Audrey Samson | Goldsmiths, University of London (original) (raw)

Papers by Audrey Samson

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

In the previous episode, FRAUD considered legacies of pelagic extraction from the perspective of ... more In the previous episode, FRAUD considered legacies of pelagic extraction from the perspective of artisanal fisherfolk, and discussed how to begin unthinking and unknowing these extractive ontologies. In the following, with Dr Jennifer Telesca we focus on the role of institutions tasked with conservation management in 'managing extinction'. We discuss how marine policymaking has contributed to the accelerating extraction of maritime life. In her recent article, 'Fishing for the Anthropocene: Time in Ocean Governance', she denounces the role of managerial capitalism, armed with bleak yet powerful persuasive tools such as visual charts, scientific models and statistical formulas, which together "plan, measure and quantify time as an exercise of power at sea". In this vein, our discussion will focus on the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), and how it has managed and administered the extinction of the blue fin tuna, which is the focus of her recent book, Red Gold. We also consider modes of decentrering the legal spaciest policies by redefining value systems based on multispecies respect and environmental justice.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

Previous episodes have focused on certain measures of conservation in fisheries, such as Maximum ... more Previous episodes have focused on certain measures of conservation in fisheries, such as Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), which were historically put in place to protect domestic industries rather than fish populations. These measures often reinforce legacies of pelagic extraction. This episode focuses on the situation from the perspective of Ghanian artisanal fisherfolk. Their testimonies are in conversation with Dr Epifania Amoo-Adare, an artist, ‘renegade’ architect, pedagogue and researcher based in Accra (Ghana) who is currently engaged in what she describes as the “art of unthinking”. In this episode, we join Amoo-Adare in the art of unthinking, where the very idea of ‘development’ is questioned in a discussion of Ghana’s depleting marine landscape, the othering of artisanal fishermen, fish mothers and their fishmongers, which ends by the outlining of fundamentally non-extractive alternative modes of coexistence.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

This episode focuses on modes of maritime extraction that continue legacies of colonial rule. In ... more This episode focuses on modes of maritime extraction that continue legacies of colonial rule. In discussion with Liam Campling we explore some of the legal and economic infrastructures that support and perpetuate forms of pelagic extractivism, such as Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) among others, based on his recent book, co-authored with Alejandro Colás, Capitalism and the Sea: the Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World. As the EU has the third largest fishing fleet in the world, the majority of which belongs to companies registered in Spain, fisheries become a paramount resource to consider. Like most states, the EU approaches marine natural resources using mechanistic lenses such as input/output paradigms. This is exemplified in the usage of the word ‘stock’ to designate populations of fish. Understanding oceanic spaces as resources that can be measured like an inventory exists within a form of marine management which has facilitated the industrial, long-haul fishing responsible for much of today’s overfishing. This episode focuses on the specific tools and agreements that enable overfishing, bringing its logic to the Global South in a gold-rush for resources.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

After developing an understanding of the Berlin Conference’s implications, of the concept of Eura... more After developing an understanding of the Berlin Conference’s implications, of the concept of Eurafrica, and of how the European Integration project was truly founded in the previous episodes, in FRAUD we wanted to understand more about how these structures have continued, and how they have been transformed and institutionalised in contemporary international relations. One fundamental example of this is the Franc of the Financial Community of Africa (CFA). We invited Ndongo Samba Sylla, a development economist at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Dakar (Senegal), who recently co-authored Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story with Fanny Pigeaud (published by Pluto Press), onto the podcast to discuss these issues with us.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

In this episode we consider how the very foundation of the EU was grounded on an extractivist mod... more In this episode we consider how the very foundation of the EU was grounded on an extractivist model. In their book Eurafrica, the Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism, Prof. Peo Hansen and Prof. Stefan Jonsson, debunk the theory of what they refer to as the "Immaculate Conception of the European Union formation", one where a group of benevolent Western European leaders chose to set aside nationalist rivalries to unite for peace, democracy and freedom, to one where the cooperation of European states to no little extent was predicated upon the exploitation of African resources, which could be better accomplished through a coordinated effort.

