So-called plants at Critical Media Lab, Basel

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

14:00 @ Critical Media Lab (Basel, CH)

With editors Jara Rocha & Femke Snelting and guest Joëlle Bitton.

https://volumetricregimes.xyz

For this presentation, several “computational ecologies of practice” were selected to “feel the borders” of how so-called plants are being made present. The figure of “so-called plants” problematizes the limitations of the ontological category of “plant”, and the isolation it implies. So-called plants questions the various methods that biology, computer science, 3D-modeling or border management put to work to create finite, specified and discrete entities which represent the characteristics of whole species, erasing the nuances of very particular beings.

+ info and all-week programme: https://criticalmedialab.ch/book-launch-volumetric-regimes/

Keynote @ Groundings | Linnaeus University, Växjö

1-2 Dec, 2022

At the nexus of energy and agriculture, Groundings gathers a community of researchers, practitioners, and organisers in Växjö to ask what it means to ground our modes of study in collective struggle. The conference engages a diversity of research tactics in response to an ongoing shift in environmental discourse towards the extractive zones (Gómez-Barris 2017) and terminal landscapes (Diamanti 2021) of capital's energic and agricultural metabolisms as terrains across which the histories and horizons of multispecies survival, collective autonomy, and ecological flourishing are contested. Featuring keynotes from Jeff Diamanti and The Underground Division (Helen V. Pritchard, Jara Rocha, & Femke Snelting) followed by a culinary performance by local grower Zeenath Hasan, Groundings also foregrounds roundtable discussions, group readings, and other modes of collaborative study to initiate an ongoing inquiry into grounded traditions of practice-based research.

From the decolonial practices of Walter Rodney's Groundings With My Brothers (1966) to the working-class environmentalism of Sven Lindqvist's Dig Where You Stand (1978), this two-day conference aims to build a collective vocabulary and critical infrastructure around methodologies that remain accountable to the interlocking demands of decolonisation, decarbonisation, and liberation. Situated within ongoing struggles over energy and agriculture, this initial gathering asks how 'grounded environmental and territorial questions' might manifest as an 'on-the-ground set of contingent politics' (Gergan & Curley, 2021) within these fields. Whether speaking of renewable practices or large-scale farming, these terrains continue to be framed by the manifold emergent and long-standing settler colonial technologies that organize them, hardening relations to land based on domination in transnational arenas (Yang 2017) and modes of financial exploitation or extractive speculation (Dunlap 2021). Nonetheless, the current 'crisis' of energy and agriculture marks an opening for radical interventions.

Addressing both 'terrains of domination' and 'terrains of struggle,' we invite contributions across multiple formats to delineate the material, methodological, and 'epistemological grounds through which we theorize and imagine and name liberation' (McKittrick 2006; 2021). Disturbing the sediments of empire, filmmaker Filipa César's '"mining"' of historical strata' (2018) in Amílcar Cabral's agronomical texts provincialises Marxist accounts of soil metabolism while contemporary framings of 'racist environments' (Opperman 2019; Sharpe 2017), decolonial botany (Sheikh & Gray 2018), or late neoliberalism's 'polluted politics' (Onís 2021) take up lineages of anticolonial struggle to envision transformative ecologies. We might also look to feminist agroecological practices shared through generational knowledge and anticapitalist relations to land (Tamm & Wägner 1940; Sonjasdotter 2019) or to the 'grounded' place-based solidarities (Coulthard & Simpson 2016) that shape Indigenous resistance to fossil capital and colonial agronomy. Within the ancestral territory of Sápmi, which stretches across the settler states of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia, Indigenous Sámi land is exploited through the corporate extractivism and green colonialism of wind and water energy projects. Refusing these modes of capture, Indigenous land stewardship movements such as the Áltá Action or Ellos Deatnu! counter the horizons of capitalist 'green transition' through direct actions that frame artistic practices as an intrinsic part of the struggle for self-determination (García-Antón, Gaski & Guttorm 2020; Kuhn 2020).

In taking up the provocation of militant research practices as an attempt to 'generate capacity for struggles to read themselves' (Colectivo Situaciones 2005), Groundings seeks to cement alliances between an expansive set of disciplinary coordinates including anticolonial methods, environmental humanities, artistic research, postcapitalist and decolonial design, critical geography, infrastructure studies, historical materialism, activism, solidarity studies, soil studies, queer trans*feminist technoscience, militant cinema, and beyond.

+ info, registrations and programme: https://lnu.se/en/meet-linnaeus-university/current/events/2022/groundings-from-situated-knowledges-to-terrains-of-struggle/

Groundings is supported by funding from Linnaeus University, Regenerative Energy Communities, and the Institute for Experimental Design and Media Culture (IXDM), FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern, Switzerland.

Zonas de respons(h)abilidad | NUDOS. Sevilla, 21 y 22 de noviembre de 2022.

"Reuniendo programas y propuestas desde diversos espacios geográficos conectados por la forma en que entienden la cultura como un campo de experimentación transversal, estas propuestas artísticas, culturales, tecnológicas y científicas serán inspiración para el proyecto Magallanes_ICC impulsado desde el Ayuntamiento de Sevilla junto a socios andaluces y portugueses. Un nuevo espacio cultural en la ciudad que encontrará su sentido en el intercambio de conocimientos y en aprendizajes de acceso abierto; en ser un espacio para la producción desde todas las disciplinas, fomentando una cultura que piensa y se preocupa por la sostenibilidad, y que promueve una noción abierta e inclusiva de la participación ciudadana."

+ info y programa completo:  https://icas.sevilla.org/programas/interreg-magallanes_icc/conferencias-y-clases-magistrales

Zonas de respons(h)abilidad, por Jara Rocha
Lunes 21 de noviembre, 18:00 h

Uno de los grandes sostenes de la modernidad colonial, capitalista y patriarcal se actualiza cotidianamente con la lógica de la computación ágil basada en modelos paramétricos que limitan lo vivible, lo factible, lo entendible y lo mundeable. Sin embargo, sin abandonarnos al antagonismo culpabilizante y sin abandonar la técnica como espacio de potencia y de inter-dependencia -en toda su complejidad y reclamando su renegociación-, se pueden detectar zonas desde las que activar habilidades para responder, en condiciones de inter-dependencia, a daños institucionales, epistémicos y medioambientales. A partir de materiales de eso que podemos llamar los regímenes de la volumetría, podemos apuntar hacia algunas formas más seguras, justas, oportunas y afirmativas de co-constitución infraestructural.

