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Asset 111118
© Clarote
Asset 111118
© Clarote
International Summer Festival 2021
Digital / Discourse / Online

The Future of Code Politics

New visions and futures for artificial intelligence, algorithms and codes

Tickets:

3 Euro for on-site participation. Online: free of charge. LIVESTREAM will be embedded here on time.

Info

HIER finden Sie alle aktuellen Informationen und Corona-Regeln für Ihren Besuch vor Ort. ​

Past dates

also online

Friday

8/13/21

6:00 PM

also online

Saturday

8/14/21

2:00 PM

also online

Sunday

8/15/21

12:00 PM

The debate about artificial intelligence, technologies, codes and algorithmic systems in Europe usually centers around questions of efficiency and technical progressiveness – rarely we talk about resilience and sustainability in this context. At the same time, it is not only since the pandemic that we realize how these technologies have a massive impact on social systems, policies, societal processes and our coexistence as communities. They create new realities and entrench old structures that we thought had long been abolished. Technologies, it is now well known, can discriminate, they have ecological costs, they are entrenched in (neo-)colonial structures, and the monopoly of power over our data lies with big tech companies. These technologies form infrastructures that have an impact on our lives for the future and sustainably determine the conditions of our societies.

The 3-day focus THE FUTURE OF CODE POLITICS highlights new perspectives on those technologies and their socio-political implications. And focuses on protagonists who critically deal with these opaque structures. The invited speakers and artists point out the social and planetary costs of the technological infrastructures that surround us every day, and work on the decolonization of technologies, as well as on transfeminist, indigenous or africainfuturist visions for artificial intelligence, algorithms and codes.

The program is created in cooperation with Summer Festival curator Lena Kollender, the founder of the Ethical Tech Society Lorena Jaume-Palasí, the activist and technology sociologist Fiona Krakenbürger and in collaboration with the globally networked initiatives CodingRights (Joana Varon), Musea M.A.M.I. (Lucía Egaña Rojas) and Indigenous AI (Suzanne Kite).

Digital program flyer (overview and background information) HERE.

Program On Friday, August 13:

OPENING

18:00 / 15min. / live at P1 & online Two of the curators of the conference, Lorena Jaume Palasí and Lena Kollender, welcome the audience, briefly introduce the main questions of THE FUTURE OF CODE POLITICS as well as the program of the upcoming three days.

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU & VANESSA NAKATE

18:15 / 60 min. incl. Q&A afterwards / livestream P1 & online Computer scientist and researcher in the field of artificial intelligence Dr. Timnit Gebru and Ugandan climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate will open the first day of the conference with a key note conversation. Timnit Gebru was co-head of the Ethical AI Intelligence Team at Google until early December 2020. She had already caused a global stir with her 2018 study on racist facial recognition software, and most recently made headlines with a critical study that highlighted, among other things, the environmental costs of Google's new AI – after which she was fired in a scandal that was discussed worldwide, accompanied by widespread protests from Google's workers. Vanessa Nakate was the First Fridays For Future climate activist in Uganda and founder of the Rise up Climate Movement, which aims to amplify the voices of activists from Africa. Her work includes raising awareness to the danger of climate change, the causes and the impacts. Toghether, they will discuss questions around the extractivism and transgenerational justice in the context of artificial intelligence and new technologies.

EROTICS OF EXTRACTIVISM CALL CENTER by CENEXXX.CL (CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS DE LA NATURALEZA EXTRACTIVA) / CURATED BY M.A.M.I. & CODINGRIGHTS

from 19:30, open until 21:30 / installation on-site or online via fono.cenexxx.cl In an installation at the Westfoyer, a virtual call center opens up, connecting one person at a time to a telemarketing operator in Chile. In an intimate setting on the phone, the technological environments and consumption habits of the audience members are analyzed. And the concrete impact of these habits on the mine workers, the environment and the societies around the mineral mines in Latin America providing the material for our hardware, are imagined in a possible future.