This institutionalised the colonies' role as purveyors of raw materials. Hansen and Jonsson have summarised it as follows: “Eurafrica is able to make sense both of the political and discursive discontinuity and the infrastructural or economic continuity between the late colonial period and an emerging Neo-colonial globalisation.” This is supported by archival research, foremost into the inter-governmental negotiations that led up to the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, and numerous other sources. As one analyst put it in 1957: “It is in Africa that Europe will be made”.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

Through sorcery and extraction, the EURO–VISION series begins with Prof Adekeye Adebajo, Director... more Through sorcery and extraction, the EURO–VISION series begins with Prof Adekeye Adebajo, Director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg. The conversation focuses on the history of extraction between the European and the African continent, which has laid the groundwork for the Critical Raw Materials Initiative to take shape. A key event in this genealogy is the Berlin Conference (1884-85), led by the Chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck, during which plenipotentiaries of fourteen states — none of which were from Africa — assembled to discuss the partition of the African continent. After a century and a half ago this meeting continues to shape Africa's borders today, as well as its governance, its economy, its international relations, and the extraction of its materials. The latter of which is often either towards Europe, or to benefit European-owned companies. Based on Adebajo’s monograph, The Curse of Berlin: Africa after the Cold War, we delve into the extent of von Bismarck's legacy and the significance of this event in contemporary international affairs.

Jesper Eriksson: Coal: Post-fuel, 2018

“Forests, footprints, industry pollution, credits, emissions, animate and non animate alike are m... more “Forests, footprints, industry pollution, credits, emissions, animate and non animate alike are measured and valued in terms of carbon, and their potential to sequester it. In the wake of climate catastrophe, carbon as currency becomes a tool that capitalises in the present upon the uncertainty of the future.”

EURO—VISION: the booklet, 2020

€uro-vision critically charts some of the affective modes of power entangled in surveillance tech... more €uro-vision critically charts some of the affective modes of power entangled in surveillance technology and migrant flows. In doing so, it explores the extractivist gaze of the EU’s migration policy and its inscriptive operations on
territories and bodies at its peripheries.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2022

In this EURO–VISION podcast episode, together with Dr Nishat Awan, FRAUD considers how resource d... more In this EURO–VISION podcast episode, together with Dr Nishat Awan, FRAUD considers how resource depletion affects local communities, as well as the wider infrastructures of extraction which they are a part of.

Description
In our last episode, we considered how institutions such as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) are managing the extinction of the bluefin tuna, which is emptying the seas and leading to the forced displacement of fisherfolk, namely, that are traditionally living from the wildlife in those seas. In this episode we consider how this resource depletion affects those communities, as well as the wider infrastructures of extraction which they are a part of. Together with Dr Nishat Awan, who leads the research project Topological Atlas at TU Delft. Topological Atlas produces visual counter-geographies that combine digital mapping and storytelling techniques with a participative approach, attending to those who are at the margins of traditional geopolitical inquiry.

How does erasure execute knowledge production? The following is a tour through a collection of er... more How does erasure execute knowledge production? The following is a tour through a collection of erasure that provides a glimpse into the many directions that this question may take us, through the lens of a series of artistic interventions, academic research, experiments and artefacts. I present these items from a collector’s point of view. For achieving completion of this collection of erasures would be, in the words of Jean Baudrillard, like death. That is to say that the desire to complete the series, to achieve the perfection of its imaginary ending, is that which creates the elusive object of desire. As such, in the same way that a collection can always extend itself laterally, or spark a new one ([1968] 1996, 113), I am presenting it as an object of desire, fuelled by the impetus of neoliberal growth, which can never be complete and will forever expand into new meanings of execution, always towards the elusive erasure of death

Execution is a function that operates within a range of systems, such as language, computation or... more Execution is a function that operates within a range of systems, such as language, computation or biology. This contribution traces a few of these instantiations of execution in order to highlight the materially discursive quality of any particular executing system, with the discussion moving from law and guillotine, language to langue, computer instruction and memory. In each case tracing the way in which execution produces situated posthuman couplings in a dynamic ensemble of such conjugating systems

How does erasure execute knowledge production? The following is a tour through a collection of er... more How does erasure execute knowledge production? The following is a tour through a collection of erasure that provides a glimpse into the many directions that this question may take us, through the lens of a series of artistic interventions, academic research, experiments and artefacts. I present these items from a collector’s point of view. For achieving completion of this collection of erasures would be, in the words of Jean Baudrillard, like death. That is to say that the desire to complete the series, to achieve the perfection of its imaginary ending, is that which creates the elusive object of desire. As such, in the same way that a collection can always extend itself laterally, or spark a new one ([1968] 1996, 113), I am presenting it as an object of desire, fuelled by the impetus of neoliberal growth, which can never be complete and will forever expand into new meanings of execution, always towards the elusive erasure of death