Registro de la charla:

Infras Antifas #1 – Agua

Miércoles 16 de noviembre a las 19h

Diálogo videológico Jara Rocha + Higo Mental

¿Cuáles son los flujos de distribución del agua? ¿Quién tiene acceso a su control? ¿Hay dueños, hay herederos? ¿Cómo se establece y estructura ese poder? ¿Qué intereses entran en juego según cuál sea el origen o el uso final de la materia? ¿Qué desigualdades, exclusiones y opresiones se sostienen y acentúan por parte de esos intereses de uso y abuso? En esta sesión centramos el foco en el microfascismo infraestructural por medio de una materia tan mundana, por imprescindible para la vida, como es el agua. A través de una conversación mediante materiales audiovisuales encontrados en internet, trazaremos una narrativa —de entre tantas otras posibles— para pensar en el agua, sus infraestructuras, y en las infraestructuras de las que en general dependemos como del agua misma. Desde la ancestralidad en riesgo de los glaciares a la gestión de flujos en las tuberías, y/o desde la gobernanza de los huertos a los ecocidios con vistas a campos de golf.

 

En un formato de doble fase, Jara Rocha e Higo Mental lanzaremos unos primeros vídeos para contextualizar la sesión, y después se abrirá la compuerta de Twitch al imaginario de les asistentes con el fin de salpicarnos en una sesión coral.

www.higomental.com 

+info y programa completo de PLECS: https://plecs.culturalrizoma.com/es/plecs_2022_es/

Registro de la sesión: 

Activaciones dublab de No Ar/On Air de Cinthia Marcelle

No Ar/On Air (2009-en curso) es una de las instalaciones que forman parte de la exposición Cinthia Marcelle. Una conjunción de factores, en la que la artista convierte la sala de exposición en el escenario de una emisora de radio. En este caso, el programa Sonemos funciona como una aproximación colectiva a la instalación, desde donde la singularidad estética de la obra de Marcelle es reinterpretada y estirada desde el trabajo de artistas o comunidades artísticas en donde la radio es la herramienta fundamental que los vincula, y que, al igual que en el caso de Cinthia, sirve para introducir conceptos como lo colectivo, la clase social o la raza.

 

dublabBCN es una radio online sin ánimo de lucro, una plataforma comunitaria centrada en todo aquello que no suena en radios convencionales, buscando siempre equilibrio entre sonidos experimentales y otros más accesibles. Una forma de descubrir músicas, estilos y discursos no normativos sin necesidad de pasar por grandes plataformas homogeneizadoras. Un altavoz de propuestas innovadoras y experimentales que funciona como un difusor de la creación sonora, formando parte activa de la agenda cultural de la ciudad y tejiendo una red comunitaria local.

dublabBCN traslada su cabina de radio al museo, en compañía de Jara Rocha, le autore del podcast Naturoculturas son disturbios, y Alberto Flores del Río, a cargo de Radio noche. Una colaboración de perfiles muy distintos que, a través de la radio como herramienta, trazarán vínculos entre temas inconexos, disensos, fascinaciones u obsesiones, un lugar desde donde aprender a estar juntxs.

+ info e inscripción gratuita: https://www.macba.cat/es/exposiciones-actividades/actividades/sonemos-dublabbcn

 

 

 

Performative lecture @ Any / One Day the Future Has Died. Impossible Possibilities of Artificial Intelligence

"In the age of Artificial Intelligence, on any given day, at some point most definitely, the Future has died.

The Future, with capital F, seems to be perfectly synchronized, in line and aligned with the global mode of technological production. In this kind of Future in a hyper networked and digitized society, we witness new modes of extraction, monopolizations, surveillance; new types of environmental harm and damages as well as new codes of discriminations and exclusions which bring more climate change-induced provincialization, more competition and individualism. Not only does this model of Future not provide enough space for the many(-folded), its pretension lies in the misreading of the concept itself. Because in contrast to its usual connotation, the Future does not necessarily and always indicate a tomorrow or far away. But, as Michelle M. Wright and Rasheedah Phillips brilliantly show in their works, it is about a radical re-thinking of time and experiencing of temporalities that gives way to a broader and better understanding of stories, past and present, of todays, of tomorrows, of in-betweens (Fred Moten).

futures – without capital F and in their plural form – always also happen now.

With the Impossible Possibilities we think AI with Kara Keeling. We are concerned with the presence of AI, with what goes beyond its expression and produces a surplus that cannot be seen or understood, but is nevertheless present: "Whatever escapes recognition, whatever escapes meaning and valuation, exists as an impossible possibility within our shared reality, however one describes that reality, and therefore threatens to unsettle, if not destroy, the common sense on which that reality relies for its coherence." (2019: 83). What is impossible to recognize is the possibility of AI. For what defies re-cognition exists in a world that is real but not fed into the normative discourse of AI as predictive computation. With this conference, we turn our attention to paradox as a condition of existence that has the potential to shake the common sense of AI.

Impossible Possibilities does not stand for exposing the binary in the conundrum but stands for an invitation for exploring such a  paradox productively."

Full programme and info: https://www.hgb-leipzig.de/hochschule/kalender/1518

Preliminary program (Register: any_one@hgb-leipzig.de).

Please keep Crashing (Workshop Documentation)

With students of Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig
Organized by the Academy for Transcultural Exchange (AtA), facilitated by Anja Kaiser and Melina Weissenborn

[our panel:]

Sedimented Temporalities of Geodigital Landscapes (Panel)
With The Underground Division (Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting) and Orit Halpern
Moderation: Katrin Köppert

Booklaunch | Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence

"Volumetric Regimes makes an essential contribution to the ways in which we must rethink matter politically and ecologically. As the book unfolds, ontological questions of intensities, dimensions, and substance are denaturalised as mere properties of matter that can be measured, modified, and thus computed, which today are exemplified by 3D modelling and parametric design, but are shown to be part of processional life-worlds that relational and mutually informed and informing. Not the partitioning of bodies, particles, datapoints, and spaces as techno-capital and techno-science would have it but a material enmeshment that brings the volumetric into presence otherwise."  – Susan Schuppli

“This radical multi-form collective investigation traces the cutting edge of how bodies and subjects are rendered technologically. It proposes multi-dimensional forms of intervention, and claims an experimental horizon of the possible, shattering the mantra of unavoidability.” — Olga Goriunova

 

To download the pdf and/or order a paper copy on-line: 

http://data-browser.net/db08.html

http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/volumetric-regimes/ 

Six years of trans*feminist disobedient action-research on 3D technologies, paradigms and procedures culminated in Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence (Open Humanities Press 2022, DATA-browser series, eds. Geoff Cox and Joasia Krysa). Compiled by Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting and Jara Rocha), the publication brings together diverse materials on the political, aesthetic, computational and relational regimes in which volumes are calculated. The book foregrounds technological practices that invite widenings of what is possible. With contributions by Sophie Boiron, Maria Dada, Pierre Huyghebaert, Phil Langley, Nicolas Malevé, Romi Ron Morrison, Simone C. Niquille, Helen V. Pritchard, Jara Rocha, Sina Seifee, Femke Snelting and Kym Ward.

