Ontological Politics

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Any social or political envisioning is constrained by an invisible frame: by the implicit values and views on which it is created, most importantly its view of the nature of human beings.

A big vision begins with a vision for the “Being” of human beings. We need to go back to basics if we are to rediscover our imagination and create possibility for ourselves and our societies. Any social or political envisioning is constrained by an invisible frame: by the implicit values and views on which it is created, most importantly its view of the nature of human beings. For example, much of modern economic and political thought rests on the assumption that you or I know what we want (think markets, democracy etc). However, most wisdom traditions teach us that discovering what we want is actually very hard and takes deep practice and reflection.

In this session, participants will enquire into the nature of “Being” for human beings and how this would translate into a big vision for humanity and a new framework for progress. A mixture of play, embodiment and reason will be used in this workshop like session.

The session is led Sylvie Barbier and Rufus Pollock, the co-founders of Life Itself. Sylvie Barbier is a performance artist, entrepreneur and educator who loves to create powerful embodied experiences.  Her life ambition is to become a witch! Rufus Pollock is a researcher, technologist and entrepreneur. He has been a pioneer in the global Open Data movement. He is the founder of Open Knowledge. Formerly, he was Shuttleworth Fellow and Mead Fellow in Economics at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge and is currently an Ashoka Fellow and Fellow of the RSA. (Bio source: Life Itself)

Website: Life Itself
Twitter: @forlifeitself @rufuspollock

Related Untitled Agenda Theme:  Reimagining human     

 

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Max Göttner (c)Max Göttner (c)

Yesterday’s Innovation by Max Göttner and Miriam Gronau ft. Gottfried Hamburger and Jürgen Dahl [DE] // ART & IMAGINATION

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Centerpiece is the screening of the audio-visual art-piece. This part is non interactive. For high immersion, headphones, a darkened room and a comfortable seating position are recommended. Before the screening, we will start the session with an introduction to give some context about the used materials and featured artists / authors. After the screening we will engage in a conversation about central ideas from the artpiece.

Innovation Von Gestern, or Yesterday’s Innovation, is a multi-layer live Collage about mobility, information society and the decline of industrialism in West Germany. The performance is based on a generative audio visual engine, which creates an emergent and self writing performance out of visual, sound and text input. Musical fragments and progress-critical texts are fed into the engine along with video sequences of remains of the industrial age and vast structures. With that input a strange and Immersive narrative showing how the belief in progress and individual mobility has  shaped landscapes and the crumbling cityscapes of today. The hopes and fears of people on the brink of a new era, about the skepticism and positivism of the past. An ambivalent Aesthetic for tomorrow’s world between utopia and dystopia.

The overall concept and execution of this performance is by Max Göttner and Miriam Gronau from Hyperreal. Göttner works as a creative coder and electronic engineer in the fields of media arts and rethinks the future of mobility in the VW group Future Center. Gronau works as an actor and voice artist in progressive political performances and business coaching.

Gottfried Hamburger [ Music ] was an unknown pioneer of electronic music from the West German industrial town of Remscheid. He worked as a communication technology engineer from the 60s to the 90s. His music was never released and consists of small home studio experiments, which can be seen as comments on the post industrial era and the upcoming information society.

Jürgen Dahl [ Text ] was an author and journalist from the West German town of Moers. He wrote texts about gardening as well as environmental and scientific topics. There is a strong progress and a tech-skeptical tone to his work. Living from 1929-2001 he was a coeval of Gottfried Hamburger.

Images : Max Göttner (c)

Related UNTITLED Agenda Tracks : REIMAGINING cities

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(c) Hugo Lefèvre

“What if we build a new world from the perspective of the marginalised?” by Tundé Adefioye [BE] // ART & IMAGINATION

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This was a session at Untitled Festival 2020.
As much of the Western world reckons with the contemporary realities of colonial legacies, this session invites participants to experimentally reimagine how the transformation of incumbent societal structures may profoundly impact historically marginalized individuals.

Reimagining an anti-colonial and anti-racist society includes understanding that the resources at the center of society today are resources that have been taken from individuals who have been oppressed. How can those resources now help the marginalized? The key focus of this session would be exploring how these very resources can be taken from the center to help, engage and mobilize the margins instead of always focusing on the center.

Furthermore, we will explore how these resources can be re-allocated in a way that does not take away so much energy from those who have been historically marginalized and oppressed. Given the ongoing pandemic and environmental issues we need to create safer, brave spaces that allow for innovation, healing and strengthening of communities that have been systematically under resourced and marginalized.

