A conversation about interdisciplinary and critical thinking, creative practice, and the value of counter-histories

In this episode, we speak with Paul about our responsibility to society as analysts, as researchers, and about the role of artists in translating back and forth between theoretical foundations and practical forms of action. Paul is a cultural and media scientist and currently professor of Digitality and Cultural Pedagogy (Media Studies) in Salzburg, Austria. In our conversation, we explore how theory and practice can be meaningfully combined, how we can build the capacity to intervene and create change, and why a deep understanding of historical developments and their underlying structures is essential. Paul shares insights from his research into histories of knowledge transmission between China and the West, as well as the relationship between language and symbolic systems. Throughout the episode, we reflect on the importance of working with people who are in a position to bring about real transformation, and on the value of counter-histories in opening up new ways of thinking and acting.

Paul @Mozarteum University

Exhibition UNCANNY VALUES @MAK

MA Open Arts @Mozarteum

A conversation about digital power, feminist resistance, and the social responsibility of academic research.

In this episode, we speak with Anna about the possibilities and limitations of bridging engaged research, activism, and academia, and about how social media platforms such as Facebook both support and constrain feminist activism. Examples include the Arab Spring as well as more recent developments. A central focus is the role of content moderation in feminist activism. In addition, Anna reflects on her experiences with feminism in Tunisia and Switzerland, as well as on the paradox of strong direct political participation alongside the very late introduction of women’s suffrage. Further aspects of the discussion include possibilities for empowerment in the context of Big Tech and the social responsibility of academic research.

Dr. Anna Antonakis is currently a senior researcher in the field of Social Design at the Institute of Design Research, Bern University of Applied Sciences. Drawing on science and technology studies and intersectional approaches, she investigates questions around digital technologies and representations, global inequalities and security/ies. Her research currently focusses on how power operates in and through the design of processes, narratives and (digital) artifacts.Her research interests are anchored in the historical moment of the revolutionary uprisings in Tunisia in 2010/2011, which she witnessed and analysed online and offline. She holds a PhD in political science from the Freie Universität Berlin.

Links:
Profile bhf 

Publication:
Antonakis, A. (2024): Feminist Participation and Content Moderation Regimes: Tackling Systematic Exclusions Online. In: Katrin Meyer, Stephanie Pfenninger Tuchschmid, Yunna Skliarova (ed.): Revisioning Democracy and Women’s Suffrage: Critical Feminist Interventions“. Seismo Press. Swiss Association for Genderstudies. (Open Access).

Further readings:
Wenn KI dann feministisch, https://netzforma.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2020_wenn-ki-dann-feministisch_netzforma.pdf 

netzforma.org

In this episode, we sit down with Rosa Wevers, Dutch researcher, curator, and critical thinker at the intersection of gender studies, digital technology, and the arts. Rosa shares her journey into exploring how systems of oppression are entangled with technological development, especially AI. Together, we ask: How can art challenge dominant narratives about tech? How is technology shaping society and culture? As we navigate an era of shifting power structures and deepening crises, Rosa offers sharp insights into why critical engagement with technology has never been more urgent — and how art can help us imagine otherwise.

Links to:
Rosa Wevers 
Rosa Wevers Instagram
Podcast Kunstmatig: https://kunstmatig.net/
Artist Mimi Ọnụọha
Adam Harvey

Elisa is co-founder of SUPERRR, a lab for feminist futures that Elisa founded together with Julia Kloiber. SUPERRR deals with traditional questions of digital rights and understands feminism as inherent intersectional feminism. Our guest Elisa works to create a base where different expertise can come together and have fruitful conversations about digital, but also social justice issues. In this episode, she talks about how to practice and establish a “thinking about the future” that helps policy makers shape visions and laws that do not harm those who are already disadvantaged, but benefit us all. Elisa and her colleagues provide methods on how to address digital rights issues in a world of massive inequalities. She asks: How can we bring in our own narratives and define our own playing field? For Elisa, digital policy must be framed as social policy, and this is a crucial factor.

https://elisalindinger.de

https://re-publica.com/de/user/8264

https://superrr.net/lab

Martina researches the use of digital technologies in rural indigenous communities in the Puna of Jujuy, Northwest Argentina. The Jujuy Puna is part of the so-called Lithium Triangle, a high-altitude desert area where lithium – one of the most important minerals for the production of digital technologies – is mined and processed, leading to the pollution of scarce water resources. In addition, the rural and indigenous population, who have always lived in this region, are excluded from the products of this exploitation. In this episode, Martina talks to us about the political meanings and consequences of these processes for everyday life in the Puna villages, about issues of digital sovereignty and the struggles of the communities. She argues that the spread of algorithmic digital media represents a new dimension of a centuries-old structure of coloniality for indigenous peoples in Latin America.

https://www.weizenbaum-institut.de/portrait/p/martina-di-tullio

https://deerlab.academia.edu/MartinaDiTullio

https://proyectopallqa.wordpress.com/martina-ditullio

After a long summer break, we are back with a new exiting guest: Clara Herrmann. Since 2019, Clara has headed the JUNGE AKADEMIE, the international artist-in-residence program of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. For JUNGE AKADEMIE she developed the program HUMAN MACHINE and initiated and curated the project AI ANARCHIES with a fellowship program and an autumn school co-curated by Nora N. Khan and Maya Indira Ganesh and a final exhibition and event in 2024: The Anarchy of the Soul. Clara was co-founder and coordinator of the Digital Solitude program at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, where she developed and curated the project Web Residencies. In this episode, Clara guides us through her work as a curator, the specific challenges of her projects and the undertakings to open up art while leaving it with complete autonomy in times of great politicization.