Tuesday 4 October 20:00 – 22:00 @ Varia, Rotterdam (NL)
https://varia.zone/booklaunch-volumetric-regimes.html

The event at Varia celebrates the wiki-to-print paper edition designed and developed by Manetta Berends. It is a special moment in an ongoing multi-local launch, made up of playful contributions, informal responses and interactive formats proposed by comrades in the making of technosciences otherwise.

The evening starts with a performative introduction by the editors, followed by an intervention by designer, artist and researcher Alex Zakkas in conversation with Manetta Berends.

Books will be sold at the event at a reduced price.
All materials have also been published on a dedicated wiki: https://volumetricregimes.xyz/

Volumetric Regimes is produced with support from London South Bank University and Liverpool John Moores University.

(pic by Varia https://varia.zone/archive/2022-10-04-Volumetric-Regimes-booklaunch/)

Elefants dins l'habitació | Ecoles de Context | La Capella

Escoles de context és un programa d’estudis que posa l’èmfasi en facilitar recursos formatius, línies d’investigació i espais de trobada a disposició de la comunitat artística de la ciutat. Així, l’objectiu de “fer context” mitjançant la pràctica es reformula com un dels eixos vertebradors de La Capella, donant peu a una sèrie de subprogrames estables dedicats a la performativitat de la veu, la textualitat, la cultura LGTBIQ+, la noció de llibreria i el mateix autoaprenentatge institucional.

Com a prova-pilot, Escoles de context inicia les seves dinàmiques el pròxim mes d’octubre, assajant temporalitats, ritmes i intensitats diverses que, a la vegada que posen sobre la taula certs atributs contextuals inherents a la pràctica artística emergent a Barcelona, possibiliten també una revisió i posada en crisi constant del model institucional, tant a escala d’infraestructura com humà, que defineix La Capella. Els grups d’estudi de les Escoles de context s’adrecen a la mateixa escena artística, establint dinàmiques de proximitat amb grups petits i regulars que només s’obriran al públic quan la situació ho requereixi.

El grup de persones que conformen Escoles de context són Enric Farrés Duran, Alexandra Laudo, Daniel Gasol, Marc Vives, Laia Estruch, Jara Rocha, i amb les següents línies d’investigació:

PUBLICACIONS - La llibreria de La Capella

A cura d’Enric Farrés Duran

TEXTUALITAT - Branca, arrel, brot, tija

A cura d’Alexandra Laudo

VEU - Escola de veu

A cura de Laia Estruch i Marc Vives

CULTURA LGTBIQ+ - Transmaricabollo

A cura de Daniel Gasol

INFRA-INTRA-APRENENTATGES INSTITUCIONALS - Elefants dins l'habitació

A cura de Jara Rocha:

La xarxa de dependències infraestructurals on succeeix el dia a dia de les estructures institucionals també és cultura, i defineix pràctiques artístiques. Aquesta escola es planteja com un espaitemps en què atendre les continuïtats i discontinuïtats, herències i prospeccions, latències i potències que configuren el context tècnic, burocràtic i semiòtico-material, i amb què els centres d'art es constitueixen. En sessions d'estudi intrainstitucional, conversant i documentant a partir de close-readings d'infraestructures, eines, protocols i literatura grisa, La Capella s'exposa a un procés de coneixement del medi en què existeix el centre d'art.

 

+ info e inscripciones: https://www.lacapella.barcelona/ca/escoles-de-context-1

 

 

 

 

Expo | Duerme en el accidente que provoca

Sobre las numerosas y contradictorias experiencias del hogar

 

Exposición, 15.09.2022 - 08.01.2023 (Barcelona)

Las numerosas y a menudo contradictorias experiencias que provocan las nociones de hogar laten bajo una gruesa capa de asunciones, imposiciones, inercias y familiarizaciones. ¿Qué ocurre cuando estas latencias de vivencias dispares se agitan, se exponen y se cruzan provocando accidentes, señalando violencias y abriendo posibilidades?

Duerme en el accidente que provoca es un tejido de preguntas y propuestas artísticas acerca de significados y dudas, vivencias y extrañamientos, genealogías e historias, políticas y Políticas, representaciones o difuminaciones, explotaciones y exploraciones, espacios y tiempos, nosotres incluyentes o excluyentes, violencias y revictimizaciones, o las matrices de racismo, clasismo, capacitismo, androcentrismo, antropocentrismo.

Una exposición formada por las propuestas individuales y colectivas del grupo de artistas seleccionades, por las actividades paralelas con las voces y participaciones de otros agentes convocados y por una mesa situacional que se ha ocupado colaborativamente de provocar y acompañar los procesos y subprocesos de creación y reflexión.

Mesa situacional+

Hannah Adib 
Asunción + Guasch 
Gael del Río + Luca Bani 
Daniel Cid + Francesc Pla + Eva Serrats 
Gema Darbo 
Agnes Essonti 
Rafael Frazão 
Hogar Diska 
Hogueras/hogares 
Lucía Lijtmaer 
Julio Linares 
Eva & Franco Mattes 
Noha Mokhtar + Júlia Nueno + Xavier Nueno 
Recetas Urbanas (Santiago Cirugeda + Alice Attout + Yaiza Ares) 
Río Paraná (Duen Sacchi + Mag De Santo) 
TAKK (Mireia Luzárraga + Alejandro Muiño)
Génesis Valenzuela 

+ info y programa: https://artssantamonica.gencat.cat/es/detall/Dorm-en-laccident-que-provoca

the Cell for Digital Discomfort @ The Hauntologists | BAK (Utrecht)

 

10 September–13 November 2022
BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht

18–20 November 2022
İKSV, Istanbul

2–4 December 2022
GUDSKUL, Jakarta

Participants include: Özge Açıkkol, Merve Bedir, Kerem Ozan Bayraktar, Cell for Digital Discomfort (Cristina Cochior, Karl Moubarak, and Jara Rocha), Dika+Lija, Philippa Driest, freethought collective, Ilgın Hancıoğlu, Alexandra Karyn, Gayatri Kodikal, Gatari Kusuma, Yen Noh, Rifandi Nugroho, İlyas Odman, Marina Papazyan, Anitha Silvia, and Zone Collective (Megan Hoetger and Kirila Cvetkovska), among others. 

The Hauntologists is a project emerging through experimentation and collective research within the 2021/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice. Engaging spectrality as a tactic to investigate and redress the conditions of brokenness of the world, it takes place in Istanbul, Jakarta, and Utrecht from 10 September until 10 December 2022 as a continuously evolving and geographically distributed discursive, performative, publishing, and exhibitionary composition.   

At present, many find themselves haunted by the persisting brokenness of the world—inequality, war, racial and gendered violence, precarity, techno-colonialism, and other perpetual crises. Can one haunt back to intervene and redress this ongoing sense of dread? Could spectrality be embraced as an embodied cultural and political sensibility to experiment with? Can research be practiced as a haunting to overcome the limits of traditional categories of knowledge, knowledge production, and so-called artistic research? 

+info: https://www.bakonline.org/program-item/the-hauntologists/

Vibes & Leaks goes Elastic II, Berlin Fieldtrip

2nd FIELDTRIP of the Vibes & Leaks Goes Elastic process.

Berlin, 14-24 July, 2022.

In collaboration with: Kollektiv Bibliotheck New Yorck Bethanien, Ren Britton and Maeve Devine

Vibes & Leaks elasticizes towards Berlin in July to organize our attentions around a self-managed and assembly-based archive of social movements' banners of several decades, and the implications towards non/normative bodies and collectivities due to somatic difference as well as semiotic-material complexities of the genealogies of struggle.

The plan is to visit (staying there over night or not, this is to be discussed/defined!) the amazing archive of the formerly squatted space of Bethanien, which now is a house project called "New Yorck". Along the years, for decades, this archive became a key backbone for the memories of social movements, local and international, and hosts a massive amount of books, fanzines, posters and other printed materials. There is a small group (of circa 5 people?) caretaking for the archive, which contains contents of a super wide array of socio-political struggles, from kurdish and zapatista fights to transfeminisms, squatting legacies, anti-gentrification, anti-colonialism, ecologism, etc. Really, really a jewel of paper and cardboard in the middle of Kreuzberg neighborhood. But what interested us more is that they also host an archive of demonstration banners: they keep the memories of voices which once occupied public space with reclaims, affirmations and rejections of many sorts and sensibilities, but clearly intersected. Huge banners, medium banners, small banners. Banners in german and english and spanish and arabic and greek and... banners of textile and of recycled plastic, banners so big that needed to be folded and kept somewhere, together. Apparently the Kollektivbibliothek only hosts the banners, but they belong to a different collective. We love the idea of these banners and posters --along with zines, books and stickers, for sure-- being our axis for a research on what voices get to be heard, where and by whom. What claims circulate and can be read, or not. What urgencies get passed along from bodies to collectives to cityscapes. And which ones get lost in time while others still pervail on our contemporaneity, in our politicized to-do lists.

This is why we also approached Ren Britton: because their sensibility regarding what gets heard or seen, in a queer and trans*feminist fight against ableism, is super important to us and we want to learn and invent things together with Ren as well. And of course the device of the archive itself comes with its big problematics, which we need to look at together, with a queer technosciences approach.

small outcome of the session: some Prototypes for Archival Redundance

+ info on the project: http://ttttoolbox.net/VibesnLeaks::index.xhtml 

[Investigación-arte] Infras Antifas

Damos comienzo en colaboración con Higo Mental al proceso de investigación-arte Infras Antifas, gracias a una Beca Barcelona Crea.

Img: David Benqué

¿Sabemos reconocer las estructuras microfascistas en los ámbitos cotidianos? ¿Qué define a una infraestructura, y en qué medida su uso o asimilación participa de lógicas fascistas? ¿Qué impacto tienen la operaciones corporativas en la llamada innovación totalitaria que nos viene impuesta en los detalles más mundanos? Infras antifas es un proceso de investigación en marcha alrededor de estas preguntas con el fin de elaborar una serie de herramientas que nos permitan, por un lado, identificar las derivas microfascistas en nuestros hábitos tecnológicos y, por otro, ofrecer una respuesta a las mismas. Consideramos que el proyecto puede encajarse en las artes visuales, en tanto que son estrategias del campo artístico y visual las que se utilizarán tanto para el proceso de investigación como para imaginar y prototipar el conjunto de herramientas.

Este proyecto pretende arrojar luz —con una sensibilidad trans*feminista— sobre cuestiones a menudo invisibilizadas en los debates en torno al auge de los fascismos. Si bien en los últimos años se ha dedicado mucho esfuerzo desde el ámbito cultural y de la comunicación a entender cuáles eran las estrategias comunicativas de la extrema derecha, es innegable que el fenómeno en auge es demasiado complejo como para explicarlo únicamente desde esta dimensión. Los fascismos no solo se apoyan en una estrategia comunicativa concreta, sino que fundamentan su aceptación social y construcción o limitación de deseo en el campo de lo material. En este campo se encrudece la ideología de la escasez en la que nos encontramos desde hace más de una década y que refuerza tanto los discursos, mensajes e imaginarios fascistas y microfascistas como su materialización en la práctica. Uno de los ejes invisibilizados del ámbito material es el de la articulación tecnoecológica/infraestructural. 

La articulación tecnoecológica/infraestructural contemporánea arroja una complejidad relacional para cuyo análisis probablemente no sean suficientes las perspectivas y análisis sociopolíticos más habituales (Mackenzie Wark), incluidas aquellas más sofisticadas en los ámbitos de la crítica institucional, económica, medioambiental o representacional. Aprendiendo de las tecnociencias transfeministas, urge una inventiva analítica y una imaginación tecnopolítica que provea con métodos más oportunos a esa articulación. Las condiciones semióticas y materiales de posibilidad en un entorno de daño acelerado y precariedad relacional altamente mediada computacionalmente, requieren primero nombrar el régimen patriarco-colonial del tecnocapitalismo como un régimen de resonancias y maneras evidentemente fascistas (limitación de la soberanía de individuos y comunidades, deterioro de canales públicos o autónomos de intervención democrática, universalización por vías de innovación centralizante de grandes poderes tecnológicos, fabricación sintética de escasez y opacitación de los procesos de introducción de dependencias y necesidades de impacto socialmente desigual que intensifican vínculos de exclusión/explotación/extracción basados en el racismo, el sexismo, el capacitismo, el clasismo, el especismo o el edadismo). Pero después de nombrar los fascismos y microfascismos, cabe preguntarse por qué modos de diversificación, ensanchamiento de posibles y florecimiento de tecnodiversidades (Yuk Hui) pueden contribuir a lo que cabría llamar "tácticas infraestructurales antifascistas".

