Martin Kiel

In the 1980s, he was advised against his wish to become a forester. The forests are sick, he was told, and foresters probably superfluous in the future. So, in 1989 he started to study biology, German literature, philosophy, archaeology and art history at the Ruhr University Bochum. In 1995 he wrote his dissertation on Christoph Ransmayr's "The Last World" and developed a model for working on postmodern phenomena. Following the postmodern paradigm of Leslie A. Fiedler's "Cross the Border – Close the Gap", Martin Kiel tries to build bridges from economic to academic contexts, from conditional to unconditional space (J. Derrida). He has worked in various management roles (Thalia, Douglas) and areas that mostly faced digitization or had transformations in processes and organizations as a task. He pursued teaching and research activities as visiting professor at the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, the Zollverein School of Management & Design Essen, the Pepperdine University in Malibu, USA, the Ruhr University Bochum, the University of Münster and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. In the summer of 2018 he again joined the German Summer School in Taos, New Mexico as a visiting professor with a project in the vein of Aby Warburg. Martin Kiel is currently head of the Dortmund office for codecentric AG and director of the think tank the black frame. Since 2015 he has been visiting professor for communication theory at the Berlin University of the Arts. His research focuses on strategy development and narration in cultural studies, digital transformation, and investigative aesthetics. The woods are still alive. For now.

Talk: Learning from Learning from Las Vegas. A Deadpan Tour on the Endless Strip of the Contemporary

Conference: The Low End Theory
Date: Day 2 – 15:30
Location: E-Werk Kesselsaal, Gelmeroda
Language: German

Martin Kiel and Stephan Porombka set out to learn from the cult classic "Learning from Las Vegas". For both of them this book by architects Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, published in 1972, is not only a still relevant attempt at a solution. Even today there are still surprising hints on how to deal with the tension between high & low. Kiel and Porombka therefore read "Learning from Las Vegas" as a learning and exercise book which allows to experiment with the complex confusion of the present. With curiosity for the other. With increased intellectuality. With pleasure deriving from one’s own productivity. But above all with the necessary wit and humor. In order to explain this "learning from" as a program for the art of living, Martin Kiel is currently on his way to Las Vegas with a research group. From there he will supplement the exercise proposals presented by Stephan Porombka at the Digital Bauhaus Summit in Weimar with exclusive live reports.

Under the patronage of

Deutsche UNESCO Kommission

Supported by

Thüringen

Organized by

Media and event partners

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