https://junge-akademie.adk.de/people/clara-herrmann/
@claradius

Aida Eyvazzadeh and Sakine M. Bozorg are former content moderators in Berlin who worked for a global social media platform. The are both from Iran and in this episode, they talk about why and how migrant workers in Germany constitute as a crucial labor supply to the global platform economy. They explain what content moderation is, how it is labor intensive work and requires several skills. Instead of being valued, content moderators face high control on their work and even repression, a kind of corporate authoritarianism that reminds them of the authoritarian regime in Iran. They go on to recount their experiences of challenging these power asymmetries through the German institutional resources and trade unions, and the difficulties they have faced in doing so. Talking about these experiences, they suggest ways for unions to reflect and make certain changes. Beyond these institutions, they also find hope in networking with different communities in Berlin and internationally for sharing resources and finding possibilities to organize. Aida currently works in the civil society sector and Sakine is an independent researcher and essayist. She is also part of the Data Workers Inquiry project (https://data-workers.org/) that is supported by the Distributed AI Research Institute and the Weizenbaum Institute and is launching on the 8th of July this year.

To know more about content moderation work in Germany, you can access this article here: https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/wge/2/2/article-p176.xml

To access Sakine’s talk at the Transnational Forum of Alternatives to Uberisation at the European Parliament, please click here: https://left.eu/events/transnational-forum-of-alternatives-to-uberisation-4/

In this episode, we speak with Basma Mostafa, a journalist from Egypt living in exile in Germany. We speak about the role of journalism and the use of digital technologies including social media during and following the Egyptian revolution. We learn about the increasing threats to press freedom and military violence against journalists, lawyers and activists in the country, and hopes of fighting the Egyptian regime from exile. Basma’s story is reflective of the struggles faced by exiled diaspora in Germany and what it means to miss ‘home’ when the home of one’s memory and imagination no longer exists. We ask Basma about what different movements can learn from the Egyptian revolution that started more than 13 years ago and if there is potential in building international diasporic movements in Germany.

Shownotes
‘Bleibefreiheit’ (freedom to stay) mentioned in the episode
https://www.fischerverlage.de/buch/eva-von-redecker-bleibefreiheit-9783103974997

More information about Basma Mostafa
Basma Mostafa, is an award-winning Egyptian journalist with over a decade of experience investigating the human rights abuses in Egypt.

Mostafa’s fearless reporting has led to her imprisonment 3 times. She is a fellow with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and was nominated for the global True Story Award 2024.

Links to some of her work
Escape from Egypt: How I fled the media crackdown
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/egypt-journalist-freedom-asylum-somaya-abdelrahman

Acts of violence against demonstrators in Bahri and Al Steen in November 2021
https://sudanesearchive.org/en/investigations/acts-of-violence-against-demonstrators-in-bahri-and-al-siteen-in-nov-2021

Der Preis, den wir zahlen müssen
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/medien/der-preis-den-wir-zahlen-mussen-4330150.html

Präsidentschaftswahlen in Ägypten
https://taz.de/Praesidentschaftswahlen-in-Aegypten/!5976026/

Family of murdered coptic man forced to leave North Sinai after continued therats
https://www.madamasr.com/en/2021/05/26/news/politics/family-of-murdered-coptic-man-forced-to-leave-north-sinai-after-continued-threats/

Our guest Armaghan Naghipour is a lawyer specializing in migration and anti-discrimination law and the deputy chairwoman of DeutschPlus (https://www.deutsch-plus.de). Most recently, she was State Secretary for Science, Research and Equality in the State of Berlin. Prior to that, she held various advisory positions in Berlin state politics, including helping to draft Berlin’s state anti-discrimination law.

In the wonderful atmosphere of the Grüner Salon at the Volksbühne Berlin, we talk about Armaghan’s experiences as a political advisor and State Secretary, about what it is like to take on responsibility as State Secretary and to shape society in these specific political structures, but also about the hesitation and the feeling of being an impostor, and what it is like to jump in at the deep end. We talk about the responsibility that comes with such an appointment, about discrimination characteristics of AI from a legal perspective and how legal frameworks shape our everyday lives. We touch upon the anti-discrimination law in Germany and specifically the Berlin anti-discrimination law, upon how Armaghan’s parents fled Iran in the 1980s when she was 1 year old, and how the topic of migration is a recurring theme in her professional work as well as in this podcast. Last but not least, we talk about the power that comes from these kinds of conversations.

Many thanks to Johanna Hampf and the Weizenbaum Institute, the Berlin Design Week and the Grüner Salon. Many thanks to the audience and to all our listeners.

Armaghan on Twitter/X: @armaghipour

What is participatory research, and how hard is it to navigate disciplines like sociology and computer science at the same time? Dr. Milagros Miceli – a sociologist and a computer scientist – is from Argentina and currently based in Berlin. Her research on data work is widely known to provide rich empirical evidence on the abysmal working conditions of click workers and content moderators in Germany, Argentina, Syria, Kenya and Bulgaria. Milagros leads the research group ‘Data, Algorithmic Systems, and Ethics’ at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society. She is also a research fellow at the DAIR Institute, where she is currently investigating ways to engage communities of data workers in AI research. 

This episode with Milagros takes us on a journey of her love for her work, but also the struggles that it brings along. She goes on to talk about issues like credibility, acceptance and recognition as a pioneering researcher in a field that is finally getting the attention it deserves, but at the cost of balancing it as a woman, migrant, and mother of two.

Milagros on Twitter