Can a conference be a machine for thinking through new ideas in a collectivity or from a multiplicity of perspectives? Since the question of artistic research in Africa is new and evolving, we have structured the conference to operate as an open-ended interrogative machine. This conference incorporates a wide variety of inputs, from traditional conference paper presentations and panels, to performances, interactive engagements and workshops.We have also been as inclusive as possible, treating postgraduate student work as having the same potential as the work of established figures in the field. All the work selected for this conference was chosen because of the vigour and freshness of the ideas expressed in the proposals, and the potential for the work to open up new ways of thinking about artistic practice and research in Africa in the 21st century.We have designed the conference to foreground the asking of questions, as well as sharing ideas and critique through recognising that artistic research, with its emphasis on embodied knowledge and new forms of subjectivity represents multiple challenges for traditional academic hierarchies. In programming of this conference, we have almost as many “performance-lectures” as we have traditional academic papers. More than one group of presenters have chosen to further question the format of the conference, with anti-panels; while others offer interactive workshops on indeterminism, decolonisation of the mind, and the potential of digital networked media to link embodied performances across the continent.With over sixty presenters, this promises to be a very exciting conference which will articulate the questions that need to be taken forward into the development of artistic research in Africa.
Adnan Hadzi presents thoughts on ‘mindless futurism’ at the Hacking the Computable symposium.
Zur ästhetischen Kritik digitaler Rationalität
Eine Tagung der Staatlichen Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart/Campus Gegenwart, der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Ästhetik und dem Forum Digitalisierung der Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft in Kooperation mit der Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, der Staatlichen Akademie der bildenden Künste Stuttgart und der Université de Fribourg.
Tatsächlich scheinen mit der digitalen Wende, dem ‘digital disrupture’ sämtliche gesellschaftliche und auch kulturellen Prozesse in ein dichtes Netz von Codierungen und Kontrollen eingesponnen, die ebenfalls die Dinge (die ‚smart‘ werden) als auch die Körper und ihre Identität und Integrität wie das Ästhetische selbst und die Künste betreffen. Digitalisierung und Algorithmisierung tangieren im Sinne entscheidungslogischer Programmarchitekturen mittels Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, stochastischer Zufallsprozesse Denken und Kreativität als vermeintlich letzte Domänen eines ,Anderen’ der Computation und genuines Residuum der conditio humana.Die Vermutung liegt nahe, dass diese ‚letzten‘ Entscheidungen über den Ort des „Menschlichen“ sowie das, was die Rolle von Ethik und Verantwortlichkeit wie gleichermaßen der kritischen Urteilskraft sein kann, auf dem Feld des Ästhetischen ausgetragen werden – ob als spezifisch ästhetische Anmutung des Technischen und Ökonomischen oder in künstlerischen Formen von Erkenntnis und Kritik. Hier geht es um Möglichkeiten einer Widerständigkeit gegenüber der vermeintlich restlosen Usurpation des Realen durch Algorithmik und Digitalisierung. Die Tagung Hacking the Computable. Zur ästhetischen Kritik digitaler Rationalität versteht sich in erster Linie als Diskussionsplattform, die diese und ähnliche Fragen zu untersuchen, kritisch zu hinterfragen und – möglichst kontrovers – zu überprüfen sucht.Veranstalter*innen: Judith Siegmund, Natascha Adamowsky, Dieter Mersch, Emmanuel Alloa, Daniel Feige
In the framework of Hyperemployment, the symposium AUTOMATE ALL THE THINGS! wants to explore a contradiction implicit in the increasing automation of work: is this process, which should apparently open up a new age of free time, no labour and universal basic income, instead turning humans into software agents, invisible slaves of the machines? Welcomed as a curse by the Luddites a tthe very beginning of the industrial age, throughout the 20th century,automation did not destroy human labour, but profoundly changed itsorganisation on a global scale. In the late-20th century, technological innovations brought automation to a brand new level, accelerating the shift toward a post-industrial economic model. Today, with many jobs previously run by humans becoming fully automated, the dream– or nightmare – of a post-work society seems closer than ever; andyet, at a closer look, automation in its current form isn’t destroying human labour. Rather, it is making it invisible.
Domenico Quaranta Portraying the Invisible Crowd Throughout history, portraying workers has often been a step into recognising their existence, allowing them the dignity tobe considered as a subject, as well as the representatives of a “class”. Digging into the research for the show, Hyperemployment’s curator Domenico Quaranta will offer atour through various artistic efforts to portray online workers,from Chinese Gold Farmers to scan-ops, from gig workers to online content moderators.