Static Glow refers to the phenomenon by which data persists in the network long after the person ... more Static Glow refers to the phenomenon by which data persists in the network long after the person it relates to is dead. Such as the so-called Facebook ‘ghost profiles’; accounts owned by the deceased that continue to appear in ‘Friends’, ‘Suggestions’, and somewhat more disturbingly, ‘Birthday reminders’. Example: Her static glow still lingers after 4 years. This article discusses the historical context of static glow, as well as its current and future significance

It is commonly understood that execution designates the process by which a computing machine foll... more It is commonly understood that execution designates the process by which a computing machine follows the step-by-step instructions of a program. Yet execution does not happen in a vacuum and is neither deterministic by nature. In this entry we argue that while there might be codes instructing a machine how to execute, the processual unfolding and worldly embeddings in which executing instructions are resolved is nothing but uncertain. In present-day computational cultures and infrastructures, complex relations are effected and effaced within conflations of languages, symbols and meanings with technical, cultural and political desires and decisions. A situation that can be thought of as a continual resolution, composing and rendering of various generative, undecidable, invisible, affective, intersecting and executing uncertainties

Goodnight Sweetheart is an art-led enquiry that investigates how the digital ‘medium’ is redefini... more Goodnight Sweetheart is an art-led enquiry that investigates how the digital ‘medium’ is redefining our relationship to memory. The project has resulted in publications, exhibitions, performances and workshops internationally, reaching audiences of over 20 000. The project explores the interdependence of memory and digital data through rituals of erasure, or digital data funerals. These symbolic acts of erasure points to the quasi impossibility of truly deleting data online and in doing so, to its materiality. These rituals also reimagine the biopolitical relationship to “data”, and as such address the entanglements of body, memory and data. By creating funerals for our data, these ceremonies help us understand our new relationship to data and to define what and how such rituals may be useful. Goodnight Sweetheart was born through an artist residency at Eastern Bloc in Montreal, Canada in 2015. It has continued and further developed through a series of exhibitions (Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland, 2020), ISEA (South Korea, 2019), Stephen Lawrence Gallery (United Kingdom, 2018), esc medien kunst labor (Austria, 2017), Austrian Cultural Forum (United Kingdom, 2017), Never Apart & Centre des arts de Shawinigan (Canada, 2017), Connecting Spaces (Hong Kong, 2015), ADA Mesh Cities (New Zealand, 2015)), workshops (Kunstraum Graz, 2017, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2015, University of the Arts London, 2015, City University of Hong Kong, 2015), publications (book chapters published by: Routledge 2019, Bloomsbury, 2018, Open Humanities Press 2017, Autonomedia, 2016, APRJA, 2015), conference presentations (King’s College London (2017), IT University of Copenhagen (2016), Kingston University (2015), Transmediale (2015)), and funded by the Canada Art Council, the Wellcome Trust, the University of Melbourne (Digital Commemoration research group), and the ACC Asia Culture Center (Gwanju, South Korea). Digital Data funerals were a novel concept (ritual) proposed by the artist in 2015 which have become a matter of concern internationally. The evolving practice has built upon the various exhibitions, workshops, and publications to call attention to the materiality of data and networks, and to thinking through possible new rituals to accommodate this aspect of our digital selves. It has been featured in media outlets such as Radio Canada, Vice magazine, Asia Art Pacific and Die Referentin

This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interac... more This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interact with the remains of the dead, including bodies, materials and digital artefacts. It focuses on how residues of death persist and circulate through different spaces, materials, data and mediated memories, refiguring how the disposal of the dead is understood, enacted and contested across the globe. The volume contains contributions by scholars from a number of disciplines and includes a diverse range of case studies drawn from Asia, Europe and North America. Together they reveal how rapidly changing practices, industries and experiences around death’s remains involve the entwining of digital technologies with other material and ritualised forms of commemoration, as well as with shifting boundaries between the sacred and the profane, the institutional and the vernacular, the public and the private.

