RCPP

Favourite writer and proxy companion Tom McCarthy will give this year's Szondi lecture at Freie Universität -- a lecture he says will be relevant to all our recent proxy ponderings. See you there!

www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de

RCPP wrote a short essay about Biometric borders and new authentications systems – value, faces, identity, and proxies – for Transmediale's journal.
It's now online!

Bunker-face | transmediale On the two sides of the same coin, by Boaz Levin and Vera Tollmann

Hard to believe it's already here: RCPP's book "Proxy Politics: Power and Subversion in a Networked Age", is now out with Archive Books, and coming soon to a bookshop near you!

Wouldn't have happened without a wonderful group of fellow proxies, dedicated writers and collaborators, and the ineffable PWR.

Proxy PoliticsPower and Subversion in a Networked Age – Archive Books Proxy PoliticsPower and Subversion in a Networked Age Edited by Research Center for Proxy Politics Design by PWR English Softcover 11.5 x 18.5 cm 256 pages ISBN 978-3-943620-71-9 Euros 15,00 Contributions by Tom McCarthy, Kodwo Eshun, Goldin+Senneby, Brian Holmes, Nick Houde, Jonathan Jung, Laura Ka...

There it is!

Hi, we made it, the proxy conference video recordings are online now: 👩‍💻👨‍💻

RCPP RCPP is a member of Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

The Proxy and its Politics Elvia Wilk reports from the Research Center for Proxy Politics.

And on Saturday. Epic trailer by Fred.

The Proxy and Its Politics - On evasive objects in a networked age Sat, Jun 24, 2017 11 am — 8 pm HKW, Berlin Free admission The proxy, a decoy or surrogate, is today often used to designate a computer server acting as an…

We packaged the list of speakers and performers into a vvvvvvideo:

The Proxy and Its Politics - On evasive objects in a networked age Sat, Jun 24, 2017 11 am — 8 pm HKW, Berlin Free admission The proxy, a decoy or surrogate, is today often used to designate a computer server acting as an…

This is what we are currently working on behind closed doors, hope to see you there! Please save the date: June 24 https://www.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/veranstaltung/p_132927.php

The Proxy and Its Politics - On evasive objects in a networked age The proxy, a decoy or surrogate, is today often used to designate a computer server acting as an intermediary for requests from clients. Originating in the Latin procurator , an agent representing others in a court of law, proxies are now emblematic of a post-democratic political age, one increasing...

EXTRO-IMAGE
Work-session April 10 - 12, 2017

In this workshop we will discuss the limits of the ‘visual’ in relation to ‘the image’: Can we still call for an ‘image’ in algorithmic processes that is not data-visualisation, geolocation tagging or information mapping? What could be a new approach to the question of visuality? The workshop will try to understand matters of (re-)scaling in terms of exponential growth of computing power and image resolution. This implies a close attention to the matter of diagrammatic articulation, which means images that actively process data rather than to depict or represent.

How do new magnitudes (big data comes in petabytes or even exabytes) and algorithmic processes demand a redefinition of what is commonly understood as visual culture? Visual culture undergoes a definitional crisis. Have images taken on the capacities of triggers for activation and operation rather than mere representations? The image loses its anthropic horizon under the algorithmic condition. An image can be calculated and studied by the machine, which puts pressure on a human understanding of what human vision used to do and what 'the image' actually has become.Therefore it seems difficult for us to assume the computer's perspective. At the same time, there are more images being produced and circulated than ever before.

How does a machine that creates an image from everything it 'looks at' change visual culture? Can those images be considered contributions to visual culture at all? Can we still call it an image? An operation that takes the form of an image? Or is it rather a process of pattern construction and abstraction? What we call an *extro image* exceeds the image as we know it and signals the post-anthropic. What does this new kind of image contain and what does it hide? How does it feed into systems of surveillance and control?

The workshop follows an empirical approach of showing the effects of algorithmic prediction. A result of the workshop could be a picture book which introduces and documents these new characteristics of images, their front side and flipside. The mathematics of algorithms behind calculated images has become an index of power. As a result, images feel like a thin mask. How could we pin down and document actual political problems and cognitive dilemmas? This is our task during the workshop.

