Thanks Ruth,
This material is perfect ;-)
marc
Co-Founder, Co-Director and main editor of Furtherfield.
Art, technology and social change, since 1996
http://www.furtherfield.org
Furtherfield Gallery & Commons in the park
Finsbury Park, London N4 2NQhttp://www.furtherfield.org/gallery
Currently writing a PhD at Birkbeck University, London
https://birkbeck.academia.edu/MarcGarrett
Just published: Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain
Eds, Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Nathan Jones, & Sam Skinner
Liverpool Press - http://bit.ly/2x8XlMK
Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On 9 April 2018 11:33 AM, Tom Keene <t...@theanthillsocial.co.uk> wrote:
> Very much so - thanks!
>
> TOM KEENE: Artist/Activist/Researcher
> Save Cressingham Gardens
> www.db-estate.co.uk
>
> On Mon, 9 Apr 2018, at 11:12 AM, ruth catlow wrote:
>
>> Of interest?
>>
>> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>> Subject: [bgcon] open call: AMBIENT REVOLTS
>> Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2018 12:03:24 +0200
>> From: Krystian Woznicki
>> [<k...@berlinergazette.de>](mailto:k...@berlinergazette.de)
>>
>> Reply-To: k...@berlinergazette.de
>>
>> Organisation: Berliner Gazette
>> To: digi-ya...@berlinergazette.de
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> What does it mean to act politically when, like in this very moment, we
>> are confronting the spread of right-wing populism as an ambient force
>> that polarizes all of us? What, in other words, does it mean to oppose
>> the imperceptible power of an atmosphere that outrules a collectivity
>> that is inclusive of all? What does it mean to counter the
>> quasi-environmentalization of proto-fascist tendencies that further
>> foster segregation?
>>
>> Posing these questions in its 19th year, the Berliner Gazette continues
>> a long-term engagement with contemporary forms of political agency and
>> the common. In this open call for contributions, we wish to invite
>> activists, journalists, researchers, cultural workers, coders and
>> artists to join us looking for answers.
>>
>> We want to invite you to participate! There are two different formats of
>> participation: conference workshops (deadline: May 20, 2018 ) and online
>> newspaper (deadline: June 20, 2018).
>>
>> The structure of this email is as follows:
>>
>> 1. Development, context, goal
>> 2. Conference workshops | call for contributions
>> 3. Online-newspaper | call for contributions
>>
>> Links, that are implemented in the email text as footnotes, you will
>> find at the very bottom.
>>
>> 1. Development, context, goal
>>
>> *Development*
>>
>> The BG team [1] began developing the AMBIENT REVOLTS project in July
>> 2017. We started right after the G20 summit in Hamburg where some of us
>> joined the alternative media center FCMC [2] and witnessed with many
>> other journalists the most severe execution of preemptive state violence
>> in Germany’s recent history [3,4,5]. The ensuing recreation of the
>> political landscape echoed the authoritarian approach of the G20 police
>> force: a shift of politics to the right and even radical right, a
>> restriction of demonstration rights and of expressions of political
>> dissent, scaling and expanding security measures, etc. Against this
>> backdrop we developed the concept for AMBIENT REVOLTS, including the
>> general idea for our 2018 annual project consisting of a special section
>> in our online-newspaper and a series of events culminating with our
>> annual conference.
>>
>> Shortly after the g20-summer the BG annual conference FRIENDLY FIRE [6]
>> took place and provided many fruitful possibilities to reflect the
>> politics of citizenship under current conditions. Then, in December
>> 2017, the BG team contributed to the #LutherLenin festival at the Studio
>> Hrdinu in Prague [7]. Here we were able to test some of the ideas for
>> AMBIENT REVOLTS. Finally we launched the project with first
>> contributions to our online newspaper [8] and with a panel at the
>> transmediale festival [9] in February 2018. Documents of our
>> transmediale event are available in audio [10] and video [11,12].
>>
>> After that few members of the BG team went on a month-log tour, visiting
>> some of the nodes of the BG network in Europe, including cities such as
>> Genoa, Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Porto, Paris and Brussels. We learned
>> a lot about how the people who contribute to our online-newspaper or to
>> our annual conferences live and work in their respective local contexts.
>> This helped substantially honing some of the key ideas of the AMBIENT
>> REVOLTS project.
