al sesgo

oblicuo / hiedra / 1981

al-g al-b

TO-GET-HER(E)

Aitana Cordero + Quim Bigas

in reverse

massive overview

(+ joyas así en http://centersoftheworld.wordpress.com)

laberinto de pasiones (28O-02D)

Rubén y Jaron coordinan esta cosa tan chula que se cuenta así:

"De forma reciente hemos experimentado el resurgir de una multiplicidad de materialismos. De ciertas miradas del mundo posthumanistas que pretenden llevar el materialismo hasta sus últimas consecuencias. El interés por entender las agencias y potencias de la materia hace que nos interroguemos sobre las condiciones materiales de existencia más allá de la voluntad de los hombres y mujeres que producen su acontecer histórico. Densidades, viscosidades, resistencias, distancias y humedades se entrelazan con infraestructuras, artefactos, herramientas y tecnologías, cruzados por serotoninas, dopaminas, testosterona y feromonas, creando redes complejas que afectan y se dejan afectar. La agencia ya no reside en la voluntad sino en la densidad de las redes que integran humanos y no humanos, discursos, máquinas y animales. Esta complejización del materialismo, aceptar que no vivimos en un mundo lineal ni determista nos obliga a repensar nuestro análisis de las cosas, sobre cómo se relacionan eventos, sujetos y tecnologías, y sobre todo, sobre cómo acontecen las realidades materiales de la cultura."

Fechas (martes): 28 de octubre, 4, 11, 18 y 25 de noviembre y 2 de diciembre.

+ info en la web de nociones comunes bcn

tanto que

ruinas rumanas

on displacement (& desire) / Victoria Ruiz

desplazamiento situación posición colocación dispersión orientación arrastre coordenación

en un sitio nuevo en una colina: la electrodoméstica

+ info

The Darmstadt Delegation / DL14

The darmstadt delegation came together on the basis of a shared experience of troubling differences in the politics, values and practices of “activists" heavily using networked technology for their struggles, and of "techno-activists" who struggle to develop progressive and alternative technologies. We observe that, loyal to a utopia of a globally functioning interwebs, techno-activists usually organize around universal values: information must be “free”, secure, “privacy-preserving”, accessible, etc. In comparison, those who bring their political struggles to the interwebs may express political differences across a broader spectrum, situated in local and/or global contexts. However, pragmatic decisions due to time pressure and lack of resources often mean that these struggles may integrate themselves into proprietary and conservative technical infrastructures. As a consequence, during “sneaky moments of first getting things done", many organizational matters are delegated to "techies" or to technological platforms.

If we believe the mantra that our tools inform our practices and our practices inform our tools, we may want to radically reconfigure these divisions of labor between “activists” and “progressive techies". But how? Where do we start? What are ways to resist those sneaky moments in which we pragmatically submit ourselves to "specialization of work" that reproduce hegemonic divisions of gender, race, class and age, and that reinforce ideological differences between activists for social justice and activists for just technologies?

The darmstadt delegation follows in the steps of numerous initiatives which are working on crossing divides while developing technical alternatives for current day struggles. Most recently, we see ourselves in conversation with the numerous initiatives that have aligned around backbone409 [1], interference [2], transhackfeminist camp [3] and the internet ungovernance forum [4]. We are excited to have the opportunity to continue some of these conversations with you in the context of DL14 [5]. Due to unforeseen constraints, only Seda Gurses will be physically present at the conference. For those who would like to discuss more, I encourage you to get in touch with all of our delegates [0]

[0] Currently active delegates are Femke Snelting (ConstantVZW, Belgium), Jara Rocha(Objetologias, Bau School of Design, Spain), Miriyam Aouragh (University of Westminister, UK) and Seda Gurses (New York University, USA).
[1] http://backbone409.calafou.org
[2] http://interference.io
[3] http://transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/call-for-proposal/
[4] https://iuf.alternatifbilisim.org
[5] http://digitallabor.org/

fue punciones espumas tácticas

+ info en éste

hoy o del m

cuchillar antes de peña del rayo

calle del arra antes de

arroyo de lanchas de castilla

des kilomètres

sadadi di nha cesaria

regardez des enfants

towards a materialist theory of becoming

la inscripción de

a lo mejor

force the hand of chance

Psychic TV con Derek Jarman, Genesis P-Orridge
& Jordi Valls (1983)

-vía LA LÍNEA SIN FIN #4 som 6 milions-

algo

Rotring ink on cartridge paper 100 x 70 cm

Suzanne Treister, 2013

cette

blancheur rigide

UKI

[UKI - viral game - an intro by shu Lea Cheang on Vimeo]

> he encontrado ésto, que es de hace ya un rato, y me ha enternecido mucho

+ info en la web de entonces

THF!