KEYNOTE Elisa Giardina Papa Notes on Post-Work: Free Time and the Human Infrastructures that Sustain Automation and Artificial Intelligence Most of the academic and political discourse on post-workhas focused on the relationship between automation andfree time. That is, it has posited that automation has theemancipatory potential to free us all from work: to reducenecessary working hours or at least to devote ourselvesto more intellectually rewarding jobs (immaterial labour).What is not fully convincing about this approach is that it isgrounded in a hierarchical separation between machinesand humans. What is missing is the acknowledgment of thehuman infrastructure that sustains automation and artificialintelligence. The invisible, precarious, alienated, low-paidand offshored workforce that automation requires in orderto function properly. These workers and their tasks are thefocus of this talk.
LECTURE PERFORMANCE Sebastian Schmieg I Will Say Whatever You Want In Front Of A Pizza, 2017 I Will Say Whatever You Want In Front Of A Pizza is aspeculative Prezi (a presentation software) that exploresdigital labour, the amalgamation of humans and software,and the possibility of interventions inside algorithmic systems.Narrated from the perspective of a cloud worker, the Prezivideo presents digital workers as software extensions. Theubiquitous network and the computerisation of everythinghave not only blurred the lines between bots and people –supposedly autonomous programs are sometimes people whohave to act as if they were software; this development hasalso made it very easy for everyone to hire, programme andretire humans as part of any workflow: bodies and minds thatcan be plugged in, rewired and discarded as one sees fit.
BOOK PRESENTATION Silvio Lorusso EntreprecariatEntreprecariat (Krisis Publishing, 2018; Onomatopee, 2019) explores and maps out the current entrepreneurial ideology from a precarious perspective. The Entreprecariat indicates a reality where change is natural and healthy, whatever it maybring. A reality populated by motivational posters, productivity tools, mobile offices and self-help techniques. A reality in which a mix of entrepreneurial ideology and widespread precarity is what regulates professional social media, online marketplaces for self-employment and crowdfunding platforms for personal needs. The result? A life in permanent beta, with sometimes tragic implications.
ROUND TABLE Michael Mandiberg Sašo Sedlaček Sanela Jahić Domenico Quaranta – moderator Art Making in the Age of Automation How does the increasing automation of labour affect artistic practice, on all the levels of content, process and form? How is it affecting the present society and our vision of the future?What can art do to deal with the increasing fragmentation of human labour and its disappearance from visibility, and give it back its presence and dignity? Taking off from their own work and from the statements of other participants in the symposium, the artists involved in the round table will attempt to offer an answer to these and other questions.
This boat book & blog documents our journey on our narrowboat ‘Quintessence’ and the development of the boattr prototype in collaboration with MAZI (for “together” in Greek), a Horizon 2020 research project. Boattr connects narrow boats to the ‘Internet-of-Things’ and allows for open wireless mesh-networking within the narrow boat community, by using affordable microcomputers. The main goal of this project is to provide technology and knowledge that aims to 1) empower those narrow boats who are in physical proximity, to shape their hybrid urban space, together, according to the specificities of the respective local environment, and 2) foster participation, conviviality, and location-based collective awareness of the canals.
This is an edited collection of assembled and annotated boat logs, photographs and video essays, manifested, in a scholarly gesture, as a ‘computer book’.
The boattr prototype was built on the MAZI toolkit and the capabilities offered by Do-It-Yourself networking infrastructures – low-cost off-the-shelf hardware and wireless technologies – that allow small communities or individuals to deploy local communication networks that are fully owned by local actors, including all generated data. These DIY networks could cover from a small square (e.g., using a Raspberry Pi) to a city neighbourhood (e.g., the Commotion Construction Kit used at the RedHook WiFi initiative) or even a whole city (e.g., guifi.net, awmn.net, freifunk.net), and in the case of boattr the UK canal network.
The boattr DIY infrastructures offer a unique rich set of special characteristics and affordances for offering local services to the narrow boat community, outside the public Internet: the ownership and control of the whole design process that promotes independence and grass-roots innovation rather than loss of control and fear of data shadows; the de facto physical proximity of those connected without the need for disclosing private location information, such as GPS coordinates, to third parties; the easy and inclusive access through the use of a local captive portal launched automatically when one joins the network; the option for anonymous interactions; and the materiality of the network itself. The prototype integrates existing FLOSS software, from very simple applications to sophisticated distributed solutions (like those under development by the P2Pvalue project, mobile sensing devices, and recent developments in open data and open hardware), allowing it to be appropriated by different non-expert users according to their respective context and use case.
