Rafael Prieto-Curiel

urban dynamics, science of crime and complex models related to migration

Rafael Prieto-Curiel has been a postdoctoral research fellow at the Complexity Science Hub since May 2022. Before that he was at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford/Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London, working on urban dynamics at the Peak Urban project. He has a master’s degree in statistics and a PhD degree from University College London UCL in maths and security and crime. Rafael was director of strategic analysis at the Emergency Attention Centre of Mexico City where he worked on crime forecasting and police and resources allocation. At CSH, he works on mobility, migration, urban dynamics, and a demographic analysis of African cities. As an undergraduate student, he directed the Maths magazine "Laberintos e Infinitos." While studying at UCL, he founded the Maths magazine "Chalkdust" as well as the science communication website “Punto Decimal MX.”
LINKS: https://csh.ac.at/rafael-prieto-curiel/

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/cities-and-spatial-interactions-in-west-africa_57b30601-en

Morgane Billuart

Cycles, the Sacred, and the Doomed  (Set Margins’, 2024) 

with a co-reading by the author & Carmen Lael Hines

Morgane Billuart (1997) is a French writer and filmmaker. She completed her studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and pursued education at the Cooper Union in New York. In an era dominated by digital culture, the enthusiasm for DIY internet philosophies, and the proliferation of self-help seminars, her distinctive approach seeks to shed light on the contemporary dynamics of faith and belief formation. Her work consistently grapples with these themes, intricately intertwined with her identity as a woman, prompting contemplation on the roles of bodies in reshaping the technocratic and digital landscapes that encompass us. morganebilluart.com
Carmen Lael Hines is a writer, researcher, and curator interested in tech, bodies, and the implications of their entanglements. She is currently a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Visual Cultures at the Technical University of Vienna. Her most recent works concern topics such as AI, neoliberal aesthetics, femtech, home automation, dating apps and platform urbanism. She is currently co-editing the book Dissident Practices: Posthumanist Approaches to a Critique of Political Economy, to be published by Bloomsbury. She co-curated the exhibition ‘Bordering Plants’ in the Exhibit Galerie at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and was also on the curatorial team for Austria’s contribution to the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021. She has curated exhibitions/programmes at: e-flux screening room NY, The Austrian Cultural Forum NY, Architekturzentrum Wien(as part of the Claiming*Space Collective) and Galerie Kandlhofer.

Thomas Proksch

Never let a good crisis go to waste.*

Thomas Proksch führt als Landschaftsplaner und Landschaftsökologe ein Büro in Wien und ist in dieser Rolle seit 1991 mit unterschiedlichsten Problemstellungen am Umweltsektor und deren planerischer Bewältigung konfrontiert. Schwerpunkte seiner Tätigkeit reichen von der Stadtplanung, Freiraumplanung und Landschaftsplanung bis hin zu Raumverträglichkeitsuntersuchungen, Umwelt- und Naturschutzgutachten wie unter anderem Naturschutzmanagementkonzepten. Daneben ist er als Universitätslektor tätig.

* Winston Churchill

Vladan Joler

Mapping Extractivism

In this talk, researcher and artist Vladan Joler speaks about his cartographic practice. He develops a visual language to analyse the multi-layered superstructures that underlie new extractivist practices.
He takes us through the different allegories and concepts presented in his recent animated movie, map and essay "The New Extractivism": step by step, from the gravity fields of Internet black holes to the architecture of our personalized prison caves to the design of the numerous parts of the engines of extractivism.
At this moment in the 21st century, we are witnessing the rise of a new form of extractivism, one that reaches into the furthest corners of the biosphere and the deepest layers of human cognitive and affective being. The stack behind contemporary technological systems expands far beyond the "technical stack" of data modelling, hardware, servers and networks. The full stack reaches into capital, labor and nature. It demands an enormous amount of each while its true costs – social, environmental, economic, and political – are hidden.
Through counter-mapping, Vladan Joler offers a new analytic and visual aesthetics that confronts planetary scale extraction.