+ info: https://higomental.com/

 

(Un)wanted Spacetimes | Espaciotiempos (in)deseados

[ESP abajo]

What does it mean to live in the midst of devastation and to find ways to exist through the cracks? Which questions, not new for several modes of existence and lands, are rised by the current planetary crisis? How many worlds have already ended? How many others keep becoming in absolute abandonment? How to give account of the ways in which colonialism, extractivism, patriarchy and different forms of violence have been oppressing, segmenting, excluding and disableing bodies, populations, epistemes and lands for a long time now? This itinerary focuses on (un)wanted zones as spacetimes of sacrifice, and wishes to examine areas that are (administratively, representationally) abandoned, unfairly exposed to damage or strongly wounded. In such places, human or nonhuman existence is disinvested in relation to the deep time of earth as well as the flowing times of day-to-day-turbocapitalism. What is yet to be (un)learned in relation to these areas, and what can the role of technology be? Which tools, discourses, aesthetics and practices can contribute to building forms of transversal resistance and action, while underlining the need for participated, intergenerational and interterritorial environmental justice?

by Daphne Dragona & Jara Rocha

 

Visit the itinerary on-spot at the show, 09.06-21.08.2022

+ info about The Irruption: https://artssantamonica.gencat.cat/ca/detall/La-irrupcio

Read the itinerary texts here: https://artssantamonica.gencat.cat/en/detall/Espaitemps-desestimats

 

---

¿Qué implica vivir en medio de la devastación y encontrar formas para existir a través de las grietas? ¿Qué preguntas, ya conocidas para numerosos modos de existencia y territorios, son planteadas por la crisis planetaria en curso? ¿Cuántos mundos ya se han acabado? ¿Cuántos otros siguen sucediendo en absoluto abandono? ¿Cómo dar cuenta de los modos en que el colonialismo, el extractivismo, el patriarcado y las diferentes formas de violencia han estado oprimiendo, segmentando, excluyendo y discapacitando cuerpos, poblaciones, epistemes y tierras durante demasiado tiempo? Este itinerario se fija en las zonas (no) queridas como espaciotiempos de sacrificio, y busca examinar áreas que están (administrativa y representacionalmente) abandonadas, injustamente expuestas a daños o fuertemente heridas. En esos espacios, la existencia humana o no-humana sucede en condiciones de desinversión en relación con el tiempo profundo de la tierra y de los tiempos fluidos del turbocapitalismo cotidiano. ¿Qué queda por ser (des)aprendido en relación a estas áreas, y cuál puede ser el rol de la tecnología? ¿Qué herramientas, discursos, estéticas y prácticas pueden contribuir a construir formas de resistencia y acción transversales, mientras se señala la necesidad de una justicia medioambiental participada, intergeneracional e interterritorial?

por Daphne Dragona y Jara Rocha

Visita el itinerario presencialmente en la exposición, 09.06-21.08.2022

+ info sobre La Irrupción: https://artssantamonica.gencat.cat/ca/detall/La-irrupcio

Lee los textos del itinerario aquí: https://artssantamonica.gencat.cat/es/detall/Espaitemps-desestimats

 

 

La Irrupción (ISEA BCN, 2022)

09.06-21.08.2022

ISEA 2022 (Barcelona)

Arts Santa Mònica (La Rambla)

https://artssantamonica.gencat.cat/es/detall/La-irrupcio

La crisis ecológica, climática y social que nos atraviesa provee con agitaciones ecosistémicas múltiples, como por ejemplo el momento pandémico que todavía estamos viviendo. No obstante, aunque los desajustes se narren como irrupciones aisladas, pertenecen a un continuum de fenómenos acumulados. La pandemia COVID-19 es uno de los numerosos síntomas del profundo agotamiento y de una violencia lenta desigualmente distribuida, derivados de esquilmos y macrooperaciones industriales e institucionales extractivas que han sido llevadas a cabo en nombre del desarrollismo y el progreso, en el marco de la modernidad colonial capitalista. Esta exposición propone un conjunto de piezas y proyectos que, desde diferentes posiciones, indagan en esta situación y las posibilidades del arte (siempre limitadas y parciales) para repolitizar las imaginaciones, los traumas, los miedos y las urgencias que nos interpelen e instiguen a irrumpir diferentemente, respons(h)ablemente desde dentro del colapso medioambiental y socioeconómico al que se ha precipitado el planeta Tierra. 

La selección de obras se ha llevado a cabo en el marco de una convocatoria pública elaborada conjuntamente entre el Simposio Internacional de Arte Electrónico 2022 (ISEA 2022) y el centro de artes Santa Mònica. Su despliegue en el espacio expositivo ha sido concebido como una invitación a que quien lo visite recorra la exposición trazando su propia narrativa o siguiendo algunos de los itinerarios específicos propuestos por les comisaries y les colaboradores invitades.

Artistas:
Erich Berger
Uwe Brunner + Bettina Katja Lange + Joan Soler-Adillon
Joana Chicau + Jonathan Chaim Reus
Chanee Choi
Erik Contreras
Roderick Luis Coover + Adam Vidiksis + Nick Montfort
Derek Curry + Jennifer Gradecki
Sara Dean + Beth Ferguson + Marina Monsonís
Joelle Dietrick + Owen Mundy
Nikolas Gomes
Andy Gracie
Xuanyang Huang
Colin Ives
Shona Kitchen
Irma Marco
Lauren Lee McCarthy
Rosell Meseguer
Jane Chang Mi
Kasia Molga
Marina Núñez
S4RA
Robertina Šebjanič  + Sofia Crespo + Feileacan McCormick
Laura Splan
Nooroa Tapuni
Weidi Zhang

Itineraris narratius per:
Paula Bruna y Marta Gracia
Daphne Dragona y Jara Rocha
Joan Yago y Enric Puig
Paz Peña O. 
Israel Rodríguez Giralt
Ian Alan Paul
Grupo Contraimaginarios Postpandémicos

Diseño expositivo:
Francesc Isern
Paula Font

Un proyecto curado por:
Marta Gracia
Jara Rocha
Enric Puig Punyet

Son[i]a #350. Deleted scenes

We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation. We talk about research as an interdependent practice and we call for complexity. Along the way, we speculate on non-coercive forms of computation and consider some case studies from the collaborate project Possible Bodies and The Underground Division.

Listen: https://rwm.macba.cat/en/extra/sonia-350-jara-rocha-deleted-scenes

Conversation: Anna Irina Russell, Albert Tarrats, Ricardo Cárdenas and Anna Ramos. Script: Anna Irina Russell. Production: Anna Ramos. 

