The workshop will address questions of organisation, collective agency and relations with machines. And reflect about the role of aesthetics in shifting social, technical and legal alignments. We will start with a presentation by Sollfrank and Stalder followed up by a series of interventions by researchers of the CRAPCC and special guests.

Presentation: Aesthetics of the Commons.

Abstract: The sharing of informational and physical materials is foundational to creating and inhabiting a common reality and develop collective agency. Sharing is more than simply making accessible, but also developing processes of relating and decision-making. To develop such processes, we need social and visual aesthetics that communicate what is happening and inspire further experimentation. In this talk, Sollfrank and Stalder will look at artistic/activist projects that create infrastructures, processes and aesthetics of the commons.

This event is a part of:

Relations, collective agency and aesthetics under the networked condition

During two days, we will work with artist researchers Felix Stalder and Cornelia Sollfrank. They have developed (individually and in collaboration) a large body of work on the crucial questions that traverse a world increasingly open to computation and structured through networks. Their varied practice covers an impressive repertoire. From community building and networking, mailing list management to hacks, pranks, diagramming, they both move (together and separately) from theory to practice and back. Their work offers ways to reflect on the current digital condition and provides means to speculate and act in order to inhabit it and change it. This programme is an invitation to think about the  condition we are in, across the different registers of economy, aesthetics, politics and law. The first day will concentrate on issues such as the means of sensing data and making sense of a world increasingly quantified. The second will move to questions of organisation, collective agency and relations with machines. And reflect about the role of aesthetics in shifting social, technical and legal alignments.

The programme offers two activities with different modes of engagement and interaction: a public presentation and a workshop. The talk at Kunsthal Aarhus is open free and open to everyone, see https://kunsthalaarhus.dk/en for more info. To participate in the workshop, please write postdoc Nicolas Malevé maleven@cc.au.dk For those interested in familiarizing themselves with the discussion, we also organise a reading session ahead of their visit.

This programme is made possible by an Investigator Grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF21OC0068539)