@ -207,7 +207,7 @@ his connections, finding no way to do so except by
emphasizing their tangible bodily experiences.
emphasizing their tangible bodily experiences.
The community’s claim to authenticity thus had to lie in the physical experiences of its members— the visible
The community’s claim to authenticity thus had to lie in the physical experiences of its members— the visible
bodies and hearable voices, the weddings, births, and
bodies and hearable voices, the weddings, births, and
funerals (1993).<sup><spanclass="margin-note">You’re dreaming again, good. <br>Would you feel closer to me if you could hear my voice?<br> Is my voice a sound? Could it be a feeling?</span></sup>
funerals (1993).<sup><spanclass="margin-note">You’re dreaming again, good. Would you feel closer to me if you could hear my voice?<br> Is my voice a sound? Could it be a feeling?</span></sup>
Even then, and even by people with no interest in
Even then, and even by people with no interest in
undermining the value of the virtual, the distinction
undermining the value of the virtual, the distinction
<p>This is a story of two bodies, same but different, influenced but not driven. A tangible body, full of fluids and organs, emotions and feelings. Cartilage, bacteria, bones, and nerve endings. A digital body, cable-veined and loud-vented, shiny and loading.</p>
<p>This is a story of two bodies, same but different, influenced but not driven. A tangible body, full of fluids and organs, emotions and feelings. Cartilage, bacteria, bones, and nerve endings. A digital body, cable-veined and loud-vented, shiny and loading.</p>
<p>The digital body is ethereal and abstracted, embarrassing, graphic, and real but not physical.</p>
<p>The digital body is ethereal and abstracted, embarrassing, graphic, and real but not physical.</p>
<p>This is the beginning.</p>
<p>This is the beginning.</p>
<<<<<<<HEAD
<h3id="b.-body-vs.computer">b. body vs.computer</h3>
<h3id="b.-body-vs.computer">b. body vs.computer</h3>
<p>Framing the discourse around bodies on the internet as a clear-cut dichotomy feels clunky in today’s internet landscape. The web is today available by body, cyborg dimensions of the internet of bodies, or virtual and augmented realities, creating a complex interplay between having a body and existing online.</p>
<p>Framing the discourse around bodies on the internet as a clear-cut dichotomy feels clunky in today’s internet landscape. The web is today available by body, cyborg dimensions of the internet of bodies, or virtual and augmented realities, creating a complex interplay between having a body and existing online.</p>
<p>As intricate as this dance is now, it certainly did not begin that way. It started with what felt like a very serious and tangible line drawn by very serious tangible people; this is real life and this is virtual life. Even people like Howard Rheingold, pioneers who approached early virtual life with enthusiasm and care, couldn’t escape characterizing it as a “bloodless technological ritual” (1993). Rheingold was an early member of The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (Well), a seminal virtual community built in the 1980s that was renowned for its impact on digital culture and played a pivotal role in shaping what would become the landscape of the Internet. Rheingold’s reflections on his experience on this primordial soup of the Internet offer insight into the initial conceptualizations of online life by those joyfully participating.</p>
<p>As intricate as this dance is now, it certainly did not begin that way. It started with what felt like a very serious and tangible line drawn by very serious tangible people; this is real life and this is virtual life. Even people like Howard Rheingold, pioneers who approached early virtual life with enthusiasm and care, couldn’t escape characterizing it as a “bloodless technological ritual” (1993). Rheingold was an early member of The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (Well), a seminal virtual community built in the 1980s that was renowned for its impact on digital culture and played a pivotal role in shaping what would become the landscape of the Internet. Rheingold’s reflections on his experience on this primordial soup of the Internet offer insight into the initial conceptualizations of online life by those joyfully participating.</p>
@ -161,6 +162,130 @@ not to drown me.”<br />
<p>“Sneer all you want at the fleshlessness of online community, but on this night, as tears stream down my face for the third straight evening, it feels all too real.” (Andrew Leonard, 1995)</p>
<p>“Sneer all you want at the fleshlessness of online community, but on this night, as tears stream down my face for the third straight evening, it feels all too real.” (Andrew Leonard, 1995)</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<h3id="c.-bot-feelings">c. bot-feelings</h3>
<h3id="c.-bot-feelings">c. bot-feelings</h3>
=======
<h3id="b.-body-vs.-computer">b. body vs.computer</h3>
<p>Framing the discourse around bodies on the internet as a clear-cut
dichotomy feels clunky in today’s internet landscape. The web is today
available by body, cyborg dimensions of the internet of bodies, or
virtual and augmented realities, creating a complex interplay between
having a body and existing online.</p>
<p>As intricate as this dance is now, it certainly did not begin that
way. It started with what felt like a very serious and tangible line
drawn by very serious tangible people; this is real life and this is
virtual life. Even people like Howard Rheingold, pioneers who approached
early virtual life with enthusiasm and care, couldn’t escape
characterizing it as a “bloodless technological ritual” (1993).