We propose that mutated forms of death are emerging with neoliberalism’s biopolitical financialis... more We propose that mutated forms of death are emerging with neoliberalism’s biopolitical financialisation of life. Thinking of such forms as commercial extinction and social death, how do we begin to frame these outside of a quantified rhetoric of surplus? These questions aim to provoke a discussion about these terms that can be interpreted as modes of exhaustion, while maintaining particular biological, social or economic conditions of life. When we are confronted with capitalism’s failure to fulfil resource exhaustion, a model of conservation by dispossession1 might emerge within what Rosi Braidotti calls “new and subtler degrees of death and extinction” (2013, 115). In this text we want to think with other conditions of death and extinction that can help to move beyond the missing item of an inventory, a carved rock along a fossil road or a set of pre-emptive actions to be executed beyond a certain threshold. Thus, we ask if there could be figures, which rather than narrating death ...

Execution is a function that operates within a range of systems, such as language, computation or... more Execution is a function that operates within a range of systems, such as language, computation or biology. This contribution traces a few of these instantiations of execution in order to highlight the materially discursive quality of any particular executing system, with the discussion moving from law and guillotine, language to langue, computer instruction and memory. In each case tracing the way in which execution produces situated posthuman couplings in a dynamic ensemble of such conjugating systems

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

In the previous episode, FRAUD considered legacies of pelagic extraction from the perspective of ... more In the previous episode, FRAUD considered legacies of pelagic extraction from the perspective of artisanal fisherfolk, and discussed how to begin unthinking and unknowing these extractive ontologies. In the following, with Dr Jennifer Telesca we focus on the role of institutions tasked with conservation management in 'managing extinction'. We discuss how marine policymaking has contributed to the accelerating extraction of maritime life. In her recent article, 'Fishing for the Anthropocene: Time in Ocean Governance', she denounces the role of managerial capitalism, armed with bleak yet powerful persuasive tools such as visual charts, scientific models and statistical formulas, which together "plan, measure and quantify time as an exercise of power at sea". In this vein, our discussion will focus on the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), and how it has managed and administered the extinction of the blue fin tuna, which is the focus of her recent book, Red Gold. We also consider modes of decentrering the legal spaciest policies by redefining value systems based on multispecies respect and environmental justice.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

Previous episodes have focused on certain measures of conservation in fisheries, such as Maximum ... more Previous episodes have focused on certain measures of conservation in fisheries, such as Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), which were historically put in place to protect domestic industries rather than fish populations. These measures often reinforce legacies of pelagic extraction. This episode focuses on the situation from the perspective of Ghanian artisanal fisherfolk. Their testimonies are in conversation with Dr Epifania Amoo-Adare, an artist, ‘renegade’ architect, pedagogue and researcher based in Accra (Ghana) who is currently engaged in what she describes as the “art of unthinking”. In this episode, we join Amoo-Adare in the art of unthinking, where the very idea of ‘development’ is questioned in a discussion of Ghana’s depleting marine landscape, the othering of artisanal fishermen, fish mothers and their fishmongers, which ends by the outlining of fundamentally non-extractive alternative modes of coexistence.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

This episode focuses on modes of maritime extraction that continue legacies of colonial rule. In ... more This episode focuses on modes of maritime extraction that continue legacies of colonial rule. In discussion with Liam Campling we explore some of the legal and economic infrastructures that support and perpetuate forms of pelagic extractivism, such as Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) among others, based on his recent book, co-authored with Alejandro Colás, Capitalism and the Sea: the Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World. As the EU has the third largest fishing fleet in the world, the majority of which belongs to companies registered in Spain, fisheries become a paramount resource to consider. Like most states, the EU approaches marine natural resources using mechanistic lenses such as input/output paradigms. This is exemplified in the usage of the word ‘stock’ to designate populations of fish. Understanding oceanic spaces as resources that can be measured like an inventory exists within a form of marine management which has facilitated the industrial, long-haul fishing responsible for much of today’s overfishing. This episode focuses on the specific tools and agreements that enable overfishing, bringing its logic to the Global South in a gold-rush for resources.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

After developing an understanding of the Berlin Conference’s implications, of the concept of Eura... more After developing an understanding of the Berlin Conference’s implications, of the concept of Eurafrica, and of how the European Integration project was truly founded in the previous episodes, in FRAUD we wanted to understand more about how these structures have continued, and how they have been transformed and institutionalised in contemporary international relations. One fundamental example of this is the Franc of the Financial Community of Africa (CFA). We invited Ndongo Samba Sylla, a development economist at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Dakar (Senegal), who recently co-authored Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story with Fanny Pigeaud (published by Pluto Press), onto the podcast to discuss these issues with us.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

In this episode we consider how the very foundation of the EU was grounded on an extractivist mod... more In this episode we consider how the very foundation of the EU was grounded on an extractivist model. In their book Eurafrica, the Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism, Prof. Peo Hansen and Prof. Stefan Jonsson, debunk the theory of what they refer to as the "Immaculate Conception of the European Union formation", one where a group of benevolent Western European leaders chose to set aside nationalist rivalries to unite for peace, democracy and freedom, to one where the cooperation of European states to no little extent was predicated upon the exploitation of African resources, which could be better accomplished through a coordinated effort.

This institutionalised the colonies' role as purveyors of raw materials. Hansen and Jonsson have summarised it as follows: “Eurafrica is able to make sense both of the political and discursive discontinuity and the infrastructural or economic continuity between the late colonial period and an emerging Neo-colonial globalisation.” This is supported by archival research, foremost into the inter-governmental negotiations that led up to the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, and numerous other sources. As one analyst put it in 1957: “It is in Africa that Europe will be made”.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2021

Through sorcery and extraction, the EURO–VISION series begins with Prof Adekeye Adebajo, Director... more Through sorcery and extraction, the EURO–VISION series begins with Prof Adekeye Adebajo, Director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg. The conversation focuses on the history of extraction between the European and the African continent, which has laid the groundwork for the Critical Raw Materials Initiative to take shape. A key event in this genealogy is the Berlin Conference (1884-85), led by the Chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck, during which plenipotentiaries of fourteen states — none of which were from Africa — assembled to discuss the partition of the African continent. After a century and a half ago this meeting continues to shape Africa's borders today, as well as its governance, its economy, its international relations, and the extraction of its materials. The latter of which is often either towards Europe, or to benefit European-owned companies. Based on Adebajo’s monograph, The Curse of Berlin: Africa after the Cold War, we delve into the extent of von Bismarck's legacy and the significance of this event in contemporary international affairs.

Jesper Eriksson: Coal: Post-fuel, 2018

“Forests, footprints, industry pollution, credits, emissions, animate and non animate alike are m... more “Forests, footprints, industry pollution, credits, emissions, animate and non animate alike are measured and valued in terms of carbon, and their potential to sequester it. In the wake of climate catastrophe, carbon as currency becomes a tool that capitalises in the present upon the uncertainty of the future.”

EURO—VISION: the booklet, 2020

€uro-vision critically charts some of the affective modes of power entangled in surveillance tech... more €uro-vision critically charts some of the affective modes of power entangled in surveillance technology and migrant flows. In doing so, it explores the extractivist gaze of the EU’s migration policy and its inscriptive operations on
territories and bodies at its peripheries.

EURO–VISION: The podcast, 2022

In this EURO–VISION podcast episode, together with Dr Nishat Awan, FRAUD considers how resource d... more In this EURO–VISION podcast episode, together with Dr Nishat Awan, FRAUD considers how resource depletion affects local communities, as well as the wider infrastructures of extraction which they are a part of.

Description
In our last episode, we considered how institutions such as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) are managing the extinction of the bluefin tuna, which is emptying the seas and leading to the forced displacement of fisherfolk, namely, that are traditionally living from the wildlife in those seas. In this episode we consider how this resource depletion affects those communities, as well as the wider infrastructures of extraction which they are a part of. Together with Dr Nishat Awan, who leads the research project Topological Atlas at TU Delft. Topological Atlas produces visual counter-geographies that combine digital mapping and storytelling techniques with a participative approach, attending to those who are at the margins of traditional geopolitical inquiry.

How does erasure execute knowledge production? The following is a tour through a collection of er... more How does erasure execute knowledge production? The following is a tour through a collection of erasure that provides a glimpse into the many directions that this question may take us, through the lens of a series of artistic interventions, academic research, experiments and artefacts. I present these items from a collector’s point of view. For achieving completion of this collection of erasures would be, in the words of Jean Baudrillard, like death. That is to say that the desire to complete the series, to achieve the perfection of its imaginary ending, is that which creates the elusive object of desire. As such, in the same way that a collection can always extend itself laterally, or spark a new one ([1968] 1996, 113), I am presenting it as an object of desire, fuelled by the impetus of neoliberal growth, which can never be complete and will forever expand into new meanings of execution, always towards the elusive erasure of death