>>
>> *Context*
>>
>> When we returned to Berlin in the beginning of March 2018, the
>> atmosphere was literally spooky as the ghosts of the G20 summit came to
>> the fore again. Symptomatic of this was the career step of Olaf Scholz
>> [13]. Instead of paying for the consequences of his ‘bad management’ as
>> the mayor of Hamburg – we are, to reiterate, talking about the most
>> severe execution of state violence in Germany’s recent history –, Scholz
>> became finance minister and even vice chancellor in Angela Merkel’s
>> fourth cabinet. This disturbing move echoed the later day promotion of
>> many high ranking policemen and politicians who had been responsible for
>> the excesses of violence during the G8 in Genoa 2001 [14].
>>
>> If such things can happen ‘in bright daylight’ and if they are taken to
>> be normal, rather than causing a public debate, then the public sphere
>> is in peril. After all, Scholz’s promotion was followed by a silence
>> that is telling inasmuch it expresses an implicit framework for
>> censorship. As such this silence is a constitutive condition for the
>> post-G20 public sphere: while (left-wing) criticism of the government
>> and its interpretation of democracy is quelled, right-wing populists are
>> elevated, e.g. when readily given stages, even by liberal media.
>>
>> If, in other words, the broader spectrum of the Left is delegitimized
>> while the far Right is legitimized, then the public sphere is being
>> constricted through two simultaneous moves. Both moves, as different as
>> they are, have in common that they contribute to closing the public
>> discourse for opposition, for dissent and, above all, for the biggest
>> possible plurality of contributions – the latter would also include
>> marginalized, invisibilized and illegalized actors for whom discursive
>> openings generally tend to be highly precarious.
>>
>> Needless to say, the aforementioned features have always been the vital
>> basics of any democracy, yet, remarkably, it is in this historic moment
>> – in Germany, Europe and beyond – that the greatest collective courage
>> needs to take hold to actually perform any of such basic democratic
>> engagement. As it is we are challenged to explore how this courage can
>> manifest itself in many different ways.
>>
>> *Goal*
>>
>> Against this backdrop the AMBIENT REVOLTS project takes an international
>> approach, foregrounding cross-border exchange and cooperation. More
>> specifically, the project aims at accompanying and advocating an
>> engagement with the public sphere at the molecular level. There are two
>> reasons for that.
>>
>> Firstly, we wish to understand better how ambient forces operate today,
>> meaning: how they colonize the micro-textures of the everyday, how they
>> enable the contagion of bodies and the modulation affect, and, more
>> concretely, how they foster right-wing populism. Secondly, we wish to
>> explore possibilities for interventions upon the ambient forces at their
>> operational level. Hence the AMBIENT REVOLTS project focuses on
>> micro-politics in the expanded micro-worlds of the networked public
>> spheres: small acts and minor gestures in the everyday – be it when
>> engaging in the class room or chat room, on the street or online, with
>> friends or colleagues.
>>
>> 2. Conference workshops | call for contributions
>>
>> Who: activists, journalists, researchers, cultural workers, coders and
>> artists
>> What: responses, ideas, commentary, material, links
>> Deadline: May 20, 2018
>> Email: info(at)berlinergazette.de
>>
>> The AMBIENT REVOLTS conference will take place November 8-10, 2018 at
>> the Center for Arts and Urbanistics (ZK/U) in Berlin. There will be five
>> workshop tracks bringing together civil society actors from more than 20
>> countries. We are now inviting activists, journalists, researchers,
>> cultural workers, coders and artists to submit ideas, questions,
>> material, links. All of this will contribute to the shaping of the
>> respective five workshop tracks. Please respond to the questions below
>> by May 20, 2018.
>>
>> Workshop Track: Rebooting Populism?
>> Keywords: Populism, Authoritarianism, Social Media, Liquid Democracy
>> Questions: If right-wing populism (and populism in general) today hinges
>> upon social media, are then the top-down logics of demagogy reversed? Is
>> populism nowadays a bottom-up affair? If so, can this reversed logic be
>> deployed for emancipatory and, ultimately, democratic ends?
>>
>> Workshop Track: Hacking the Urban Backend
>> Keywords: Smart City, Programmed Environments, Appropriation, Hacking
>> Questions: If in today’s smart city the urbanite is becoming one element
>> of the programmed environment, then how are the boundaries for political
>> action being redefined in the course of this? What happens to public
>> space as a realm in which political actors voice their concerns? Is the
>> arena of political intervention being relocated to the invisiblized
>> backend of the city?