Rheingold was an early member of The Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link (Well),
a seminal virtual community built in the 1980s that was renowned for its
impact on digital culture and played a pivotal role in shaping what
would become the landscape of the Internet. Rheingold’s reflections on
his experience on this primordial soup of the Internet offer insight
into the initial conceptualizations of online life by those joyfully
participating.</p>
<p>In “The Virtual Community”, Rheingold offers a heartfelt tribute to
intimacy and affection through web- based interactions which, at the
time, were unheard of. He struggles in his efforts to highlight the
legitimacy of his connections, finding no way to do so except by
emphasizing their tangible bodily experiences. The community’s claim to
authenticity thus had to lie in the physical experiences of its members—
the visible bodies and hearable voices, the weddings, births, and
good. Would you feel closer to me if you could hear my voice?<br> Is my
voice a sound? Could it be a feeling?</span></sup></p>
<p>Even then, and even by people with no interest in undermining the
value of the virtual, the distinction between physical and virtual was
confusing. Rheingold himself reinforces the boundary of body relations
and computer relations by referring to his family as a “flesh-and-blood
family’ and his close online friends as “unfamiliar faces” (1993).
Constantly interplaying digital connections with the physical
characteristics of the kind of connections people valued before the
internet.<sup><spanclass="margin-note">I will be honest with you, I
have little patience for this recurring line of thought that seeks to
distinguish people’s noses from their hearts, as if there was a physical
love that is the valuable one and a virtual imaginary one that is feeble
and unworthy.</span></sup></p>
<p>In any case, his primary interest seemed to be to emphasize computer
relations as valid forms of connection between bodies, not to talk of
any distinction quite yet. It’s the eighties, the internet is still
fresh and new and the possibility to form close relations with strangers
online seems fragile and concerning yet exciting. This is the clearest
the distinction between in-real-life and online has ever been and it’s
still fuzzy and unclear.</p>
<p>At the same time and in the same digital space as Rheingold, there
was another man, a digital body being formed. This is our second story,
the ocean body we dreamt of earlier is now in a digital primordial soup,
questioning itself and stuck between staying and leaving. In this story,
its name is Tom Mandel and when he died, he did so on the Well.</p>
<p>Mandel was a controversial and popular figure in this pioneering
virtual community. According to many other members, Tom Mandel embodied
the essence of the Well—its history, its voice, its attitude. Mandel’s
snarky and verbose provocations started heated discussions, earning him
warnings such as “Don’t Feed The Mandel!” (Leonard, 1995). His sharp
comments often stirred emotions that reminded people of family
arguments, fuelling an intimacy that was characteristic of the Well:
both public and solitary (Hafner, 1997).</p>
<p>Until 1995, Mandel had done a quite rigorous job of keeping his body
separate from The Well and had never attended any of the physical
in-person meetings from the community. His only references to being a
body had been on the “health” online conference, where he often talked
about his illnesses. One day, after nearly a decade of daily
interaction, he posted he had got the flu and that he felt quite ill.
