Factory Workshop ~ Justice Economy: The Dramaturgy of Debt and Indebtedness

Session 6: 12 & 13 April 2019

During this factory session,  we will start on Friday with the four group presentations. Then the groups will be given time – two hours – to work more on their presentations and their rehearsal. Friday is dedicated to perfecting the group contributions.

On Saturday we will spend the day designing and rehearsing the score of the entire contribution by the student body. We will also keep some time to discuss the choreography of the entire event. The end of Saturday will be dedicated to discussing the technical and logistical aspects of the entire Roaming Assembly edition. 

 

 

Session 5: 8 & 9 March 2019

As you know, the first layer of writing is still in the stage of being a "cryptic loner", i.e. it is at this stage not too clear what these texts/statements are about nor to which discourses they respond...Hence, I have been thinking of ways to continue, expand, clarify and sharpen these statements.

The idea is that now, the second layer of editing should be done in such a way that each statement feels like being a response to, or in dialogue with, an existing discourse.

Before the next session:

a. A text/interlocutor is a must. However, 'my' suggested texts in themselves are not a must. If you feel that your statement is better speaking through or to another text then please, by all means, write the title and link to that text as a 'reply' to the comment.

b. I proposed mainly theoretical texts – yet, if there is a literary text that you favor – then that is not a problem. HOWEVER, the statement, at this stage, needs to convey some sort of position/ality (imagine you are in a public debate full of all types of political, theoretical, ethical, artistic opponents to you, and you are there to make your point clear)

c. The new edit of each statement (you can totally over-write your text), taking advantage of  the responses that you had in class and the discussions that the first editing version conjured.

d. Each new edit should be around 250-300 words.

e. Some of you received a link to an essay or an article and some of you received a link to a book. Those who received links to longer texts, should basically choose which part of the book they like to read (unless stated differently in my comment). Please do not panic from the very long texts, just get what you need from them – use them for now as your interlocutors. Borrow their textuality, respond to it, even if affectively.

f. Please send these texts before the next session.

During the next session:

- During the next session we will start our 3rd editing layer, which will start building upon the theoretical and start going towards the fictive/performative etc..

- Please bring with you any props that you feel can be used (it might not work to make something performative in the end, but let's try to find out anyways!)

 

 

Session 4: 8 & 9 February 2019

I am quite excited about the upcoming session, since – as discussed in January – it will be fully dedicated to the PRODUCTION OF CONTENT. This will be in the form of writing (writing also includes the writing of score).

The past three sessions were dedicated to the gathering of material and to outlining some broad areas where the questions around justice and debt could be activated. Please take a look at the list below (please take these sketched titles in their most broad sense..I know there were more interesting things talked about during the sessions, but we can bundle them under these titles).

Section 1: Justice & Debt // Representation, Spectacle & Reproductive Performance {Bamboozled}

Section 2: Justice & Debt // Coloniality: Repatriation & Cultural Patrimony {Interview with Maria Theresa Alves et al + Wampum}

Section 3: Justice & Debt // Translation & Law {Interview with Maria Theresa Alves et al + Wampum}

Section 4: Justice & Debt // Technology: Data Economy & Surveillance Capitalism {Renee Ridgway’s session}

Section 5: Justice & Debt // Technology: Mediation / (Tele)phony / The Call {The Telephone Book}

Section 6: Justice & Debt // Scenes of Objection / Scenes of Subjection - Speaking Commodities {In The Break}

Friday 16:00 - 18:00

We will gather all our keywords from all the sessions and order, bundle them under the different sections, decide upon their hierarchies in case there are any etc..

Friday 19:00 - onward

1. Each of you will pick TWO terms/keywords.

2. I will then ask each of you to pick TWO sections from the list that I sketched above, which you feel you connected with the most.

3. Each of you needs to write TWO statements/claims, using in one way or another the TWO keywords (you are encouraged to take advantage of the conversations we’ve had so far, but it is not an obligation. HOWEVER, you need to fit both statements convincingly within your chosen sections {please do not restrain your imagination: i.e. your statement for instance can be about “ghosts”, yet in strong relation or in response to something discussed or stated under the general umdbrella of Justice/Spectacle or Debt….(and so forth)..Your statements can be related to your initial proposals if you like, and to your various input from the first session, HOWEVER they definitely need to be updated from that time.

Saturday:

10:00 - 13:00

Speed Dating:

We will randomly choose (from papers in a bowl) one of you to state their two statements and another to respond with their own two statements.

14:00 - 16:00

Based on the choice of sections, groups will be formed. Each group will co-author a short text, in which all the statements will be used, and links will need to be forced between them.

16:00 - 18:00

Presentation of the texts and scores

End of Factory Session

 

 

 

Session 3: 11 & 12 January 2019

Dear Justice Economy Warriors,

Firstly, I’d like to wish you a wonderful and inspiring year to come. In line with the Justice Economy ethos, I guess my utmost wish to you all – besides good health – is to find joy along the way – the joy in/of friendship as a start. 

Following our guest Renee Ridgway’s contribution to the December session, which introduced us to new dimensions for thinking the relations of debt and justice, through a) discussing issues concerning the repatriation of ‘cultural patrimony’ vis-à-vis settler-/colonial conceptions of value, property and ownership and b) informing our archive-in-the-making with material surrounding data-economies and surveillance capitalisms (data-as-currency; the trace-and-track-economies; the search-engine etc…); our upcoming session will focus on a rather concentrated and slow reading of several textual excerpts with the aim of both expanding our understanding of the different material discussed to date, as well as setting up a new ground for our conversations: that is, the question of ‘readership’ itself.

