SHORT DESCRIPTION

Cosmotechnics is a collective research project exploring East Asian philosophies of technology through the conceptual framework of cosmotechnics. Drawing on Yuk Hui’s writings, the project reconsiders technology not as a universal construct but as something shaped by culturally specific cosmologies, worldviews, and historical trajectories.

Initiated by AFSAR in 2023, the project investigates how East Asian cosmological thought might offer alternative frameworks for understanding technology, imagination, artistic practice, and collective life. Rather than approaching technology through a Western-centered narrative of progress and innovation, the study foregrounds contingency, recursion, and relational ontologies embedded in regional philosophical traditions.

AFSAR members met regularly for study sessions combining close reading, discussion, and collective reflection. The research evolved from theoretical inquiry into public talks, lecture-performances, and collaborative writing, enabling the project to circulate across artistic and academic communities.

COLLABORATIONS

⁃ Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research (AFSAR)

▾ Cosmic Dialogues on Fiction Writing

Talks

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin
11 April 2024

Speakers: Charmaine Poh, Feng You, Park Hye-in, Yan Lin (AFSAR)

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Organised as part of AFSAR’s ongoing study of cosmotechnics, this public talk extended the collective’s inquiry into East Asian technological thought toward fiction writing and speculative narrative. Building on their collective reading of Yuk Hui’s works, the session explored cosmology, technodiversity, and the relationship between philosophy and science fiction.

The discussion unfolded through a written correspondence with artist Mooni Perry between January and April 2024. Perry’s video work Letter to AFSAR—presented within the exhibition A Home for Something Unknown at n.b.k.—served as a point of departure for reflecting on cosmological grounding, storytelling, and feminist technological imaginaries.

The talk functioned as a dialogical platform connecting collective research, exhibition contexts, and speculative writing practices.

▾ Locating Cosmotechnics: Rethinking ‘Technology’

Lectures

University of the Arts Berlin (UdK), Berlin (Germany)
7 February 2025

Speakers: Park Hye-in, Mina Ha, Jooyoung Hwang (AFSAR)

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Organised as part of AFSAR’s inquiry into East Asian technological thought, this public lecture examined the critical possibilities of cosmotechnics as a framework for rethinking technology. Responding to Yuk Hui’s proposition—“If we can understand or develop different understandings of technology, will that allow us to think differently?”—the session explored how dominant Western concepts of technology might be re-evaluated through alternative philosophical, historical, and cultural perspectives.

Drawing from the collective study of Art and Cosmotechnics, the speakers discussed how cultural techniques, tools, and technological practices in the South Korean context have shifted over recent decades. The lecture proposed ways of “locating” cosmotechnics—understanding technology as an activity shaped by local epistemologies, moral orders, and cosmological frameworks rather than as a universal abstraction.

The event foregrounded AFSAR’s collective research methodology and advanced cosmotechnics as a means of reimagining technological knowledge, artistic practice, and global modernity beyond Eurocentric paradigms.

▾ NOX: Impulse Lectures — Eastern Futurism Lectures

Lectures / Dialogue

LAS Foundation, Berlin (Germany)
9 December 2025

Speakers: Charmaine Poh & Park Hye-in (AFSAR)
Part of Lawrence Lek’s solo exhibition NOX

Presented within Lawrence Lek’s exhibition NOX, this lecture–dialogue examined intersections between East Asian cosmology, technological thought, and speculative futurisms. Building on AFSAR’s long-term study of Yuk Hui’s writings, the session explored how cosmotechnics offers alternatives to universalist and hierarchical models of technology.

The discussion introduced cosmotechnics as an epistemological shift—moving away from narratives of technological singularity toward technodiversity, the understanding that technological activity is shaped by local moral orders, cosmologies, and historical trajectories. The speakers framed their inquiry through a series of shared questions emerging from their ongoing correspondence:

• What is Eastern cosmology?
• What constitutes an epistemology of the unknown?
• How might we rethink being, nothingness, and recursivity beyond Western ontologies?

The programme opened with a reading from their email dialogue, foregrounding AFSAR’s collective and dialogical research methodology before inviting the audience into a broader discussion on futurity, place-making, and alternative technological imaginaries.

By foregrounding East Asian philosophical perspectives, the lecture contributed to the exhibition’s exploration of simulated worlds, algorithmic agencies, and speculative architectures while complicating dominant techno-futures.

▾ Critical History of Technology

Lecture-Performance

Matter of Flux Festival, Berlin (Germany)
15 June 2023

Creators/Performers: Charmaine Poh, Han Wen Zhang, Mooni Perry, Yan Lin, Park Hye-in
(AFSAR)

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Critical History of Technology is a collaboratively developed lecture-performance created by AFSAR during the collective’s study of Yuk Hui’s Art and Cosmotechnics (January–August 2023). The work translates philosophical inquiry into a performative format, combining spoken text, collective reading, and embodied gestures to explore how technology, art, and thought co-constitute one another across different cultural and historical contexts.

Bringing together practitioners from East and Southeast Asia, the performance responded to key questions emerging from the group’s study sessions: How does technology mediate cosmology? What forms of knowledge arise when technical activity is situated within specific moral and cosmological orders? How might artistic practice enact or challenge these epistemologies?

Developed as a scripted yet collectively authored piece, the performance foregrounded shared learning as both method and medium. Presented at the Matter of Flux Festival, it invited audiences to reconsider technodiversity and to imagine technological histories beyond universalist narratives.