Post-digital: Micropolitical Perspectives on the Relationship between Art and Technology

Currently, the term “post-digital” is associated as much with the naturalization of digital technologies in our daily lives, as with the reflection on how they affect us, as individuals and society as a whole. These technologies are now dominating communications, including at a personal level, but are also found in everyday objects, invested with systems, both intelligent and interconnected, that collect data and can make decisions to automate and optimize their functionalities. Thus, we start out with a critical approach to the term post-digital in order to discuss contemporary artistic production, specifically within the scope of media art. We associate the term with a disenchantment with digital information systems and gadgets, at a time when fascination with such systems and apparatus has lost its meaning. At the same time, the term points to a dilution of digital technologies, which have pervaded the diverse spheres of human life and experience. In the art context, we observe the resistance to surveillance and control, to the dominance of high-tech corporations, as well as to the collection and analysis of Big Data, and a tendency to move towards a multifaceted art, permeated by political, social, cultural and environmental issues.
We are interested in looking at the field of media art and at the aesthetic and poetic experiences pointing to a multiplicity of ways, in which various issues arise or are appropriated from the digital: explorations of different materialities and critical appropriation of technological supports, the combination of analog and digital elements in works of art, the utilization of data from phenomena of the physical world, the appropriation and remix of data (audible, visual and numerical) from various spheres of the Internet, issues concerning the human cost and the consumption of natural resources for technological development, colonial and decolonial approaches to technology, among others.

This dossier aims at constituting a space for critical discussion about the relations between art and technology, as well as their micropolitical perspectives. Contributions may be presented in the form of articles, essays, visual essays, interviews, book reviews and exhibitions reviews. The dossier is also an offshoot of the 2. International Convergences Seminar, which took place at the Institute of Arts of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and the Goethe Institute in Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil, between October 9th and October 11th, 2019. The Seminar featured a program consisting of presentations, lectures and thematic discussion panels, as well as an exhibition and audiovisual performances.

Organization:
Felipe Merker Castellani (Graduate Program in Visual Arts, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil)

Cornelia Lund (HfK Bremen, Co-director of fluctuating images, Berlin)

Submission deadline: 31st of July 2020
For submissions and more information: https://periodicos.ufpel.edu.br/ojs2/index.php/paralelo or felipemerkercastellanigmail.com