Re-thinking Relationality in the Sociotechnological Condition (19-20 May, 2016)

*Re-thinking Relationality in the Sociotechnological Condition*


We are pleased to invite you to the workshop "Re-thinking Relationality
in the Sociotechnological Condition" at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg,
Digital Cultures Research Lab (DCRL).
The event will be held on May 19th and 20th 2016.

*Venue*
Musikschule Lüneburg, Studio 2, St. Ursula-Weg 7, Lüneburg

*Registration*
If you would like to attend the event, please register with
(paul.feigelfeld /at/ leuphana.de) until May 12th.

*Organizers*
Boris Traue, Post-Doc Researcher at the Digital Cultures Research Lab
(DCRL), Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
(boris.traue /at/ leuphana.de)

Götz Bachmann, Professor for Digital Cultures at the Institute for
Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM)
(goetz.bachmann /at/ leuphana.de)

*Event description*

Understandings of relations and relationality are currently under
reconsideration both in sociology and media studies. Substantialist
ideas of "the" social and "the" technological are frequently understood
to have been effectively replaced by concepts of hybridity,
sociotechnicality, naturecultures, spatiality, networks, etc. However,
it seems as though these more holistic notions again need to be revised
to adress the intersection of power, technology, and normativity in
contemporary societies. A more radically relational perspective which
adresses modes of experience within and through relational orders may be
better suited to grasp both the horizontal (interactive, valuative) as
well as vertical (hierarchical, ordering) aspects of realities in the
cybernetic sociotechnological condition. It promises to account for the
constitution of reflexivity and agency in the co-individuation of
technologies, norms, and subjectivity. Recent developments in
sociological and media research contribute to this debate with a triadic
concept of relationality. The symposium brings together different
strands of relational thought and research in social theory and media
theory. It adresses the following questions: In what sense is the
relation prior to what is being related, such as subjects, other living
beings and things? Do technologies supplement, augment or replace
institutional, normative power? How can the related entities re-work
relations? What are agency and reflexivity in communication, discourses,
assemblages, infrastructures, dispositifs, institutions, when these are
understood as radically relational phenomena?
An attempt to re-think, describe and understand relations at once lived
and engineered may allow us to come to terms with the affective,
emotional, normative and political underpinnings of contemporary
communication societies. The two-day event engages sociologists and
media scholars in a dialogue about the artificial nature of contemporary
social and technological relations and their epistemic, agentic,
political and normative dimensions.

*Schedule*

Thursday May 19th

9:30 -10:30 Arrival

10:30-11:00 Welcome: Götz Bachmann (Leuphana)
Introduction: Boris Traue (Leuphana)

11:00-12:00 Hubert Knoblauch (Technische Universität Berlin)
Subjectivity, Reciprocity, and Relationality

12:00-13:00 Anna Tuschling (Universität Bochum)
„The forgotten Third?“ Relationality and Affective Computing

13:00-14:30 Lunch (at the venue)

14:30-15:30 Jérémy Grosman (Université de Namur)
Youtube's Recommendation System: Relating Contents, Users and Advertisers

15:30-16:30 Michaela Pfadenhauer & Tilo Grenz (Universität Wien)
Objectivation as Relationality. Consequences concerning Media Technology

16:30-17:00 Coffee Break

17:00-18:00 Mathias Blanc (CNRS, Lille)
The relation-image. Relationality through Visual Media

18:00 – 19:00  Gesa Lindemann (Universität Oldenburg)
The Triadic Structure of Dividualization and Individualiziation

19:00 – 19:30 Reception

20:30 Dinner (Restaurant)

Friday May 20th

10:00 -11:00 Yuk Hui (Universität Lüneburg)
On the Concretization of the Social in Light of a Realism of Relations

11:00 – 12:00 Paula Bialski (Universität Lüneburg)
tba

12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00 -14:00 Anna Henkel (Universität Oldenburg):
Relations of Meaning. Relationing media of verbalized and corporealized
meaning

14:00 - 15:00 Olli Pyyhtinen (Tampereen Yliopisto/University of Tampere)
Human and Nonhuman Thirds and a Theory of Relations

15:00-16:00  Closing Round and Good-Byes