Vladan Joler is an academic, researcher and artist whose work blends data investigations, counter-cartography, investigative journalism, writing, data visualisation, critical design and numerous other disciplines. He explores and visualises different technical and social aspects of algorithmic transparency, digital labour exploitation, invisible infrastructures and many other contemporary phenomena in the intersection between technology and society.
In 2018, in cooperation with Kate Crawford, he published Anatomy of an AI System, a large-scale map and long-form essay investigating the human labour, data and planetary resources required to build and operate an Amazon Echo device. Vladan Joler’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Design Museum in London, and also in the permanent exhibition of the Ars Electronica Center. His work has been exhibited in more than a hundred international exhibitions, including institutions and events such as: MoMA, ZKM, XXII Triennale di Milano, HKW, Vienna Biennale, V&A, Transmediale, Ars Electronica, Biennale WRO, Design Society Shenzhen, Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, MONA, Glassroom, La Gaite Lyrique, the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and the European Parliament in Brussels. https://labs.rs/en/

Emma Dowling

Considering Care

The COVID pandemic has both exacerbated and amplified the structural crisis of care that afflicts contemporary society. In her talk, Emma Dowling, author of The Care Crisis, will explore current political economies of care and the ways in which austerity measures, financialisation and new technologies not only shape particular configurations of care, but also the very conceptions of what care is. Beyond mere calls for more compassion, Dowling will discuss what it might mean to challenge and change the structural conditions for caring.

Emma Dowling is a sociologist and political scientist and teaches at the University of Vienna. Previously Dowling has held academic positions in Germany and the UK. Her research has covered topics such as affective and emotional labour, gender and social reproduction, as well as the financialisation of the social. Her most recent work asks what our economy looks like when viewed from the perspective of care, charting the material conditions that shape its configurations. She is the author of The Care Crisis - What Caused It and How Can We End It? (2021, Verso).

Hayley Newman and Bryan Reedy

HAND archival software for artists

Hayley Newman and Bryan Reedy will talk about their project HAND, archival software for artists which they have been working on together since January 2017.

Hayley and Brian are two London-based artists. In 2016, Hayley received a grant to start to archive her performance work and Bryan Reedy helped her digitise her analogue work. During this process she began to look for a database to host her archives. She was disappointed to find that the models available were expensive, focused on the art object and sales, and didn’t provide her with what she needed: an offline archival database to store her performance work and associated research and contextual materials.

During this time Bryan built a prototype database to organise her work. Bryan is currently developing a more widely accessible, desktop version of the original web-based database. The application will be licensed under the MIT open source initiative license and aims to provide an environment that does not privilege the art object or sales but instead creates a space in which research, documentation and social context exists alongside artworks and archive materials.

Hayley Newman I am interested in performance and performativity, documentary practices, humour, subjectivity and fiction. My commitment to working creatively around the current economic, social and ecological crises forged The Gluts (Hayley Newman, Gina Birch and Kaffe Matthews) and our eco-electro musical Café Carbon which we took to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009. For Café Carbon we wrote songs about food and climate. My pre-Occupy novella Common, written as Self-Appointed Artist-in-Residence in the City of London over the summer of 2011, was published by Copy Press in 2013. In Common I wrote about the economic crisis from within; as it was happening on the streets of the Square Mile. I am a tutor on the doctoral programme at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL and was recently an Art360 award holder. Art360 is an independent charity set up to empower artists and estates to manage, protect and make their work accessible. The work Bryan and I are doing to code archival software is a development of this which we hope will contribute to thinking around archiving ephemeral practices. www.hayleynewman.org

Bryan Reedy I am an artist based in London producing paintings, sculptural works, and installations exploring the psycho-corporeal nature of objects and drawing on my personal engagement with the expression of identity (socio-political, sexual, philosophical) and the making of place.  I have a long-standing fascination for the archival impulse and in the role that design can play in broadening the voice of the fringe. I have had the opportunity to work on a number of projects that engage these interests in different ways. In 2010 I worked with The Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Foundation to archive her estate and to present Sedgwick’s artwork on a level with her more widely known academic oeuvre. From 2012-2015 I served as the lead designer for Guillotine Publishing, an erratically published chapbook series focused on speculative fictions and radical nonfictions. The current project, undertaken with Hayley Newman and based on the process of archiving her 20+ year career in performance art, is an exciting new opportunity to explore my archiving fascination and to have a hand in setting the groundwork for a robust and responsible model of data collection and collation. www.instagram.com/bryanreedy

This project is supported by UCL’s HEIF Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Fund.
Link:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/enterprise/staff/access-funding/knowledge-exchange-and-innovation-funding

David Sperling

Counter-cartographies: technopolitics for spatialization of information

The capturing, processing and arranging of data in space and time are organized as transversal procedures. They are applied to the purposes of life management and the generation of meaning in complex and often controversial techno-political settings. Parallel to these forms of production and delivery of visual and spatial information, regimes of (in)visibilities are defined and realities thus molded.

