WORKSHOP: Tracing Information Society – Technopolitics Timeline

Technopolitics

Date and Time: 21 – 22 June 2017, 3-8pm,
Workshop 1: “The Timeline and the Curated Knowledge Space”
Workshop 2: “Editing the Hong Kong Timeline”
Venue: Connecting Space Hong Kong (Directions)

Space is limited but if you are interested in attending the workshops, please contact admin@technopolitics.info

Technopolitics is an independent, interdisciplinary research group that is going to set up a “Curated Knowledge Space” at Connecting Space Hong Kong. This format is based on a printed Timeline with associated printed and audio-visual material and provides the framework for an open-ended exploration of the genesis and current configuration of our shared techno-cultural realities.

The “Information Society Timeline” consists of 500 entries that refer to the fields of art, culture, media, politics, economy, technology and social life and are taken to be relevant for the shaping of the Information Society. An important common objective is to investigate large scale historical processes, structured by techno-economic paradigms, from a critical, explorative standpoint, using trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural approaches and to connect these processes to the cultural forms of the respective historical moment. The timeline serves as a framework for this on-going process.

A central aim of this project is to invite collaborators from a wide range of different disciplines and areas of knowledge in order to challenge and expand the notion of the Information Society by discussing and adding events to the Timeline that are relevant from their perspectives. Thus, before the actual exhibition opens on June 23, Technopolitics convenes a 2-day workshop to discuss and edit the Timeline. We believe that only a multiplicity of concurrent perspectives is capable of developing narratives that are sufficiently complex and flexible to help us understand the present moment.

The workshop consists of two parts. The first part will focus on the timeline as a whole, familiarize the participants with the structure and the content of the timeline and explore the potential and limitations of the approach. The second part of the workshop will focus on the individual entries, and participants are invited to edit the timeline by adding their own entries based on their perspectives on what constitutes relevant events. The adding of new entries is a discussion that involves the whole Timeline, as each new entry replaces an old one in the process.

The results of the workshop will be visible as revision on the timeline to the visitors of the exhibition, highlighting the processual, open-ended character of the project.

The Techopolitics, an independent transdisciplinary working group based in Vienna, Austria, is represented in Hong Kong by Sylvia Eckermann, Doron Goldfarb, Gerald Nestler, Felix Stalder, Axel Stockburger and Ina Zwerger.