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Tracing Information Society – A Timeline

drupaladmin — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 08:08:01 +0000

Tracing Information Society is the new project of the Technopolitics Working Group. This text was collectively written on the occasion of the Technopolitics Salon@Social Glitch where the timeline project was discussed together with two respondents, Aneta Stojnić and Noit Banai, and the audience.

This informal group began in February 2010 and comprises about 10 core members and about 30 contributors. Most of us work as artists, theoreticians, curators or journalists inside and outside major institutions. What brings us together is an interest in the impossible project of analyzing the Information Society as an open totality, that is, an integrated network of actors and events with dimensions that change depending on the perspective taken. The aim is to produce cultural criticism and art works that engage with the deeper structures of the present as a contribution to the globally distributed efforts of transforming them.

The concept of the Information Society, after being over-hyped in the 1980s and 1990s and used as a pretense for many dubious political projects (for example, by Newt Gringrich or Tony Blair) at the time, has fallen out of use lately. This offers us the freedom to re-purpose it as an umbrella term to connect multiple strands that drive complex societal transformations. One strand is the emergence of a distinct techno-economic paradigm, usually called post-fordism, following the economic crisis of the 1970s. Since the 1990s, processes of financialization have become ever more important. Another strand concerns the political transformation that brought about a system of governance which privileges market-structures in all areas of life––what is usually called neo-liberalism. A third strand is the social transformations and pluralizations of subjectivity, of gender and of what has become known as the non-human that challenge the dominant models of Western universalism and of patriarchy. A fourth strand has been created by environmental movements which have begun to transform the human relationship to nature, a task made all the more urgent by the increasingly pressing reality of climate change. Using the concept of the Information Society as an umbrella – like the group's own title Technopolitics––emphasizes the role of the technological infrastructures that underpin, though do not determine, all of these developments. Culture, society, nature and our own agency cannot be conceived of independently of these technological capacities.

The conceptual and technological foundations of the Information Society were laid in the first half of the 20th century. As a social formation it became dominant in the USA and Europe in the 1970s and globally after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. There is a considerable debate whether the contemporary economic and political transformation following the economic crisis, which started in 2008, necessitates a new umbrella term or not.

The goal of this impossibly large project is not to produce a new master narrative but to provide a framework for inquiry that is, at the same time, internally coherent and open to heterogeneous inputs and outputs. Even more, this project also provides complementary and competing pathways through an expansive and still shifting terrain. The coherence is provided by the emphasis on the simultaneous presence of all of these strands in all fields of inquiry while the openness is provided by an extreme variety of methods of research and formats of output. Thus, the projects cannot be contained within the knowledge practices provided by academia or the art system alone.

The main method of operation of the working group are regular, convivial face-to-face meetings, often with a potlatch of drinks and food, in which one member or invited guest presents his or her current research/artistic project as work in progress, which is then subjected to sympathetic but rigorous criticism from the point of view of the overall framework. These meetings, while not formally closed, are not aimed at a general public and are not recorded.

After a series of public talks we decided to engage together in a material project that couples artistic as well as theoretical research and practice and initiated Tracing Information Society – A Timeline. The timeline provides a format that is both clearly structured––everything is organized according to its datum––and open to multiple perspectives as of what constitutes a relevant event. The value of a timeline is not to signal the return to a simple linear chronological model of historical development but to show the parallelism of heterogeneous events. So, for example, the year 1962 brings, among others, two entries next to each other: one is Beat the Dealer – probability theory and computation meet casino-gambling the other is the publication of Fritz Machlup’s groundbreaking empirical study of the “knowledge economy.” It is the claim of the project that these events, while usually not considered together, are nevertheless directly related to one another.

The timeline––in its current manifestation in print measures 2.8 x 7 meters––shows data on six main layers, color-encoded, and annotated with keywords that are considered relevant for the coming into being of this social formation. As heterogeneous as both the entries and the group are––there is no binding theory––they all come from a critical angle and hence articulate struggles and contradictions as well as turning points (such as major political events and natural disasters) via individual entries in a single but multilayered timeline. The idea was to bring things into a relation that is not necessarily a causal one. By showing things together, new associations arise.

The Timeline is a work-in-progress with a participatory angle: the visitors of the exhibition are invited to make suggestions of their own and insert them in box placed next to the Timeline print. The Timeline can serve several functions: it serves as a heuristic device; by exploring new cross-connections such as in the example given above, it gives new insights into the process of self-instituting of information society; the printed Timeline can be shown in exhibitions and allow visitors to explore associations, memories and inspirations of their own; it can also be used as a teaching device, in workshops, and in particular in an extra-university and activist context. The aim is to produce further versions of the timeline and to incorporate more diverse viewpoints as to which are the defining events in the historical development of the Information Society. Future versions of the work will include a digital version and an exhibition which transposes the 2D timeline into 3D exhibition space and electronic space.

To discuss the conceptual outreach, the potentials, and the implications of the project, a round table discussion was held on November 19th, 7 pm.

Tracing Information Society so far carries the shared input of: John Barker, Sylvia Eckermann, Doron Goldfarb, Armin Medosch, Gerald Nestler, Felix Stalder, Axel Stockburger, Matthias Tarasiewicz, Thomas Thaler and Ina Zwerger. Graphic Design: Fatih Aydogdu. The first version is on view at the exhibition SOCIAL GLITCH. Radical Aesthetics and the Consequences of Extreme Events from September 25 - December 5, 2015, curated by Theories in Mind

NOTE: This text was first published in Continent Online Magazine http://continentcontinent.cc/index.php/continent/article/view/216

Die post-anthropologische Kondition? (Ankündigung)

drupaladmin — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 16:32:38 +0000

Immer mehr Bereiche der menschlichen Kultur werden von technologischen Entwicklungen erfasst, die man der Automatisierung zurechnen kann. Die Technowissenschaften haben ein Niveau erreicht, das es ihnen ermöglicht, Natur nicht nur zu erforschen oder zu verstehen, sondern aktiv zu gestalten. Der Salon Technopolitics macht die post-anthropologische Kondition zum Thema, im Rahmen von Vienna Open.

Technopolitics Salon @ Vienna Open
Samstag 18.10. 19:00 – 23:00 Uhr
Mobiles Stadtlabor am Karlsplatz

„Die post-anthropologische Kondition?“

Den Herausforderungen der neuen Entwicklungen stellen sich die feministische Science-Studies-Autorin Jutta Weber (Paderborn), der Künstler und Forscher Gerald Nestler (Wien/London) und Netzkultur-Theoretiker Felix Stalder (Zürich/Wien) durch Keynote-Vorträge. In der zweiten Hälfte des Abends werden die Themen diskutiert, unter Beteiligung des Technopolitics-Arbeitskreises, von Freunden, Bekannten und Publikum. Eingeführt und moderiert wird der Abend von Technopolitics-Gründer Armin Medosch.

Technopolitics ist eine transdisziplinäre Forschungsplattform, die es sich zur Aufgabe gesetzt hat, die in kritischen Diskursen zu sozio-ökonomischen und politischen Themenfeldern gemeinhin zu wenig beachtete Bedeutung technologischer Entwicklungen, Perspektiven und Paradigmenwechsel genauer zu untersuchen, ohne dabei einem kurzsichtigen technologischen Determinismus zu erliegen. Mit dem Technopolitics Salon im Rahmen von Vienna Open wenden wir uns an eine größere Öffentlichkeit.

Abstracts und theoretischer Hintergrund

Felix Stalder, University of the Arts, Zurich

Politik der Algorithmen

Vor dem Hintergrund einer umfassenden sozialen Mobilisierung haben sich neue Muster der Kultur herausgebildet. Selbst-organisierenden Gemeinschaften wurden zu den eigentlich Subjekten der
Bedeutungsgenerierung in einer Welt, die immer mehr von Algorithmen mit-konstruiert ist.

Die Rolle der Algorithmen lässt sich aber nicht technologisch bestimmen, sondern wird wesentlich durch das institutionelle Umfeld, in denen sie realisiert werden bestimmt. Sie können gegen diese Gemeinschaften arbeiten und Tendenzen der Postdemokratie befördern, oder auch zu einer Revitalisierung der Demokratie durch die Commons beitragen.

Zu neueren Kontrollformen der Technoscience

Jutta Weber, Univ. Paderborn

Abstract

Bis heute ist uns die Bedeutung der modernen Technowissenschaften und der ihnen zugrundeliegenden Rationalität(en) kaum gegenwärtig. Während die Rede von der Informations-, Wissens- oder Netzgesellschaft Konjunktur hat, bleibt ein Verständnis unseres technowissenschaftlichen Weltzugangs eher randständig. Über die biokybernetische Wende der Technoscience nachzudenken, heißt, prägnant die Verschiebungen unserer Wissensordnung, ihre Epistemologien und Ontologien zu verstehen. Zentrale Bausteine dieser neuen Wissensordnung sind nicht nur das wirkmächtige Blackboxing und die Analogisierung von Organismus/Mensch und Maschine, sondern auch die Fokussierung auf das beobachtbare Verhalten von Systemen sowie das Ressourcing von Unordung, Rauschen und Unvorhersehbarem.

In meinem Beitrag werde ich auf die aktuell erweiterten, flexibilisierten und prinzipiell unabschließbaren Denkformen und Kontrollmechanismen der Technoscience eingehen, denn: „Weder zur Furcht noch zur Hoffnung besteht Grund, sondern nur dazu, neue Waffen [und Wege] zu suchen“ (Deleuze), um alternative Optionen der 'post-anthropologischen' Kondition verwirklichen zu können.

Gerald Nestler, Abstract Technopolitics Salon

Die Netzwerkgesellschaft wird zunehmend durch die Generierung und das Design eines neuen Wissens geprägt, das ältere, humanistisch geprägte Definitionen des Begriffs obsolet erscheinen lässt. Dieses Wissen, das als Technowledge bezeichnet werden kann, wird nicht aus dem Verhältnis menschlicher Sinne in das Erfahrungsregister der Menschen übergeführt, es speist sich aus spekulativ angelegten Operationen automatisierter Bots. Das Sehen als privilegierter Sinn der Erkenntnis in der Moderne gerät in eine Krise, da technologisch konstruiertes Wissen dem Sehnerv keine Reize zur Verfügung stellt. Maschinenwissen und seine Auflösungsleistung entsteht jedoch nicht nur jenseits direkt sinnlicher Wahrnehmungsschwellen – und damit jenseits klassischer Formen der Repräsentation – es akkumuliert durch delegierte Handlungs- und Entscheidungskompetenz. Während einerseits neue Dimensionen von Komplexität extrudiert werden, löst sich andererseits der kohärente Zusammenhang immanenter Zeiterfahrung. Die Vergangenheit wird zu einem Reservoir von Daten, deren Analyse Zukunft nicht mehr nur antizipiert, sondern produziert, und zwar in einer Geschwindigkeit, die mit dem in den Finanzmärkten bekannten Schlagwort einer „future-at-present“ perfekt beschrieben ist. Hier ist die Zukunft weder ein auf lange bzw. kurze Sicht prognostiziertes „dann“, vielmehr kolonisiert sie mittels automatisierter, referenzialisierter Verhandlung einen Zeit-Raum, in dem die Pole der Handlungsperspektive umschlagen: Zukunft ist Präsenz und Ausgangspunkt der Transaktion, Gegenwart verschmilzt zum Nicht-Ort politischer Handlungsfähigkeit, indem ihre Registrierung der derivativen Evaluation (Verwertung) durch Preise vorbehalten ist, die im Moment ihrer Entstehung bereits historisch, d.h. impotent, sind. Diese Entwicklung wird anhand eines Beispiels aus den Finanzmärkten konkretisiert und einer kritischen Analyse unterworfen.

Theoretischer Hintergrund: ZUR FRAGESTELLUNG „POSTANTHROPOLOGISCHE KONDITION“

Von Axel Stockburger auf Basis von Diskussionen der Technopolitics Arbeitsgruppe

Der Begriff der postanthropologischen Kondition ist für uns von besonderer Bedeutung, weil er uns erlaubt, einen adäquaten und gemeinsamen Forschungsansatz für die oft fragmentiert und zusammenhanglos erscheinenden Schlüsselmomente und Konfliktorte des gegenwärtigen gesellschaftlichen Umbruchs zu entwickeln. Dieser Begriff ermöglicht uns, eine kritische Distanzierung zu Diskursen über den Post- oder auch Transhumanismus einzunehmen. Anders als diese lenken wir den Blick weniger auf die philosophische Auseinandersetzung mit den Traditionen des Humanismus, und auch nicht auf die technowissenschaftliche Hybridisierung des menschlichen Körpers.