Participants: Yael Wicki Raphaëlle Mueller Léa Gallon Aurelien Ballif, Tina Wetchy, Charlotte Eifler, Jonathan Jung, Laura Katzauer, Ghalas Charara Joo Young Hwang, Maïté Chéniere Mikk Madisson Eleanor Aylett-Jones, Fred Lamb

Conceived by Kodwo Eshun, Doreen Mende (CCC Research Master Programme) and Vera Tollmann (RCPP Research Center for Proxy Politics) for the Theory Fiction seminar.

CCC / HEAD Boulevard Helvétique 9
2nd floor, salle 27

... we are excited to be in it! "A Single Swing of the Shovel: Former West Proxies", thanks to Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze for a deep story and a euphonic title.

We’re pleased to announce the release of Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989.

Co-published by BAK and MIT Press, this publication includes over 70 texts, visual essays, and conversations by artists, thinkers, and cultural practitioners worldwide, and marks the culmination of an eight-year artistic and curatorial research experiment, FORMER WEST.

The volume explores with and through art the social, cultural, politico-economic, technological, and ecological repercussions of the end of the Cold War on the contemporary. In a nod to a supposed counterpart, the “former east,” the book proposes to “former” the west as a way of resisting the west’s continued coloniality, and appeals to art’s critical potential for thinking and living through alternatives.

Asking how to envision such alternative trajectories, the contributions probe the distinctions established within the post-1989 geopolitical order, specifically those of a global north and global south, and seek to align the post-communist condition with the postcolonial constellation. They consider in parallel the cultural, political, and environmental upheavals that structure the present moment with the post-ideological, posthuman, and posthistorical formations that have emerged in intellectual and artistic response. The book queries not only history and historicization in their western guise, current conditions defined by wars, creeping normalizations of contemporary fascisms, post-truth, and algorithmic cultures, but also solidarities in the context of global class recomposition and migration, unfolding in chilling relevance to the political atmosphere of today.

Contributors include: Nancy Adajania, Edit András, Athena Athanasiou, Zygmunt Bauman, Dave Beech, Brett Bloom, Rosi Braidotti, Susan Buck-Morss, Campus in Camps, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Chto Delat?/What is to be done?, Jodi Dean, Angela Dimitrakaki, Dilar Dirik, Marlene Dumas, Keller Easterling, Okwui Enwezor, Charles Esche, Silvia Federici, Mark Fisher, Federica Giardini and Anna Simone, Boris Groys, Gulf Labor Coalition, Stefano Harney, Sharon Hayes, Brian Holmes, Tung-Hui Hu, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Sami Khatib, Delaine Le Bas, Boaz Levin and Vera Tollmann, Isabell Lorey, Július Koller, Sven Lütticken, Ewa Majewska, Artemy Magun, Suhail Malik, Teresa Margolles, Achille Mbembe, Laura McLean, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Sandro Mezzadra, Walter D. Mignolo, Aernout Mik, Angela Mitropoulos, Rastko Močnik, Nástio Mosquito, Rabih Mroué, Pedro Neves Marques, Peter Osborne, Matteo Pasquinelli, Andrea Phillips, Nina Power, Vijay Prashad, Gerald Raunig, Irit Rogoff, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Naoki Sakai, Rasha Salti, Francesco Salvini, Christoph Schlingensief, Georg Schöllhammer, Susan Schuppli, Andreas Siekmann, Jonas Staal, Hito Steyerl, Mladen Stilinović, Paulo Tavares, Trịnh T. Minh-Hà, Mona Vătămanu and Florin Tudor, Marina Vishmidt, Marion von Osten, McKenzie Wark, and Eyal Weizman.

Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989 is edited by Maria Hlavajova and Simon Sheikh. Visual introductions to book chapters are curated by Maria Hlavajova and Kathrin Rhomberg.

Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989 has been published in the context of the curatorial and artistic research experiment FORMER WEST (2008–16), developed by BAK and realized through manifold partnerships with artists, theorists, activists, as well as art and educational institutions transnationally. Leading up to this publication, a series of public editorial meetings has been held in Utrecht (2014), London (2015), Budapest (2015), and Warsaw (2015), in which themes, contributions, and propositions for this publication have been considered in dialogue with the public.

Published by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst and MIT Press, 2016 | Design by Mevis & Van Deursen, Amsterdam | English language | 748 pages | Paperback | ISBN: 9780262533836

The publication is out now and can be ordered via MIT Press.

Thanks to Heather Dewey-Hagborg for distilling *Proxy Power* with us. DNA shots anyone?