[-empyre-] Urban Data Politics

[Adam Nocek]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hello all,

Thanks so much Oron and Johannes for your compelling comments. What's
intriguing to me is how much the conversation is an elaboration of last
week's developing discussion on urbanization. That is, we seem to be
running into the same frustrations but at a different scale of design
(though I wouldn't want to separate bio and urban design too much, which I
think we were beginning to touch on last week-- especially with Adrian's
comments). In my last post, I mentioned affect precisely because it is a
concept that has so often been marshaled to situate the "human" in
pre-individual capacities for change. But it seems that this is what has
been put into "crisis" (if you'll permit me using this term). Oron, this
makes me think of your work on "deep time." I wonder if you could discuss
some of this work, and perhaps put some of our "what is to be done" tone
(to reference Ross from last week) into perspective.

I also want to use this as a segue into this week's topic, "urban data
politics," with Etienne Turpin and Davide Panagia. To draw our new guests
into the conversation, I wonder how the Anthropocene thesis (Etienne) or
Datapolitiks (Davide/Etienne) might help us negotiate some of these
difficult questions?

Thanks so much!

Here the bios:

Etienne Turpin (ID) is a philosopher researching, curating, and writing
about complex urban systems, community resilience, and colonial-scientific
history. He completed his Ph.D. (Philosophy) in the Department of Theory
and Policy Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)
of the University of Toronto. He is supported by a Vice-Chancellor's
Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the SMART Infrastructure Facility,
Faculty of Engineering and Information Science, and an Associate Research
Fellowship with the Australian Center for Cultural Environmental Research,
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Wollongong, Australia. With the
support of these appointments, Etienne lives and works in Jakarta, where
his research is coordinated through anexact office and supported by SMART's
_GeoSocial Intelligence for Urban Livability & Resilience_ Research Group.
Prior to his work in Jakarta, Etienne was a Research Fellow at the Center
for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, where he also taught
advanced design research and architecture history and theory, and
coordinated research-based travel studios for the Taubman College of
Architecture and Urban Planning. He has also taught in the architecture and
landscape architecture graduate programs for the Daniels Faculty of
Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto, and in the art
history and visual culture undergraduate programs for the Department of
Visual Studies, University of Toronto-Mississauga.

Davide Panagia (US) is an Associate Professor of Political Science at UCLA
and co-editor of the quarterly journal Theory & Event (Johns Hopkins
University Press). He received his Ph.D. in 2002 from Johns Hopkins and was
previously Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Cultural
Studies Department at Canada’s Trent University. Panagia’s teaching and
research interests include contemporary political theory, the history of
political thought, aesthetics of cultural theory, visual culture, and
citizenship studies. His recent books include _The Poetics of Political
Thinking _(2006),_The Political Life of Sensation_(2009), and _Impressions
of Hume: Cinematic Thinking and the Politics of Discontinuity_ (2013).
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Re: [-empyre-] Mediated Matters and design abjections

[Johannes Birringer]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--

hello all

thanks, Oron, for quietly correcting my mistake of the rolled down/rolled up 
sleeves over the silent ear that cannot hear.  And interestingly, both Adam and 
Oron, in their last posts, somewhat changed a reference I made, from "perverse 
capitalism" to "pervasive capitalism."  I did mean perverse, and I wanted to 
make that comment in regard to what I assumed was "regenerative biology's'' and 
connected life-design biotechnology' proximity to cosmetic surgery. I admit
that I lack some of the background; perhaps, Oron, you could please elaborate 
on the trajectory of what you just hinted at, that allure of designing new in 
vitro things, matters, products, organs?  Where does generative biology play, 
industrially? and how do symbolic bioart performance cope or situate themselves 
-- and you mention "Victimless Leather," yes, and I thought of you (and 
"Evolution Haute Couture", that show in Russia a few years back) again last 
Friday
when I sat in an auditorium at the London College of Fashion and listened to 
designers there speculate on the future, mapping the future. The symposium was 
called "The Body in Digital Fashion,"  and one speaker, Lynne Murray, just 
appointed head of the Fashion Digital Studio, cheerfully announced the future 
is bright, as the "body is the perfect interface between business and 
consumer". 

Now one would want to explore more concretely the design limitations within 
perverse capitalism, no?  Boyan Manchev, from whose "La résistance de la danse" 
I took the analytic of perverse capitalism [available also in German as "Der 
Widerstand des Tanzes: GEGEN die VERWANDLUNG des Körpers, der Wahrnehmung und 
der Gefühle ZU WAREN in einem perversen Kapitalismus" 
[http://www.corpusweb.net/der-widerstand-des-tanzes.html] of course vigorously 
critiques the "politics of plasticity",  and, as Adam correctly suggests, I 
think, affects are mutational matters designed into product and interaction. 
And thus to counter an alluring neoliberal design productivity dealing in 
pseudo affects and real affects, increasingly perverse fetishisms and life 
style enhancements, what do we need? surely more than slow space or stillness 
(of movement/mutation, as Manchev seems to imply with his examples from dance), 
and misguiding-design? Perhaps current political terrors are coming 
capitalisms's way, facing its generativity. Other disruptive potentials, if I 
follow Oron's logic, were to lie in the breeding of strange, useless, unusable 
monsters and hybrid abjections, impure and unsanitary concrescences? or am I 
misunderstanding? 


regards
Johannes Birringer


[Oron schreibt]

Yes, this silence of the ear, a symbolic object. An ear that is made for the 
eye; whether it is on a back of a mouse or on Stelarc's arm when the sleeve is 
rolled over. In both cases the ears call us to imagine "extended operational 
architectures of bodies", perhaps, as Johannes suggest, not as powerful (for 
some) as words/lectures that are vocalisation of images made for the ear.
As mentioned, it is hard to imagine anything outside the "pervasive 
capitalism", in particular when it comes to design, capitalism's not much of a 
bastard kid, and the servant of neoliberalism. However, would the rule of 
design be disturbed when it comes to designing living systems? When we choose 
to embark on pseudo-utilitarian series of works, In-Vitro Meat (Disembodied 
Cuisine) and In-Vitro Leather (the ironically named Victimless Leather), we 
thought that by doing it as art works we will be able to bring into focus the 
disruptive potential of biological design.
But of interest for me is what happens when the designed product is non-human 
and the purpose is not medical. The new allure of regenerative biology consumer 
products is no longer confined to artists who want to be critical or designers 
who want to be speculative



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