NGI SALON @ Transmediale Berlin

NGI SALON @ Transmediale Berlin

2nd of Feb. 2018 | 16:00
Café Stage HKW – Haus der Kulturen der Welt
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 | D-10557 Berlin
This NGI Salon contributes to the definition of the “human” aspects of the Next Generation Internet

Agenda and registration page

MODERATOR:
Marta Arniani, Curator, Futuribile

SPEAKERS:

• Beatrice Fazi, Research Fellow in Digital Humanities & Computational Culture, University of Sussex
• Uta Meier-Hahn, Researcher in Internet Policy and Governance, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG)
• Ben Vickers, Curator of Digital at the Serpentine Galleries, Co-Director of LIMAZULU Project Space, Near Now Fellow, facilitator for the open-source development of unMonastery
• Jeanne Charlotte Vogt, Curator, cultural producer and co-director of NODE Forum for Digital Arts

FOCUS OF THIS NGI SALON

The space in-between: the value of interpretation and interaction for the Next Generation Internet

We inhabit the space between data-generating devices, places and habits. Nonetheless, our individual experiences and public conversations are extremely objectified, flattened on information nodes and their interfaces. Even the decentralised revolution carried out by distributed ledgers technology mostly perceives relations as transactions. We delegated to technology companies the definition of what a meaningful interaction is.

Non-biased data gathering, empowering interactions, inclusive narratives: this Salon wants to promote proposals for strengthening the space in-between, the space made of intangible relationships and embodied experiences that constitute our social fabric.

TRANSMEDIALE BERLIN – FACE VALUE

Things are what they are—but could they be different? transmediale 2018 face value aims to take stock of current affairs, to recognize things for what they are before saying how they could be different. It is an attempt to probe the values, as well as the processes of value creation, that have contributed to our present moment of extreme political, economic, and cultural divides. The festival seeks possible new ways of resisting and deconstructing the alarming development of a digital populism, the radicalization of net culture and the new culture wars.

“Taking things at face value” seems to have become the norm of public discourse amidst today’s reactionary and algorithmically guided communication practices. transmediale wants to challenge this impulse to judge things by their immediate appearance and instead look at less visible issues, which run deep across all sectors of society. These include power relations rarely discussed at digital culture events, such as contemporary imbalances of class, gender, and race, which are also being built into technological systems. In fact, rather than providing an emancipatory alternative, (post-)digital culture today seems to support hate-mongering, racist and neo-colonial powers. This, however, should not be a reason to lament a mythical past, back in which, supposedly, the internet was free and digital creativity unbound. Rather, there is a need to embrace both unsettling and uniting cultural practices, as well as daring speculative thinking, to promote auto-criticality and an awareness that nothing is ever as simple as its surface suggests. Similarly, cultural events like transmediale are made up of different political imaginaries and communities that are simultaneously resistant and complicit to the developments one so urgently needs to oppose.