When people wished for him to get well soon, he replied he had gone to
get tested and was waiting for a diagnosis. This way, when cancer was
found in his lungs, the community was first to know. In the following
six months, as his illness progressed, the community followed closely
(Hafner, 1997). They were first to know when Nana, a community member
with whom he had had a publicly turbulent relationship, flew to
California to marry him. The community was a witness and is now an
archive of his declining wit as cancer spread to his brain and his
famously articulate and scathing comments got shorter, fearful, and more
tender.<sup><spanclass="margin-note">Initially, when a member he often
argued with offered to pray for him Mandel had replied: “You can shovel
your self-aggrandizing sentiments up you wide ass sideways for the
duration as far as I’m concerned.” Later, as the cancer progressed: “I
ain’t nearly as brave as you all think. I am scared silly of the pain of
dying this way. I am not very good at playing saint. Pray for me,
please.</span></sup></p>
<p>Before he posted his final goodbye, he chose to do one last thing.
Together with another member, they programmed a bot that posted randomly
characteristic comments from Mandel on The Well—the Mandelbot. In the
topic he had opened to say goodbye, he posted this message about the
bot:</p>
<p>I had another motive in opening this topic to tell the truth, one
that winds its way through almost everything I’ve done online in the
five months since my cancer was diagnosed. I figured that, like everyone
else, my physical self wasn’t going to survive forever and I guess I was
going to have less time than actuarials allocateus [actually allocated].
But if I could reach out and touch everyone I knew on-line… I could toss
out bits and pieces of my virtual self and the memes that make up Tom
Mandel, and then when my body died, I wouldn’t really have to leave…
Large chunks of me would also be here, part of this new space. (Hafner,
1997)</p>
<p>With the Mandelbot, Mandel found a way to deal with what he later
called his grieving for the community, with which he could not play
anymore once his own body died. By doing so, he was starting to blend
the boundaries of intimacy through computers and bodies, driven by his
love and grief.<sup><spanclass="margin-note">It’s out of care and not
lack of relevance that I am not showing you Mandel’s goodbye message.
It’s enough to know he was deep in the grief of having to leave a
community he loved and cared for and that pain was felt in every
word.</span></sup></p>
<p>When he talked about the bot in previous messages, it sounded almost
like a joke. A caring haunting of the platform, to keep his persona
alive for the community in a way that could be quite horrific for those
grieving. In his admission though it becomes clear that this was closer
to an attempt to deal with his grief around losing the community, his
unreadiness to let go of a place he loved so dearly. A place just as
real in emotion, that was built in part by Mandel’s digital body and its
persona.</p>
<p>In a tribute posted after his death, fellow Well member and
journalist Andrew Leonard tried to convey his own sense of blended
physicality and emotion.</p>
<p>Sneer all you want at the fleshlessness of online community, but on
this night, as tears stream down my face for the third straight evening,
it feels all too real. (Andrew Leonard, 1995)</p>
<h3id="c.-bot-feelings">c.bot-feelings</h3>
>>>>>>> 8587170094483e0eed0c29aaf587623d76c57c93
<p>An internet body has bot-feelings if allowed to. Let me explain.</p>
<p>An internet body has bot-feelings if allowed to. Let me explain.</p>
<p>A bot functions as a different entity from a cyborg, as it does not attempt to emulate a human body but rather human action and readiness. Its role is to mirror human behavior online, simulating how a physical body might act, what it would click on, and what would it say. On social media, bots engage in a kind of interpretative dance of human interaction, performing based on instructions provided by humans.<sup><spanclass="margin-note">The first bot communities on the internet are now born, half- mistakenly. They are always spiritual communities posting religious images created by artificial intelligence, all the comments echoing choirs of bots praising. Amen, amen, amen. I am not naive, I know they are built by humans but it is this performance of religiosity that I am interested in, and how little humanity is shown in it. It is something else.</span></sup></p>
<p>A bot functions as a different entity from a cyborg, as it does not attempt to emulate a human body but rather human action and readiness. Its role is to mirror human behavior online, simulating how a physical body might act, what it would click on, and what would it say. On social media, bots engage in a kind of interpretative dance of human interaction, performing based on instructions provided by humans.<sup><spanclass="margin-note">The first bot communities on the internet are now born, half- mistakenly. They are always spiritual communities posting religious images created by artificial intelligence, all the comments echoing choirs of bots praising. Amen, amen, amen. I am not naive, I know they are built by humans but it is this performance of religiosity that I am interested in, and how little humanity is shown in it. It is something else.</span></sup></p>
