BodyBuilding: A Platform in Transition

BodyBuilding: A Platform in Transition
Name BodyBuilding: A Platform in Transition
Location The Internet
Date 2020/06/24
Time 19:30
PeopleOrganisations Hackers & Designers, The Underground Division, Helen Pritchard, Femke Snelting, Jara Rocha
Type Exhibition
Web Yes
Print No

Under-platform.jpg

On 24th of June 2020 Hackers & Designers (H&D) will launch their online platform — a website dedicated to publishing works from the BodyBuilding exhibition. BodyBuilding was a process-driven exhibition curated by H&D, with the aim to investigate the intersection of technology and the agency of the (human, post-human, trans-human, non-human) body from a maker's perspective. The physical and interactive structure, through which visitors were able to move, view, experience, and interact with the different artworks was on view only for a short duration due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Join us at 19.30 on our self-built streaming platform: live.hackersanddesigners.nl for a conversation together with The Underground Division (Helen Pritchard, Femke Snelting, and Jara Rocha) about the ROCK REPO — questioning inhuman materialities and how they matter [in] the world, the crushing exploitations and extractions of normative 3D processes of geocomputation, and the act of translating between the 'physical' and the 'digital'. In addition to our conversations, we'll also listen together to a new sound recording of 'Ultrasonic dreams of aclinical renderings' by The Underground Division, made in collaboration with Katrina Burch. And finally, we'll end with a talk by Anja Groten on the notion of the platform and platformization.

The audience will be able to join in the conversation via the chat.

With this website launch, and accompanying online event, H&D aims to translate the physical installation at Tetem into a digital space — taking the occasion to discuss digital platforms and hosting initiatives that currently gain a lot of attention. The event will pay attention to self-hosted video streaming and live video chat possibilities, as well as less conventional formats for online encounter, and invites the audience to join the discussion about the importance of challenging proprietary, commercial platforms such as Zoom, Teams and Google Hangouts that exploit users' reliances on communication infrastructures in times of crisis.

H&D is an initiative that promotes the importance of physical encounters for community building, making friends and allies through processes of DIY making. H&D sees the need for continuity, solidarity, and for sharing works developed during the exhibition. While no longer able to meet together in a physical space, this online event is organised as a way to continue the conversation with our collaborators and a wider audience about the platform function of H&D and digital platforms that can have enabling but also limiting effect on user participation. As a way to question how we deal with these modes of translation, from the physical to the digital, we want to expand the experience of building a physical support structure for the exhibition at Tetem into the digital realm.