On Friday, we will continue what Renee had started in December, while tapping into what we shall call for now ‘a metaphysics of debt’. We will read together passages from Avital Ronell’s The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech.

 [Avital_Ronell] - The Telephone Book Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech.

On Saturday, we will have the entire day to focus on Stefano Harney & Fred Moten’s The Undercommons, Fugitive Planning and Black Study.

 Harney, Moten - The Undercommons - Minor Compositions

Throughout the two days, we will be collectively mapping out the keywords and key concepts relevant to the readings.

Homework:

Please prepare for this session your new terms – each a single term relevant to our factory – with a very clear contextualization and reasoning consistent with (or diverging from) your previous bibliography and index contributions. (I will request this for all the upcoming factory sessions).

I very much look forward to seeing you in Cagliari,

Warmly,

Rana

 

 

 

Session 2: 7 & 8 December 2018

Dear Justice Economy Participants,
I hope that you are all very well and that you have fully recovered from the past DAI week, and more so, energized to start the last Justice Economy session of 2018!
I'm very delighted and excited to introduce you to our first guest, artist Renèe Ridgway, whose practice very much taps into much of the concerns that we have come across in our first session. Renèe will be leading this entire Justice Economy session; i.e. both Friday and Saturday, under the title Linguistic Factor[y]. I have prepped Renèe regarding all our discussions, thanks also to Gayatri's and Mathew's brilliant and detailed report. So Renèe has already a picture of what we've done.
Please read the short blurb below, which she shared with us to contextualize the framework of the upcoming session.
"As a lexicographer, I am always aware that words are the daughters of earth, but objects are the sons of heaven.’ Samuel Johnson (title of work by Maria Thereza Alves 1983)
This two-day workshop will focus on the ‘justice economy’ by exploring the contemporary online ‘data economy’ and citizens’ data rights through the lens of ‘search’. Artist/researcher Renée Ridgway will show selected past projects and her current PhD “Re:search- The Personalised Subject vs The Anonymous User”. The readings augment her research and past projects in order to think about how ‘debt and forgetting’ (Moten & Harney) are tied to ‘memory and extractivism’ in an era of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff 2015). Fair Trade Heads: A Conversation on Repatriation and Indigenous Peoples is an interview from the Documenta 14 publication, South, Issue 7 between Maria Thereza Alves, Candice Hopkins, and Jolene Rickard that addresses issues of provenance and repatriation, indigeneity and exile regarding colonial violence, which continues to the present day. Ridgway’s entry for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Media, Organisation and Technology is ‘search engines’, drawing attention to the complexities of searching with keywords, the consequences of the online data economy and some alternatives. Furthermore, the screenings on Friday evening bring to light how data functions as a currency in the online tracking economy in regard to habits and human/algorithmic interaction. At Saturday’s all-day workshop, DAI students will work together in the ‘linguistic factor(y)’ on a collective lexicon containing personally chosen ‘keywords’ that relate to their own research interests, yet are made accessible to outside audiences or the uninitiated."


Additionally, Renee is sharing with us two texts (easy reads and do not require much time from you) which should provide enough background information for the two days and connect some of the loose elements.  
1. Text #1 is this interview
2. Text #2 (on your mailboxes) is Renèe's entry for a lexicon in the forthcoming publication for The Oxford Handbook of Media, Organisation and Technology, which will be discussed on Saturday at length.
I will very unfortunately not be joining you this December session, as I will be in Kochi, but I very much look forward to seeing you in January. I very wish you a great and productive session and I look forward to hearing all about it!

Warmly, 

Rana

 

 

 

Session 1: 9 & 10 November 2018

Dear All,

I would like to wholeheartedly welcome you to our first editorial meeting of/on Justice Economy.

For the purpose of building a bibliography bank, which will be evolving throughout the workshops, I would like to ask each of you to prepare one (or more) bibliographical reference that you find relevant to our topic – be it a book title, a film title, a play etc…These references can be in any language (preferably languages that you speak, for purposes of translation). No other preparation is required for this first meeting. 

Friday 15-00 -18.00

- General introduction of the participants, their interests and possible contributions.

- General introduction by Rana Hamadeh, about the workings and outcomes of the editorial meetings.

- Making a start on collecting and organising our Bibliography Bank.

Friday 19:00 - 21:30

We will inaugurate our factory sessions with a screening of Spike Lee’s two and half hour film, Bamboozled (2000). I’d like to propose this film as an entrance for our upcoming conversations; an entrance that introduces in a rather tangential manner, some of the structures that could mobilise the Justice Economy trajectory.

Saturday 10:00 - 13:00

A rhizomatic reading-out-loud of the first ‘textual web’, comprising textual material that I have gathered for our collective examination. This material will serve both as an interlocutor to discuss the film that was screened in the evening before, as well as our first material for building and mapping the Justice Economy lexicon.

Saturday 14:00 - 18:00

- Making a start on collecting and organizing our lexicon following the film screening and our reading of the texts.

- Continuing the collection and organization of the Bibliography Bank.

- Concluding session with the planning of the upcoming session.

 

I very much look forward to seeing you all on Friday!

Warmly, 

Rana

 

 

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