Table of Contents
Research Journal
Adnan Hadzi
Boat Log
Adnan Hadzi & Natascha Sturny
Reflections
Natascha Sturny, Rob Canning & James Stevens
Videos
Adnan Hadzi
Images
Natascha Sturny
Resources
Franz Xaver & Anton Galanopoulos
Editor
Adnan Hadzi
Authors Collective
Adnan Hadzi
Natascha Sturny
Franz Xaver
Anton Galanopoulos
James Stevens
Rob Canning
Tech Team
Harris Niavis – MAZI Programmer
Giannis Mavridis – Micro-Computer Programmer
Producers
Adnan Hadzi – Format Development & Interface Design
Panayotis Antoniadis – MAZI Project Manager
Mark Gaved – Coordination Creeknet
Quintessence Logo: H1 Reber / Buro Destruct
Cover artwork and booklet design: OpenMute Press
Copyright: the authors
Licence: after.video is dual licensed under the terms of the MIT license and the GPL3
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
Language: English
Assembly On-demand
OpenMute Press
Acknowledgements
Co-Initiated + Funded by
Horizon 2020 – The EU framework programme for research and innovation
The Mazi project (2016-2018) has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 ICT CAPS initiative under grant agreement no 687983.
Thanks to
Ushi Reiter – Art Meets Radical Openness, Servus.at, Linz
Vince Briffa – Department of Digital Arts, University of Malta
Clemens Apprich – Centre for Digital Cultures, Lüneburg
Rob Canning – School of Art and Design, Coventry University
Gary Hall – School of Art and Design, Coventry University
It’s that time of the year for us to meet and have a laugh, drop some tracks, have a jam and eat some healthy food together. Join us in our festive season get together!On Saturday, 4th January 2020, we celebrate a busy year and the start of a more busy and sure more exciting year 2020.We will discuss exciting new developments and opportunities ahead of us plus you will get to meet new members of the EMM team.Various dj’s and friends will be invited to play, you can bring your own laptop or records to play too!Plus we will be bringing some music rig with us too, so please do not hesitate to bring your own synth or drum machine for a music jam with us.
In November 2018, five months after Matteo Salvini was made Italy’s Interior Minister, and began to close the country’s ports to rescued migrants, a group of 93 migrants was forcefully returned to Libya after they were ‘rescued’ by the Nivin, a merchant ship flying the Panamanian flag, in violation of their rights, and in breach of international refugee law.
The migrants’ boat was first sighted in the Libyan Search and Rescue (SAR) Zone by a Spanish surveillance aircraft, part of Operation EUNAVFOR MED – Sophia, the EU’s anti-smuggling mission. The EUNAVFOR MED – Sophia Command passed information to the Italian and Libyan Coast Guards to facilitate the interception and ‘pull-back’ of the vessel to Libya. However, as the Libyan Coast Guard (LYCG) patrol vessels were unable to perform this task, the Italian Coast Guard (ICG) directly contacted the nearby Nivin ‘on behalf of the Libyan Coast Guard’, and tasked it with rescue.
LYCG later assumed coordination of the operation, communicating from an Italian Navy ship moored in Tripoli, and, after the Nivin performed the rescue, directed it towards Libya.
While the passengers were initially told they would be brought to Italy, when they realised they were being returned to Libya, they locked themselves in the hold of the ship.
A standoff ensured in the port of Misrata which lasted ten days, until the captured passengers were violently removed from the vessel by Libyan security forces, detained, and subjected to multiple forms of ill-treatment, including torture.
This case exemplifies a recurrent practice that we refer to as ‘privatised push-back’. This new strategy has been implemented by Italy, in collaboration with the LYCG, since mid-2018, as a new modality of delegated rescue, intended to enforce border control and contain the movement of migrants from the Global South seeking to reach Europe.
This report is an investigation into this case and new pattern of practice.
Using georeferencing and AIS tracking data, Forensic Oceanography reconstructed the trajectories of the migrants’ vessel and the Nivin.
Tracking data was cross-referenced with the testimonies of passengers, the reports by rescue NGO WatchTheMed‘s ‘Alarm Phone’, a civilian hotline for migrants in need of emergency rescue; a report by the owner of the Nivin, which he shared with a civilian rescue organisation, the testimonies of MSF-France staff in Libya, an interview with a high-ranking LYCG official, official responses, and leaked reports from EUNAVFOR MED.
Together, these pieces of evidence corroborate one other, and together form and clarify an overall picture: a system of strategic delegation of rescue, operated by a complex of European actors for the purpose of border enforcement.
When the first–and preferred–modality of this strategic delegation, which operates through LYCG interception and pull-back of the migrants, did not succeed, those actors, including the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Rome, opted for a second modality: privatised push-back, implemented through the LYCG and the merchant ship.
Despite the impression of coordination between European actors and the LYCG, control and coordination of such operations remains constantly within the firm hands of European—and, in particular, Italian—actors.
In this case, as well as in others documented in this report, the outcome of the strategy was to deny migrants fleeing Libya the right to leave and request protection in Italy, returning them to a country in which they have faced grave violations. Through this action, Italy has breached its obligation of non-refoulement, one of the cornerstones of international refugee law.
