Geert Lovink in conversation with Annekathrin Kohout „Stuck on the Platform – Reclaiming the Internet“

Echo, Damian, Scheinleistung

Geert Lovink in conversation with Annekathrin Kohout „Stuck on the Platform – Reclaiming the Internet“

FFT Düsseldorf – Forum Freies Theater
FR, DECEMBER 16, 2022, 18:30 H

Office medienwerk.nrwPanel Discussion

The media theorist and net critic Geert Lovink has been observing developments in the digital world with growing concern for years. He warned early on about platform capitalism and urged us to delete our Facebook profiles. His analyses show how interaction in social media can produce a special kind of sadness. Nevertheless, he has not yet lost faith in a better web. His new book “Stuck on the Platform. Reclaiming the Internet” (transcript, 2022) has just been published in German. In it, he calls on us to develop “our own versions of the technosocial”. In conversation with media scientist Annekathrin Kohout (“Nerds. Eine Popkulturgeschichte”, “Netzfeminismus. Digitale Bildkulturen”), Geert Lovink presented the German translation of the book for the first time.

After the talk at the FFT Düsseldorf, all interested parties were invited to join a public viewing session: Together we watched the livestream of internil’s performance Blackout in the foyer and interacted via chat bot with the stage of Theaterdiscounter Berlin.
More info about Blackout


Geert Lovink is a media theorist, internet critic and author of, among others, Dark Fiber (2002), Zero Comments (2007), Under the Spell of Platforms (2017) and Digital Nihilism. Theses on the Dark Side of Platforms (2019) among others. Lovink is the founding director of the media-theoretical Institute of Network Cultures (INC) based at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, which has been dedicated to culture in virtual networks as a social phenomenon since 2004. Since 2021, Lovink has also been Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the University of Amsterdam.
Geert Lovink in the Collective Chronicle of Thoughts and Observations, 2017
More info about the Institute of Network Cultures (INC)



Annekathrin Kohout is a media scholar and co-editor of the book series “Digital Image Cultures” and the journal POP. Kultur und Kritik and a member of the editorial board of the international Journal of Global Pop Cultures. Her book “Nerds. Eine Popkulturgeschichte” was published by C.H. Beck in 2022. She is currently a guest lecturer at the Institute for Media, Theatre and Popular Culture at the University of Hildesheim.
More info about POP. Kultur und Kritik
More info about Journal of Global Pop Cultures

TALK “WHAT THE VALLEY CALLS THINKING – AND HOW IT IS TALKED ABOUT”

Bild – VA Was das Valley denken nennt

TALK “WHAT THE VALLEY CALLS THINKING – AND HOW IT IS TALKED ABOUT”

HMKV im Dortmunder U | CINEMA, GROUND FLOOR And online
MI, 15th JunE 2022, 19 – 21 p.m.

Office medienwerk.nrwPanel Discussion

With Dr. Inke Arns, Prof. Dr. Adrian Daub and Jonas Lüscher
Moderated by: Dr. Iuditha Balint and Fabian Saavedra-Lara


Together with the cooperation partners, the Fritz-Hüser-Institut für Literatur und Kultur der Arbeitswelt and the HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein, the Office medienwerk.nrw cordially invited to the discussion “What the Valley calls thinking – and how it is talked about” with the literary scholar and publicist Prof. Dr. Adrian Daub, the writer Jonas Lüscher and the curator and director of the HMKV Dr. Inke Arns on June 15, 2022 at 7pm. The venue was the cinema in the Dortmunder U.

On the occasion of the current HMKV exhibition House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm, the discussion event at Dortmunder U brought some thoughts from Adrian Daub’s and Jonas Lüscher’s texts into dialogue with the ideas and selected works from the exhibition. What all three participants have in common is the concern to take a critical and differentiated look at the history of ideas in Silicon Valley and the narratives about digital technologies produced by the companies residing there. In the discussion, some of these myths, which currently revolve around the buzzword “artificial intelligence”, for example, were named and deconstructed.

The event was moderated by Dr. Iuditha Balint (Fritz Hüser Institute) and Fabian Saavedra-Lara (Büro medienwerk.nrw).


About the guests:
The Cologne-born Germanist and literary scholar Prof. Dr. Adrian Daub is professor of comparative literature and German studies at Stanford University, where he is the director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research.
He writes on topics such as early feminism, memory culture and 19th century German popular and musical culture. His book “What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley” (Suhrkamp, 2020) tells the story of Silicon Valley – a region that has risen to become the most powerful IT and high-tech location in the world over the last 70 years. In his book, Daub, who established his professional focus at Stanford in close proximity to the Valley, questions its self-staging by examining the rhetoric of entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel or Mark Zuckerberg and historically contextualising the ideology of the industry.

Jonas Lüscher is a Swiss-German writer and essayist. After studying philosophy, he did intensive research on the significance of narratives for the description of social complexity and in this context he had a scholarship from the Swiss National Science Foundation for a research stay at Stanford. His novella “Frühling der Barbaren” (2013) is about the importance of narratives in social contexts – in this book, Richard Rorty’s theories come to bear narratively. His novel “Kraft” (2017) tells about the mentality and rhetoric of Silicon Valley. As a socially and politically engaged essayist, Jonas Lüscher publishes on various topics such as economics and populism.

