Edaphon, Sci-Fi und Bionik

Now largely forgotten, Annie Francé-Harrar and Raoul H. Francé published numerous popular science bestsellers of the 20th century. In addition to early German-language sci-fi and cultural theory, their works dealt with topics that are currently increasingly present within art and popular science: Plants as narrative figures, the soil in the context of the climate crisis and the transfer of biological structures and processes to technology and cultural studies. However, a closer look at the works also brings problematic thought patterns into focus, which call for critical processes of counter-reading and counter-working, which in turn can be transferred to current works with similar themes. As an extension of the seminar of the same name, ‘Edaphon, Sci-Fi and Bionics’ opens up a space for encounters: with the Francé work complex itself, but above all with the perspectives and questions that can be formulated along the way from the present and through an interdisciplinary lens.