Our main focus of recent months has been fixed on plight of beloved droog and long term collaborator Alexei Blinov. His death just last week of organ failure followed six months of struggle with pancreas and liver cancer, chemotherapy and health services.
A fabulous circle of friends enveloped him with love and support throughout, not least in respect of his creative drive and fierce intellect, but for the huge sense of fun and selflessness he encouraged in all who knew him. A very special friend indeed. A public Transition Celebration is planned for Sunday 15th December at one of Alexei’s favourite bars, Strongroom in Shoreditch London 3-10pm, please come early and celebrate his life and times.. together! A sensational gathering of friends and family shared in the unique celebration of his life and times. It centred around this wonderfully apt and beautifully crafted plasma capsule which scanned and smoothed Alexei’s passing on and up to next phase of further exploration and infinite dreaming. See the growing collection of Alexei images and video clips in this shared album.
Alexei Blinov (10 July 1964 – 26 November 2019) was a London-based electronic engineer and new mediaartist working out of Raylab in Haggerston. As founder of experimental new media organisation “Raylab” he has collaborated with a number of creative artists including Jamie Reid.
He was trained as a doctor before moving to the UK. In the early 1990s he specialised in large scale high quality laser projections. Since the late 1990s he has produced a wide variety of interactive audio-visual installations. Over the past few years, he has been the creative force behind many interactive audio-visual art projects in the UK.
Between 1993 and 1996 he worked extensively in the Netherlands, creating laser projections for scientific events, music and arts festivals and for dance companies. Since 1997 he has worked mainly in the UK creating interactive audio-visualinstallations at a number of important art galleries including the ICA, London and the Barbican Art Centre, London. Collaborations include Ciron Edwards.
From 2006-2016 he led the technical development for feature film Dau – life and times of physicist Lev Landau, on set in the Ukrainian border city Kharkov where he revisited many period experiments and engineered his own to feature in the film. The movie is one of Russia’s largest and most controversial cinematic projects to date.
He engaged with new media projects based on wireless networking such as WiFi, and was a well known and respected I/O specialist with a passion for high voltage and radio frequency experimentation. Blinov researched electro stimulation of neural feedback and blockchain resourcing.
He has exhibited a selection of these HT experiments including the ‘Hairpin Circuit’ at Moscow University. A set of spectacular arctic ICE core holographic images were recently exhibited in St Petersburg.
Alongside Ilze Black and Martin Howse, he was a member of TAKE2030, a brave new media society that operated in parallel net media scheme. The London based collective produced public art projects, shifting social network missions into hypermedia playing fields. Past projects include RichAir2030, UK, EU (2003-2004) and Lets do Lunch, London (2005). Blinov had deep ties with the Open Wireless Network community between Moscow, London and Berlin, collaborating with Jamie Reid, Empress Stah, Shu Lea Cheang, Nancy Mauro-Flude and many others.
He died on 26 November 2019 following complications from pancreatic cancer.
Working Group 1 met at Tranzit for the first meeting to discuss contexts. The expansion of research across a civil society and the proliferation of practice-based research across academic landscapes have brought about new stakeholder alliances, modes of research, and applications. These are the contexts from which many Advanced Practices emerge. However, many of these initiatives are idiosyncratic (e.g., ad-hoc funding initiatives and/or efforts to think ‘outside the box’); others are deeply embedded in institutions whose cultural roles are evolving (e.g., archives’ efforts to leverage collections in response to shifts in popular interest or intellectual property potentials).
WG1 will survey these shifting contexts in order to ‘map’ currently emerging resources and adjacencies. Its goal is to develop a provisional set of typologies that are:
descriptive not prescriptive,
overlapping and non-exclusive, and
responsive to the needs of different actors/entrants.
These typologies will not serve, even informally, as certification process or ‘registry’ of Advanced Practices; and while WG1’s mandate is to conduct diligent broad-based research, these typologies, by definition, cannot be exhaustive.
Possible typologies might include: areas of interest (e.g., oceans, logistics, national security), practical methods (e.g., rules/guidelines for collaboration), participant needs (e.g., individual or institutional aspiration), and/or formats/techniques of dissemination.
WG1 objective: ‘Map’ emerging resources and adjacencies in order to develop typologies for understanding Advanced Practices.
WG1-specific activities: Identify a wide range visual/textual models for mapping findings; develop flexible/extensible system for annotating typologies and other useful annotations and indexing techniques.
WG1-specific tasks: (1) Develop a shared, rich-media user-writable resource (e.g., a wiki) to maintain provisional typologies linked to examples and supporting resources; (2) identify relevant typologies; and (3) populate and annotate the mapping platform.
WG1 milestones: (1) Setup of online working environments, and (2) publishing a dynamic map of Advanced Practices.
WG1-specific deliverables: Visual maps of annotated typologies of Advanced Practices