Dr. Inke Arns is the director of HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund, Germany. She has worked internationally as an independent curator and theorist specializing in media art, net cultures, and Eastern Europe since 1993. After living in Paris (1982-1986) she studied Russian literature, Eastern European studies, political science, and art history in Berlin and Amsterdam (1988–1996 M.A.) and in 2004 received her PhD from the Humboldt University in Berlin. She has curated many exhibitions – at the bauhaus dessau, MG+MSUM Ljubljana, Gallery EXIT Pejë, KW Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, CCA Glasgow, CCA Ujazdowski Castle Warsaw, HMKV Dortmund, HKW Berlin, Muzeum Sztuki Lodz, La Gaîté Lyrique Paris, MMOMA Moscow, BOZAR Brussels, NCCA Yekaterinburg, exportdrvo Rijeka, a.o. She is the author of many articles on contemporary art, media art and net culture, and has edited numerous exhibition catalogues and books. In 2021-2022 Visiting Professor at the Münster Art Academy. 2022 Curator of the Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo (artist: Jakup Ferri), 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.



A cooperation between the Fritz-Hüser-Institut für Literatur und Kultur der Arbeitswelt, the HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein and the medienwerk.nrw office.

The programme was funded by NEUSTART KULTUR and Stiftung Kunstfonds.

Portraits: Adrian Daub: © Cynthia Newberry | Jonas Lüscher: © Ulrike Arnold/Jonas Lüscher | Inke Arns: © Frank Vinken

META MARATHON 2019 – ROBOTICS

Meta Marathon 2019

META MARATHON 2019 – ROBOTICS

NRW-FORUM DÜSSELDORF
Fri, 15.03. – Sun, 17.03.2019, 42 hours

Office medienwerk.nrwPanel Discussion

The META MARATHON 2019 was organised by the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf in cooperation with the tanzhaus nrw and the Filmmuseum Düsseldorf. The Office medienwerk.nrw contributed the programme item “Robotic Swarm”.

42 hours non-stop living, loving, celebrating and working with robots: The META MARATHON 2019 was dedicated to the topic of robotics on March 15th – 17th, 2019. Visitors could not only take part in workshops, talks and performances, but also share their living space with robots, including the opportunity to stay overnight at the NRW-Forum and meet the probably currently most famous robot in the world, Sophia.

What happens when robots leave the industrial context and become part of our everyday life? What does society have to be prepared for when automated processes are carried out by machines and decisions are made without human intervention? How do robots change our actions and feelings? Are machines becoming more human-like or human emotions more machine-like? Can robots help us to relax and decelerate and what does a culture of intelligent robotics look like?

ROBOTIC SWARM
Presentation & Talk with Katrin Hochschuh, Adam Donovan, So Kanno.

Moderation: Klaas Werner
Sunday, 17.03., 11:00 am

The artist duo Katrin Hochschuh and Adam Donovan have invented, developed and programmed non-humanoid swarm robots. These were developed as antithesis or extension to humanoid robots like the famous “Sophia”. They want to show that non-humanoid robots can also learn and create a feeling of empathy and compassion.

In this event, presented by the office medienwerk.nrw, the artists showed how they work, both in the technical process and on a conceptual level, focusing primarily on their current work Empathy Swarm. Kanno, whose work Lasermice also deals with swarm behavior, joined the discussion.



The Office medienwerk.nrw was funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Office hosted by: Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund.

META MARATHON – Artificial Intelligence

Meta Marathon 2018

42 hours of non-stop talks, performances, films, concerts, exhibition and workshops on the subject of artificial intelligence: the META Marathon is a new type of technology festival that took place May 25th – 27th, 2018, at the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf. The participants created the festival themselves, changed roles from experts to laymen and experimented with the new format – including overnight accommodation on site.

Invitated by the office medienwerk.nrw, curator Michelle Kasprzak spoke on the topic: Algorithms, trust, and politics: how everything old is new again.

The office medienwerk.nrw was supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of NRW. Office hosted by: Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund.

Discourse programme of the Videonale. 16 (in cooperation with medienwerk.nrw)

Kurven_Lockemann

Discourse programme of the Videonale. 16 (in cooperation with medienwerk.nrw)

VIDEONALE c/o KUNSTMUSEUM BONN
FR, 17.02.- SA, 17.02.2017

Office medienwerk.nrwPanel Discussion

The office medienwerk.nrw cooperated with the long-standing network partner Videonale e.V.. Together, the two partners organised – as part of the discourse programme of the VIDEONALE.16 – two panels for the opening weekend (February 16th – 19th, 2017), during which there were also many other performances, lectures and guided tours:


Panel: The artist is (not) present – Live performances and their representation in media art 
Impulse lecture by André Eiermann: Postspectacular performance
Talk: Doplgenger (artist duo, Belgrade), André Eiermann (dramaturge, theatre scientist, Cologne), Wermke/Leinkauf (artist duo, Berlin)
Moderation: Katrin Mundt (freelance curator, author, Bochum)
In english language.

The panel discussed the theoretical and aesthetic framework of performances – those ones which are performed live and also the ones which are preserved in video. The starting point was the thesis that performances do not depend on the joint physical presence of performers and audience, but rather involve a mediating third party.


Panel: Performativity of digital media – on action and participation everywhere 
Talk: Dries Depoorter (media artist, Gent), Stefan Panhans (artist, Berlin), Julia Scher (artist, professor for multimedia/performance, Cologne)
Moderation: Felix Hüttemann (PhD student, Bochum)
In english language.

In the constant battle for attention, regarding to the flow of digital image overload, there are usually no winners or losers. Despite constantly optimised methods of self-presentation, it remains unclear who is performing for whom and who is seen by whom. The panel reflects on other (subversive) strategies to react to the ubiquitous retrievability of the unique.


The panel were a cooperation with the office medienwerk.nrw. 

The program of the Videonale and the opening weekend can be found at: v16.videonale.org.

The office medienwerk.nrw was funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of NRW. Office hosted by: Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund.