Introduction

Jorinde Seijdel's reading group will focus on the changing conditions of (re)-searching, writing and publishing today, and on how new discursive contexts and knowledge distribution systems are currently being created. The questions put forward are: How to (re)-search today? (In the age of Google, digital archives and search engines...) What does it mean to publish today? (in a digital culture, in an information society...) What is an author/authorship today? (In the age of the consumer-producer and DIY, in the age of endless reproduction...)

For the seminars texts will be read by Alessandro Ludovico (Post-Digital Print. The Mutation of Publishing), Konrad Becker/Felix Stalder (Deep Search: The Politics of Search Beyond Google), Boris Groys (Google: Words beyond Grammar), Andrew Bennet (The Author), Michel Foucault (What is an Author?).

May 27 Monday:

In this Reading Group we will critically reflect on Facebook as a dominant social environment in which we are supposed to act, publish and express ourselves. We will consider privacy issues, Facebook as an apparatus of control, and sharing as a highly commercial activity. We will look at new subjectivities emerging in online communities and at alternative social networks. We will discuss liberating aspects of social networking. As a main source of information, we will address the research project "Unlike Us", initiated by the Institute for Network Cultures (INC), based in Amsterdam. (http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/unlikeus/) and its publication "Unlike Us Reader. Social Media. Understanding Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives" (ed. G. Lovink & M. Rasch). At the same time, we will begin exploring the thinking of the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, who's central theme is technology and the crucial role technologies play in the constitution of thought. We will listen (online) to his lecture From Neuropower to Noopolitics, which he gave at the INC earlier this year. On Monday May 28 mediatheorist Geert Lovink, founding director of the INC, will be guest lecturer at DAI. He will go into depth about the Unlike Us project.

Reading list:

1) Pieter Lemmens, The Struggle for the Mind in Contemporary Capitalism. Introduction to Bernard Stiegler, in: "Open. Cahier on Art & the Public Domain", No. 24, Politics of Things, 2012, p. 50-53, http://www.skor.nl/_files/Files/OPEN24EN_Stiegler%20and%20Lemmens.pdf

2) Bernard Stiegler, The Most Precious Good in the Era of Social Technologies, in: "Unlike Us Reader. Social Media. Understanding Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives" (ed. G. Lovink & M. Rasch), p. 16-31, http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publication/unlike-us-reader-social-media-monopolies-and-their-alternatives/

3) Andrea Miconi, Under the Skin of the Networks: How Concentration Affects Social Practices in Web 2.0 Environments, in: "Unlike Us Reader. Social Media. Understanding Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives" (ed. G. Lovink & M. Rasch), p. 89-103, http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publication/unlike-us-reader-social-media-monopolies-and-their-alternatives/ ((I also attached this e-publication as a pdf!) 4) Mercedes Bunz, As You Like It: Critique in the Era of an Affirmative Discourse, in: "Unlike Us Reader. Social Media. Understanding Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives" (ed. G. Lovink & M. Rasch), p. 136-146, http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publication/unlike-us-reader-social-media-monopolies-and-their-alternatives/ 

Evening lecture: 19:30 Geert Lovink

The Unlike Us Agenda
Social Media--From Critique to Alternatives

In this lecture Geert Lovink will present the concepts and projects of the Unlike Us network, a global community of geeks, artists, researchers, designers and activists that do not accept the ideological suprimacy of Twitter and Facebook and are looking together for other, more public ways to communicate, share and debate online.

Geert Lovink, founder of the Institute of Network Cultures (HvA, Amsterdam), professor at the European Graduate School, Dutch media theorist and internet critic, author of Zero Comments and Networks Without a Cause.

April 22 Monday:

This seminar we will go into the implications of Google with regard to copyright issues, intellectual property, privatization and commodification of knowledge. We will consider different conflicts between public and private with respect to the ownership and control of knowledge and culture. Free Culture activists are fighting copyrights or creating alternative licenses in order to defend 'an open source society, that is, a society whose source code is revealed so that we can all work collaboratively to solve its bugs and create new, better social programmes'. (Michael Hardt & Antoni Negri) At the same time, the Google Books project, Google's plan to scan every book in the world and to create a digital 'library for mankind' and a repository of human knowledge, goes far beyond this by making huge profits by ignoring copyrights...

Reading list:
Robert Darnton, The Library in the Information Age. 6000 Years of Script, p. 32-45, in: "Deep Search. The Politics of Search beyond Google", Vienna, 2009.

Stephen Wright, Digging in the Epistemic Commons, p. 6-21, in: "Open. Freedom of Culture. Regulation and Privatization of Intellectual Property and Public Space", NAi Publishers/Skor, 2007, # 12

McKenzie Wark, Copyright, Copyleft, Copygift, p. 22-30, in: "Open. Freedom of Culture. Regulation and Privatization of Intellectual Property and Public Space", NAi Publishers/Skor, 2007, # 12

March 18 Monday:

In the reading group about changing notions of authorship, knowledge production and cultural practices in a digital age and networked society, we will this time focus on some current writings of Boris Groys (born 1947 in East-Berlin). Groys, media theorist, philosopher and art critic, states that with the advent of visual media, of the Internet and its social networks, art must no longer be considered aesthetically, but 'poetically'; that is to say, from the perspective of the art producer instead of the consumer. Now that everyone has become a producer and can publicly manifest themselves in the networks and the media, Groys is asking whether art and the artist are losing their exclusivity and professionality, and thereby also their privileged position. At the same time, Groys is identifying contemporary paradigms of communication and trying to understand them in a philosophical and art historical way. Considering Google as a 'philosophical machine' he states that "Google dissolves all discourses by turning them into the word clouds that function as collections of words beyond grammar".

Texts to read: Boris Groys, Google: Words Beyond Grammar, in: "100 Notes - 100 Thoughts. n Introduction: Poetics vs. Aesthetics, in: Boris Groys, "Going Public", Sternberg Press, Berlin/New York, p. 9-21; Marx After Duchamp or The Artist's Two Bodies, in "Going Public", p. 121-135; WikiLeaks.The Revolt of the Clerks, or Universality as Conspiracy, in: "Open. Cahier on Art & the Public Domain", No. 22, Transparency, NAi Publishers/SKOR, Rotterdam, 2011.

February 18 Monday

As a continuation of our investigation about changing notions of authorship, knowledge production and cultural practices in a digital age and networked society, this Reading Group will start exploring the search engine and its underlying political philosophy. How do we nowadays find out about the world? What kind of power is exerted by search engines? Can search engines empower individuals? How can we acquire knowledge about the networks and the means of sorting them? We will study and discuss texts by Felix Stalder/Christine Mayer, Theo Röhle, Matteo Pasquinelli and Konrad Becker, all published in Deep Search. The Politics of Search beyond Google, a collection of essays assembled by media theorists Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder, and published by World-Information Institute, Vienna, 2009. The Reading Group will connect with the public lecture by Becker, titled "Deep Infopolitics and Cultural Intelligence" and taking place on Monday evening February 18 at DAI.

January 14 Monday:

This Reading Group will start with an exploration of key texts by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault on the notion of the author and concepts of authorship in relation to western society, its institutions, politics and power. As a follow-up and to examine these concepts more closely connected to contemporary visual art practices, we will read and discuss the essay Appropriation and Authorship in Contemporary Art by Sherri Irvin. What it is that makes an artist the author of an artwork? What does the special relation of authorship, such that the work should be interpreted in terms of the artist's meanings (or at least in terms of meanings the artist could have had) consist in? Irvin goes into these questions by constructing a thought experiment comparing appropriation art to a case of artistic forgery. What is the crucial difference between the artist/author and the forger?

We will also read, to get grip on the overarching contexts, chapter 2 and 3 of Bennet's The Author, respectively Authority, Ownership and Originality and The Romantic Author. Sherri Irvin, Appropriation and Authorship in Contemporary Art, "British Journal of Aesthetics" # 45 (2005), 123-137. Background reading: Andrew Bennet, The Author, chapter 2 & 3, 29-72.

October 29 Monday: 

For the first seminar Roland Barthes' seminal essay The Death of the Author will be discussed, as well as Anti-Copyright in Artistic Subcultures by media theorist Florian Cramer, the evening guest for today.