Execution is a function that operates within a range of systems, such as language, computation or... more Execution is a function that operates within a range of systems, such as language, computation or biology. This contribution traces a few of these instantiations of execution in order to highlight the materially discursive quality of any particular executing system, with the discussion moving from law and guillotine, language to langue, computer instruction and memory. In each case tracing the way in which execution produces situated posthuman couplings in a dynamic ensemble of such conjugating systems

How does erasure execute knowledge production? The following is a tour through a collection of er... more How does erasure execute knowledge production? The following is a tour through a collection of erasure that provides a glimpse into the many directions that this question may take us, through the lens of a series of artistic interventions, academic research, experiments and artefacts. I present these items from a collector’s point of view. For achieving completion of this collection of erasures would be, in the words of Jean Baudrillard, like death. That is to say that the desire to complete the series, to achieve the perfection of its imaginary ending, is that which creates the elusive object of desire. As such, in the same way that a collection can always extend itself laterally, or spark a new one ([1968] 1996, 113), I am presenting it as an object of desire, fuelled by the impetus of neoliberal growth, which can never be complete and will forever expand into new meanings of execution, always towards the elusive erasure of death

Static Glow refers to the phenomenon by which data persists in the network long after the person ... more Static Glow refers to the phenomenon by which data persists in the network long after the person it relates to is dead. Such as the so-called Facebook ‘ghost profiles’; accounts owned by the deceased that continue to appear in ‘Friends’, ‘Suggestions’, and somewhat more disturbingly, ‘Birthday reminders’. Example: Her static glow still lingers after 4 years. This article discusses the historical context of static glow, as well as its current and future significance

It is commonly understood that execution designates the process by which a computing machine foll... more It is commonly understood that execution designates the process by which a computing machine follows the step-by-step instructions of a program. Yet execution does not happen in a vacuum and is neither deterministic by nature. In this entry we argue that while there might be codes instructing a machine how to execute, the processual unfolding and worldly embeddings in which executing instructions are resolved is nothing but uncertain. In present-day computational cultures and infrastructures, complex relations are effected and effaced within conflations of languages, symbols and meanings with technical, cultural and political desires and decisions. A situation that can be thought of as a continual resolution, composing and rendering of various generative, undecidable, invisible, affective, intersecting and executing uncertainties

Goodnight Sweetheart is an art-led enquiry that investigates how the digital ‘medium’ is redefini... more Goodnight Sweetheart is an art-led enquiry that investigates how the digital ‘medium’ is redefining our relationship to memory. The project has resulted in publications, exhibitions, performances and workshops internationally, reaching audiences of over 20 000. The project explores the interdependence of memory and digital data through rituals of erasure, or digital data funerals. These symbolic acts of erasure points to the quasi impossibility of truly deleting data online and in doing so, to its materiality. These rituals also reimagine the biopolitical relationship to “data”, and as such address the entanglements of body, memory and data. By creating funerals for our data, these ceremonies help us understand our new relationship to data and to define what and how such rituals may be useful. Goodnight Sweetheart was born through an artist residency at Eastern Bloc in Montreal, Canada in 2015. It has continued and further developed through a series of exhibitions (Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland, 2020), ISEA (South Korea, 2019), Stephen Lawrence Gallery (United Kingdom, 2018), esc medien kunst labor (Austria, 2017), Austrian Cultural Forum (United Kingdom, 2017), Never Apart & Centre des arts de Shawinigan (Canada, 2017), Connecting Spaces (Hong Kong, 2015), ADA Mesh Cities (New Zealand, 2015)), workshops (Kunstraum Graz, 2017, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2015, University of the Arts London, 2015, City University of Hong Kong, 2015), publications (book chapters published by: Routledge 2019, Bloomsbury, 2018, Open Humanities Press 2017, Autonomedia, 2016, APRJA, 2015), conference presentations (King’s College London (2017), IT University of Copenhagen (2016), Kingston University (2015), Transmediale (2015)), and funded by the Canada Art Council, the Wellcome Trust, the University of Melbourne (Digital Commemoration research group), and the ACC Asia Culture Center (Gwanju, South Korea). Digital Data funerals were a novel concept (ritual) proposed by the artist in 2015 which have become a matter of concern internationally. The evolving practice has built upon the various exhibitions, workshops, and publications to call attention to the materiality of data and networks, and to thinking through possible new rituals to accommodate this aspect of our digital selves. It has been featured in media outlets such as Radio Canada, Vice magazine, Asia Art Pacific and Die Referentin

This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interac... more This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interact with the remains of the dead, including bodies, materials and digital artefacts. It focuses on how residues of death persist and circulate through different spaces, materials, data and mediated memories, refiguring how the disposal of the dead is understood, enacted and contested across the globe. The volume contains contributions by scholars from a number of disciplines and includes a diverse range of case studies drawn from Asia, Europe and North America. Together they reveal how rapidly changing practices, industries and experiences around death’s remains involve the entwining of digital technologies with other material and ritualised forms of commemoration, as well as with shifting boundaries between the sacred and the profane, the institutional and the vernacular, the public and the private.