INDIGENOUS AI – JASON LEWIS, CEYDA YOLGORMEZ, MICHELLE BROWN, SUZANNE KITE: DEVELOPING NEW APPROACHES / CURATED BY INDIGENOUS AI

19:30 / 120 Min. / online workshop, free of charge, but a seperate registreation is needed: click HERE . Our relationship to artificially intelligent technologies is largely framed by popular media, news reporting, or major scientists’ claims. These frames restrict such systems to notions of control and utility, all the while keeping the black-box of these technologies intact, and thus furthering an elite-expert hegemonia that had been defining how to think of AI since the last half of the previous century. One way to subvert this history is to imagine different futures with these technologies, and bringing forward different questions that were (unfortunately) not germane to the AI sciences. Questions about nonhumans and their agency seem especially pressing in the discourse of AI, but they cannot find a way out of a dichotomy of human-machine in the Western knowledge systems. Rather, in this workshop, we would like to bring to attention how to conceive of the world as consisting of multiplicities and heterogeneous communities, by bringing in Indigenous Protocols for imagining the futures that we will be sharing.


Program Saturday, August 14:

SCOTT BENESIINAABANDAN & HEMI WHAANGA: INDIGENOUS AI AND LANGUAGE / CURATED BY INDIGENOUS AI

14:00 / 90 Min. incl. Q&A / livestream P1 & online The history of European algorithmization is very closely interwoven with the history of colonization and racism; at its core, it could be described as a history of the essentialization of the human being. Maori linguist Dr. Hēmi Whaanga therefore asks in the Indigenous AI position paper, »Is AI the new (r)evolution or the new colonizer for Indigenous peoples?« He describes the power of colonization primarily as the control and transformation of thought culture, language and reality construction of the colonized. In an interview with Anishinaabe intermedia artist Scott Benesiinaabandan, they will discuss their contributions to the Indigenous Protocols and AI Working Group – a group working on frameworks for a design and creation of AI from an ethical position that centers Indigenous concerns.

JILLIAN C. YORK: SILICON VALUES

16:00 / 60 min. incl. Q&A afterwards / live at P1 & online livestream The Internet once promised to be a place of extraordinary freedom beyond the control of money or politics, but today corporations and platforms exercise more control over our ability to access information and share knowledge to a greater extent than any state. American activist and author Jillian York presents the main propositions from her recently published book, »Silicon Values«, in which she examines the impact of the current »surveillance capitalism« (S. Zuboff) on our right to free expression and how the policies of a few big tech companies threaten our democracies.

WENDY HUI KYONG CHUN: DISCRIMINATING DATA

17:30 / 60 min. incl. Q&A afterwards / livestream P1 & online (the recording of this stream will be available on November 2nd after the publication of the book.) In her book »Discriminating Data«, due out in November 2021, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun shows how polarization is a goal – not an error – of Big Data and machine learning. These methods, she argues, encode segregation, eugenics, and identity politics through their default assumptions and conditions. Chun, who has a background in systems design engineering as well as media studies and cultural theory, presents the main propositions and foundations of her research and asks: How can we release ourselves from the vice-like grip of discriminatory data? Chun calls for alternative algorithms, defaults, and interdisciplinary coalitions in order to desegregate networks and foster a more democratic Big Data.

EROTICS OF EXTRACTIVISM CALL CENTER by CENEXXX.CL (CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS DE LA NATURALEZA EXTRACTIVA) / CURATED BY M.A.M.I. & CODINGRIGHTS

18:30 - 20:30 / installation at Westfoyer& online via fono.cenexxx.cl In an installation at the Westfoyer, a virtual call center opens up, connecting one person at a time to a telemarketing operator in Chile. In an intimate setting on the phone, the technological environments and consumption habits of the audience members are analyzed. And the concrete impact of these habits on the mine workers, the environment and the societies around the mineral mines in Latin America providing the material for our hardware, are imagined in a possible future.

CONSULTATIONS WITH THE ORACLE FOR TRANSFEMINIST TECHNOLOGIES by TRANSFEMINISTTECH.ORG / CURATED BY M.A.M.I. & CODINGRIGHTS

19:00 / 90 min. / Workshop, either on-site or online Throughout history, human beings have used a wide variety of divination procedures – such as tarot decks – as technologies to understand the present and reshape our destinies. In this gathering, you will be invited to consult the Oracle for Transfeminist Tech, a hands-on card deck designed to help us collectively envision and share ideas for transfeminist technologies from the future. The wisdom of the oracle, embedded with transfeminist values, will help us foresee a future where technologies are designed by people who are too often excluded from or targeted by technology in today's world. Consultations will be facilitated online by Joana Varon and Sasha Costanza-Chock and offline by Clarote and Lucía Egaña Rojas. More on transfeministech.org


