The international conference “Techno-collectivities” is organized by the DFG-Research Group Media and Participation. Between Demand and Entitlement (University of Konstanz) and the Graduate School Loose Connections: Collectivity at the intersection of digital and urban space (University of Hamburg). It will bring together leading scholars to tackle fundamental questions regarding new forms and paradigms of participation, of emerging and dissolving collectivities in media-historical contexts, as well as current technological developments and their increasing environmentalisation. In the first line of inquiry, the conference questions the way in which technological infrastructures, including datafication, algorithmic automation, and economic interests configured by them shape perceptions and forms of participation. In light of these analyses, the conference will scrutinize some of the crucial flipsides of participation and their alternatives. It will seek forms of participation that escape categorisation and critically explore the concept of non-categorical participation in their media-historical, technological and epistemological dimensions by focusing on parameters such as the apersonal, anonymity and affect. The conference further pushes forward a theorisation of non-participation and its strategical and tactical importance in the techno-participation, which effectively subverts the clear distinction between inclusion and exclusion. In so doing, the conference aims to re-open the question of participation in all its forms, and hence re-conceptualise it within the framework of media-technological ecologies.
Panel 1: Infrastructure and Automatic Participation
Panel 2: Non-Categorical Participation
Panel 3 Non-Participation and Decollectivization
Confirmed Speakers
Jennifer Gabrys (London), Alexander Galloway (New York, Lüneburg), Andrew Goffey (Nottingham), Adrian Mackenzie (Lancaster), Nortje Marres (Warwick), Anna Munster (Sydney), Dimitris Papadopoulis (Leicester), Luciana Parisi (London), Stevphen Shukaitis (Essex)
Organizers
Erich Hörl (Konstanz, Lüneburg), Yuk Hui (Lüneburg), Urs Stäheli (Hamburg),
Robert Stock (Konstanz)
Further information and detailed schedule will be available soon.
Contact
Yuk Hui – yuk.hui[at]leuphana.de
Robert Stock – robert.stock[at]uni-konstanz.de