T H Ffeminist 
convergencia trans 
gente de todos los géneros 
disentir socialmente 
piratas guerrilla punto 
eclectic tech carnival
genderhacking

Calafou
del 4 al 11 de agosto


+ info aquí + aquí + aquí

fin de s

images of the world and the inscription of

him

"When you look at objects the people who produce them remain unimaginable. The spectator who understands this becomes unimaginable to himself. This is the departure for a new image of man."

anónimx + glissant + cucurto + euraca

sneaky temporalities

let's first get things done

images of the world and the inscription of

"Mundo autónomo, o sea, con leyes propias, con contradicciones propias, donde la exigencia es alegre y la paciencia duradera, donde aún no te has recuperado de la frase que acabas de escuchar cuando llega el siguiente golpe, la siguiente idea o emoción, idea y emoción, que tanta generosidad quepa en un par de cuerpos y que comprendamos, al mismo tiempo, que ciertas cosas no pueden enseñarse, sólo pueden aprenderse."  (de Miriam Martín sobre Où gît votre sourire enfoui?, Pedro Costa, 2001)

a las siete y media de hoy en La Morada

sclxtrc - any zero

demá dijous 24 de juliol a les 20h

let’s first get things done

: on division of labor and practices of delegation in times of mediated politics and politicized technologies

4th of August, 2014
Thinking together /  Osthang Project
Darmstadt, Germany

"How can we live together? This is the very simple and fun (if not challenging) question that the participants of the Osthang Architecture Summer School will be asking this Summer in Darmstadt, Germany. The program will come to a closure with a nine day(!) public forum titled “thinking together” curated by Berno Odo Polzer. As Berno writes:

“«Thinking Together» is focused on rethinking future modes of living together in a pluricentric world, so it is a transdisciplinary platform for political imagination: ‘political’ because it is concerned with the way in which we organize the spaces, practices and lives that we share, locally as well as globally – ‘imagination’ because it is aimed at forming new ideas and imaginaries about how to do so.”

Be it in getting out the call for the next demonstration on some “cloud service”, or developing a progressive tech project in the name of an imagined user community, scarcity of resources and distribution of expertise makes short cuts inevitable. But do they really?

The current distance between those who organise their activism to develop “technical infrastructures” and those who bring their struggles to these infrastructures is remarkable. The paradoxical consequences can be baffling: (radical) activists organize and sustain themselves using “free” technical services provided by Fortune 500 companies. At the same time, “alternative tech practices”, like the Free Software Community, are sustained by a select (visionary and male) few, proposing crypto with 9-lives as the minimum infrastructure for any political undertaking.

The naturalization of this division of labor may be recognized in statements about activists having better things to do than to tinker with code or hardware, or in technological projects that locate their politics solely in the technology and infrastructures as if they are outside of the social and political domain. What may seem like a pragmatic solution actually re-iterates faultlines of race, gender, age and class. Through the convenient delegation of “tech matters” to the techies or to commercial services, collectives may experience a shift in the collective’s priorities and a reframing of their activist culture through technological decisions. The latter, however, are typically not open to a broader political discussion and contestation. Such separation also gets in the way of actively considering the way in which changes in our political realities are entangled with shifts in technological infrastructures.

We want to use this day to resist the reflex of “first getting things done” in order to start a long term collaboration that intersects those of us with a background in politics of society and politics of technology." (Seda Gürses)

Together with Seda Gürses, Femke Snelting & Miriyam Aouragh

+ info on Thinking together here

images of the world and the inscription of

publicación: Teknokultura "entre dos siglos"

"Este libro reúne una selección de los trabajos publicados en la revista digital Teknokultura en conmemoración de sus trece años de existencia. Los textos incluidos en esta “antología” muestran la diversidad de temas, cuestionamientos y debates que Teknokultura ha albergado y fomentado desde su aparición en 2001. Se han quedado fuera muchos otros también importantes que forman parte del esfuerzo de crear un foro de discusión sobre asuntos de tecnología que deje de una vez por todas de concentrarse en el aparato y el estrecho ámbito de sus usos particulares para atender las maneras complejas en las que la tecnología como sistemas de significación reestructura la vida social, económica, política y cultural. Invitamos al lector a transitar por estas páginas con la expectativa de suscitar suficientes inquietudes como para continuar la discusión, así como acción política y social más allá de ellas."

Textos: Heidi J. Figueroa Sarriera, Ángel Gordo, Javier de Rivera (comps.), Steffen P. Walz, Barbara Bolt, Langdon Winner, Steven Mentor, Andy Miah, Adolfo Estalella, Antonio Lafuente, Jara Rocha, Luis Moreno-Caballud y Remedios Zafra

+ info: catarata.org

gendered Turing tests and strategies for concealing and identifying gender online

"In the prelude to How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles describes two different variations on the Turing test. The most famous one, the one many of us may know, involves a person using some kind of computerized chat interface to talk to either a computer, or a human in another room. It is the task of the test subject to determine, from conversation, whether their interlocutor is human or machine. Passing the Turing test has long been seen as one of the holy grails of artificial intelligence. When computers are able to pass as human, the argument goes, one of the distinctions between humans and computers dissolves.

Hayles also describes another Turing test. This one starts in the same way as the previous, with a human participant talking to someone in another room through a computerized chat interface. But in this one, the discussion partner on the other side is definitely human. The goal of the participant is, instead, to determine whether their conversation partner is male or female. If this second Turing test has similar stakes to the first, Hayles asks, does an ability to fool the participant negate the gender of the human on the other side? (...)