We propose that mutated forms of death are emerging with neoliberalism’s biopolitical financialis... more We propose that mutated forms of death are emerging with neoliberalism’s biopolitical financialisation of life. Thinking of such forms as commercial extinction and social death, how do we begin to frame these outside of a quantified rhetoric of surplus? These questions aim to provoke a discussion about these terms that can be interpreted as modes of exhaustion, while maintaining particular biological, social or economic conditions of life. When we are confronted with capitalism’s failure to fulfil resource exhaustion, a model of conservation by dispossession1 might emerge within what Rosi Braidotti calls “new and subtler degrees of death and extinction” (2013, 115). In this text we want to think with other conditions of death and extinction that can help to move beyond the missing item of an inventory, a carved rock along a fossil road or a set of pre-emptive actions to be executed beyond a certain threshold. Thus, we ask if there could be figures, which rather than narrating death ...

Execution is a function that operates within a range of systems, such as language, computation or... more Execution is a function that operates within a range of systems, such as language, computation or biology. This contribution traces a few of these instantiations of execution in order to highlight the materially discursive quality of any particular executing system, with the discussion moving from law and guillotine, language to langue, computer instruction and memory. In each case tracing the way in which execution produces situated posthuman couplings in a dynamic ensemble of such conjugating systems

Static Glow refers to the phenomenon by which data persists in the network long after the person ... more Static Glow refers to the phenomenon by which data persists in the network long after the person it relates to is dead. Such as the so-called Facebook ‘ghost profiles’; accounts owned by the deceased that continue to appear in ‘Friends’, ‘Suggestions’, and somewhat more disturbingly, ‘Birthday reminders’. This paper examines the phenomenon of deceased user's online social life.

This is a fork for FRAUD's wider question regarding Carbon Derivatives in which to explore the li... more This is a fork for FRAUD's wider question regarding Carbon Derivatives in which to explore the live techno-social apprehension of the boreal forests. Carbon Derivatives is an art-led-inquiry into the collusion between extractive and speculative operations. This regime fastens a so called 'financial gaze' upon the northern forests as they emerge as Earth's largest carbon reserve.

Terra Preta / Terra Abstracta introduced the carbon financialization of anthrosols--soils formed from a variety of mechanisms that result in the alteration of earthen and surface materials.

Soil as a cultural object has several examples: Brazil terra preta (or terra preta de indio); Terramare in the central Po valley of Northern Italy; the Chernozem belts of the Eurasian steppe and the Canadian Prairies in Manitoba; or Plaggen soils of the North Sea. These earths called the attention of agrogeologist and agrochemist for their heightened fertility, particularly in forests regions where soils are generally poor--red, oxidized, and so rich in iron and aluminium that often are toxic to low lying plants. The black earth belt in Ukraine and Russia is also thought of being the birthplace most Indo-European languages, excepting Basque, Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Sami, and a few others).

Analyses of Amazonian Dark Earths result in extremely high organic matter content and remarkably enhanced properties, most of which stimulate plant growth. Already in C19th naturalist Herbert H. Smith and geologist Friedrick Katzer argued that the properties of many earths in the lower Amazon region presumed cultural origins. However, the Amazon regions—from the mid-1900s on—were consistently referred as the “counterfeit paradise.” The apparent lushness of the forest existed only because vegetation was extraordinary efficient at nutrient circulation, effectively absorbing almost all traces released from decaying leaves. This abstraction was propped by many American archaeologists, like Betty J. Meggers whose work at the Smithsonian Museum was funded due to its strategic interest for military agencies and the Department of Defence, with covert links to US foreign policy.