The presentation will have three parts. Firstly, I will discuss topics of mapping and counter-cartography as a way of making visible the complex realities generated by these procedures. Secondly, I will present two counter-cartographic practices we have conducted with architecture students in Brazil; the first example asks what can be drawn from the relationship between the expansion of an airport and the use of slave-like labor; and the second questions how we can understand a city from buildings that (de)territorialize offshore companies. Operating through articulations between spatial and social mapping these projects are focused on making visible the production of the city of São Paulo in connection to the hidden logics of economic and political power. The final part will synthesize some remarks about counter-cartographies as technopolitics tools for architecture teaching and practice.

David Sperling is Professor of the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo and coordinator of the Center for Studies on Contemporary Spatialities at IAU-USP. He is Researcher of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development since 2017 and member of the Editorial Board of several Scientific Journals in Brazil and abroad. He is an architect, holds a Master degree and a Ph.D. in Architecture and Urbanism from USP. Some of his projects, visual works, and cartographic projects were exhibited at the 4th, 10th and 11th International Architecture Bienniales of São Paulo and at the Storefront for Architecture and Urbanism (NYC). He was the curator of the exhibitions "Homo Faber 2.0: Politics of Digital in Latin America" (2018) and "Homo Faber: Digital Fabrication in Latin America" (2015). He was Visiting Professor at Leuphana University (Germany) in 2017 (with a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) and from the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Argentina) in 2014 (with a grant from the Association of Universities of the Montevideo Group). His main research topics are cartographies and mapping; space, technology, and culture; interfaces between contemporary architecture and art practices; design processes and computational technologies.

Link:
www.iau.usp.br/pesquisa/grupos/nec/

Katherina T. Zakravsky

“GoT” as dialectical school for a global civil society

“Game of Thrones”, an HBO TV show based on George R.R. Martin's series of fantasy novels “A Song of Fire and Ice”, has lived for 8 seasons. Now that it has, as they say “wrapped“, we can start to understand why this show (one of so many high concept TV shows) has gained such an ardent following and such significance amongst critiques, scholars and fans.
The lecture will have 3 parts. First it will try to map out a structural model on the trans-media and socio-economic architecture of a “thing” such as GoT. What does it consist of? There is the genre of the narrative, there is the TV industry, there is the symbolic “halo” of the reception process in social media and elsewhere that can lead to a “cult”, or not.
The second part will focus on the reception, on fan and nerd culture as a specific agency of pop culture, rendering it the site of a new epoch of global politics.
The final part will try to condense a daring thesis, taking Fredic Jameson as a basis, as to why a product on a feudal fantasy world can be a vessel to make us understand the unknown horizon we are as a global industrial society evolving into.

KT Zakravsky is a trained academic philosopher (Poststructuralism, Kant, Nietzsche, Science Fiction, ethics of science and technology), writer, concept and performance artist and curator.
Current projects are the conception of a TV show, political blogging on Facebook and elsewhere, the performance projects “ViennaSchoolOFF” and “Teatro Antifragile”. 2018 collaboration with Klaus Spieß and Lucie Strecker on performative installations on microbial agency and micro-performativity. 2015-2017 artist in residence in seeLab, Seestadt Aspern, 2017 head of project “L>FiST” on the disappearance of 7 ficticious characters from Seestadt Aspern involving social media storytelling, multimedia installation and performance.

Links:
https://www.facebook.com/ladyzakray
https://planetzakra.wordpress.com/
http://yt.vu/c/UCpeDL20T71R6utSoYjZx7CQ

Axel Stockburger

Film Screening and Talk: Красная звезда / RED STARS

Красная звезда / RED STARS is a film that engages with Alexander Bogdanov’s science fiction novel “Red Star” (1908), which envisions a utopian society on Mars and it’s contemporary reception in the context of contemporary renewed efforts to colonize Mars. RED STARS relates to central topics of Bogdanov’s pre-revolutionary socialist imagination, reaching from collectivity and identity, over gender relations, art, science towards economy and education, through the use of interviews with, among others, Alexander Malinosky, Alla Mitrofanova, Pavel Arseynev, Anastasia Gacheva, Anna Gorskaya, Alexandra Simakova and Boris Klushnikov.