There's a huge spectrum of ways that gender is represented, discussed, made an issue, or turned into infrastructure on the internet. Different platforms construct gender as an issue of varying importance. In some software development communities (on mailing lists, in IRC), it's generally considered impolite to ask people for personal details that they're not readily volunteering. A comment raised by this is the idea that many women don't get noticed or counted because they don't mention or make obvious their gender, because the default or un-gendered stated is considered to be male. If someone does not make it explicitly clear that she is a woman, she is assumed to be a man. If someone makes it explicitly clear that they are something other than simply a woman or man, it starts a discussion, which may or may not be welcome to the person who has accidentally instigated it. So on one side of this spectrum, there's communities where disclosing gender is not structurally necessary and speculation is entirely a private activity by individuals; on the other side of the spectrum, there are platforms like Facebook, where including a gender is a required activity in profile building, and where the default is man or woman, unless you choose to start writing in an answer, and then there's an authorized list of possibilities. Gender is built into the bedrock of Facebook. We take for granted that we can find out what gender someone is on Facebook. Moreso, we take for granted that we can find out what gender someone is, in general."

Ginger Coons

+info: http://www.constantvzw.org/site/Gendered-Turing-tests.html

REROAM worksessions

(at Relearn Summerschool - Variable - Schaerbeek - BXL - 6-11 june 2014 )

Chairs attached to a school fence, signifying the school is en toma [occupied] (Chile, 2011)

What would it mean to design a school in terms of a nomadic learning   situation? Probably we need to think differently about its physical   characteristics as well as its location and access to pedagogical resources. Then: what is a pedagogical resource? What is the meaning of   "learning infrastructure"? What would an itinerant educational object   look like, and how would it be produced and shared? Do educational   objects actually "learn"? How?

Reroam  proposes daily exercises, a collection of present models, experiences  and theories that examine the physical situations  where learning  happens. Thinking through conviviality and discomfort, we  look for  spaces that would facilitate disensus.Taking our bodies into  account,  we will take a moment every day to speculate together about  ways that  we could make re-learning situations physical.

Prepared by: Catherine Lenoble, Jara Rocha & Femke Snelting

+info: http://relearn.be/ 
(+ soon on schedule)

Relearn 2014 (Variable, BXL)

Relearn is a summerschool with as many teachers as it has participants. It is about sharing and trying Free Culture practices, and is entirely done with Free, Libre and Open Source software. Relearn takes place in Variable, a collectively run F/LOSS Arts Lab in Brussels. It starts from the idea that tools are increasingly mediated by software and the algorithmic and legal dynamics that constraint and shape its use. Reconnecting to the physical and digital material of those tools is a means of (re)asserting ownership and ensuring active participation in the future of our work practices.

Relearn starts on Sunday July 6 at 11:00 and ends Friday 11 July at 19:00
It takes place in Variable, Rue Gallait 80, Brussels.

+info: http://relearn.be/
+references: http://relearn.be/r/pedagogy::references
+schedule: http://osp.constantvzw.org:9999/p/summer-school-2014-schedule

Unlinked (dislocations, disappearances & deprecations) - 2014's MMD&C finnisage at Piet Zwart

This year’s graduation show of the Piet Zwart Institute’s Master of Media Design & Communication: Networked & Lens-Based perhaps reflects a shift in popular culture. Whereas no self-respecting media self-help book or newspaper article published in the last decade missed using ‘linked’ or ‘stay connected’ in the text several times, a more recent rash of articles and runaway best-sellers feature words such as ‘introvert’ or ‘silence’. Have we reached a consensual moment where we might all agree it has become urgently necessary to critically look at how the words ‘social’ and ‘media’ might be used together? Is it becoming increasingly pressing to explore how contemporary media forms pervasive networks of both communication and mis-communication? To look at how media can foster community yet also create isolation and foster loneliness?

Each project reflects a unique research trajectory over two years: each artist has developed a unique media language through which they have researched particular topics and then – through a cycle of studio-based practice and critical reflection – have created the artworks and research projects you will find in this show: works about dislocation, disappearance & deprecation.

Graduating Master MMD&C students: Roel Roscam Abbing, Yoana Buzova, Lasse van den Bosch Christensen, Marlon Harder, Menno Harder, Nicole Hametner, Niek Hilkmann, Michaela Lakova, Nan Wang.

- Tuesday June 24: the first year students present two events. The Art of Documentation from 17:30 to 18:30 in the WORM filmzaal, followed by Politics of Craft in V2_, which opens at 19:00 and continues until 29 june.

- Saturday June 14 and 18: VHS Anatomy Workshop with Niek Hilkmann, at TENT

- Sunday June 29: the finnisage of Unlinked from 15:00 to 18:00 in TENT, features a launch of the graduation catalogue, a concert by Niek Hilkmann and a performance by Nan Wang.


+info: http://pzwart.nl/pzi/News/Nieuwspagina/?article=2173

(vía @oleajeinfinito)

la materia contraataca

I Jornada de Objetologías, en Bau (Pujades, 118 - Barcelona)

+ info sobre el coso aquí

+ info sobre el sarao acá

preciosity

la pluma atraviesa una península