• 00:01 Interdependent research
• 03:35 Conversational crossroads as a starting point for generating amalgams
• 05:30 Mapping and DIWO/DIY
• 08:46 Bitflipping, non-coercive computing, and a hunch about 3D to be explored
• 13:02 Possible Bodies
• 15:23 The three axes of Possible Bodies: (X) so-called bodies, (Y) the legacy of volumetric technologies, (Z) the probable and the possible
• 21:25 Inventory as methodology
• 26:46 Research and disobedient action
• 30:36 Languaging
• 34:29 Item #89: The truthful hairy hominid and the cracks of parametric truth
• 43:25 The case of Make Human
• 47:28 Item #117: Fold Out. Detection of “fugitive bodies” in lush borderlands
• 49:00 G-plates: visualization of plate-tectonic processes and movements. A change of scale
• 51:27 Texts on the table: Sylvia Wynter, Cassandra Troyan, Sophie Lewis, Helen Prichard, Martino Morandi...

[workshop] Installing Ourselves into Libreplanet

RESCHEDULED: May 23

A workshop session to map out each of our current conditions of connecting and being together, the physical-political, and technological conditions using a diagrammatic methodology.

The workshop is geared towards installing ourselves into the conference's infrastructural spectralities by sharing, learning from and attuning to each others' conditions for connectivity, online participation and basic computer-mediated mundane day-to-day life. We want to pose this affirmation as an initial trigger: installing is about situating — attuning to our network of (inter)dependencies and attuning to the dependencies with our local and vernacular but also standardized and planetary networks.

This workshop was created in the context of the Fellowship for Situated Practice organized by BAK.

  + info: https://www.fsf.org/events/libreplanet-workshop-april-25-installing-ourselves-into-libreplanet

 

Tilt the Scroll to Repair: Efficient Inhuman Workforce at Global Chains of Care

it is fundamental to challenge the GAFAM regime from a perspective of anticolonial and transfeminist intersectional analytics. The crisis of presence at the global chains of exploitation is already mundane: by user power wasted—­or washed away—­by a capitalist patriarchal-­colonial matrix of woven and wefted infrastructures; by an infrastructure of damage arranged around supply chain events such as the domesticated labor

production of microtaskers (or “Turkers”), the offshore labor production of hardware assemblers; by the shipping routes that routinely trace the colonial scheme; by the waste around smelters and refiners erasing life all around; by the care workforce that shoulders all this productive weight. In sum, by a convergence of powers entwined in the project of massive extraction, growth, and control.

To continue with the urge for a denser and more complex technopolitical imagination, those global chains of care need to be scrolled up and down, sideways, and underneath. Scroll the chains away from the userized nonlife flows hidden by Amazon. Scroll the chains through to show their damage. Scroll the chains along to tilt forces and erase GAFAM & Co.’s efficient machinery. Scroll off the chains, and partially repair them through other computational geometries of relation.

Our chapter, titled "Tilt the Scroll to Repair: Efficient Inhuman Workforce at Global Chains of Care" and co-written with artist-researcher Joana Moll, is finally out in the volume titled "Digital Work in the Planetary Market", edited by Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari and published by MIT Press (2022) under fully open conditions:

https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5319/Digital-Work-in-the-Planetary-Market 

& accessible in different formats (pdf, html5, epub or order paper copies) right here --> https://www.idrc.ca/en/book/digital-work-planetary-market

Understanding the embedded and disembedded, material and immaterial, territorialized and deterritorialized natures of digital work. Many jobs today can be done from anywhere. Digital technology and widespread internet connectivity allow almost anyone, anywhere, to connect to anyone else to communicate and exchange files, data, video, and audio. In other words, work can be deterritorialized at a planetary scale. This book examines the implications for both work and workers when work is commodified and traded beyond local labor markets. Going beyond the usual “world is flat” globalization discourse, contributors look at both the transformation of work itself and the wider systems, networks, and processes that enable digital work in a planetary market, offering both empirical and theoretical perspectives.

The contributors—leading scholars and experts from a range of disciplines—touch on a variety of issues, including content moderation, autonomous vehicles, and voice assistants. They first look at the new experience of work, finding that, despite its planetary connections, labor remains geographically sticky and embedded in distinct contexts. They go on to consider how planetary networks of work can be mapped and problematized, discuss the productive multiplicity and interdisciplinarity of thinking about digital work and its networks, and, finally, imagine how planetary work could be regulated.

Contributors

Sana Ahmad, Payal Arora, Janine Berg, Antonio A. Casilli, Julie Chen, Christina Colclough, Fabian Ferrari, Mark Graham, Andreas Hackl, Matthew Hockenberry, Hannah Johnston, Martin Krzywdzinski, Johan Lindquist, Joana Moll, Brett Neilson, Usha Raman, Jara Rocha, Jathan Sadowski, Florian A. Schmidt, Cheryll Ruth Soriano, Nick Srnicek, James Steinhoff, Jara Rocha, JS Tan, Paola Tubaro, Moira Weigel, Lin Zhang

 

Naturoculturas son disturbios #8 Martino Morandi & Jara Rocha feat. The (de)Ontologi(ci)sts

Listen online at:

https://dublab.es/shows/naturoculturas/11-04-22

Tracklist:

• The Flipping (de)Ontologi(ci)sts - The Flipping (de)Ontologi(ci)sts (2019)
• Missy Eliot - Work It - Work It (2002)
• chris dreier - P.S.Y.O.P (2021)
• Karmen Ponikvar - Linear constructions (2022)
• Jojo’s Skank - Chip on Fire - DISRUPT (2020)
• Hyena - Floor 01 - Particle Decelerator (2020)
• ATAMATOR - New approach to sort bits - Image Stitching (2014)
• ATAMATOR - Addicted To Final Tunnels (2018)
• Paratech - Gate Keepers (2018)
• Jona - Cosmic Ocean ⬝ Episode III (2021)
• Femke Snelting - How to Kill a Supercomputer - The Bitflipping Mixtape (2019)
• Helen Pritchard - Alpha Ray, Alpha Decay - The Bitflipping Mixtape (2019)
• Maria Dada - The Good Zero - The Bitflipping Mixtape (2019)
• Martino Morandi - Flip-Flap-Flop - The Bitflipping Mixtape (2019)
• Jara Rocha - Square Wave - The Bitflipping Mixtape (2019)

Death to deadly freshness! Long live lively corruption!

AIrot is looking for an Ageing Software Worker. Join our Rancid Prediction Engine PDP, REPEL & SOS teams!