Axel Stockburger will introduce the project and briefly contextualise Alexander Bogdanov’s position in relation to contemporary discourses related to the current ecological crisis. The film is presented in Russian with English subtitles.

Axel Stockburger is an artist and theorist who lives and works in Vienna. He studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna with Peter Weibel and holds a PhD from the University of the Arts, London. His films and installations are shown internationally.
Among other projects he has initiated the independent art television channel TIV in Vienna in 1998 and collaborated on international projects with the London based media art group D-Fuse (2000-2004). At present he works as Associate Professor in the Department for Art and Digital Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Axel Stockburger is a member of Technopolitics since 2011.
stockburger.at

Susy Scardocchia

Trademarks and morality: should we give a f—k?

Take the following words: fucking hell, paki, hitler, mafia, screw you, fucking freezing, bin laden, weed, ETA. Do you find them offensive?

The words mentioned above are all trademarks. Some were refused on moral grounds. In this talk, we will explore how such borderline trademarks are treated by the EU authorities in the context of the general moral landscape of liberal society.
Trademarks are powerful means of communication. Their selling power is deeply connected to how unique and persuasive they are. Trademarks are also a form of commercial expression, which is protected as a freedom by the EU Convention on Human Rights, with a crucial limitation: the trademarks should not be disturbing, or offensive, or insulting, or threatening. For this reason, in the EU – a mixture of ethnicities, religions and cultures - the law on trademarks establishes that “signs which are contrary to public policy and accepted principles of morality” may not be registered as trademarks.
The landscape of immoral trademarks is continuously evolving. Ethical standards change, as do political regimes. Is it enough to argue for a delicate balance between this freedom and its boundaries? Or are there other pressing issues in the relation between trademarking and other freedoms that need to be dealt with?
So, what does the perception of a trademark tell us about society? To what extent do the trademark decisions taken by EUIPO and the European Courts authorities accurately mirror the views in society on what is moral or immoral, what is good and what is evil?

Susy Scardocchia is an Italian-Austrian trademark lawyer. After growing up in Italy, China, Austria and the United States, she graduated from the University of Turin, worked as a lawyer in Rome and then moved to Alicante, Spain in 2001, where she has lived ever since (except for two years spent travelling ), working at the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) as a legal specialist in the Boards of Appeal.

Ines Doujak and John Barker

Ines Doujak and John Barker will talk about two visual works “Economies of Desperation” and “Silk Road” which deal with different sides of the present world political economy. One with the effects of war, debt, land grab and the war on drugs, how they overlap and are most visibly shown by involuntary migration. The other with the absolute confidence of the present Chinese leadership in creating a new world based on large scale infrastructure mostly in the interests of an international trade in which those stuck in economies of desperation do not appear, but are functional to.
The talk will talk of how art can make for a view of the world whereby things not kept separate are visualised together. It will be in English and some, no doubt in German.

Ines Doujak and John Barker live in London and Vienna, and work together through a common interest in the political dimension of cultural exchanges. Since 2010 they have collaborated on exhibitions like
2018 Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kerala, India; ´50 Jahre nach '50 Jahre Bauhaus' 1968´, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart; ´A BEAST, A GOD, AND A LINE´, Dhaka Art Summit ’18, Bangladesh; Para Site, Hong Kong; TS1 Yangon Myanmar; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland 2017 ´The Conundrum of Imagination´, Leopoldmuseum, Wiener Festwochen; ´Stealing from the West´, Academy of the Arts of the World Cologne 2016 ´Not Dressed for Conquering´, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; ´Transcultural Flux´, Stiftelsen 3, Bergen and Akershus Kunstsenter, Lillestrom; ´The Next Big Thing is Not a Thing´, Bureau Europa, Maastricht; Peace-Treaty, San Sebastian; Sans peau / No Skin, SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, Montreal, QC 2015 ´The Beast and the Sovereign´, MACBA, Barcelona; ´Ape Culture´, HKW, Berlin; ”Social Glitch´, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna; ”Creating Common Good“, Kunsthaus Wien; ”All Men become Sisters”, Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz; ”Notes on Crisis, Currency and Consumption“, Galerie Raum mit Licht, Vienna; ”The Value of Food“, Saint John the Divine, New York; ”to expose, to show, to demonstrate, to inform, to offer“, MUMOK, Vienna; ”The School of Kyiv“, Kyiv Biennal 2014 ´Universes in Universe´, Biennial São Paulo; “Fields“, National Art Museum, Riga; “Into the City“, Wiener Festwochen, Vienna 2013 ”October Salon”, The Cultural Centre of Belgrade, Belgrade; ´Not Dressed for Conquering´, Royal College of Art, London 2012 ”Unauthorized“, Inter Arts Center, Malmoe; ”Acts of Voicing”, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; “The Indian-Investigator-Machine visiting the TBA“ at ´Ephemeropterae´, Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary Vienna; ”Art and Fashion”, Museum of Modern Art, Vienna; ´Garden of Learning´, Busan Biennale, Korea.