These theories were embedded within the colonial paradigm of the Americanist thought the propositions of which reinforced the central aspects of an early archaeology of Brazilian Empire. As 'terra nullius', the Amazon constituted a vastly empty jungle open to occupation and exploitation. The indigenous body constituted “a living fossil, a calcined surface, macerated by degeneration,” classified as culturally inferior, barbarian or primitive, in short: degenerate (Martius). In so doing, these claims legitimized a regime of internal colonialism—a set of apparatuses and logics, usually from and of techno-science, devised by local elites to impose projects of colonization and conquest within a national frontier of natives and their geography.

In Germany, terra-preta™ and terra-mulata™ are registered as protected names or trademarks (registered with the Terra Preta GmbH, headquartered in Berlin). Although they are are the complex intellectual achievements throughout millennia of the Amazonia people, the concepts and expressions terra preta (and terra mulata) are portrayed as products of European creativity. Similarly to Shiva's biopiracy, we see the carbon market--or carbopiracy--as a continuation of imperialistic relations based on "patterns of accumulation" (Krippner 2005, 174).

If Aristotelian Oeconomics claimed the betterment of administration via the separation of economics from politics (housecraft from statecraft), Schmitt's Oeconomos brings a new nomos. It presents a new green (or black) world order based on the ambiguity between the post-fire paradigm of the bio-economy, and Emissions Trading Systems--two (of the) earth(s) prime surface values.

Talk series in which to present FRAUD's research project Carbon Derivatives. It started with the ... more Talk series in which to present FRAUD's research project Carbon Derivatives. It started with the Design Residency whose partners included Helsinki Design Week (HDW) and Aalto University, and it is organised and supported by Helsinki International Artist Program (HIAP) and the British Council.

Carbon Derivatives is an art-led inquiry into the collapse between forestry and financialization. We investigate the genealogy of carbon and its derivatives, from the carbon stored in trees, the lichens that grow on them, its distilled form in pine tar (terva), to fossil fuels and their nancialisation in emission trading systems. This project positions art and design as a radical tool to unfold hegemonic discourses and engender critical thinking.

In the 19th century, forests were conceptualised as large climatic moderators, regulating humidity, rain and rivers. Earlier, forests in continental Europe represented the foundation of political power, from the recreation of state power in ‘royal forests’ (designated hunting grounds for aristocracy), to the contriving of wood shortage through placing restrictions on forest use for financial gain. Congruously, in 1954, Thorsten Streyffert describes the history of forest policy as “the history of growing scarcity of wood”. More recently, contemporary capitalism privileges ow oriented ontologies and network structures. The northern forests are seen as a great cycle of flows, whereby carbon circulation, exchange and storage function as nominal abstractions.

Does understanding the boreal as a space of flows obfuscate embedded histories of cultural conflicts, subaltern knowledges, and environmental violence? In the green economy, a tree is the ultimate siphon between the exhaust of a sweatshop and the IPCC database; the Paimio chair is a sleek apparatus for carbon storage.

This residency took place in May and August-September.
Several stakeholders involved in forest and carbon questions were:

The British Embassy
BIOS/Mustarinda (artistic research group)
LUKE research institute
Aalto University (partners)
Helsinki Foundation (developing a legal model of forest conservation)
Arctic Design
Metsahallitus
Reindeer Herders Association
Snowchange Cooperative (traditional knowledge systems)
Helsinki Contemporary Gallery
Sinne Gallery
University of Lapland
Talo Design
Pilke Science Center
Helsinki University
and The National Archives of Finland

OEI #94-95 Geografier, 2022

Within a wider enquiry into the EU's Critical Raw Materials Initiative, this article explores tou... more Within a wider enquiry into the EU's Critical Raw Materials Initiative, this article explores tourism as a crucible for extraction, and considering how the medicalisation and commodification of the coastline are ushering in a form of toxic wellness. It traces genealogies of circulation through sanitariums, Ling exercises, spas and wellness through the Halland coastline, a geography which wavers between the monstrous and the desirable.

Empathy Revisited: designs for more than one, 2022

The controversial evaluation report of the EU-Morocco Fisheries Partnership Agreement is a damnin... more The controversial evaluation report of the EU-Morocco Fisheries Partnership Agreement is a damning cost-benefit analysis showing that it is cheaper to pay Spanish fishing fleets to remain at port, than to pay for accessing Moroccan fish stocks. In addition, this report is classified, thus only accessible to members of the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee under extremely restrictive circumstances: in the French language only, in a room accessible to one person at a time, without phone, translator, assistant or notepad.