Workshop Talk with Charissa Terranova, “Biological Bill of Rights: Moholy’s Space-Time Social Democracy”

Artist and designer László Moholy-Nagy described his last book Vision in Motion (1947) as an attempt to add a “biological bill of rights” to the “politico-social.” This talk explores the meaning of this elliptical but enchanting phrase in the context of Moholy-Nagy’s final posthumously published work and the development of the American welfare state in the postwar period.

Charissa N. Terranova is a writer and educator researching nature, biology, and biotechnology in the history of art and architecture. She is Margaret M. McDermott Distinguished Chair in Art and Aesthetic Studies and Professor of Art and Architectural History in the Bass School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas. Terranova has authored several books and articles about the interstices of history in the plural, that is histories of art, design, science, and technology.

Image: John J. Kewell, Cultural Work Center, Vision in Motion, p. 361, 1946; Rethinking the Soviet social condenser.

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