The ability to artificially cool environments and living entities has driven a powerful set of human imaginaries, all informed by tropes of control: new found abilities to stop and start life at will, to secure and store foods that would otherwise be geographically unavailable, to occupy spaces normally unsympathetic to human life, and to generate forms of knowledge that can now be successfully archived in artificial brains that sit outside conventional bodily housings.

In this lecture, Prof. Parry will chart the complex historiographies and geographies of artificial cooling, demonstrating both what these technological fantasies have made possible, but also the costs that we, as a human race, may pay for their realisation.

The lecture will take place as part of the project’s first internal workshop at KWI from 6 January to 8 January 2025.