Et_ting: Technology, Art & Design

What we are reading:

"Tools for Conviviality" by Ivan Illich

About the book:
The book reads as a theoretical and practical proposal on how we can repurpose technology as a means rather than an end to realizing ourselves. It is a positive encouragement to share and help each other create systems that are transparent and in return strengthen our ability to build things. It also urges us to rethink a system that places at its center the idea that technology must advance, machines have to take over and that infinite growth and revenue increase is not only possible, but a noble goal in and of itself.

This book is one of those kinds of works that are quoted over and over. Especially in discussions where optimism and clarity on where we should go with technology is called for. It encourages to look constructively at the mess we've made of our modern world. More busy with building up ideas than tearing down old ones, this is a book that we hope will foster a discussion about the tools of technology and how we can make them our own.

Details:
Tools for Conviviality is a small book of just 126 pages, available on the internet as a pdf if you google it. This session will, believe it or not, be out first held online! Two hours as usual, but this time on Zoom. Please sign up to secure a limited spot, and do remember to give notice if you cannot make it.

For this book club session, our host will be multidisciplinary artist, curator and researcher Natalia Tikhonova currently based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. This session is a part of the Calculation Art project online residency program spring 2021.

When:
May 17 from 17:00-19:00 somewhere online

Want to join?
Send an e-mail to: et.ting.net@gmail.com. Please write 'Tools for Conviviality Book Club' in the subject line. In the confirmation you will receive a link.

There is a limited amount of seats available. They will be distributed on a first come first served principle.

What we are reading:

"Data Feminism" by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein

Chapter one and two.

About the book:
Today, data science is a form of power that makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In Data Feminism, Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought.

To buy the book, read more here: https://data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu/

We will read and discuss the book at a series of book club meetings throughout the autumn, and will only be discussing chapter one and two at the first session.

This book club session will be co-hosted by software developer, Alma Freiesleben

When:
September 9 from 17:00-19:00 at Nørrebro, Copenhagen.

Want to join?
Send an e-mail to: et.ting.net@gmail.com. Please write 'Data Feminism Book Club' in the subject line. In the confirmation you will receive info on location.

There is a limited amount of seats available. They will be distributed on a first come first served principle.

What we are reading:

Donna Haraway - "Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene"

We want to explore alternative tech futures and believe Donna Haraway can provide some theoretical and methodologically tools, that can be helpful in the search for identifying a plural, divers, inclusive, ecological and interdependent tech future.

Haraway is Professor in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interweaves information technology with feminist theory, just as she has influenced human-machine as well as human-animal studies, questioning the relations between humans and non-humans.

About the book:
In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices. The Chthulucene, Haraway explains, requires sym-poiesis, or making-with, rather than auto-poiesis, or self-making. Learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth will prove more conducive to the kind of thinking that would provide the means to building more livable futures. Theoretically and methodologically driven by the signifier SF—string figures, science fact, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, so far—Staying with the Trouble further cements Haraway's reputation as one of the most daring and original thinkers of our time (Duke University Press)

Venue: TBD