The penultimate day of the symposium explores the audible bleak aspects of possible futures—or futurities—that are already having a massive impact on the lives of various people and non-human beings in diverse parts of the world. In light of the question of how strongly our lives are shaped, controlled, and monitored by digital technologies and their creators, we seek—in the context of the increasing persecution and restriction of ways of life—the remaining or newly emerging interstices, cracks, and glitches that must be kept open. What agency, and what positive and utopian potential, does artificial intelligence possess when it does not act in the interests of Big Tech companies? What counter-narratives, practices of resistance, avenues of access, or exit strategies do indigenous communities develop affected by exclusion and surveillance? Finally, against the backdrop of increasingly widespread deforestation and wildfires worldwide, we engage with posthuman thought and, in addressing the question of the forest’s survival, turn our attention to non-human or more-than-human life.
With contributions by: Verena Lercher, who, as part of her artistic research on artificial voices, explores virtuosity and the invomplete as generators of knowledge; Paralogues, who explore the history of human-caused deforestation based on the Epic of Gilgamesh; and Tiara Roxanne, who takes visitors to the border between Texas and Mexico and helps them experience firsthand how digital technologies audibly shape the lives of the indigenous people living there.
Discussion:
Vernera Lercher
Paralogues
Tiara Roxanne
Moderated by: Janine Eisenächer
Symposium: October 16, 3 pm / Flutgraben – Projektraum