Das Moment des Anthropologischen wird von uns gerade deshalb ins Zentrum gerückt, weil spezifische Transformationen in der Informationstechnologie auch neue Episteme mitproduziert haben, die nicht nur den Zugang zum Wissen über das “Menschliche” mit verändert haben, sondern auch weil es erlaubt einen breiteren Rahmen von Praktiken von der Politik über die Ökonomie bis hin zur Kunst zu eröffnen. Dabei geht es uns ganz explizit nicht darum, innerhalb der Disziplin der Anthropologie zu operieren sondern die zunehmend prekärer werdenden Handlungssphären und Entscheidungsspielräume der Subjekte in gegenwärtigen biopolitisch-kybernetischen Regimes, anhand konkreter Situationen mit den Mitteln der Kunst und der Wissenschaft zu erforschen.

Im Sinne dieses Interesses am Konkreten schließt unser Verständnis der postanthropologischen Kondition zum Teil an die Überlegungen der von Manuel de Landa1 und Rosi Braidotti2 in den 1990er Jahren skizzierten “New Materialism” an. New Materialism postulierte, dass Bewusstsein immer eine materielle Dimension habe (Bewusstsein als Idee des Körpers), dass Materie immer auch in die Dimension des Denkens reiche (Das Denken hat den Körper als sein Objekt) und vor allem, dass Natur und Kultur nicht scharf voneinander getrennt existieren können, so dass wir mit Donna Haraway immer von “nature cultures”3 sprechen müssen. Viele der klassischen Dichotomien lassen sich innerhalb dieses Ansatzes überwinden, um sich verstärkt auf die wesentlichen Fragestellungen nach einer angemessenen Ethik und Politik im Angesicht der techno-wissenschaftlichen Umwälzungen konzentrieren zu können.

Auch in der Arbeit Bruno Latours4 taucht die Frage nach den Verbindungen und Vermischungen, menschlicher und nicht-menschlicher Akteure jenseits klassischer Kategorienbildung auf. Dabei ist es für die Technopolitics Arbeitsgruppe von zentraler Bedeutung die Theoriebildung im Feld feministischer, posthumanistischer und transspiezistischer Zugänge wie sie etwa von Haraway oder Butler vorgestellt wurden, im Hinblick auf ihre emanzipatorische und kapitalismuskritische Dimension zu überprüfen. Hier geht es vor allem darum die dezentrierende und anti-essentialistische Stoßrichtung dieses Denkens aufzunehmen ohne sich jenen Differenzierungs- und Subjektivierungslogiken zu ergeben, die sich bereits als perfekter Motor für neoliberale Konsumgesellschaften gezeigt haben. Vor diesem Hintergrund erscheint uns die Untersuchung der “algorithmischen Einhegung” vielfältigster menschlicher Praktiken, von der Ökonomie (Automated Trading), über Biopolitik (Personal Biofeedback) bis zu Politik (Simulationsszenarien) und Wissensproduktion (Search Algorithms und Big Data) als zentraler Konfliktort der postanthropologischen Kondition, dessen Geschichte, Funktionen, Bedingungen und Möglichkeiten wir besser verstehen wollen.

1. De Landa, (2006) M. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. Continuum, London.
2. Braidotti, R. (2013) The Posthuman, Polity, Oxford
3. Butler, J. (2004) The Companion Species Manifesto, Prickly Paradigm Press, Chicago.
4. Latour, B. (2009) Das Parlament der Dinge, für eine politische Ökologie, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M.

And the coolest Scientist of the Year is .... Luc Steels

drupaladmin — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 08:15:44 +0000

English

And the award for coolest scientist of the year goes to .... Luc Steels. The author of the Talking Heads Experiment played a gig with cover versions of the Talking Heads, Vienna April 15, on the occasion of the conference of evolutionary linguists

Radiokolleg - Braucht Medienkunst eine Geschichte?

drupaladmin — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 09:09:56 +0000

Deutsch

Radiokolleg - Braucht Medienkunst eine Geschichte?

