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