...a job-fiction piece by Possible Bodies, editada por Daniel Gasol para A*Desk

[ENG]

https://a-desk.org/en/magazine/death-to-deadly-freshness-long-live-lively-corruption/

[CAST]

https://a-desk.org/magazine/muerte-a-la-frescura-mortifera-larga-vida-a-la-viva-podredumbre/

[CAT]

https://a-desk.org/ca/magazine/muerte-a-la-frescura-mortifera-larga-vida-a-la-viva-podredumbre/

El inventario de Possible Bodies: la des-orientación y sus consecuencias

Traducción y republicación por parte de nmenos1, a invitación de Juan Covelli.

Cada uno a su modo, los ítems están relacionados con un mundo que está deviniendo oblicuo, donde dentro y fuera o arriba y abajo están cambiando posiciones, y donde nuevas perspectivas se hacen disponibles. Hablan de la mutua constitución de cuerpos y tecnologías, materia y semiótica, naturaleza y cultura; y de cómo se gestiona la orientación en las herramientas a través de la matriz tecnológica de la representación.

 +

Tratamos de experimentar su proceso de “hacer mundo” permaneciendo en la exigencia de “entrar” en el software. Manteniendo un equilibrio entre la comprensión y la confusión, utilizamos la sensación de desorientación creada por los conceptos cambiantes de la palabra “mundo” para medir lo que sucede cuando un término tan vertiginoso se extrae del lenguaje coloquial para ser re-normalizado y re-naturalizado. En el nauseabundo contexto semiótico del modelado de 3D, la palabra “mundo” comienza a funcionar en otro espacio, igualmente real pero abstracto.

+

Todo parece demasiado imponente, demasiado normativo en el sentido humanista, incluso demasiado esencialista. ¿Qué composiciones corporales comparten una base horizontal, qué entidades tienen el don de comportarse verticalmente? ¿Cómo afectan otras trayectorias a nuestras condiciones semióticas-materiales de posibilidad y, por lo tanto, a la misma política que los cuerpos co-componen?  

+

Puede que sea necesario dejar de lado la necesidad de “suelo” como elemento definidor de la propia existencia del cuerpo, aunque esto nos hace preguntarnos acerca de las agencias que trabajan en esta encarnación sin suelo. Si la tierra es para aquellos que la trabajan, entonces ¿quién trabaja el suelo?

Texto completo: https://www.nmenos1.xyz/public/texto/web

Son[i]a #350

Intensamente íntimo, balbuceante y difícil de compartir, pero aquí un podcast en Radio Web MACBA que se hizo hace un año y luego se paró y luego se retomó y circuló. Con todo el cariño y la complejidad al cuidado de Anna, Anna Irina, Albert y Ricardo <3

ESCUCHA aquí --> https://rwm.macba.cat/es/sonia/sonia-350-jara-rocha

• 00:23 Las condiciones semiótico-materiales de posibilidad
• 05:46 Maternar y cocriar en un espacio no solo nuclear
• 13:53 Complejidades del nombrar
• 19:02 Edadismo y adultocentrismo
• 22:55 El teatro de la genética y el tabú de la no transferencia genética
• 35:00 Juegos con el vocabulario: ensanchamiento de los posibles a través del lenguaje
• 42:27 Disidencia lingüística y puesta en circulación
• 46:32 Autodefensa bibliográfica
• 47:26 Abrazar la complejidad
• 52:05 Cortes parciales y uso táctico de las identidades
• 58:58 Respons(h)abilidad
• 64:40 Pedagogías críticas, Martino Morandi y la escuela de verano Relearn
• 76:41 Detectar zonas de potencia
• 79:44 Los problemas del solucionismo
• 83:23 Tecnocolonialismo, turbocapitalismo y cadenas globales de cuidados
• 91:11 Amazon Turkers: precarización, invisibilización y deslocalización del trabajo.
• 95:06 Visión computacional. Nicolas Malevé y las promesas de los algoritmos
• 101:38 El rigor en la investigación en formatos no académicos
• 106:41 Sobre el tiempo: The Underground Division y "Figurations of Timely Extraction".

Conversación: Anna Irina Russell, Albert Tarrats, Ricardo Cárdenas y Anna Ramos. Guión: Anna Irina Russell. Producción: Albert Tarrats. Voz: Anna Ramos. Sonido: librería sonora de Albert Tarrats. 

 

+ info sobre RWM: https://rwm.macba.cat/es/sobre-rwm

Falling and Floating. A guided tour into Volumetric Regimes feat. GOB GOB

29/03

17:30-20:30 

@Theory Stairs, FedLev Building (Sandberg Instituut)

 

Six years of trans*feminist disobedient action research on 3D technologies, paradigms and procedures are about to be published as “Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence” (Open Humanities Press, DATA-browser series). The book foregrounds technological practices that provide with a widening of the possible and brings together diverse materials on the political, aesthetic and relational regimes in which volumes are calculated. The ongoing multi-local launch of Volumetric Regimes is made up of playful contributions, informal responses and interactive formats proposed by known and unknown comrades in the making of technosciences otherwise. 

The guided tour into Volumetric Regimes: material cultures of quantified presence (Open Humanities Press, 2022) at Sandberg Institute will touch upon 3D image production tools and the possible practice of dissident worlding by axes, planes, dimensions and coordinates. It will be matched with play session and screening feat. works by Ráchel Plutón and Elio J Carranza. 

Optional Reading: 

https://volumetricregimes.xyz/index.php?title=Dis-orientation_and_its_Aftermath

https://volumetricregimes.xyz/index.php?title=Clumsy_Volumetrics

https://volumetricregimes.xyz/index.php?title=Endured_Instances_of_Relation

GOB GOB is an initiative for critical engagement with image production software and game development by Elio J Carranza, Lauren Fong, and Aidan Wall.

+ info: https://sandberg.nl/femke-snelting-jara-rocha-falling-and-floating

 

Rendering Research at ERG (BXL); Book launch feat. Elodie Mugrefya

Possible Bodies (Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting) feat. Elodie Mugrefya will present their upcoming book Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence on Thursday 24th March at 17.30, at ERG (école de recherche graphique), 87 rue du Page – 1050 Bruxelles – as part of the Rendering Research workshop organized by DARC (Aarhus University), CSNI (London South Bank University) and transmediale festival for art and digital culture. All welcome.

The ongoing multi-local launch of Volumetric Regimes is made up of playful contributions, informal responses and interactive formats proposed by known and unknown comrades in the making of technosciences otherwise. For the occasion of Rendering Research we will be joined by Elodie Mugrefya, who we invited to re-interpret, critique, and/or remix materials from Volumetric Regimes through her sensibility for technocolonial knowledge production.

