Minor Compositions

There is no authority but yourself… and there is no self

There is no authority but yourself… and there is no self 19 August – 7PM – The Substation, Singapore Punk is often narrated as a kind of year zero, a total break with the past. But this is far from the case. Nowhere is that clearer through the anarcho-punk punk Crass, who taking the phrase “there is no authority but … Continue reading →
Open Book Publishers

One Hundred Books: How Far Have We Come? (Part One)

Open Book Publishers was born in 2008, sparked into life by co-founder and managing editor Alessandra Tosi’s first-hand experience of the frustrations of academic publishing. The thrill of seeing her book in print was dampened by the realisation that, thanks … Continue reading →
INC

So what about Politics?–Call for contributions (iMAL Brussels, Nov. 3/4, 2017)

“If the past 10 years have been about discovering post-institutional social models on the Web, then the next 10 years will be about applying them to the real world.” Chris Anderson, 2010, www.wired.com)

So, what about politics? (November 3/4 2017 @  iMAL, Brussels)  looks at initiatives that could be seen as the avant-garde of a new political era. In a critical period of crisis in our political systems, we welcome artists, activists, academics, and everyone using innovative technological tools to reclaim political processes or to shape new forms of organisation, from local collectives to global movements.

As  Rebecca Solnit says, “It’s equally true that democracy is flourishing in bold new ways in grassroots movements globally”, and “There is far more politics than the mainstream of elections and governments, more in the margins where hope is most at home.” How does this apply to the margins of our technological imagination? Which tools and practices are being dreamed of, tested and explored?

What is the impact of today’s Internet-inspired post-institutional thinking on the practice of political action? For this we focus on tactics, tools and visions of grassroots initiatives, as well as on changing government policies and strategies.

iMAL wants to invite its guests to look beyond the often-perceived neutrality of technology and unveil underlying narratives. The symposium revolves around questions such as: What are the politics of a P2P society? How can we perceive a network as a real “distributed agora”? What can we learn from artist- or activist-led experiments focusing on collectivity and political agency? And most important: What are the concrete tools and initiatives today that really try to facilitate and use new forms of agency such as liquid democracy, e-governance, civic intelligence, platform cooperativism and autonomous self-organisation?

OPEN CALL: Digital culture and technology. But what about politics?

This is an open call for contributions by artists, activists, technologists, designers, researchers, citizen initiatives, collectives or groups to the symposium ‘So, what about politics?’. The event will be held on November 3-4, 2017 in Brussels at iMAL, the Brussels-based center for digital cultures and technology.

Send your proposal to SoWhatAboutPolitics@imal.org
Deadline: September 1st, 2017

This Open Call is not restricted to specific kinds of contributions. You can send us proposals for a lecture, workshop, performance, installation… Day 1 of the symposium will be focusing on lectures and presentations. Day 2 is reserved for participatory activities such as Open Assembly Lab or Workshops.Proposals will be selected according to their relevance and feasibility (logistics, budget).

The symposium is curated by Bram Crevits in collaboration with Yves Bernard (iMAL.org). This event is organised by iMAL (Brussels center for Digital Cultures and Technology) in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam), Medialab Prado (Madrid) and KASK/School of Arts (Ghent).

After the symposium Blockchain.Fact.Fiction.Future in 2016, So what about Politics? continues our exploration of how society can be improved with the digital world. So what about Politics? is supported by Saison des Cultures Numériques 2017, Ministery of Culture (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles).

Janneke Adema

Deadline Extended To 31/09/17: ‘Art(I)culations of Violence’ Special Issue

Writing From Below ‘Art(i)culations of Violence’ Special Issue

Call for Submissions

Presenters from the 2017 South Australian Postgraduate and ECR Gender, Sex, and Sexuality Studies conference: ‘Art(i)culations of Violence’ are invited to submit full papers for a peer-reviewed special issue of Writing From Below.

The theme, Art(i)culations of Violence: Gender, sex, sexuality and the politics of injury and revivification,aims to explore the multitude of ways that violence occurs, be it institutional, personal, epistemic, discursive, cultural, economic, symbolic, and/as physical. We invite presenters to consider ‘articulations’ not only as the acts or act of articulating, pronounciation and enunciation, but also physical formations, motions and movements, including but exceeding intellectual, political and artistic movements. Building on the theme of Dr Katrina Jaworski’s inspiring keynote speech at our 2016 conference, Intersections, we encourage presenters to engage with Stuart Hall’s theory of articulation – a means of living ‘in and with difference’ through strategic alliances that do not ‘substitute difference for its mirror opposite’ but encourage us ‘to rethink both’ (Hall 1985, p. 93) – and the ways this may relate to (or articulate with) concepts of performativity.

We invite both traditional and non-traditional submissions under the following categories:

  • Full Critical Papers based on Conference Presentations (4000-8000 words)
  • Poster / Visual art submissions (please include 250 word ERA research statement)
  • Creative Writings from ‘Art(i)culating the Body’ Workshop Attendees (up to 3000 words, plus please include 250 word ERA research statement)If submitting Visual or Creative works, please see the ERA Research statement guidelines in Appendix C.

All submissions are due on 31st September 2017.

Please register as an author to submit.

Submission for the special issue indicates your willingness to assist with peer reviewing.

If you have further questions, please email sagenderandsexualitiesconf2017@gmail.com

Back to news
Limn

Preface: Hacks, Leaks, and Breaches

Way back in September 2016, during that period when the media was reporting on Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear and Guccifer 2.0, security researcher Dino Dai Zovi posted this exemplary tweet: “Has hacking jumped the shark?” he asked, “It used to be teens, then criminals, then nation-states, and now it’s nation-states pretending to be teens.” As Dai Zovi’s tweet suggests, “hacker” clearly means many different things—from adolescent boys to criminals on the “Dark Web” to nation-state spies. And one might add: from makers of Free Software to certified information security researchers to cool television characters like Eliot Alderson, to wardens of privacy and promoters of encryption to those helping secure the work of journalists and dissidents. All these and more are hackers.  Some are hacking, some are leaking, some are breaching—and it does not always mean just the same thing. What used to be an “underground” subculture, is now part of a new regime of offensive and defensive state action, a robust domain of criminal exploration, and the site of ever more powerful political activism.
Limn

Car Wars

  1. Zero Tolerance

Dear Parents,

I hate to start the year with bad news, but I’d rather it be this than a letter of condolence to a parent whose child has been killed in a senseless wreck.