Tactics&Practice [podcast]

Better Machines for Better Humans

Kate Crawford is a leading scholar on the social implications of artificial intelligence. Her book ATLAS OF AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence is the culmination of a five-year-long research into materiality of AI. Far from being immaterial, AI is made of flesh, sweat and fossil fuels, and is not neutral. Also, AI stands as one of the most concentrated industries of the world, with only five or six companies holding the pipelines of the data, designed to serve the capital, or for policing and for military purposes. Acquainting this is essential to resistance and change, because it’s by abstracting away the processes through which AI is made that the actual modes of production can persist. However, no political situation lasts forever and no technology is invulnerable: these planetary computational systems can be decentralised and become useful to humans and the planet.

Guests: Sanela Jahić, intermedia artist; Lenart J. Kučić, journalist and podcaster; Nika Mahnič, researcher of the digital condition(ality).

COLOPHON

Host: Marta Peirano

Guest: Kate Crawford

Editing, Audio Mix and Music: Gašper Torkar

(re)programming podcast series

Produced by Janez Fakin Janša and Marcela Okretič

for Tactics&Practice #10: (re)programming

Project coordinator: Sonja Grdina

Production:

Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art

Ljubljana, 2023

Part of

Tactics&Practice

konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

Posthuman Politics

Future is not only about data and trends, it is about imagination. The work of designer and filmmaker Anab Jain transports people into the future. The evolving installation Mitigation of Shock by her studio Superflux envisions a random apartment in the London of 2050 or in a Singapore that has become a flooded city in 2219. In this conversation, Jain gives the listeners an emotional vade mecum to imagine and possibly shape the future, starting with equipping themselves with many options and possibilities in order to explore those prospects and interconnections, then asking which decisions that we are taking today may affect them in the future. As indicated in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, there is an urgency to reassess our relationship with what we call “nature” – we have to think of ourselves as one species among others, who are our companions.

Guests: Saša Spačal, post-media artist; Anja Planišček, associate professor at Faculty of Architecture, Ljubljana; Špela Petrič, new media artist and former scientific researcher.

COLOPHON

Host: Marta Peirano

Guest: Anab Jain

Editing, Audio Mix and Music: Gašper Torkar

(re)programming podcast series

Produced by Janez Fakin Janša and Marcela Okretič

for Tactics&Practice #10: (re)programming

Project coordinator: Sonja Grdina

Production:

Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art

Ljubljana, 2023

Part of

Tactics&Practice

konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

Can We Repair the Climate?

Holly Jean Buck works at the interface of environmental sociology, international development, and science and technology studies. In her book After Geoengineering, she takes a deep dive into the envisioning, development and deployment of tactics and schemes for deliberately intervening in the environment, including Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). What we have to do to restore the planet is clearer than ever, we have the technologies and the money to do it. The obstacle, then, is social and political. We should acknowledge that what we are facing is not a climate crisis but an ecological crisis, one where people need to have a say in the plan and where specific exit strategies for every country and reality must emerge through building a consensus in communities.

Guests: Rok Kranjc, sustainability transitions researcher, translator and editor; Senka Šifkovič Vrbica, lawyer working in the fields of legal protection of the environment; Borut Tavčar, journalist who focuses on environmental issues.

COLOPHON

Host: Marta Peirano

Guest: Holly Jean Buck

Editing, Audio Mix and Music: Gašper Torkar

(re)programming podcast series

Produced by Janez Fakin Janša and Marcela Okretič

for Tactics&Practice #10: (re)programming

Project coordinator: Sonja Grdina

Production:

Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art

Ljubljana, 2023

Part of

Tactics&Practice

konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

An Alternative Earth

Benjamin Bratton is an American Philosopher of Technology, known for his work spanning social theory, computer science, design, AI, and for his writing on the geopolitical implications of what he terms “planetary scale computation”. In the conversation with Marta Peirano, he explores the main issues raised in The Terraforming and The New Normal, the speculative urbanism think tanks that have extensively explored alternative future trajectories for cities, considering them as planetary technologies.

To reorient and remobilise already existing technologies regimes and processes for purposes that are for the very long term and to preserve life on Earth, a renewed Copernican turn is necessary in theory and in practice: a technologically mediated departure from anthropocentric and individual perspectives.

Guests: Marko Bauer, translator, writer and editor; Miloš Kosec, architect and researcher; Miha Turšič, artist, designer and researcher.

Watch this episode in video format > HERE

Read this conversation in book format > HERE

COLOPHON

Host: Marta Peirano

Guest: Benjamin Bratton

Editing, Audio Mix and Music: Gašper Torkar

(re)programming podcast series

Produced by Janez Fakin Janša and Marcela Okretič

for Tactics&Practice #10: (re)programming

Project coordinator: Sonja Grdina

Production:

Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art

Ljubljana, 2023

Part of

Tactics&Practice

konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

What Does it Take to Change the Future?

Kim Stanley Robinson stands as one of today’s most beloved science fiction writers and is a prominent exponent of climate fiction. In his novel The Ministry for the Future (2020), he envisions a scenario where India is struck by a devastating heatwave, resulting in the loss of millions of lives within days: soon after this tremendous tragedy, a climate response begins to take shape. Do we need such a shock for governments, or maybe some billionaire, to take radical actions against the climate crisis? Solutions to buy time before we reach the point of no return are already known and available, maybe a utopian horizon painted by literature can help us implement them. In his most bleak yet hopeful work to date, Robinson delves into the limits and possibilities of human cooperation under extreme circumstances.

