The Participatory Condition (#PCond)
An international colloquium hosted by Media@不良研究所
Since the late 1990s, contemporary societies have been increasingly mobilized by the relational principle of 鈥減articipation.鈥� Participation is not only a notion and a set of practices, but also a promise, a belief, a rhetoric, a form of distribution of power, a way of being actively involved with others in decision-making processes that potentially affect the direction and operation of communities, systems and organizations, politics and culture. Its contemporary expansion is manifest in the variety of fields it embraces, including: participative democracy; citizenship; governance; journalism (the collection, analysis and dissemination of news and information); everyday communication; commerce; labor; education; the formation of online communities; urban planning; design; videogaming and virtual game worlds; the culture of curating; and art. Of crucial interest for Media@不良研究所, this expansion has been facilitated by the development of social media technologies (internet forums, blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc.) and new interactive media devices, which favor participatory forms of communication鈥攆orms that support open access to information and allow participants to create, generate and exchange information in virtual communities, networks, and cultural co-productions. Hacktivism is the political practice par excellence of participatory politics in the age of the internet鈥攁 practice in which traffic can be redirected from one website to another, or websites defaced鈥攕hifting or interrupting, as it were, the 鈥渇low鈥� of information.
The participatory impulse rests on the overarching expectation that participation empowers individuals, creates stronger communities and fulfills the ideals of representative democracy; that it secures the circulation of information and enhances decision-making processes by enabling the sharing of these processes between rulers and citizens, producers, spectators and users. But debates around participation and the actual unfolding of participatory practices show this assumption to be partway problematic. Because of its expansion as a relational principle, it might well have become a grand narrative that in fact hegemonizes participatory approaches instead of favoring heterogeneity (e.g., the diversity of positions and identity groups). It is imperative to examine the degree to which participation truly functions as a modality of change in contemporary society鈥攁 context in which participation is now so widespread that it seems to be more of a requirement than a choice. Has participation become 鈥渁 new tyranny鈥� (Cooke and Kothari, 2001)?
This is to say that the very media structures that enable participation risk overshadowing important questions related to the value of participation, the possible conformism it generates, as well as its ethical challenges and unforeseen consequences. For instance, does the contemporary imperative of participation deny the citizen鈥檚 and the spectator鈥檚 right not to participate and stay passive (Carpentier, 2011)? And how is surveillance鈥攁 practice enabled and sustained by new media technologies鈥攊mpacting participation (Andrejevic, 2007)? What is the right balance between open access and privacy (J贸nsd贸ttir, 2013; Cohen, 2012)? To what extent is participation making us better thinkers (Hayles, 2012) or increasing our 鈥渟tupidity鈥� (Stiegler, 2011)? How is participation affecting our understanding of knowledge, democracy, intimacy and subjectivity (Crawford, 2012)? Although participation is a decision-making process, and sometimes an activist process by which political regimes can be questioned and even dismantled (Cammaerts, 2012), can it not also be considered as a new aesthetics (Frieling 2008; Dezeuze, 2010; Bishop, 2012)? What would be the perceptual, sensorial and affective textures of this aesthetics? These questions are at the center of The Participatory Condition, a two-day colloquium organized by Media@不良研究所, whose main objective is to assess the role of media in the development of a principle whose expansion has become so large as to become the condition of our contemporaneity.
The Participatory Condition scrutinizes the very idea of participation in the digital age, from our face-to-face encounters with beings and technologies, to the experiences we share as users, publics and producers, in the flesh and online. Like many of the new technologies that preceded it, from the telegraph to the telephone and the Internet, some have seen the 鈥減articipatory web鈥� as a tool for collective empowerment (Jenkins et al, 2006). While cyber-optimists project increased democratic representation and the levelling of social inequities thanks to the features of the interactive web, cyber-skeptics question the extent to which virtual participation corresponds to more tangible forms of political engagement (Morozov, 2012). Recent scholarship moreover confirms that digital divides or 鈥減articipation gaps鈥� hold strong, prompting us to interrogate the truly participatory nature of mobile, interactive, and social media.
Consistent with Media@不良研究所鈥檚 focus on in 2013-14, the colloquium The Participatory Condition addresses the history, problems and possibilities of participatory media: for instance, how the practices of the Internet may or may not have changed contemporary practices of citizenship; how participatory media negotiate with surveillance and data-collecting devices that are embedded within the very media that enable participation; and finally, how participatory processes are increasingly expected across the fields of art, design, social sciences, journalism and media, as well as computing.
Drawing from research in the fields of design, cognitive sciences, art, education, law, literature, gaming, and media studies, The Participatory Condition examines the relationships between diverse technological platforms that enable interactivity, the promise of participation they appear to imply, and the nature of the actual exchanges that are derived from their uses. Particular attention is also paid to the modes by which contemporary media transform our practices, as well as our thinking. At the root of our investigation is a questioning of the inherent participatory nature that is often attributed to emerging media, and a cautioning as to what other forms of participation might be obscured by promises of a digital utopia.
Keynote presentations:
N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Antimodular Research
Bernard Stiegler, Institut de Recherche et d鈥橧nnovation, Centre Georges Pompidou
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Confirmed speakers:
Bart Cammaerts, London School of Economics
Nico Carpentier, Free University Brussels
Julie Cohen, Georgetown Law
Mia Consalvo, Concordia University
Kate Crawford, Microsoft Research
Christina Dunbar-Hester, Rutgers University
Rudolf Frieling, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Jason Lewis and Skawennati, Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace
Birgitta J贸nsd贸ttir, M.P., Iceland
Geert Lovink, Institute of Network Cultures
Graham Pullin, University of Dundee
Trebor Scholz, The New School
Christopher Soghoian, American Civil Liberties Union
T. L. Taylor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jillian York, Electronic Frontier Foundation
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Colloquium committee:
Darin Barney, Gabriella Coleman, Christine Ross, Jonathan Sterne, Tamar Tembeck
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Partners:
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Mus茅e d鈥橝rt Contemporain de Montr茅al
Department of Art History and Communication Studies, 不良研究所
Canada Research Chair in Technology & Citizenship, 不良研究所
James 不良研究所 Chair in Contemporary Art History, 不良研究所
Wolfe Chair in Scientific & Technological Literacy, 不良研究所
Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, 不良研究所
Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, 不良研究所
Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, 不良研究所
不良研究所 Institute for the Study of Canada
Hexagram-Concordia, Concordia University