Program Sunday, August 15

M.A.M.I.: THE POST PATRIARCHY MUSEUM / CURATED BY M.A.M.I. & CODINGRIGHTS

M.A.M.I. is an online museum inaugurated in the speculative year 3021 in celebration of the fall of patriarchy, which started on February 19, 2052. It is an advanced collective technology that emerged from technofeminisms rooted in Latin America/Abya Yala. Walking across M.A.M.I virtual galleries, we can appreciate a series of artworks and archeological pieces produced by feminists in response to the now extinct and distant patriarchal violence, which, by the 20th and 21st century acquired several forms, such as racism, lesbophobia, fatphobia, colonialism, sexism, transphobia, among others. M.A.M.I. is a Spanish word, but the acronym of M.A.M.I. can take different forms and interpretations: Museum of Art from Melting Injustices; Museum of Archeology of Misoginous Injuries; Memorial of Ancestral Messy Interactions; Museum of Art from Mistic Irreverence; Museum Against Machism Indigestion and so forward. More on museamami.org

M.A.M.I.: COLLECTION WORKSHOP

12:00 / 120 min. / workshop live at Kampnagel Set in a fictional year 3021, this workshop guides participants to think collectively and to name expressions of the old and extinct patriarchal violence. Recalling feminist strength and creativity by visiting feminist pieces of art and activism from the past millennial, participants will also contribute to the curation of M.A.M.I collection from a non-European perspective. The workshop will be facilitated by Lucía Egaña Rojas and Clarote.

M.A.M.I. PANEL: CONVERSATIONS WITH THE FUTURE

15:00 / 60 min. / hybrid panel with participants on and site via livestream at P1 & online A conversation with feminist artists and activists from the year 3021 that bring their experiences about how it is to live in a post-patriarchal future, toghether they are celebrating the launch of the M.A.M.I. museum. And they will answer the most pressing questions of our present in the 2st century. Think of all the questions you would like to ask your descendants: How is it to live in a world in which racist patriarchy does not exist anymore? What values persist? Who rules? Which tech is most prominent? Does the Internet still exist? How do they communicate? How did they manage to overcome Climate Change? With Lucía Egaña, Neema Iyer, Constanza Figueroa, Loreto »Maka« Bravo and Joana Varon.

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN KATE CRAWFORD & NNEDI OKORAFOR

16:30 / 60 Min. / streaming at P1 & online The Nigerian-American author and one of the most important representatives of Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism, Nnedi Okorafor, is known worldwide among other things for her novels WHO FEARS DEATH (currently being adapted by HBO as a TV series), the BINTI trilogy, and her work for Marvel's BLACK PANTHER: LONG LIVE THE KING and WAKANDA FOREVER. Kate Crawford is one of the leading international researchers on the social, political, and environmental impacts of artificial intelligence and author of the recently published ATLAS OF AI. Kate's work also includes award winning, collaborative art projects EXCAVATING.AI and critical visual design ANATOMY OF AN AI SYSTEM that have been acquired by renowned houses such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the V&A Museum in London. To close the conference, Nnedi and Kate engage in a conversation on their latest books REMOTE CONTROL and ATLAS OF AI, the relationship between nature and technology and how culture dictates the use of technology.

CLOSING PANEL

18:00 / 40 min. incl. Q&A / hybrid panel with participants on site and via livestream at P1 & online A closing panel with the co-curators of this conference, Lorena Jaume-Palasí, Fiona Krakenbürger, Joana Varon (CodingRights/M.A.M.I.), Lucía Egaña Rojas (Musea M.A.M.I.), Suzanne Kite (Indigenous AI, canceled due to illness), Lena Kollender (Summer Festival) and Lucía Egaña Rojas (Musea M.A.M.I.).


Concept & curation: Lorena Jaume-Palasí, Lena Kollender, Fiona Krakenbürger In collaboration with: Lucía Egaña Rojas (Musea M.A.M.I.), Suzanne Kite (Indigenous AI), Joana Varon (CodingRights) English Subtitles: Substream Stage Management: Finja Zlim Online Coordination: Sophie Blomen
IN COOPERATION with Allianz Kulturstiftung, Nemetschek Stiftung and the Gunda-Werner-Institut in the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.WITH THE SUPPORT OF Wikimedia Deutschland – Association for the Promotion of Free Knowledge.