+1
I wanted to contribute that the recent scholarly work of HCI researchers such
as Os Keyes et al’s “A Mulching Proposal” and AI researcher Joy Buolamwini et
al’s “Gender Shades,” etc., exist in the space of serious research and savvy
presentation that contains inherent critiques of their subjects in a way that
is reminiscent of some of the art projects mentioned in various threads.
What is interesting there is that these projects are also very specific to a
highly-engaged community that already prizes knowledge sharing and gets a lot
of press attention, so I’d argue that these researchers are well-positioned to
affect the fields that they critique. I’m not sure how engaged net-artists are
by comparison, as I am woefully ignorant of the current state of things there.
:)
Maybe artists can also carve out more space for themselves in academic/industry
networks so they can radicalize- I mean reach- more people?
-S
On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 9:38 AM, Rachel O' Dwyer wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I really appreciate all the replies both on and off the list.
>
> I hadn't made a connection between this post and the very popular discussion
> of net-time and I’m very interested to hear that Transmediale is exploring
> the persistence of networks.
>
> One of the most inspiring books I've read in the past few years was [Anna
> Tsing's A Mushroom at the end of the world: on the possibility of life in
> capitalist ruins.](https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10581.html) It might
> seem odd that an anthropological text on supply chains and Matsutake
> mushrooms changed how I thought about the politics of networks, but the book
> also explores the limits and possibilities of political agency from a
> position of ecological ruin, hopelessness and precarity. A brilliant chapter
> ‘some problems with scale’ also helped me to articulate criticisms I had of a
> lot of peer-to-peer and network activist projects. I’m also re-reading some
> work from people like the late [Mark
> Fisher](http://www.zero-books.net/books/capitalist-realism) and [Rebecca
> Solnit](https://www.amazon.com/Hope-Dark-Untold-Histories-Possibilities/dp/1608465764)
> on politics and hope.
>
> A few things have come up in conversations over the past few weeks (I’ve
> mostly been talking to and emailing people instead of writing).
>
> 1. There also seems to be a shift towards a feminist politics of networks.
> Maybe I’m using the term ‘feminist’ incorrectly here because I don’t mean
> work that’s particularly concerned with identity politics. But if we say that
> people like
> [Butler](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gender-Trouble-Routledge-Classics-Judith/dp/0415389550)
> and [Haraway](https://www.dukeupress.edu/staying-with-the-trouble) and
> [Barad](https://www.dukeupress.edu/meeting-the-universe-halfway) disrupt
> binary thinking around gender and materiality, this kind of
> transdisciplinary, non-binary thinking coupled with an ethics of care (i.e.
> someone like [Maria Puig de la
> BellaCasa](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/people/maria-puig-de-la-bellacasa/))
> provides us with a set of tools for thinking through new kinds of resistance
> as well as new ways of relating to ourselves with and through networked
> communications infrastructure. There seems to be more of an emphasis on
> localized and situated interventions for example rather than things that
> scale. There seems to be a greater emphasis on pedagogical practices than on
> technical implementation. If anything is starting to emerge as a kind of
> pattern for me, this is it. I think that’s also reflected in the
> sensibilities of projects like [Platform
> Cooperativism](https://platform.coop/) and the [Decode
> Project](https://decodeproject.eu/what-decode).
>
> 2. Techniques that can be identified as part of first and second wave
> ‘tactical media’ such as reverse-engineering/ circuit bending/ hacking; the
> exploit; commoning/DIY; obfuscation; visualization/mapping; and speculative
> imagining are still used and are still necessary. And I think some of these,
> particularly reverse-engineering and obfuscation, seem to be particularly
> significant in the context of platforms. Not to mention being able to imagine
> alternatives in the face of overwhelming odds.
>
> These are some of my own thoughts coming out of returning to the book I’m
> writing on the politics of wireless networks and the EM spectrum, from
> students while teaching an undergraduate elective on network politics and art
> with undergraduate students in NCAD and recent conversations mostly over
> networks with Rosa Menkman, Geert Lovink, Jussi Parikka, Surya Mattu, Patrick
> Bresnihan, Brian Holmes, Nate Tkacz, Nora O Murchu and Sarah Grant, the OMG
> collective in Dublin and C-Node (Paul O’Brien) in the past few weeks.
>
> On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 3:05 PM Minka Stoyanova
> wrote:
>
>> Hello Rachel,
>>
>> I love your questions. Personally, I just submitted my PhD
