1st draft 2nd essay, 2nd trimester

===== Plan and methodology new essay, 2nd trimester:

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Abstract:

The core question of the research that I’m outlining during this 2nd trimester is the problem of the relationship between automation and subjectivity.

The conclusion of my last work was claiming the necessity of understanding the relationship between technological code based language and human language. How this relationship, or tension is manifesting itself into public space?

In the first trimester I was particularly worried or interested in reflecting upon a relevant paradox: if the capability of certain technologies and financial instances are acting on a global scale, why other “political bodies” and identities are still suffering from conditions of immobility, inequality and subjects of restrictive legislations?

In order to extend further this question, I want to reflect more on the politics of movements within our geopolitical and technological context. As the topic sounds pretentiously wide, I’m trying to reduce it and see it under a smaller scale.

What could help in this sense is to rely this research with the work I’m doing for the Special Issue n.2, in collaboration with De Player. For this project I’m planning to make a series of performative actions in the public and surveilled spaces of Rotterdam.

The object of the performance is the relationship between moving identities and automatic algorithmic recognition of movement. In particular, I’m interested in a new form of biometric called “Gait Analysis”, an applied technology that can detect identities observing the way bodies walks. 

A technology that samples and categorize with an automatic as well subjective policy (because aware of the variations of the different kind of movements). A biometric identifier is then able to take advantage of personal body language (a subjective and either cultural feature) that is observable through walking.

This surveillance system is working as a categorization discriminator and what I’m asking to my self is: How do I act under this involuntary and arbitrary sampling?

Is our dream of living in a transparent and safe city an inappropriate tool to disgregate and force identities into restrictive regulations of movement?

The act I want to stage is a choreography of small movements that respond to the detection systems with a fictional walk that enact movements that are not able to be detected. The Gait analysis and its application in sampling bodies it’s a technique that makes use of corporal characteristic of the human bodies to define an identity: from the joints angulations to the hip strike, the direction and speed of the walk or the angle of a step.

What happens if I force my body into a “non-human” and non-detectable walk?

This gestures will be a both passive and active form of “dissent”: passive because of the non-literality of the counter-movement, and active because of the experiental flow of the walk. The action will be tested in public to force this experiment to get an output while confronting it with the contextuality of the city.

In the text that I want to develop in this trimester I will then try to respond critically to the actions I will experiment during next weeks. As a lot of work still needs to be done, I cannot outline a conclusion, or a definition of the state of things.

What I’m doing and trying to show is an analytical quest on what I find problematic in the relationship between technological development of the public space and the ecology of the subjectivity.

Which are my references?

1. The lectures that I followed this year in Transmediale, because of the relevance of its core topic: “ever elusive”.

Referring to the elusiveness of the contemporary status of media cultures, an ambiguity appear to be seen in the relationship between new geopolitical instances and the technological features.

In these complex times which is the value of identity and subjectivity and how the cultural tension is shaping a new position for the agencies of our world?

- Steve Hurtz: “performance as an active appropriation”, and “availability of technology and human understanding”. He questions the concept of BIOPOWER and BIOPOLITICS and claims the necessity to develop a “necropolitic” in order to understand this instances. (without the necessity of making revolutions: “evolution will sort it out!”)

- Johannes Paul Raether: on the sharing of identities / realities. On the contemporaneity of communal identities (examples of memes). Introducing various interesting and critical concepts as: BIODIGITAL CAPITALISM, APROXIDENTITY, CAPITALOGENIC PRINCIPLES, TRANSLOCAL CIRCULATION OF BODIES, the southafrican artist experiment resilience and subversive practices in a theatrical and performative mise en-scene : “resilience lies in mutation!”

- Wendy Hui Kong Chun: on the understanding of the development of technology: “ we don’t know what’s going on, but, have we ever understand technology and nature?” and “ New media matter most when they seem not to matter at all”. Introduction of the concepts of “homophily” and “habits”: habits as embodied connections and homophily as associative bond. Which are the new habits generated by the current crisis? Which are the similarity that breeds connections which we can find, for example, in new network based social arenas? Necessity of develop a COUNTERMEDIATION.

- Richard Grusin: “technology represses the pre-individual as it is becoming necessary for the participation in the process of collective individuation”

2. “Speed and politics”, Paul Virilio: “Modernity is a world in motion”, Need for security as a superimposed necessity. Artificial creation of a common feeling of insecurity. State of open warfare: re-appropriation of a certain technological underdevelopment of the masses in the realm of weapons.

3. “Strategy of conflict” Schelling:

4. “Visibility, Six memos for the next millennium” Calvino. Importance of a pedagogy of imagination

5. Felix Guattari, The Three Ecologies, “Post-industrial capitalism, which I prefer to describe as Integrated World Capitalism (IWC), tends increasingly to decentre its sites of power, moving away from structures producing goods and services towards structures producing signs, syntax and - in particular, through the control which it exercises over the media, advertising, opinion polls, etc. - subjectivity. “ On capitalism and decentralization.