Categories
Art & Culture My Projects

Strategic Narratives of Technology and Africa

I’m pleased to be on the organizing committee of Strategic Narratives of Technology and Africa, a conference taking place in Funchal, Madeira, September 1 & 2.

The conference brings scholars, technologists, and cultural producers together on the island of Madeira: a European territory off the coast of Africa, a historical site of mutual entanglement between the Atlantic continents, and a point of departure for European expansion. Here we’ll strategize ways to revisit, reframe, and recode the future of technology on and for both continents.

What can African theorists, technologists, and cultural producers do to generate alternatives to the influx of neocolonial narratives of tech entrepreneurship? What are key epistemologies and ways of being which are endemic in Africa that should be offered to the world through new systems and processes? How can an African information economy avoid the dynamics of the resource curse, where connectivity is extractive and exercised upon African citizens rather than by and through them? What can Western technologists do differently, and what are the spaces for collaboration?

This conference aims to reinvestigate these relationships and more in order to engender dialog between African and Western audiences and participants, who should leave Madeira equipped with new strategies and new collaborative partnerships.

Keynotes include Achille Mbembe, Nanjira Sambuli, Ntone Edjabe and Sarah Nuttall.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Categories
Art & Culture

My FutureEverything 2011 picks

Meme Topology by sosolimited

I’m gutted that I’ll be missing FutureEverything in Manchester next week (11-14 May). For the lucky ones going, I thought I’d highlight the things I’d be bee-lining to if I was there.

OK well hang on, for those of you who have just tuned in, let me back up and say what FutureEverything is: an annual four day extravaganza of live music, art premieres, inspiring talks, club nights and events. In short, Fun with a capital F, but you can also sell it to your bosses as professional development and get them to send you.

On to this year’s programme! I wouldn’t miss talks by Sally Fort, Keri Facer, Chris Speed, Ela Kagel, Juha van ‘t Zelfde, and Kars Alfrink. (More info on the conference here). I’d be sure to check out the Steve Reich and Warpaint gigs, and would also be spotted at the ultra-intriguing Handmade event, a day devoted to contemporary craft, digital hacking, and DIY culture. In fact digital craft and maker communities seem to play a big role in the programming this year, which I think is great.

Anyway. Sigh — I can’t go. Hope you’ll be blogging and tweeting madly so I can have a taste of the experience.

Categories
Art & Culture

A Quick Guide to SXSW’s Panel Picker

The South by Southwest conference panel picker allows anyone who considers themselves to be part of the SXSW community to vote on panels that will appear at next year’s conferences in music, film, and interactive technologies. It’s a good, simple way to get people involved in the content they would invest their time in seeing.

As you can see from the pie chart, SXSW organisers are no fools, however: say what you like about the “wisdom of the crowd”, the advisory board and staff still run the show (and that’s a good thing).

What struck me after a quick browse was a certain homogenous feel to the panel titles. Nearly all of them are twisting themselves into pretzels to sound clever and punchy in a peculiarly uniform tone. Few simply tell you exactly what the panel content will be, and one wonders if the public voting feature exacerbates this kind of look-at-me marketing. The contrast between conferences meant to appeal to the general public and academic conferences couldn’t be more pointed, through the prism of this one tiny feature. For example:

Semi-random* sampling of SXSWi proposed panel titles:

  • The Thousand Wang Challenge: Chatroulette As A Game
  • Old is the New Black: Content’s Comeback
  • Boldly Go Where No Ad Has Gone Before
  • Invade my Privacy, Please!
  • Curation Is King and Content Is Its Bitch

Semi-random* sampling of academic panel titles (I chose the College Art Association conference from last year):

  • Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the Middle Ages, Part I
  • Authors of Cultural History from the Ottoman Empire to Nation-States
  • Innovation, Agency, History: Centering the Italian Fourteenth Century
  • The Importance of Art in Economic and Social Revitalization: The Creation of Modern Cultural Economies
  • From Fiction to Archive: Reconstructing Public Memory in South Korea

But I digress (interesting as conference panel titles are). I promised a quick guide, and so here is the guide part. Here’s what you need to know:

Vote thumbs down:

  • Anything remotely to do with SEO (search engine optimisation, for the uninitiated)
  • Panels with offensive, inane, and/or punny titles
  • Panels about the iPad (just because)
  • Panels that will tell you how to make money on your _______ (insert whatever)

Vote thumbs up:

  • Anything else that sounds remotely interesting.
  • For your friends, of course.

Good luck!

Oh, and share your faves please — there’s no way I’ll get through all 2,500 or so panel proposals.

(* – Like any good storyteller, I might notice data that supports my thesis more often than data that doesn’t.)

Categories
Art & Culture

My FutureEverything “Don’t Miss” List

I find myself in the same situation time and again when I arrive at a major international festival: too many events happening at once! Spoilt for choice! Unable to decide if I should go to one talk or another, which are of course happening at the very same time in different locations!

The programme for this year’s FutureEverything festival is so overflowing with juicy content, that perhaps you too will suffer this dilemma. In the face of such a cornucopia of content, there is something for everyone, but maybe you want to peek over my shoulder and see what I’ve circled in red on my FutureEverything diary? (Oh and hey, I wouldn’t mind you sharing your picks with me too!)

Music:
Ryoji Ikeda – test pattern [live set] / Mika Vainio [live]: “complex audio-visual terrain” … “analogue warmth and metallic harshness”
Konono No.1 [live] / Bass Clef [live] / Jon K: “a thundering sonic attack of 21st Century African music that sounds like nothing ever heard before”
Moldover [live] / Atau & Adam [live]: “a performer who combines the charisma of a rock star with the mad genius of a basement inventor”

Conference:
GloNet: “an experimental format happening simultaneously in five cities around the globe: Manchester, Sendai, Istanbul, Sao Paulo, and Vancouver”
Shaping the City panel discussion: how are cities shaped by climate, culture, and citizen participation?
Keynote: Ben Cerveny: “taking us from 1960s Situationist ideas to current collaborative interaction in public spaces”
Keynote: Keri Facer: “Learning to live in uncertain times”
New Creativity panel discussion: “How do we play, collaborate, and create in a way that makes a real impact on the world?”
McLuhan in Europe 2011 – inaugural lecture with Darren Wershler: “describing the fascinating connections between McLuhan’s predictions and declarations”

Art:
The Feast of Trimalchio: Stunningly beautiful, UK premiere
Eyewriter: a pair of low-cost glasses & custom software that allow artists and graffiti writers with paralysis to draw using only their eyes
Cu Exhibition: “diverse and experimental contemporary art from both national and international artists”

Get tickets!