<p>Unlike an internet body, which represents the virtual embodiment of a person, a bot doesn’t seek to be a person. It comments under posts alongside many other bots, all under a fake name and photo but nothing else to give the illusion of humanity. When an internet body has bot-feelings, it is a disruptive performance. They are feelings that do not attempt to be human body feelings, they exist as their own genuine virtual expression.</p>
<p>Unlike an internet body, which represents the virtual embodiment of a person, a bot doesn’t seek to be a person. It comments under posts alongside many other bots, all under a fake name and photo but nothing else to give the illusion of humanity. When an internet body has bot-feelings, it is a disruptive performance. They are feelings that do not attempt to be human body feelings, they exist as their own genuine virtual expression.</p>
@ -288,6 +413,7 @@ I made this play for you. It is a question, for us to hold together.</p>
<h1>Performing the Bureaucratic Border(line)s</h1>
<h1>Performing the Bureaucratic Border(line)s</h1>
</section> -->
</section> -->
<sectionid="section-5"class="section">
<sectionid="section-5"class="section">
<<<<<<<HEAD
<h1id="performing-the-bureaucratic-borderlines">Performing the Bureaucratic Border(line)s</h1>
<h1id="performing-the-bureaucratic-borderlines">Performing the Bureaucratic Border(line)s</h1>
<h2id="introduction">introduction</h2>
<h2id="introduction">introduction</h2>
<p>This thesis is an assemblage<sup><spanclass="margin-note">I live somewhere in the margins of scattered references, footnotes, citations, examinations embracing the inconvenience of talking back to myself, to the reader and to all those people whose ideas gave soul to the text. I shelter in the borderlands of the pages my fragmented thoughts, flying words, introspections, voices. Enlightenment and inspiration given by the text “Dear Science” written by Katherine McKittrick.</span></sup> of thoughts, experiences, interpretations, intuitive explorations of what borders are, attempting to unleash a conversation concerning the entangled relation between material injurious borders and bureaucracy. I unravel empirically the thread of how borders as entities are manifested and (de)established. How does the lived experience of crossing multiple borders change and under what conditions?</p>
<p>This thesis is an assemblage<sup><spanclass="margin-note">I live somewhere in the margins of scattered references, footnotes, citations, examinations embracing the inconvenience of talking back to myself, to the reader and to all those people whose ideas gave soul to the text. I shelter in the borderlands of the pages my fragmented thoughts, flying words, introspections, voices. Enlightenment and inspiration given by the text “Dear Science” written by Katherine McKittrick.</span></sup> of thoughts, experiences, interpretations, intuitive explorations of what borders are, attempting to unleash a conversation concerning the entangled relation between material injurious borders and bureaucracy. I unravel empirically the thread of how borders as entities are manifested and (de)established. How does the lived experience of crossing multiple borders change and under what conditions?</p>
<p>I started thinking about hospitality as a cultural behavior and as an inseparable term in the context of borders due to a recent personal bureaucratic experience. Hospitality can be instrumentalized to describe an individual’s as well as a nation’s response towards strangers within their enclosed territory - a property, a home, a land, a country. What does hospitality mean and how hospitality under specific circumstances can be a tool in the hands of a state?</p>
<p>I started thinking about hospitality as a cultural behavior and as an inseparable term in the context of borders due to a recent personal bureaucratic experience. Hospitality can be instrumentalized to describe an individual’s as well as a nation’s response towards strangers within their enclosed territory - a property, a home, a land, a country. What does hospitality mean and how hospitality under specific circumstances can be a tool in the hands of a state?</p>