Ines Doujak and John Barker,
Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kerala, India, 2018-19 (installation)

Doppel-Buchpräsentation & “Living Currency to come”

Im Zentrum der Präsentation von Horst Ebner, Ivo Gurschler und Walter Seitter steht der Versuch die fast schon kryptischen Gedankengänge von Pierre Klossowski besser zugänglich zu machen bzw. einem weiteren Publikum zu eröffnen. "LIVING CURRENCY to come”. Eine Vorahmung. Mit Andreas L. Hofbauer und Lucie Strecker.

Wörter, Bilder, Körper – Zu Pierre Klossowskis Lebendes Geld

Hg. von Horst Ebner, Ivo Gurschler und Walter Seitter, VERLAG TURIA + KANT WIEN–BERLIN

Dieser Materialienband macht sich an die Enträtselung von La Monnaie vivante / Lebendes Geld aus dem Jahr 1970. Er enthält thematisch verwandte Texte von Klossowski, ein Gespräch mit ihm sowie ein kleines »Wörterbuch« zu Lebendes Geld und drei werkgeschichtliche Essays der Herausgeber. Lassen sich Bedingungen denken, unter denen es ›legitim‹ wäre, lebende Wesen als bloße Objekte zu besitzen? Menschen als Zahlungsmittel, als neuer Goldstandard? Könnten solche Bedingungen innerhalb der sozialen Tauschbeziehungen einen alternativen Raum gegenüber der heute de facto stattfindenden monetären Prostituierung eröffnen?

Hg. von Horst Ebner, Ivo Gurschler und Walter Seitter

VERLAG TURIA + KANT WIEN–BERLIN

»La Monnaie Vivante« erschien bei Éric Losfeld éditeur (© Terrain Vague), Paris 1970.

Lebendes Geld schrieb der Übersetzer, Philosoph und Maler Pierre Klossowski in den Turbulenzen der Kapitalismus-Kritik um 1968. Der Text verbindet Analysen zur libidinösen Struktur der europäischen Wirtschaft, Erotik und Ikonik, um nach Möglichkeit einen utopischen, jedenfalls einen anderen als kapitalistischen Weg andeuten zu können. Michel Foucault sah in dem Text ein »anthropologisches Dreieck« aus Begehren, Wert und Simulakrum aufgestellt und sprach vom »größten Buch unserer Epoche«. Heute gilt es, das in seiner entschiedenen Heterogenität subversive Buch aus dem Abstand von nahezu fünfzig Jahren neu zu lesen und zu gebrauchen.

Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001) Geboren in Paris. Wuchs in Milieus um Rainer Maria Rilke, Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan und in theologischen Institutonen auf. Ehe mit Denise Marie Roberte Sinclair. Er übersetzte eine Reihe von Schlüsseltexten von Vergil bis Wittgenstein, seine Romane und Bilderserien transformieren eigene biographische Erfahrungen ins Surreale und Theoretische, die philosophischen Bücher werfen die Frage nach den unterschiedlichsten Lebensformen auf. Er starb in Paris.

Horst Ebner, geb. 1959, lebt als Lektor und Publizist in Wien. Bis 2016 Mitherausgeber der Zeitschrift TUMULT.

Ivo Gurschler, geb. 1979, Publizist und Doktorand im Bereich Philosophie an der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien.

Walter Seitter, geb. 1941, Philosoph in Wien. Übersetzte Werke von Michel Foucault, Pierre Klossowski, Francis Ponge. Arbeitet an Philosophischer Anthropologie, Physik, Ästhetik. Derzeit Lektüre der aristotelischen Metaphysik in der Hermesgruppe.
Lucie Strecker, geb. 1977, forscht künstlerisch zu performativen Prozessen zwischen Bild, Text und Technologien an der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien.