Montag, 27. Jänner 2014 bis Donnerstag 30. Jänner 2014 jeweils 09:30 - 9.45 Live mitzuhören via http://oe1.orf.at/ und 7 Tage nachhören via "Archiv" Button

In dieser Sendung folgt Armin Medosch den Windungen der Doppelhelix aus Geschichten der Medienkunst und der Geschichte der Medien im sozialhistorischen Kontext. Wie formulieren Medientheoretiker/innen und Kurator/innen die Geschichtlichkeit der Medienkunst? Die "neuen" Medien, von denen so oft behauptet wurde, sie seien die Agenten des Wandels, sind selbst Teil einer Geschichtsnarration geworden. Was können wir aus dem Altern dieser Utopie lernen? Wie viel Zukunft ist in dieser Geschichte noch enthalten? Und wie lässt sich die Vergangenheit dieser Artefakte und Praktiken bewahren, wenn ganze technologische Ökosysteme - wie etwa die interaktive CD ROM - verschwunden sind?

Mit Interviews von u.a. Bob Adrian, Inke Arns, Giselle Beiguelman, Josephine Bosma, Annick Bureaud, Wendy Coones, Nina Czegledy, Oliver Grau, Heidi Grundmann, Lev Manovich, Matthias Michalka. Gestaltung: Armin Medosch

Vorankündigung auf Ö1:
http://oe1.orf.at/programm/361978

A Canadian Story - Railways, Telephones, Satellites, an Interview with Robert Adrian X

drupaladmin — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 14:09:52 +0000

Interview with Robert Adrian (excerp)

Robert Adrian X is one of the true pioneers of art as telecommunications. This file presents just a few random samples from an interview with him about the need for a history of media art. Bob mixes his thoughts about the meaning of communications with his memoirs about working those technologies from the late 1970s onwards. The beginnings were characterised by the specifically Canadian situation, a vast country that needed telecommunications to keep its ends together.

This interview is a test and a teaser: a test because I am using a new way of uploading audio with filefields rather than the audio module, and a teaser, since excerpts from this interview will feature in the upcoming program Does Media Art Need a History"

Mekong Water Taxi

drupaladmin — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 12:12:05 +0000

(Lecture) NEW TENDENCIES (1961-1973) - PROGRAMMED ART AS FUTURE GENERATOR

drupaladmin — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 08:23:11 +0000

English

New Tendencies

In a two stop lecture tour I will be talking about New Tendencies in Zagreb on December 6th and in Ljubljana on December 7th. Here I share the abstract for the Ljubljana talk and links to the event websites.

Modern Emancipations – Emancipatory Modernities: a symposium in honour of Matko Meštrović
The Institute of Economics, Trg J F Kennedya 7, Zagreb, Croatia
Friday 6 December 2013
https://www.facebook.com/events/1375311936049332/

Ljudmila Digitalni obrok // Digital Dish
Armin Medosch: NOVE TEDENCE (1961-1973) – PROGRAMIRANA UMETNOST KOT GENERATOR PRIHODNOSTI
Datum: Sobota, 7. december, ob 19.30 uri
https://www.facebook.com/events/764007403616573/?ref=22

In this talk, New Tendencies are reconstructed as important precursors of socially engaged media art. This international art movement was formed through a series of exhibitions and related events, starting in 1961 in Zagreb. The talk will show why NT was possible only under the conditions for art provided by the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. NT, emerging under the conditions of the peak of the economic boom following the Second World war, were still part of the Modernist paradigm, but already transcended it with their practices. NT provides a looking glass through which to engage with how from inside of the industrial society a paradigm shift to the information society was in preparation. They contributed to that momentum through three key innovations:
- NT created a unique approach to art, by defining it as a continuous process of visual research.
- They created a relational and participatory aesthetics that aimed at overcoming alienation.
- Taking inspiration from some of the most radical ideas of Bauhaus, transmitted via institutions such as College of Design, Ulm, NT contributed to the foundations of so called programmed art and created an emerging information aesthetics.

Armin Medosch has worked as artist, curator and author in media art and network culture since the mid 1980s. He has been founding editor of the award winning international online magazine Telepolis. He has a proven track record from large exhibitions such as Telepolis, Luxemburg 1995; and from collaborative curatorial projects such as Kingdom of Piracy (2001-2006), together with Shu Lea Cheang and Yukiko Shikata; the large-scale international exhibitions Waves (Riga, 2006; Dortmund, 2008); he has edited and written numerous books and articles in German and English. He holds a Ph.D. in Arts and Computational Technology (ACT) awarded by Goldsmiths, University of London. His practice-based doctoral research has dealt with exhibitions as sites of research and the early history of media art in the 1960s and 1970s. He is a regular contributor to Austrian public radio ORF Oe1 in the department of science, culture and education.

