State Machines: Art, Work, and Identity in an Age of Planetary-Scale Computation
Today, we live in a world where every time we turn on our smartphones, we are inextricably tied by data, laws and flowing bytes to different countries, in which every personal expression is framed and mediated by digital platforms, and where new kinds of currencies, financial exchange and even labour bypass corporations and governments. At the same time, the same technologies increase governmental powers of surveillance, allow corporations to extract ever more complex working arrangements and do little to slow the construction of actual walls along actual borders. On the one hand, the agency of individuals and groups is starting to approach that of nation states; on the other, our mobility and hard-won rights are under threat. What tools do we need to understand this world, and how can art assist in envisioning and enacting other possible futures?
State Machines investigates the new relationships between states, citizens, and the stateless made possible by emerging technologies. Focusing on how such technologies impact identity and citizenship, digital labour, and finance, the project joins five experienced partners Aksioma (SI), Drugo More (HR), Furtherfield (UK), Institute of Network Cultures (NL), and NeMe (CY) together with a range of artists, curators, theorists, and audiences. Workshops on blockchain technology, research into new cognitive models and forms of citizenship, and conferences on democratic participation and networked cultural production were organised alongside art exhibitions, new commissions, seminars, conferences, artist talks, screenings, and publications, with the aim of building new kinds of literacy for digital understanding and participation. State Machines insists on the need for new forms of expression and new artistic practices to address the most urgent questions of our time, and seeks to educate and empower the digital subjects of today to become active, engaged, and effective digital citizens of tomorrow.
The role that digitalities, especially the web, plays in our lives, has become a symbiotic feature of our social reality, reflecting an incessant shifting network of interactions. In addition, Benjamin H. Bratton’s The Stack was a valuable pivot as we examine how global megastructure computation has influenced our geopolitical realities and how our understanding of these and in turn, ourselves, is/are shaped by global multi-layered and interconnected digital systems.
Date(s)
15.02.2019-15.03.2019 Venue
NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, Cyprus
During the recent past, citizenship used to essentially encompass our local community: the neighbourhood, city and country in which we lived. But the digital world has no such physical borders, and its citizens now need to ‘live’ with everyone everywhere. Confronted with enormous social and political unrest our understanding of democracy is seriously challenged. At a time when both the meaning and the role of citizens is changing under the demand for global integration and homogenisation, an estimate of 21 million people around the world remain stateless. Refugees are currently increasing in numbers due to the exodus from the war torn countries.
Date(s)
08.12.2018-19.01.2019 Venue
NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, Cyprus
28th April 2018, Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, Co-founders and directors of Furtherfield gave a lecture and workshop as part of the State Machines programme.
Date(s)
28.04.2018 Venue
NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, Cyprus
The Deep Web evokes images of an underworld, the locus of shadow economies where illicit trade takes place that cannot bear the light of day. This image is understandable if you consider the bad press encrypted channels have received over the years. News reporting mostly publishes sensational stories on cyber-criminals operating in a virtual legal vacuum on the Darknet, arms and human trafficking, murder-for-hire and extreme gore on contraband websites such as Silk Road. Data leaks, such as the Panama Papers, further politicised this so-called “invisible” web. Furthermore, the popular Deep Web documentary (2015) helped shape a dramatic image of these impenetrable parts of the Internet as a lawless cove, mainly populated by bandits, predators, and pirates.
Date(s)
10.03.2018-07.04.2018 Venue
NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, Cyprus
The importance of social media activism was already well established by bloggers in Tunisia and Algeria then spreading to other countries in the MENA region with the case of several bloggers in Egypt receiving substantial international exposure due to their effective use of media activism. This outreach via the so called egalitarianism of cyberspace is not without problems.
Date(s)
09.12.2017 Venue
Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus
James Bridle’s work explores the implications of technological acceleration and opacity for everyday life and the implications of algorithmic citizenship, deterritorialised nations and digital governments.
Date(s)
02.12.2017 Venue
NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, Cyprus
A name. Everybody has one. In the documentary, individuals, artists and academics from all over the world share their thoughts about the meaning and purpose of one’s name from both private and public perspectives. The problem of homonymy and other reasons for changing one’s name are explored as the film draws references from history, popular culture and individual experiences, leading us to the case of a name change that caused a stir in the small country of Slovenia and beyond.
Date(s)
20.10.2017-21.10.2017 Venue
NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, Cyprus