Guests: Dr Lučka Kajfež Bogataj, climatologist and a pioneer in researching the impact of climate change; Dr Luka Omladič, philosopher, environmentalist and environmental analyst; Ida Hiršenfelder, sound artist and archivist.

COLOPHON

Host: Marta Peirano

Guest: Kim Stanley Robinson

Editing, Audio Mix and Music: Gašper Torkar

(re)programming podcast series

Produced by Janez Fakin Janša and Marcela Okretič

for Tactics&Practice #10: (re)programming

Project coordinator: Sonja Grdina

Production:

Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art

Ljubljana, 2023

Part of

Tactics&Practice

konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

To complexify the notion of scale and to expand it, both historically and beyond human perception, allows us to think about scale within different academic, design and artistic vocabularies. Writer and professor in Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University, as well as visiting professor at FAMU (Prague) and Winchester School of Art (UK) Jussi Parikka has extensively researched the cultural histories and archaeologies of media and has, over the past years, focused even more on environmental media. In a recent text for Aksioma, he has addressed scale as the middle of a meddling bundle of forces, showing that the concrete techniques in which scale comes to existence and functions are ontogenetic, i.e. they bring worlds into existence. That’s why scale is inherently entwined with power and politics in very detailed ways, which is something he addresses in his recently published book Operational Images as well as in the slightly earlier co-edited volume in Photography Off the Scale. This fifth episode marks the culmination of the series: it is an intriguing dialogue aimed at reframing the concept of scale and at connecting all the insights and perspectives discussed in the previous episodes.

COLOPHON

Host: Neja Berger

Guest: Jussi Parikka

Recording and editing: Neja Berger

Audio Mix: Staš Kramar

Music: Gašper Torkar

Scale podcast series

Curated by Janez Fakin Janša

Produced by Marcela Okretič

for Tactics&Practice#14: Scale

Production:

Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art

Ljubljana, 2023

Part of

Tactics&Practice

konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

The concept of scale is related to mapping, which is intrinsically related to colonisation and neocolonial military practices. Anthony Downey, Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa (Birmingham City University), draws a historical line from the development of cartographic devices and photogrammetry in the 18th and 19th centuries to the neocolonial extraction of data through AI-powered models of hyper-surveillance. Utilised for training neural networks and refining algorithms, these methods of data extraction effectively redefine the future of kinetic and non-kinetic warfare. Programmed within such systems, the operative and rationalising logic of algorithms are, Downey proposes, complicit in increasingly reductive determinations of what constitutes life and death in conflict zones.

COLOPHON

Host: Neja Berger

Guest: Anthony Downey

Recording and editing: Neja Berger

Audio Mix: Staš Kramar

Music: Gašper Torkar

Scale podcast series

Curated by Janez Fakin Janša

Produced by Marcela Okretič

for Tactics&Practice#14: Scale

Production:

Aksioma Institute of Contemporary Art

Ljubljana, 2023

Part of

Tactics&Practice

konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

Infrastructures of abnormous scale are the materialisation of neocolonialism. Megabridges, power plants, military bases are means of dispossession, invasion, extraction perpetrated by bigger countries upon smaller sovereign states. Media artists and interdisciplinary researchers Anna Engelhardt and Mark Cinkevich have developed a method called “applied demonology”, which combines CGI, mediaeval demonology and satellite investigation to interrogate the spectre of colonial violence. They have used this approach to shed light on the way Russia has possessed Ukraine, Belarus and Syria like a demon that parasites its host and always breaks its promises.

COLOPHON

Host: Neja Berger

Guest: Anna Engelhardt, Mark Cinkevich

Recording and editing: Neja Berger

Audio Mix: Staš Kramar

Music: Gašper Torkar

Scale podcast series

Curated by Janez Fakin Janša

Produced by Marcela Okretič

for Tactics&Practice#14: Scale

Production:

Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art

Ljubljana, 2023

Part of

Tactics&Practice

konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

Alternative community-based data distribution networks on the local scale have emerged in Cuba as a consequence of the economic sanctions imposed on the country in recent decades. German anthropologist Steffen Köhn and Cuban media artist Nestor Siré shed light on the unique materiality and significance of these networks, built to overcome the limitations of internet access in Cuba. In the current capitalist, consumerist form of internet, characterised by closed platforms, we are fed content chosen for us by algorithms, whereas informal infrastructures allow their users, makers and content creators to be the protagonists of their own choices – and allow us to envision decentralised, non-commercial and collective interactions on the web.

COLOPHON

Host: Neja Berger

Guest: Steffen Köhn, Nestor Siré

Recording and editing: Neja Berger

Audio Mix: Staš Kramar

Music: Gašper Torkar

Scale podcast series

Curated by Janez Fakin Janša

Produced by Marcela Okretič

for Tactics&Practice#14: Scale

Production:

Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art

Ljubljana, 2023

Part of

Tactics&Practice

konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art

On the nanoscale, materials can appear as vibrant, lively subjects that can even have political implications. Laura Tripaldi, author of Parallel Minds: Discovering the Intelligence of Materials (Urbanomic, 2022), is an expert on nanotechnology who worked in industrial research before shifting her focus on philosophical and theoretical fields. She has been exploring our relationship to technology and materials we use everyday, and has proposed a different perspective on non-human and non-living entities, challenging us to consider them as active rather than passive matter.

COLOPHON

Host: Neja Berger

Guest: Laura Tripaldi

Recording and editing: Neja Berger

Audio Mix: Staš Kramar

Music: Gašper Torkar

Scale podcast series

Curated by Janez Fakin Janša

Produced by Marcela Okretič

for Tactics&Practice#14: Scale

Production:

Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art

Ljubljana, 2023

Part of

Tactics&Practice

konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art