Bill Seaman

Neosentience: The Insight Engine, The Oper& — AI and radical potential cultural change

Bill Seaman will present a multi-perspective set of views related to AI.
He will discuss his book with Otto Rossler - Neosentience / The Benevolence Engine; his experimental opera - The Oper&, a collaboration with John Supko; his development of a transdisciplinary search engine as conceptual art - The Insight Engine; and the potential of great cultural change as AI becomes autonomous and self-aware.

Bill Seaman billseaman.com

Media Artist and Researcher Bill Seaman is professor at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. He co-directs The Emergence Lab with John Supko, Media Arts + Sciences at Duke University where he teaches in the department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies. He gained a master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT, working in the then new Media Lab, The Center for Advanced Visual Studies, and in particular worked with others to invent aspects of interactive media in the Film/Video Department. He has a PhD from CAIIA – The Center for Advanced Inquiry in Interactive Art, University of Wales, where he explored the creation of generative virtual environments. He is currently working on a book on Ranulph Glanville, multiple new music albums and recently premiered an experimental generative Opera with John Supko called The Oper&, commissioned by the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.

Stefano Ferretti & Barbara Imhof

CAPTURING OUTER SPACE  The technopolitics of interplanetary exploration and colonization

The panel is to discuss the human and nonhuman exploration of space and the rationales and cultural implications these efforts might have.

An introduction by the Technopolitics member, artist and theorist Axel Stockburger will outline the questions the event raises from a technopolitical perspective.

The first presentation by Stefano Ferretti, resident fellow of the European Space Polic Institute (ESPI) will set the outline for human space missions, their challenges and the next foreseen steps, including popular conversations of making humans an inter-planetary species, as was recently declared by SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

The space architect and design researcher Barbara Imhof will present the most recent projects of LIQUIFER Systems Group which are about designing for the unfamiliar: architecture for extreme environments and space. The projects mostly fall into the area of Research & Development and partly into fundamental research. They are collaborative in their nature and are being developed by partners across many disciplines. All space related projects discuss how humans can live together in minimal spaces without common terrestrial infrastructure and create possible future scenarios in which spaceflight plays an important role. LIQUIFER’s work fuses inter-disciplinary work methodologies, visions for an inclusive future and the aspiration to create a visible impact through long term engagement in space exploration themes.

Gerald Nestler and Felix Stalder of Technopolitics will spur the conversation with questions on the interplay of technology, politics, space and culture inbetween human and automated agents. and then invite the audience to participate in a moderated Q&A.

Panel: Stefano Ferretti, resident fellow of the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI). Barbara Imhof, space architect and design researcher, LIQUIFER Systems Group, Vienna. Gerald Nestler, Felix Stalder, Axel Stockburger, Technopolitics Research Group, Vienna.

Barbara Imhof, LIQUIFER Systems Group: http://www.liquifer.com/

Stefano Ferretti, European Space Policy Institute (ESPI): https://espi.or.at/

Jean Peters

Was tun?

Wir leben in dunklen Zeiten, in denen sich ein resigniertes Ohmachtsgefühl breit gemacht hat, was der neuen Rechten einen fruchtbaren Nährboden bietet. Was können wir heute noch tun, in deiner Welt, in der die Waffenindustrie kaum zu stoppen, der Klimawandel mit einer Armee von Lobbyisten unserer Industrie weiter forciert wird, wo die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung unbedacht Smartphones und Googles zur eigenen Totalüberwachung nutzt und unser tägliche Freude über Schokolade oder Orangensaft von organisierter Kindersklaverei oder Gewerkschaftszerschlagung durch große Supermarktketten abhängig ist? Jean Peters von Peng erforscht gezielt neue Taktiken und Strategien der politischen Beeinflussung, die sich der Mittel von Kunst, Hacking und Aktivismus bedient. In seinem Vortrag wird er uns einen Blick hinter die Kulissen einiger Aktionen geben und mit den Anwesenden diskutieren, wie die drängenden Fragen unserer Zeit mit der entsprechenden Dringlichkeit begegnet werden können, sollten oder müssen.

Jean Peters von Peng erforscht gezielt neue Taktiken und Strategien der politischen Beeinflussung, die sich der Mittel von Kunst, Hacking und Aktivismus bedient. In seinem Vortrag wird er uns einen Blick hinter die Kulissen einiger Aktionen geben und mit den Anwesenden diskutieren, wie die drängenden Fragen unserer Zeit mit der entsprechenden Dringlichkeit begegnet werden können, sollten oder müssen.

Denis “Jaromil” Roio

Algorithmic Sovereignty

Hidden algorithms are growing in power and importance. Their logic is often invisible, while their results are manifest.
There is an urgent need for more awareness of decisions made by algorithms about the social and economical context in which we live. The metaphor of a “black box society” is perfect to understand the role that algorithms have taken in our contemporary and highly digitised world.
What is inscribed in such algorithms? What are the consequences of their execution and what is the agency left for the living world? What’s the role of sovereignty considering the ethic of algorithms?
Sovereignty relates to the way a community can influence an algorithm, appropriate it, distribute it, share it and create new ones.

In his Ph.D thesis titled “Algorithmic Sovereignty” Denis Roio leaves behind “in-vitro” considerations and takes a practical and participatory approach to algorithmic sovereignty by illustrating and analysing projects he has been involved in or is leading.
This way he suggests a possible path of development for Dyne.org, an interdisciplinary community of hackers, activists and artists gathered around the notion of an “independent software house” developing software not for a profit, but for its role within societies. Dyne.org research and development activities all aim at empowering communities with algorithmic knowledge to facilitate their sovereignty.


Devuan: the anatomy of a fork – https://devuan.org
Dowse: making visible the invisible – https://dowse.eu
Decode: Decentralised Citizens Owned Data Ecosystem – https://decodeproject.eu

Denis Roio, better known as Jaromil, is CTO and co~founder of the Dyne.org think&do tank. Established in 1999 and based in Amsterdam, Dyne.org is home to a community of digital artists, critical makers and free software developers with a strong focus on cryptography, peer to peer networks, decentralization and blockchain technologies. Jaromil received the Vilém Flusser Award at Transmediale (Berlin, 2009) while leading for 6 years the R&D department of the Netherlands Media art Institute (Montevideo/TBA), he is a fellow of Waag Society (Amsterdam), included in the "Purpose Economy" list of top 100 social entrepreneurs in EU (2014) and the "40 under 40" European young leaders program. Among the most recent projects he is involved in are: D-CENT, the DECODE project, Devuan, Freecoin and Dowse (ISOC NL Innovation prize 2016 special mention).

Wolfie Christl

Leben im Überwachungskapitalismus

Wir ahnen es alle. Wir werden online (und zunehmend auch offline) auf Schritt und Tritt beobachtet. Während dank Snowden's Enthüllungen einiges über Überwachung durch staatlicher Organe bekannt wurde, wurde der Überwachung zu kommerziellen Zwecken weniger Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Dabei ist in den letzten Jahren ist eine riesige, verzweigte und stark vernetzte Industrie entstanden, die in Echtzeit Daten sammelt, verknüpft, interpretiert, verkauft und zunehmend gegen uns einsetzt - von automatisierten Entscheidungen bis zur Beeinflussung von Verhalten. Ausgehend von seinen Studien "Networks of Control (2016)" und "Corporate Surveillance in Everyday Life (2017)", zeichnet Wolfie Christl (crackedlabs.org) die Konturen und Dimensionen dieser allgegenwärtigen Praktiken nach und stellt dabei die nachgewiesenen wie auch potentiellen Folgen für persönliche Autonomie, Machtverhältnisse, Gleichberechtigung und demokratische Prozesse zur Diskussion.

Wolfie Christl lebt in Wien und ist Programmierer, Forscher, Theoretiker und Netzaktivist. Er hat von 2000-2006 bei der Wiener Netzkulturinitiative Public Netbase mitgearbeitet und ist Mitinitiator des vielfach ausgezeichneten Online-Spiels "Data Dealer", das sich mit viel Witz und Ironie dem Thema Überwachung widmet. Seit einigen Jahren forscht er intensiv zu den gesellschaftlichen Implikationen der kommerziellen Nutzung persönlicher Daten und hat ein Buch und einige umfangreiche Studien zum Thema veröffentlicht. Außerdem schreibt er unregelmäßig für Medien wie die FAZ, hat beratend bei TV-Dokus mitgearbeitet und macht gewerkschaftliche Schulungen über betrieblichen Datenschutz. Er und seine Projekte wurden u.a. in der New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, Guardian und Le Monde zitiert.