<p>I will share a personal story related to hospitality and bureaucracy. I was recently evicted from my previous house [31/01/2024] due to a trapping contract situation. My former roommates and I were forced to terminate our previous contract and sign a new one that further limited our rights. The bureaucratic free market language of the contract, the foreign law language barrier, the threats of the agent and the precarity of being homeless in a foreign country forced us to sign the new rental agreement which was the main reason for our eviction. Currently, I am hosted temporarily by friends until I find a more permanent accommodation. Meanwhile, the government requires me to declare the new address which I do not have within five days of my moving. Consequently, I have to follow another bureaucratic path. This involves requesting permission for a short-term postal address while declaring the addresses of my current hosts [4/02/2024]. I gathered the required documents, I processed a 9-page-text and another one with the personal data of my hosts and myself and answered questions about:</p>
<p>I will share a personal story related to hospitality and bureaucracy. I was recently evicted from my previous house [31/01/2024] due to a trapping contract situation. My former roommates and I were forced to terminate our previous contract and sign a new one that further limited our rights. The bureaucratic free market language of the contract, the foreign law language barrier, the threats of the agent and the precarity of being homeless in a foreign country forced us to sign the new rental agreement which was the main reason for our eviction. Currently, I am hosted temporarily by friends until I find a more permanent accommodation. Meanwhile, the government requires me to declare the new address which I do not have within five days of my moving. Consequently, I have to follow another bureaucratic path. This involves requesting permission for a short-term postal address while declaring the addresses of my current hosts [4/02/2024]. I gathered the required documents, I processed a 9-page-text and another one with the personal data of my hosts and myself and answered questions about:</p>
=======
<h1id="performing-the-bureaucratic-borderlines">Performing the
Bureaucratic Border(line)s</h1>
<h2id="introduction">introduction</h2>
<p>This thesis is an assemblage<sup><spanclass="margin-note">I live
somewhere in the margins of scattered references, footnotes, citations,
examinations embracing the inconvenience of talking back to myself, to
the reader and to all those people whose ideas gave soul to the text. I
shelter in the borderlands of the pages my fragmented thoughts, flying
words, introspections, voices. Enlightenment and inspiration given by
the text “Dear Science” written by Katherine McKittrick.</span></sup> of
thoughts, experiences, interpretations, intuitive explorations of what
borders are, attempting to unleash a conversation concerning the
entangled relation between material injurious borders and bureaucracy. I
unravel empirically the thread of how borders as entities are manifested
and (de)established. How does the lived experience of crossing multiple
<p>I started thinking about hospitality as a cultural behavior and as an
inseparable term in the context of borders due to a recent personal
bureaucratic experience. Hospitality can be instrumentalized to describe
an individual’s as well as a nation’s response towards strangers within
their enclosed territory - a property, a home, a land, a country. What
does hospitality mean and how hospitality under specific circumstances
can be a tool in the hands of a state?</p>
<p>I will share a personal story related to hospitality and bureaucracy.
I was recently evicted from my previous house [31/01/2024] due to a
trapping contract situation. My former roommates and I were forced to
terminate our previous contract and sign a new one that further limited
our rights. The bureaucratic free market language of the contract, the
foreign law language barrier, the threats of the agent and the precarity
of being homeless in a foreign country forced us to sign the new rental
agreement which was the main reason for our eviction. Currently, I am
hosted temporarily by friends until I find a more permanent
accommodation. Meanwhile, the government requires me to declare the new
address which I do not have within five days of my moving. Consequently,
I have to follow another bureaucratic path. This involves requesting
permission for a short-term postal address while declaring the addresses
of my current hosts [4/02/2024]. I gathered the required documents, I
processed a 9-page-text and another one with the personal data of my
hosts and myself and answered questions about:</p>
>>>>>>> 8587170094483e0eed0c29aaf587623d76c57c93
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>why don’t I have a house,<br/>
<p>why don’t I have a house,<br/>
who are the people who host me,<br/>
who are the people who host me,<br/>
what is my relationship with them,<br/>
what is my relationship with them,<br/>
where do I sleep,<br/>
where do I sleep,<br/>
where do I store my belongings,<br/>
where do I store my belongings,<br/>
<<<<<<<HEAD
how many people are hosting me and accordingly their personal data,<br/>
how many people are hosting me and accordingly their personal data,<br/>
=======