Digital Dish is co-organised by Zavod Projekt Atol.

Technopolitics@codedcultures: Break On Through!

drupaladmin — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 08:44:47 +0000

English

technopolitics

Technopolitics is a praxis oriented research project initiated by Brian Holmes and Armin Medosch. It is a self-educational project which works out a theoretic framework and vocabulary that makes complex and difficult concepts accessible to cultural producers and activists such as themselves. Technopolitics@codedcultures consists of two parts, a presentation of technopolitical issues with short talks and audivisual support materials, and a second part with a panel of respondents and open discussion with the audience.

Technopolitics@codedcultures: Break On Through!
Tuesday, 27th of September, Urania, Mittlerer Saal, 19:00 - 23:00 CET
http://codedcultures.org/post/technopolitics

Idea and presentation: Armin Medosch

Short Talks:

John Barker: Time and Technology in Textile "Sourcing"
Felix Stalder (recorded talk): Neoliberal Zombie Ideologies vs. the Commons
Christian Lauk: The End of the Age of Fossile Fuels
Brian Holmes (recorded talk): Technopolitics on the Move - Continental Drift through the Pampa

Panel discussion with:

Konrad Becker
Beate Firlinger
Christian Lauk
Alex Nikolic
Axel Stockburger

Audiovisual shorts:

Matsuko Yokokoji and Graham Harwood: Open Data Book Stabbing (2011)
Lucas Bambozzi: Mobile Crash (2009)
Manu Luksch: Faceless (2007)
Deptford TV / Mediengruppe Bitnik: Austrian Surveillance Techno (2011)

Introduction

The current hegemonic centre of the world, the US and its Western allies, are going through a profound economic crisis which is on the verge of becoming a political crisis of world governance. This is made all the more complex because of a looming ecological crisis, created by climate change and the foreseeable end of fossile fuels. Technopolitics tries to find an adequate response to this situation for artists, cultural critics and other people concerned. How can we gain an understanding of the current transformations that does not paralyse us and enables us to act? Which critical investigations do we need to undertake to understand the current technopolitical transformations and which meaningful steps can we take?

We take “technopolitical paradigms” as a useful theoretical starting point. These are coherent articulations between types of machines, forms of organisation and supporting social institutions and change about every 50 years. They originate in a particular hegemonic centre (in our era, the USA) and disseminate through the capitalist world in outwardly radiating movements. The power of the hegemon accrues from its ability to spark innovations - combinations of ways of organisation, political domination and new technologies – which, as they are picked up by rivals, slowly start to loose their capacity to guarantee an advantage. Once a paradigm has lost its persuasive power, a deep crisis arises which cannot be resolved within the same paradigm. We think that we are experiencing such a moment. We are asking if the next paradigm will still have America as its centre and if it will be still based on the commodity-form? What can we do to break through the borders of the informational paradigm?

short cv's (alphabetically):

John Barker is a novelist and has written extensively on political economy for Mute, Variant, and Adbusters magazines as well as the journal Science as Culture.

Konrad Becker is a media researcher, artist, author and editr of numerous publications, director of Institute of cultural technologies/t0 http://www.t0.or.at and world-information.org/wii

Beate Firlinger is an independent journalist and media worker based in Vienna

Brian Holmes is a cultural critic and activist researcher, currently living in Chicago. http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/

Christian Lauk is a researcher at the Institute of Social Ecology of the University of Klagenfurt

Armin Medosch is a researcher, writer and exhibition and conference organiser based in London and Vienna. http://www.thenextlayer.org/

Alexander Nikolic is an artist, activist and researcher; he is currently waiter and curator of cultural centre Boem in Vienna. http://boem.postism.org/

Felix Stalder is lecturer in digital culture and epistemologies of networks at University of Arts, Zurich and researches at Institute of cultural technologies/t0 http://felix.openflows.com/

Axel Stockburger is an artist and theorist who lives and works in Vienna and London http://www.stockburger.at/