>>
>> Workshop Track: Involuntary Community
>> Keywords: Interconnectedness, Disruption, Social Networks, Community
>> Questions: If under today’s conditions of all-encompassing
>> interconnectedness right-wing populist moods can spread in a viral,
>> quasi-contagious fashion, then what role do system errors, glitches and
>> other (planned or unplanned) disruptions play? Can the surprise element
>> of involuntary connectedness or disconnectedness gain a political
>> valence? What forms of community can emerge, when technologies such as
>> "Near Sensing" are deployed for unexpected social ends?
>>
>> Workshop Track: Challenging the Capitalocene
>> Keywords: Capitalocene, Automation, Dehumanization, Racism
>> Questions: If capitalism in the current stage is a quasi-automated
>> matter, then what role can human actors play? If algorithms operate
>> according to racialized categories, then how does racism play out in
>> quasi-automated capitalism? What are possible strategies against
>> dehumanization?
>>
>> Workshop Track: Unlearning Learning
>> Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Self-Learning, Politics of Learning
>> If self-learning systems define our age, if, at the same time, AI-driven
>> social media come to provide pseudo-classrooms while traditional media
>> lose their authority as ‘educational institutions’, then what is the
>> present and future of pedagogy? What kind of unlearning needs to be
>> done? What, if at all, do we need to learn from self-learning systems?
>> In what kind of networked public spheres (and atmo-spheres) do we want
>> to be learning tomorrow?
>>
>> 3. Online-newspaper | call for contributions
>>
>> Who: activists, journalists, researchers, cultural workers, coders and
>> artists
>> What: essays, interviews and reports (9.500 chars)
>> Deadline: June 20, 2018
>> Email: info(at)berlinergazette.de
>>
>> At the beginning of this year we have started publishing essays,
>> interviews and reports in a special section of the Berliner Gazette
>> dedicated to AMBIENT REVOLTS [15]. We are planning to publish
>> approximately 50 contributions by the end of the year. Assembling this
>> material we would like also to elaborate a concept for a book with a
>> selection of texts on our annual theme – expanding the BG series of by
>> now eight books (5 of them anthologies/readers).
>>
>> If you have not heard about the BG annual projects before, please have a
>> look at our most recent projects UN|COMMONS [16], TACIT FUTURES [17] and
>> FRIENDLY FIRE [18].
>>
>> Please spread the word about this open call for contributions. And
>> please let us know if you have any questions regarding the call.
>>
>> Stay tuned,
>>
>> Krystian (for the BG team)
>>
>> Links
>>
>> 1.
>> https://bit.ly/2GK2LQb
>> 2.
>> https://fcmc.tv/
>> 3.
>> https://bit.ly/2IEJH6i
>> 4.
>> http://berlinergazette.de/g-20-gewalt-aus-der-zukunft
>> 5.
>> https://g20-doku.org
>> 6.
>> https://berlinergazette.de/friendly-fire
>> 7.
>> https://studiohrdinu.cz/en/predstaveni/lutherlenin
>> 8.
>> https://bit.ly/2HiFdTu
>> 9.
>> https://bit.ly/2uZV6M8
>> 10.
>> https://voicerepublic.com/talks/ambient-revolts
>> 11.
>> https://vimeo.com/262355303
>> 12.
>> https://vimeo.com/262354951
>> 13.
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaf_Scholz
>> 14.
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27th_G8_summit
>> 15.
>> https://bit.ly/2HiFdTu
>> 16.
>> https://berlinergazette.de/uncommons
>> 17.
>> https://berlinergazette.de/tacit-futures
>> 18.
>> https://berlinergazette.de/friendly-fire
>> --
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> BG – Berliner Gazette | since 1999 |
>> http://berlinergazette.de
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> BG BOOKS OUT NOW @ DP:
>>
>> FUGITIVE BELONGING
>> https://diamondpaper.net/title_27
>> A FIELD GUIDE TO THE SNOWDEN FILES
>> http://diamondpaper.net/title_26
>> AFTER THE PLANES
>> http://diamondpaper.net/title_25
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> CHECK DOCU OF LATEST BG EVENTS:
>>
>> FRIENDLY FIRE – BG Annual Conference 2017
>> https://berlinergazette.de/friendly-fire
>> SIGNALS – Exhibition of the Snowden Files
>> http://berlinergazette.de/signals
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> digi-ya...@berlinergazette.de
>>
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>>
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>> NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org
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