entitled ‘The Ethics of Dust’, by Jorge Otero-Pailos.”