jonathan kemp

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**What relations are there between computing and the earth?**

**If the dominance and execution of computing frames life and all modes of 
existence, can computing in any way be claimed to be rational?**

A panel of respondents have been invited to discuss these questions in the 
light of the (human) destructive distortion/depletion of the earth's 
resources through their extraction, use, and return as toxic residue?

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**Confirmed Respondents**:

Jamie Allen

Connie Mendoza

**Potential respondents (rough list):**

pete wolfendale (can't remember if another accelerationist)

erich berger

robin mackay

will scrimshaw

collapse geo-logging edition (V)

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Taking Care of Things! – The Life-Cycles of Archives, Old and New.

– co-organized by: Post-Media Lab and 'Habits of Living'
– planned for: January 15th-17th, 2014
– where: PML/CDC, Lüneburg, Germany

Keywords: Objects, Things, Care, Non-Archives, Life Cycles, Repository, Circulation, Collective Reference, Preservation, Historical Material, Socialisation, Media, Media Archeology, Commodities, life, Time, Library, Encyclopedia,

Concept Note (draft)

The digital condition and ubiquitous, real-time networks have produced a break with the logic of the archive as a neatly organized, placed and curated set of conserved objects. From the perspective of current theoretical approaches – from Deconstruction to Media Archeology, from Post-Media thinking to Actor Network Theory – none grant the figure of the ‘archive’ central  status anymore. The life-cycle of the archive as we knew it seems to have ended  under the assault of digital media technologies, not least because they – as networks and assemblages of continuous operation– escape archivability. But is the function of the archive dispersed for good,  or just reconfiguring? It seems big-data farms and server-centres are following in the footsteps of the archive, inheriting its function of cultural transmission, regulation and processing. But where the old archive was built on the 'datum' as a given entity defined by and locked into certain physical confinements by specialized custodians, nowadays all data storage is immediately transmitted by a myriad of digital devices. 'No data without transmission', seems to be the slogan of the present time.

As the static, broadcast mode of mass-media is being relativised, old media archives – alongside the administrative ones – are also being rivaled, contested and supplemented by millions of bastard archives, both casual (virtual picture and video museums in every pocket, on every hard-disk) and professional (Google Earth in every second report, an Apple ID as required for local registration). With media operators everywhere, cultural archives spill over into the archipelagos of the everyday, contesting ownership and representation linked to central repositories. So, even in the age of 24/7-recording, continuous live-streaming, non-stop surveillance etc., this data – and its 'information'! – either is, or ought to be, taken care of. But by whom? If the archive still lingers on: who? - which custodian subjects or collectives?; or, what? - which technical, social or cultural protocols and filters? ... are displacing the old gatekeepers and registrars of the archive?

And there is no denying that the base has broadened, the scope widened: Archiving these days, it seems, is shaped into our habits (like our own life-logging) – as our habits are archived as well. At the same time the concern of  collecting and preserving – the archival impulse – is increasingly confronted  with an acceleration of multiplying life-cycles in the natureculture environments. Preserving life has become the task of techno-politics, of gene banks, organ donation centres, in short: the cybernetic care industry. Where archives meet human and other life anew as biotechnology in its widest possible sense, issues and questions are raised: How do things and (living) bodies relate anew? What counts as a living thing in the new registries? What are the ethics of the new archives? And what does it mean to really 'care'?  Meanwhile, the bio-archives that we are turned into are products as well as symptoms of an efficient logistics: there are standing arsenals of weaponry, database-technologies for hunting down the resisting, and log books full of synthetic chemicals and 'materials', archived in commodity depots around the world. Furthermore, the earth beneath our feet is declared a geological archive for resources, its 'diversity' catalogued, speculated on and enshrined for the future productivity of techno-capitalism. Meanwhile we are constantly reminded of the fact that our cultural "hardware", the inventory streams of material civilization – our cities, swimming plastic islands and atomic waste, not to mention embodied life as the ultimate un-archivable entity – are in ever growing need of being taken care of, to be screened and kept a cautious eye on. Are we taking care of our technologically mediated environments? Is it perhaps, rather, that this new environment is 'taking care' of us? Do we become addresses and items in the ‘internet of things’, logistical objects in a cybernetic or managerial dream world?

In this medial and cultural set-up new (kinds of) archives seem to crop up everywhere, accelerated by the new means of production and distribution. Cultural repertoires are being remixed, giving new life to almost forgotten relics. Ever more things, valuables, processes, projects, constituencies, even movements, need to be 'taken care of'. Alongside the archetype of the archive, culture is thus re-formatted, caught in the new triangulations of data, information, reference and knowledge. It is not only cultural and critical theory that is being challenged thereby, but also law, the natural sciences and design, alongside other applied sciences. So what are the complex dynamics in which these new (non-)archives find themselves? Do they really make sense? And if so, by and for whom? In this new situation, should we still care about 'the archive' or rather move on... ?

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jonathan kemp

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