looking forward to thinking together

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Dear Prof. Rosi Braidotti,

Over the past years, we (me within a number of collectives) have been wondering about the details of our present material conditions. Trespassed by several performativity issues, place/displacement of enunciation problematics, non-identitary pre-occupations and a strong political reconfiguration, our generation is exposed to exceptional conditions for thinking about notions such as agency, knowledge production, dispersion, memory archiving and basic life conditions, to name just a few.

In an organic though rigorous manner, we have been confronting such issues from diffractive inquiries like “How is our sexual-affective performativity conditioned by crystallized representations of what loving beings should act like?”, “What does it mean to name the world from a Southern European radical neoliberal pro-nationstate context?”, “Can we get rid of Modern Project's configurations of thinking while experiencing sudden sociopolitical urgencies?”, “What implications does it have to implement our tools in the process of taking care of our community sustainability?”, “What transductions might we need in order to bring the behaviour of the digital networked communities to a physical experience of conviviality?”, “What does it mean to think of infrastructures as key ethic & aesthetic agents?”.

In Objetologías, we wonder together about the tactics of de-centering the subject while researching the designing processes of our material surroundings. In Euraca, we wonder about the language making and managing of non-fixed subjectivities in the last days of the Euro. In Sexo Hispter, we wonder about the reasons of the immanent de-politization of our erotics. In Relearn we gather around the implications of free libre open source tools and results in learning situations. In MasterDIWO we try to invent emancipated ways of sharing knowledge. In 404 we test the extent to which cultural mediation can serve as a post-humanist yet institutionalized task ...etc.

All of that makes me excited to participate in the Human/Inhuman/Posthuman summer course in Utrecht, as the above situated but common problematics (or opportunities?) could perhaps find shared frames and maybe useful discourses/references to keep my/our research rolling.

Looking forward to thinking together,

Jara Rocha

Barcelona, April 30th, 2015.

relearn 2015 - call for porposals

Relearn starts from FLOSS culture and practices as a way to address the production processes and frameworks involving technology and culture, in the beginning in the field of graphic design, and in the second edition expanding to production and education in broader terms. A proposal for this third edition is to continue by focusing on technology as such.

Questioning what it consists of, how it 'functions', and challenging the traditional narratives on it. In this moment in which any social, political and personal problem seems to be approached with a technological solution, it feels urgent to rework the assumptions and conceptions we have of technology.

To give an idea of this kind of perspective, there were some interesting questions resulting from past events, as the following: What's the difference between 'tech' and 'technology'? How does a file system relate to an office? Can anything digital be 'immaterial', when it sits in data-centers or it moves over infrastructures? What happens when computing becomes 'invisible'? Are interface-design, packaging and blackboxing similar processes, how do they influence our relation to an object? How do user-friendliness and efficiency determine the way software and devices are developed? 

Hopefully this way of thinking about tools, networks and infrastructures can influence the summer school tracks, offering transversal elements to connect some points in the different worksessions, in relation to one's own practices and tools.

call for proposals. 
NOW. HERE:  

http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/relearn_2015_proposals


+ info: http://relearn.be/r/about.html 

mujer de Manuela

Una práctica de escritura electoral euraca
“es hora de escribir a favor de una candidatura” 

(Cucurto jaqueado una vez más)

+ info en el blog de euraca

user info

information leaflet to accompany a banner for Somatic Design

Barcelona, 15M 2015 / Jara Rocha & Femke Snelting / in response to: http://www.baued.es/blogdebau/2015/05/18/disseny-somatic/

presentación del máster en investigación & experimentación en diseño / Hangar+Bau

“conversatorio” entre un grupo de docentes del máster en investigación & experimentación en diseño, organizado en colaboración entre BAU-Centro Universitario de diseño y HANGAR-Centro de investigación y producción artística (Barcelona)

Jueves, 7 de Mayo, a las 19.30h en HANGAR (antiguas oficinas)



+

http://hangar.org/es/news/espanol-hello-world-presentacion-del-master-en-investigacion-y-experimentacion-en-diseno/

++

http://www.baued.es/es/estudios/masters-y-posgrados/master-en-investigacion-y-experimentacion-en-diseno 

y el relatograma que del evento hizo Carla Boserman: 

 

diseño en entornos abiertos / IED Madrid @ Medialab-Prado

Esta sesión forma parte del seminario organizado por la escuela de Visual Communication del IED Madrid con el que se pretendía introducir en el campo del diseño y la comunicación visual algunos de los debates y prácticas provenientes de la filosofía hacker, la cultura libre y el acceso abierto que se están dando actualmente en torno a los nuevos modos de producción y distribución, los proyectos colaborativos, la web 2.0 y la economía de la atención.

Fue en Medialab-Prado, el 18 de diciembre del 014.

Consistió en una cadena de pedradas a cargo de:

Jaron Rowan (Free Culture Forum y Bau)
Jara Rocha (Objetologías/GREDITS/Bau)
Silvia Nanclares (Bookcamping)
Marta G. Franco (Catorce.cc)

Modera: Ana Méndez de Andés

exquisite corpse -- unfolded

Steph Alarcon, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Tamsyn Gilbert, Seda Gurses, Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting and Sophie Toubin collaborate to examine feminism, technology and the digital.

[extract from New Critical's exquisite corpse:]

In order to better understand the materialities of our (digital) present world-making, a speculative crossing of four topological vectors is proposed here for a (sintetic though) multilayered approach to the processes of social (often soft) mattering we are involved in.

Our ethic, politic, erotic and aesthetic systems, also from a technological point of view, are strongly affected by a dense repertory of gestures and agencies upon which we (humans) have only a tiny aprehension margin. This is why it might be interesting to first, when talking about these complex systems, declare a suspension of hierarchical cartesian judgement and storytelling (based on the subject-object dychotomy) and perhaps try to apply what ANT scholars have named the “principle of radical symmetry”. This will help on two fronts: 1) test de-anthropocentrified ontologies and 2) get away of essentialist approaches to somatic entities.

Also, and attending to the call of the Invisible Committee to think beyond civil liberties and go deep into the logistic composition of both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic equipments for life, a close look at infrastructures functioning can help us learn more about governance of the material world. Notions of scale and standarization in this vector are plausibly issues to deal with if an idea of autonomous shaping and caring of infrastructures is brough upon the table.

In realtion to infrastructures, there is a third tensor that clearly operates when dealing with power relations (in gender, class, race or species): that of the reproductive economies. Historically invisible, the tactics for sustainability, resilience and ultimate survival of communities are displayed by crucial agents who/which set up the basic conditions of possibility for life in its more radical materiality. Following that line of thought: how about talking about reproductive technologies in a wider sense?

Soft power is a key concept to understand relationality in our present ecosystems. This is why the notion of extitution brought up by Serres in Atlas can help in going beyond the inside-outside structuring of  institutions and perhaps test a connected-disconnected logic. Daniel López insightfully proposes to think of this vector in terms of processes of extitutionalization. This shift could be useful get rid of pre-established forms (strong identities, social organizations, geopolitical foldings, etc.).

What implications would it have to articulate this vectors in an applied-to-case/situtated manner? Would it help in challenging the imposed hegemonic regulation of social matters? Can we start practicing critical and active dispossession in relation to technologies?

Now, what would be the best way to identify and put into practice the potential in each of these topological vectors and their crossings? How can we both aprehend and be dispossessed from present semiotic-material establishment to unfold other common-world-making possibilities?

[the whole text can be accessed here: http://www.newcriticals.com/exquisite-corpse/print ]