Mark Coeckelbergh

"Romantic Technologies, Exploited People, and the Revolution: From Hippie Computing to Data Sweatshops and Contemporary Technopolitical Movements and Practices."

In this talk I argue that our contemporary dealings with technology can be better understood by putting them in the context of the history of romanticism, which exerts its influence as today we seek liberation, escape, and unity by technological means. I show how romanticism has influenced the birth and use of computing and the internet, and how today we are still seduced by its magic and romantic promises. But there is a dangerous dialectic: like the enlightenment, romanticism has turned into its opposite: the magic of technologies is used by corporations to get our data and the promises of liberation and democracy have turned into new forms of slavery and exploitation. Can new technopolitical movements and practices do something about this? Or are they also trapped in romanticism.

Mark Coeckelbergh is Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Austria and part-time Professor of Technology and Social Responsibility at the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility, De Montfort University, UK. He is also the current President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. His publications include Using Words and Things (Routledge 2017), New Romantic Cyborgs (MIT 2017), Money Machines (Ashgate 2015), Environmental Skill (Routledge 2015), Human Being @ Risk (Springer 2013), Growing Moral Relations (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), and numerous articles in the area of philosophy of technology, including philosophy of robotics and ICT and topics such as language and technology, financial technologies, and machine creativity. He also actively explores questions concerning technology through collaborations with artists and curators.

Volkmar Klien

Musik als soziales Medium und Glaubensgemeinschaft.
Komponieren mit Weltmodellen und kognitiven Erweiterungen

Agents of Change - Change the Agents

TECHNOPOLITICS meets Migrating Kitchen

In memoriam Armin Medosch, dem Initiator von Technopolitcs, einer transdisziplinären Plattform aus KünstlerInnen, ForscherInnen, DesignerInnen und JournalistInnen widmet sich dieser Abend den Agents of Change. 
Als roter Faden dient ein Kunstprojekt, das aus dem gemeinsamen Diskurs der Gruppe in den letzten beiden Jahren entstanden ist. Tracing Information Society – a Timeline ist der Titel der Zeitleiste, die anhand eines mehrdimensionalen Mappings von politischen Ereignissen, technologischen Erfindungen und kulturellen Entwicklungen zur Kritik und Überwindung der neoliberalen Informations(un)ordnung beitragen will.
Vielleicht gelingt es anhand der Einträge zu Agents of Change Perspektiven zu verschieben, die Agenten zu wechseln, neue Aktionslinien und Einträge zu finden, wie etwa den "Budapest refugee march"…

Thomas Jelinek
Technopolitics – Entropy.

Gerald Straub
Raum schafft Wissen.

Darko Fritz
New Materialisms

Dušan Barok, Monoskop
Class, Reference, Index

Monika Mokre, Birgit Mendel
Das große Gefängnis

Matthias Tarasiewicz
Cryptocurrencies as Experimental Systems: bitcoin and altcoins between tech-utopia, playful experiments and real markets.

Lisa Sigl
Cultures of Knowledge Production within and for the Movement for the Basic Income.

Doron Goldfarb
Wiki Art Histories.

Armin Medosch
The Broken Mirror, Zusammenfassung der FIELDS exhibition Thematik.

Felix Stalder
Die Kultur der Digitalität.

Axel Stockburger
Quantitative Easing for the Street.

Gerald Nestler
Artistic Research on Algorithmic Finance.

Michel Bauwens
P2P society.

Thomas Thaler
12 Billion People – Counting Population And Calculating Rations..

Kristian Lukić
Technological Singularity – Eschatology of Machinic Capitalism.

John Barker
Bloody Taylorism and Cognitive Capitalism. Results of his and Ines Doujak’s research Loomshuttles, Warpaths.

Monka Halkort
Counting versus Narration. Betrachtungen zur Datenbank als politische Form aus einem palästinensischen Flüchtlingslager im Libanon.

Francesca da Rimini
File-sharing and Disorderlyness.

Brian Holmes
Technopolitics and Technofinance.

Katja Mayer

Fahim Amir
Zoopolitics in Chandigar.

Workshop Analyse des Technopolitics-Kategoriensystems.

Christian Lauk
Ökologische Krisenszenarien.

Axel Stockburger, Felix Stalder
Zum Begriff des techno-ökonomischen Paradigmas.

Erster Technopolitics evening
Armin Medosch
Technopolitics, Vorstellung der Themen und Problemstellungen.