Dubrovnik, Santiago, and Stanford: Maturana, Varela, and the Materialities of Communication Series
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This is a short presentation delivered at the "Thinking 'Umwelten' in the Age of AI: Planetary Design in Chile and Germany" working group of the Chile-Germany Academic Forum, which took place at the Technical University of Berlin between June 16 and 18, 2025. This presentation traces and begins to problematize the participation of the Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana in the 1987 "Materialities of Communication" symposium in Dubrovnik – which was published the following year in a proceedings volume by Suhrkamp – and the contribution of Francisco Varela to the English version of that book, published in 1994 by Stanford University Press. The presentation closes with a conversation between the author and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht – one of the organizers of that symposium and one of the editors of the books that comprise the series – about the behind-the-scenes aspects of both the Dubrovnik symposium and the books in question.