As a City Dramaturg at The Brussels City Theater, Tundé Adefioye will bring his artistic insights into this experimental session. Participants will be challenged to consider how to build new societies not based on colonial bureaucracies and how people can be truly served equally in a post-colonial world.

In addition to being a city dramaturg at KVS in Belgium, Tundé Adefioye is a founder of the Urban Woorden, a non-profit that uses poetry as a tool for youth engagement. Over the years Tundé has led and participated in numerous creative events across Europe, especially working with local communities to create spaces for diverse demographics to express themselves, empower themselves, and to feel inspired to be the best version of themselves. He has also given several lectures and speeches, notably including: a series of 6 guest lectures for the Luca Leuven School of Art, a keynote speech at the 2018 IETM plenary meeting in Porto Portugal, and a keynote at the Wales Arts International conference.

From 2017-2019, Tundé wrote, co-coordinated and implemented for the innovative EU Creative Europe project MindUrStep. In 2019, he made his directorial debut with Contact Theater Manchester, with the piece ‘Old Tools> New Masters ≠ New Futures’.  He sits on the editorial board of the VUB Poincaré book on Migration and Racism [2019-2020].

Related Untitled Agenda themes : Reimagining power, Reimagining human

Photo: Hugo Lefèvre (c)

 

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Bodytalk by Simo Vassinen, Maria F. Scaroni, Roope Mokka (DE, IT, FI) // PEOPLE

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Bodytalk research team Simo Vassinen, Maria F. Scaroni, and Roope Mokka, investigates the crossing points and possible new unions of futures research with dance and physicality – with a specific zoom into rave and club culture. The team’s underlining idea is that the repetitive physical release conducted alone to monotonous, high tempo music in a shared space that we know from raves and clubs can offer new perspectives and mindshifts for digesting societal realities and imagining better futures also in other contexts.

Dissolving the ego, one dance at a time, alone together. 

The shared educational-professional-hobby-activist background of the Helsinki/Berlin-based Bodytalk team combines e.g. futures research, contemporary dance, performance, co-creation, methods of participation and empowerment, workshop moderation, techno music and club culture, journalism, event management and political philosophy. Simo Vassinen (DE/FI) has a combined background of futures research, journalism, translation, dance, performance and choreography. Maria F. Scaroni (DE/IT) is a dance artist, initiator and teacher of experimental dance and physical practices, and space-holder for raving, bodywork and community caregiving. Roope Mokka (FI) is one of the founders of Demos Helsinki, futures researcher and urbanist with a parallel storyline in underground culture and community-driven artistic projects. The three members also share a long-lasting affair with dancing and club culture. 

Bodytalk is supported by The Finnish Cultural and Academic Institutes’ Together Alone project. #togetheralonefi #instituutit

Related UNTITLED Agenda Tracks: Reimagining Human

Photo: Socially distant Technodrift in Berlin, April 2020, Maria F. Scaroni

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Untitled’s resident poet: Associate by Otso Havanto // AI

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Associate creates an experimental and poetic digital documentation from the various discussions that take place within the Untitled events. Associate is at the same time an independent artwork and experimental documentation of the festival and the online events. 

The recorded discussions in Untitled meetings and festival events are processed through a machine learning algorithm. This process picks up parts of sentences and individual words that accumulate and mix in the ever increasing database. The algorithm forms new connections between various textual elements based on machine learning models that analyse the context and statistical properties of individual words and phrases.

The machine learning model aims to bring light to emerging and new connections between textual nodes, and reflect on various alternative meanings and paths derived from the language used within Untitled discussions.

Images: Otso Havanto / Associate.

Privacy and anonymisation of data is a core function of the artwork. All the conversations recorded in Untitled events that are used for Associate, are processed in a way that it is impossible to identify an individual speaker.

The first version of the artwork is displayed online on its own website. This version creates new textual interpretation clusters and poetic variations from the Untitled discussions, ultimately aiming to foster the creation of Untitled’s own unique discourse engine. 

Associate uses a statistical machine learning model that has been trained by the Common Crawl dataset, and by the OntoNotes source material from the University of Pennsylvania. The work accumulates ever expanding textual material from the Untitled discussions and produces novel statistical vectors between the various meanings of words and concepts. Over time the work trains a model that is unique to the language used by the Untitled community and platform.

The artwork aims to encourage us to use big data as a tool and resource for the various communities, movements, and other non-commercial organizations, that aim to create a more just and fair future society for all.

The artwork can be found on the following link: associate.associates

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