 

Elodie Mugrefya is a member of Constant, Brussels where she takes part in its artistic and collective researches while developing a writing practice that intersects with Constant's themes of interest; notably notions surrounding collectivity, technological infrastructures and socio-political troubles. Constant develops projects across art and technology and operates through its commitment to free/libre open source cultures and intersectional perspectives. https://constantvzw.org/

 

+ info: https://www.centreforthestudyof.net/?p=6230 

+ info on the overarching context of Rendering Research: https://transmediale.de/projects/aarhus-university-london-south-bank-university

A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (+radio broadcast)

 

A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) is a collaborative project formed around intersectional feminist, ecological servers. Understanding servers as computers that host space and services for communities around them, this project exists inside, and in between, roaming servers and different networks. Our decentralized programme will occur in 5 locations (The Netherlands, Belgium, Romania, Greece, Austria) with the collaboration of 6 partners (Varia, LURK, Constant, HYPHA, Feminist Hack Meetings, and ESC).

In the first session, hosted in Varia, we will focus on tools and methods to make space for understanding what feminist publishing infrastructures could be. During the weekend of March 26 and 27, we will be experimenting with publishing infrastructures. The tools and methods that will emerge can later be used for further knowledge sharing as the project moves location and the programme evolves.

The session in Varia will kick-off with a public radio broadcast on the evening of Wednesday the 23rd of March. For this broadcast, we will be joined by two practitioners who have been working on and around feminist and activist servers: Spideralex and Danae Tapia. 

+ info at Varia's site <3 https://varia.zone/en/atnofs-varia.html 

Aalto Photo Talks

 

 

Thursday, March 17th 2022 on Zoom from 15:00 - 16:00

Doctoral Seminar - Open to everyone!

Date: 17^th March 2022

Time: 15:00 - 16:00

"For the second installation of Aalto Photo Talks, we have invited artist and researcher duo Femke Snelting and Jara Rocha as our guest speaker. In their forthcoming book Volumetric Regimes: material cultures of quantified presence (Open Humanities Press, 2022), authors Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting bring together several years of discussing and working with artists, software developers and theorists who detect, track, print, model and render volumes. During the talk, the duo will read and discuss the chapter “Invasive Imagination and its Agential Cuts”. The authors argue that tomography, a set of digital techniques which has become ubiquitous in the medical imaging field, produces “exclusionary boundaries,” i.e. that they generate outcomes according to pre-established categorizations and norms of the human body. Zooming in on the example of the Open Source “3-D Slicer” software, they show how digital cutting is part of a culture of quantification, and naturalised as a scientifically objective gesture. Rocha and Snelting challenge this dominant imagination of biomedical informatics and mount an “affirmative critique” by proposing technical tweaks and changes, thus opening up the possibility of “oblique, deviating, unfinished and queer cuts.”

https://volumetricregimes.xyz/

https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org

 

The talk is open to public and we welcome Aalto students from the Department of Media and other disciplines to join us. Please also feel free to invite students from outside of Aalto.

Thank you Yiu Sheung for the invite!

 

 

abandon all hope ye who enter here | Queering Damage / The Underground Division at transmediale 2022 exhibition

 

Conjuring artifice and dark humour in the face of extraction, financial fantasies, and the illusions of techno-solutionism, abandon all hope ye who enter here explores the limits of refusal in a computationally ordered and altered world. Bringing together nine artists and collectives, the works in the exhibition materialise the strange realities and cruel attachments that are often obscured beneath the veneers of shiny, seductive interfaces, and inside algorithmic black boxes. 

(...)

+ about exhibition: https://transmediale.de/projects/abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter-here

+ about Queering Damage: https://transmediale.de/artworks/queering-damage

 

Slicing, Blackboxing and Queer Cutting

 

A MERIAN reading group on futures of biomedical 3-D imaging practices

Thursday, 24 February 2022
16:00 – 18:00 CET

Please join at the Jan van Eyck or online (details coming soon).
To take part and receive the texts, please register by sending an email to info@merianmaastricht.nl

 

 

During this public reading group, participants are welcome to discuss two texts from recent books on the politics of imaging, automation and 3-D computation.

Authors Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting and Silvia Casini will be present to discuss these texts with the reading group participants and to reflect together on medical imaging and experimental and artistic interventions into this field. The reading group is co-organized and chaired by Antye Guenther (MERIAN PhD candidate), Flora Lysen (Maastricht University, MERIAN) and Femke Snelting (Constant, MERIAN).

In their forthcoming book Volumetric Regimes: material cultures of quantified presence (Open Humanities Press, 2022), authors Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting bring together several years of discussing and working with artists, software developers and theorists who detect, track, print, model and render volumes.  We will read and discuss the chapter “Invasive Imagination and its Agential Cuts”. The authors argue that tomography, a set of digital techniques which has become ubiquitous in the medical imaging field, produces “exclusionary boundaries,” i.e. that they generate outcomes according to pre-established categorizations and norms of the human body. Zooming in on the example of the Open Source “3-D Slicer” software, they show how digital cutting is part of a culture of quantification, and naturalised as a scientifically objective gesture. Rocha and Snelting challenge this dominant imagination of biomedical informatics and mount an “affirmative critique” by proposing technical tweaks and changes, thus opening up the possibility of “oblique, deviating, unfinished and queer cuts.”

The second reading is from a recently published book by Silvia Casini, Giving Bodies Back to Data: Image Makers, Bricolage, and Reinvention in Magnetic Resonance Technology (MIT Press, 2021), which traces the development of the first nuclear magnetic images of a lemon and a mouse in the 1970s to very recent new scanning techniques that would allow for “personalized and predictive” medicine. Casini pays special attention to the work of artists who collaborate with image makers to reflect on the (often forgotten) craftsmanship that is key to making medical images, as well as the experiences and forms of the body that cannot be captured by quantitative data generated by the machine.

READING

1. Rocha, Jara, and Femke Snelting, “Invasive Imagination and Its Agential Cuts.” In Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence. London: Open Humanities Press, 2021.2. Casini, Silvia. “Visualizing Uncertainty in MRI Reinvention.” In Giving Bodies Back to Data: Image Makers, Bricolage, and Reinvention in Magnetic Resonance Technology, 152–88. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021. And 2. Casini, Silvia. “Intermezzo Lives in the Grid.” In Giving Bodies Back to Data: Image Makers, Bricolage, and Reinvention in Magnetic Resonance Technology, 189–202. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021.

+ info: https://janvaneyck.nl/calendar/slicing-blackboxing-and-queer-cutting