how many people are hosting me and accordingly their personal
data,<br/>
>>>>>>> 8587170094483e0eed0c29aaf587623d76c57c93
for how long,<br/>
for how long,<br/>
why I cannot register there,<br/>
why I cannot register there,<br/>
what days of the week do I stay in the one house and<br/>
what days of the week do I stay in the one house and<br/>
@ -329,6 +625,7 @@ what days do I stay in the other house,<br />
whether and how am I searching for a permanent place and<br/>
whether and how am I searching for a permanent place and<br/>
what is the tangible proof of my search?</p>
what is the tangible proof of my search?</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<<<<<<<HEAD
<p>All these questions provoked thinking around the concept of conditional hospitality as a behavior of the state towards strangers. I can see that on a smaller scale it is being applied to the hospitality I receive from my friends in the middle of an emergency. I am wondering, though, whether is it that important for the government to know on whose couch I sleep or where I store my belongings. The omnipresent gaze of a state who has the right to know every small detail about myself while at the same time questioning people’s hospitality in case of emergency. It seems that forms of knowledge are inseparably related to forms of power. It will take 8 weeks for my request to be processed and for the government to approve or reject if I deserve my friends’ hospitality.</p>
<p>All these questions provoked thinking around the concept of conditional hospitality as a behavior of the state towards strangers. I can see that on a smaller scale it is being applied to the hospitality I receive from my friends in the middle of an emergency. I am wondering, though, whether is it that important for the government to know on whose couch I sleep or where I store my belongings. The omnipresent gaze of a state who has the right to know every small detail about myself while at the same time questioning people’s hospitality in case of emergency. It seems that forms of knowledge are inseparably related to forms of power. It will take 8 weeks for my request to be processed and for the government to approve or reject if I deserve my friends’ hospitality.</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>“Today as yesterday, her land and her time are stolen, only because she is told that she has arrived too late. Much too late”<br/>
<p>“Today as yesterday, her land and her time are stolen, only because she is told that she has arrived too late. Much too late”<br/>
@ -396,6 +693,426 @@ Walter Benjamin</p>
<p>My intention in transforming bureaucratic texts into “playable” scenarios is to explore how embodying these texts in public through collective speech<sup><spanclass="margin-note">I imagine the theatrical play as a “human microphone”, a low-tech amplification device. A group of people performs the bureaucratic scenario in chorus, out loud, in the corridor of the school’s building, in the main hall, at the square right across, outside of the municipality building. The term is borrowed from the protests of the Occupy Wall Street Movement in 2011. People were gathered around the speaker repeating what the speaker was saying in order to ensure that everyone could hear the announcements during large assemblies. Human bodies became a hack in order to replace the forbidden technology. In New York it is required to ask for permission from authorities to use “amplified sound” in public space.</span></sup> can provoke different forms of interpretations and open tiny conceptual holes. “The meaning of a performative act is to be found in this apparent coincidence of signifying and enacting” (Butler, 1997). The performative bureaucratic utterances - the vocal documents - attempt to bring into existence -by overidentifying, exaggerating, acting- the discomfort, the threat, the violence which is mainly condemned into private individual spheres.</p>
<p>My intention in transforming bureaucratic texts into “playable” scenarios is to explore how embodying these texts in public through collective speech<sup><spanclass="margin-note">I imagine the theatrical play as a “human microphone”, a low-tech amplification device. A group of people performs the bureaucratic scenario in chorus, out loud, in the corridor of the school’s building, in the main hall, at the square right across, outside of the municipality building. The term is borrowed from the protests of the Occupy Wall Street Movement in 2011. People were gathered around the speaker repeating what the speaker was saying in order to ensure that everyone could hear the announcements during large assemblies. Human bodies became a hack in order to replace the forbidden technology. In New York it is required to ask for permission from authorities to use “amplified sound” in public space.</span></sup> can provoke different forms of interpretations and open tiny conceptual holes. “The meaning of a performative act is to be found in this apparent coincidence of signifying and enacting” (Butler, 1997). The performative bureaucratic utterances - the vocal documents - attempt to bring into existence -by overidentifying, exaggerating, acting- the discomfort, the threat, the violence which is mainly condemned into private individual spheres.</p>
