Symposium on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 April: The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism: The Cognitive Turn. Organized by Mark Fisher and Warren Neidich.
In the picture: Mark Fischer
London: New Academic Building LG02,Goldsmiths University
Free and open to all - no booking required
We are currently transitioning from an economic system dominated by artisanal and industrial production to one ruled by information with its emphasis on communication, affect and cognition. Not without controversy, the term cognitive capitalism has been coined to describe these new sets of conditions. This symposium continues to pose many of the same questions asked in Part 1, held in Los Angeles in collaboration with California Institute of the Arts and Art Center College of Design, and Part 2, hosted by the ICI-Berlin which further elaborated those topics of Part 1 and began describing its' "cognitive turn." Part 3 will take this analysis one step further.
Although cognitive capitalism has been investigated quite intensely in relation to such topics as abstract and immaterial labour, informational capital, real and formal subsumption, social production of surplus value, its connection to the brain itself has been so far limited. This symposium will consider the brain from a developmental point of view using such terms as neural plasticity and epigenesis to understand cognitive capitalism in light of theories of extended mind. The aim is to formulate a new form of cognitive activism.
The symposium will consider the relationship between the attention economy, the 24/7 demagoguery of the sleepless society always on call, valorization, consumer neuroscience and conditions such as ADD, ADHD, panic disorders, autism, narcolepsy and other sleep disorders. It will utilize experts from archeology, philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and politics to consider whether a new form of anti-psychiatry can be developed for the 21st century. This conference means to inform the theoretical community on all sides of these issues in the hope of producing the epistemological tools necessary to combat the new forms of authoritarian governmentalization now on the horizon.
Participants include: Amanda Beech, Franco Berardi, Bronac Ferran, Matt Fuller, Scott Lash, Lambros Malafouris, John L. Protevi, Dimitri Papadopoulos, Luciana Parisi, Alexei Penzin, Steven Rose, Kerstin Stakemeier, and Bruce Wexler