OMNI ACCESS: Post- and decolonical perspectives on the platformed city

The current wave of platform capitalism – enlisting everyone and everything in automated processes of self-exploitation – is ushering in a new era of glorious discovery, entrepreneurialism and recklessness. This relentless evocation of the frontier spirit testifies to the continuing prevalence and dominance of colonial mindsets shaped by centuries of an ever closer entanglement of colonialism and capitalism. The underlying paradigms of expansion, extraction and abstraction are not just continuing to govern global power relations but have begun to encroach on ‘other’ spheres everywhere, on every scale and in every realm – from resource flows to political struggles, from cultural movements to urban communities, and from social relations to self-care.

Situated at the intersection of technology, race, capitalism and the urban, this two-day symposium seeks to address the complex challenges we face when trying to engage with these dynamics: are there ways to decolonise the multiple manifestations of platform capitalism? What are the conceptual challenges we face when dealing with a phenomenon that appears to be operating outside of colonial parameters and involve not only human actors as it seamlessly straddles analogue and virtual theatres? How can we move forward when the framework of decolonisation has itself become a target of exploitative and discriminatory appropriation?

Bringing together speakers from around the world, the symposium will respond to these urgencies through the lens of platform urbanism, which has emerged as one of the most ‘pioneering’ and contested sites of transformation. Key questions discussed will range from how platform urbanism not only perpetuates historical trajectories of colonialism but itself functions as a colonising device to how it creates new colonial frontiers and patterns, as for instance in the manipulation, denial and instrumentalisation of access, and to how alternative, self-initiated platforms might pave the way to more equitable futures.

 

PROGRAMME

 

THURSDAY, 16 JANUARY 2025
Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre, Whitehead Building

17.00-19.00
Panel discussion with all speakers

 

FRIDAY, 17 JANUARY 2025
LG01, Prof Stuart Hall Building

10.30
Doors open

10.45
Introduction by PETER MÖRTENBÖCK and HELGE MOOSHAMMER

11.20
VYJAYANTHI RAO, Yale University

12.10
SANDRO MEZZADRA, University of Bologna

13.00
Lunch break

14.30
OFRI CNAANI

15.20
RAVI SUNDARAM, CSDS Delhi

16.10
Coffee break

16.30
TEDDY CRUZ and FONNA FORMAN, UC San Diego

17.30
Closing panel

 

Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross
London, UK