Smelling the Rat: Technopolitics@Boem (Workshop)

drupaladmin — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 14:23:06 +0000

Public Presentation and Discussion, 8 pm CET, Saturday March 5, 2011: The financial crisis of 2008 and the resulting fiscal crisis now unfolding throughout the developed world should have finally made it clear to all that neoliberalism as a political ideology is finished. But neoliberal recipes prevail in the official sphere of politics while several other crises loom, from an ecological crisis to an energy and food crisis to a crisis of education and the political systems. Meanwhile, no clear unifying political agenda is visible on the horizon. Is it not possible to begin searching for a concerted response by all those groups who want a different way of life?

The Yugoslav Surrealist writer Oskar Davičo wrote after visiting West Afrika that if someone can write a poem in the language of the colonial power this is a first step towards liberation, but in a next step the colonial language should be mixed with the four most important tribal languages; this is what happens now in Eastern Afrika with the language Sheng which was created in Kenya and is now used by more and more people throughout the region. The emergence of Sheng and the potentialisties of new media open new possibilities for post-nationalist political agitation.

Until the Sixties the left demanded the right to shower, the Punk movement declared that stinking is political. What had happened in between? The troubled biopolitics of the right and the left conspired to sideline the role of animals as agents of history in the twentieth century. The border patrols of legitimate activism can be bypassed by focussing on animals and animality in relationship to economic and social transformations in the context of "Fordism" and its crisis. How did the industrialization of agriculture and the heritage of hygienic improvement movements interrelate with the restructuring of feeling about the human body and sharing multispecies habitats?

In areas on the territory of a country formerly known as Yugoslavia workers have used ancient communist legistlation to take over factories under the banner of self-management. Applying methods of grassroots democratic self-organisation those initiatives which exist like islands in a neocapitalist sea reach out to other initiatives to form networks or workers counciles, bringing democracy into the sites of production; similar initiatives in southern Switzerland are examples among many other which step by step move outside the capitalist mode of production and rehearse forms of political and economic self-organisation.

Technopolitics is a praxis oriented research project that tries to create productive links between theories of political-economic transformation and the political agency of groups on the "edges" (socially, culturally, geographically). According to existing theories about technological change and long economic cycles (Kondratieff waves), new technopolitical paradigms arise about every 50 years. These are coherent articulations between types of machines, forms of organization and supporting social institutions. They originate in a particular hegemonic centre (in our era, the USA) and disseminate through the capitalist world in outwardly radiating movements. The power of the hegemon accrues from its ability to spark innovations - combinations of ways of organisation, political domination and new technologies – which, as they are picked up by rivals, slowly start to loose their capacity to guarantee an advantage to the central power. The new competition increases pressure on human and natural resources until a deep crisis arises which cannot be resolved within the same paradigm, so that a reconfiguration of the system as a whole becomes necessary. It seems that we have entered such a crisis today.

A closed workshop over two days maps the themes and topics described above onto a timeline from the end of WWII till today. The results of this workshop will be presented to the interested public on the evening of Sat, March 5 after 8 pm at Boem, Koppstrasse 26, 1160 Wien http://boem.postism.org/blog/

Bibliography

drupaladmin — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 16:21:56 +0000

English

bibtex-conversion

test

drupaladmin's blog

Tracing Information Society – A Timeline

Related Links:

Die post-anthropologische Kondition? (Ankündigung)

Abstracts und theoretischer Hintergrund

Politik der Algorithmen

Zu neueren Kontrollformen der Technoscience

Gerald Nestler, Abstract Technopolitics Salon

Theoretischer Hintergrund: ZUR FRAGESTELLUNG „POSTANTHROPOLOGISCHE KONDITION“

Related Links:

And the coolest Scientist of the Year is .... Luc Steels

Radiokolleg - Braucht Medienkunst eine Geschichte?

A Canadian Story - Railways, Telephones, Satellites, an Interview with Robert Adrian X

Interview with Robert Adrian (excerp)

Mekong Water Taxi

(Lecture) NEW TENDENCIES (1961-1973) - PROGRAMMED ART AS FUTURE GENERATOR

Technopolitics@codedcultures: Break On Through!

Smelling the Rat: Technopolitics@Boem (Workshop)

Bibliography