LIVING ON PLATFORMS

We are living in a time of crises, the contours of which have been starkly delineated by the COVID-19 pandemic: health crises, social crises, economic crises, political crises and, not least, education crises. Ever more aspects of our lives are being marked by the experience of crisis. And, in the absence of analogue alternatives, ever more aspects of our lives have become dependent on digital platforms. These parallels between technological regimentation and personal limitation demand of us not only critique but also alternatives that can provide scope for other possibilities. Such alternatives waken the memory of a long tradition of radical experimentation undertaken to give dominant technologies an open, social use, as seen, for example, in the independent radio station Radio Alice, whose broadcasts in the 1970s spawned new forms of political communication, or La Borde clinic, where Félix Guattari wrote important texts on the role of the institution and anti-authoritarian and de-territorialized spaces.

In view of the current restrictions associated with COVID-19, our aim in the Visual Culture module is to draw on the radical spirit of this experimentation and explore new formats of architectural knowledge production. In the face of the proliferating disciplinary strategies of crisis management, the module programme aims to create a forum in which a plurality of voices can find expression. Each Tuesday afternoon in a virtual salon (lectures, interviews, roundtable discussions, film afternoons, etc.), we will focus on one particular aspect of current “platform living” and inquire into the consequences of this new world: what materializes and what disappears, who profits and who loses, and what is the architecture of the structure that is emerging?

Visual Culture Module
Tuesdays, 17:00-19:00
Start: 06 October 2020
Location: Online via ZOOM

For further details please see link below