Calendar

ALL EVENTS OF ‘THINKING TOGETHER’ ARE OPEN TO PUBLIC AND WILL BE CONDUCTED IN ENGLISH.

Monday, August 4, 2014
Osthang campus
seminar, lecture, film program
registration required

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1 p.m. – 7 p.m.
seminar ‘mediated politics and politicized technologies’
hosted by Seda Gürses (TR/US), with Miriyam Aouragh (NL), Femke Snelting (BE) et al.
» Osthang: workshop house

8 p.m.
preview lecture Ranabir Samaddar
» Osthang: hall

9 p.m.
film program
» Osthang: workshop house

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The current distance between those who organise their activism to develop ‘technical infrastructures‘ and those who bring their struggles to these infrastructures is remarkable. The paradoxical consequences can be baffling: (radical) activists organize and sustain themselves using ‘free‘ technical services provided by Fortune 500 companies. At the same time, ‘alternative tech practices‘, like the Free Software Community, are sustained by a select (visionary and male) few, proposing crypto with 9-lives as the minimum infrastructure for any political undertaking. The naturalization of this division of labor may be recognized in statements about activists having better things to do than to tinker with code or hardware, or in technological projects that locate their politics solely in the technology and infrastructures as if they are outside of the social and political domain. What may seem like a pragmatic solution actually re-iterates faultlines of race, gender, age and class. Through the convenient delegation of ‘tech matters‘ to the techies or to commercial services, collectives may experience a shift in the collective’s priorities and a reframing of their activist culture through technological decisions. The latter, however, are typically not open to a broader political discussion and contestation. Such separation also gets in the way of actively considering the way in which changes in our political realities are entangled with shifts in technological infrastructures.

We want to use this day to resist the reflex of ‘first getting things done‘ in order to start a long term collaboration that intersects those of us with a background in politics of society and politics of technology. (Seda Gürses, Miriyam Aouragh, Femke Snelting)

for seminars and open dinners, please register by July, 25 
» info@osthang-project.org
» Tel. +49 (0) 6151  787 61 80

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» about the project ‘Thinking Together’
» detailed information about the guests (bios)