<p>How performing a collection of small bureaucratic stories can function as an instant micro intervention and potentially produce a public discourse. Where do we perform this speech, where and when does the “theater” take place? Who is the audience? I am particularly interested in the site-specificity of these “acts”. How can these re-enactments be situated in an educational context and examine its structures? Is it possible for this small-scale publics to provoke the emergence of temporal spaces of marginal vulnerable voicings? According to the agonistic approach of the political theorist Chantal Mouffe, critical art is art that provokes dissensus, that makes visible what the dominant narrative tends to undermine and displace. “It is constituted by a multiplicity of artistic practices aiming at giving a voice to all those who are silenced within the framework of the existing hegemony” (Mouffe, 2008).</p>
<p>How performing a collection of small bureaucratic stories can function as an instant micro intervention and potentially produce a public discourse. Where do we perform this speech, where and when does the “theater” take place? Who is the audience? I am particularly interested in the site-specificity of these “acts”. How can these re-enactments be situated in an educational context and examine its structures? Is it possible for this small-scale publics to provoke the emergence of temporal spaces of marginal vulnerable voicings? According to the agonistic approach of the political theorist Chantal Mouffe, critical art is art that provokes dissensus, that makes visible what the dominant narrative tends to undermine and displace. “It is constituted by a multiplicity of artistic practices aiming at giving a voice to all those who are silenced within the framework of the existing hegemony” (Mouffe, 2008).</p>
<p>I started working and engaging more with different bureaucratic material that my peers and I encountered regularly or appeared in our (e)mail (in)boxes and are partly related to our identities as foreign students coming from different places. I chose to start touching and looking for various bureaucracies that surround me as a personal filter towards it. From identification documents and application forms to rental contracts, funding applications, visa applications, quality assurance questionnaires related to the university, assessment criteria, supermarket point gathering cards, receipts. A sequence of locked doors to be unlocked more or less easily via multiple bureaucratic keys. The methods and tools used to scrutinize the administrative artifacts are not rigid or distinct. It is mainly a “collection” of small bureaucratic experiments - closely related to language as well as the performative “nature” of these texts themselves. I was intrigued by how transforming the material conditions of a piece of text could influence the potential understandings and perceptions of its meaning.</p>
<p>I started working and engaging more with different bureaucratic material that my peers and I encountered regularly or appeared in our (e)mail (in)boxes and are partly related to our identities as foreign students coming from different places. I chose to start touching and looking for various bureaucracies that surround me as a personal filter towards it. From identification documents and application forms to rental contracts, funding applications, visa applications, quality assurance questionnaires related to the university, assessment criteria, supermarket point gathering cards, receipts. A sequence of locked doors to be unlocked more or less easily via multiple bureaucratic keys. The methods and tools used to scrutinize the administrative artifacts are not rigid or distinct. It is mainly a “collection” of small bureaucratic experiments - closely related to language as well as the performative “nature” of these texts themselves. I was intrigued by how transforming the material conditions of a piece of text could influence the potential understandings and perceptions of its meaning.</p>
=======
<p>All these questions provoked thinking around the concept of
conditional hospitality as a behavior of the state towards strangers. I
can see that on a smaller scale it is being applied to the hospitality I
receive from my friends in the middle of an emergency. I am wondering,
though, whether is it that important for the government to know on whose
couch I sleep or where I store my belongings. The omnipresent gaze of a
state who has the right to know every small detail about myself while at
the same time questioning people’s hospitality in case of emergency. It
seems that forms of knowledge are inseparably related to forms of power.
