The international conference “Techno-collectivities” was organized by the
DFG-Research Group Media and Participation. Between Demand and Entitlement (University of Konstanz)
and
the Graduate School Loose Connections: Collectivity at the intersection of digital and urban space (University of Hamburg).

Date: June 9-11 2016, University of Konstanz, Germany

The international conference “Techno-collectivities” brings together leading scholars to tackle fundamental questions regarding new forms and paradigms of participation, of emerging and dissolving collectivities in media-historical contexts, as well as current technological developments and their increasing environmentalisation. In the first line of inquiry, the conference questions the way in which technological infrastructures, including datafication, algorithmic automation, and economic interests configured by them shape perceptions and forms of participation. In light of these analyses, the conference scrutinizes some of the crucial flipsides of participation and their alternatives. It seeks forms of participation that escape categorisation and critically explores the concept of non-categorical participation in their media-historical, technological and epistemological dimensions by focusing on parameters such as the apersonal, anonymity and affect. The conference further pushes forward a theorisation of non-participation and its strategical and tactical importance in the techno-participation, which effectively subverts the clear distinction between inclusion and exclusion. In so doing, the conference aims to re-open the question of participation in all its forms, and hence re-conceptualise it within the framework of media-technological ecologies.

Further information about the conference here.

Visit the gallery here.