Packaging Across Networks

 

Online workshop held on a Telegram channel
July 7&8, 4pm – 7pm CET
An experiment in networked tracing, instigated by Nicolas Malevé, Nestor Siré, Gaia Tedone

Guest speakers and tracers: Cristina Cochior, Marloes de Valk, Maurice Haedo, Swati Janu, Steffen Köhn, Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas, Sam Mercer, Jara Rocha, Luis Rodil-Fernandez, Winnie Soon.

Please join us for a two-days online workshop to reflect and speculate on the poetics and politics of divergent networked infrastructures.

The framework of the Packaging Across Networks Workshop is Nestor Siré’s long-term research on the 'Cuban Paquete Semanal' – a one-terabyte collection of media that is aggregated weekly in Cuba on a physical hard drive and is distributed through a pirate network of distribution via in-person digital copying. In this context we are reflecting upon the material conditions of different networked infrastructures and how they force us to rethink a series of assumptions about the circulations of images and content and create different networked economies.

Over the course of two days of focused exchange, we aim to open up reflections on online and offline networks, informal channels of content circulation, and collaborative practices under conditions of socio-technical asymmetry. Through a set of presentations, discussions and a tracing exercise, we will attempt to articulate the tensions arising when online networked content is disseminated in offline networks as well as the conditions in which these offline networks may resurface online. We will address the social and economic dynamics that subtend these forms of networking. The context of the American embargo against Cuba will serve as a point of reference for this discussion that will extend to other contexts such as Khirkee, South Delhi.

The tracing exercises, which will be conducted at the hands of invited participants–tracers aided by open source software, aims to visualize the various questions and concepts introduced in the presentations and to offer a map for moments of shared analysis and speculation. Focused attention will be directed towards the near future of Siré's project: to find the relevant form of presence of the Art Section of El Paquete in an online environment. We want to collectively discuss which form this can take, which strategies can be imagined, what kinds of alliances need to be built and which trajectories must be enabled. 

The choice to use Telegram has been made to circumnavigate problems of connectivity with Cuba and to explore creative and social responses to instant messaging apps. Please download the latest update of the Telegram app ahead of the event. You can decide to follow the talk from either your phone or computer desktop. Just click on the above link to join the channel at the time of the event. If you don’t have Telegram, you can download the app for free here: https://telegram.org

The workshop is developed as part of the collaborative project 'Critical Tracing and the Post-Photographic Image’ supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Lucerne School of Art and Design. 

+ info and full programme: http://functionariesofthecamera.net/packaging-across-networks/