It will take 8 weeks for my request to be processed and for the
government to approve or reject if I deserve my friends’
hospitality.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Today as yesterday, her land and her time are stolen, only because
she is told that she has arrived too late. Much too late”<br/>
(Khosravi, 2021)</p>
</blockquote>
<h3id="waiting">waiting</h3>
<p>Waiting can be considered as a dramaturgical means embedded in
bureaucratic procedures that camouflage power relations through the
manipulation of people’s time. When people are in the middle of a
bureaucratic process and waiting for the government’s decision on their
case or just waiting for their turn. “The neoliberal technologies of
citizenship enacted through keeping people waiting for jobs, education,
housing, health care, social welfare or pensions turn citizens into
patients of the state” (Khosravi, 2021). I waited two weeks for a
response from the municipality only to discover that my request was
rejected [16/02/2024].</p>
<p>Contemporary border practices mirror past colonial practices, as they
exploit migrants’ time by keeping them in prolonged waiting, “like the
way colonial capitalism transformed lands to wastelands to plunder the
wealth underneath” (Khosravi, 2021). The current border regime, known by
extended waiting periods and constant delays, is part of a larger
project aimed at taking away wealth, labor, and time through colonial
accumulation and immediate expulsion.</p>
<p>When someone opens their house to a guest, a stranger, someone in
need, means that they open their property to someone. Hospitality is
interweaved with a sense of ownership over something. Expanding the
concept of hospitality to a nation-scale, we could say that the
nation-building process involves people asserting artificial ownership
over a territory even if they do not own any property within this
land.</p>
<p>Conditional hospitality is tied to a sense of offering back to the
home-land-nation-state-country as a way to win or trade your permission
to enter and enjoy the hospitality of a place. Coming from specific
places in comparison to others, having to offer some special skills or
your labor - if it is asked for - can be possible conditions that may
allow somebody to receive hospitality. I would say that an efficient
check of these conditions is regularly facilitated through bureaucratic
channels. The concept of unconditional-conditional hospitality is
closely related to exchange. When you do not have something to offer
according to the needs or expectations of a “household”, you may not
receive the gift of hospitality.</p>
<p>The notion of hospitality is excessively instrumentalized within the
Greek context portrayed as an “ideal” intertwined with the
nation-building narrative and as a foundational quality - product by the
Greek tourist industry. However, the Greek sea has been an endless
refugee graveyard and the eastern Aegean islands a “warehouse of
souls”<sup><spanclass="margin-note">For further reading:
<imgsrc="../images/../images/../aglaia/mitsi.jpg"alt="One of the forms that the audience had to fill out during the Lesszaal event"/><figcaption>One of the forms that the audience had to fill out during the Lesszaal event</figcaption>
<imgsrc="../images/../images/../aglaia/mitsi.jpg"alt="One of the forms that the audience had to fill out during the Lesszaal event"/><figcaption>One of the forms that the audience had to fill out during the Lesszaal event</figcaption>
@ -474,6 +1192,194 @@ Joseph says about his ID card.</p>
<p>Mouffe, C. (2008) ‘Art and Democracy: Art as an Agonistic Internvention’. Open:14 Art as a Public Issue, No.14 (2008), p.4</p>
<p>Mouffe, C. (2008) ‘Art and Democracy: Art as an Agonistic Internvention’. Open:14 Art as a Public Issue, No.14 (2008), p.4</p>
<p>Pater, R. (2021) Caps lock: How capitalism took hold of graphic design, and how to escape from it. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Valiz.</p>
<p>Pater, R. (2021) Caps lock: How capitalism took hold of graphic design, and how to escape from it. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Valiz.</p>
<p>Picozza, F. (2021). The coloniality of asylum : mobility, autonomy and solidarity in the wake of Europe’s refugee crisis. London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.</p>
<p>Picozza, F. (2021). The coloniality of asylum : mobility, autonomy and solidarity in the wake of Europe’s refugee crisis. London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.</p>
=======
<p>Title: “Passport Reading Session” When: January 2024 Where: XML –
XPUB studio Who: Ada, Aglaia, Stephen, Joseph</p>
<p>Description: This prototype is a collective passport reading session.
I asked my classmates to bring their passports or IDs and sitting in a
circular set up we attempted to “scan” our documents. Every contributor
took some time to browse, annotate verbally, interpret, understand,
analyze, vocalize their thoughts on these artifacts, approaching them
from various perspectives. The three passports and one ID card were all
coming from European countries.</p>
<p>Reflections-Thoughts: For the first time I observed this object so
closely. The documentation medium was a recording device, Ada’s mobile
phone. The recording was transcribed by vosk<sup><span
class="margin-note">Vosk is an offline open-source speech recognition
toolkit.</span></sup> and myself and a small booklet of our passport
readings was created.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“So the object here is like not by random it comes from the history
of nation-states and how nation-states and nationalities created like a
form of identity. So nation-state is actually a recent invention that
came into existence over the last two hundred fifty years in the form as
we know it nowadays, in the form of democratic capitalism, before like
monarchies and so on and each citizen of such a nation-state got also
kind of a particular identity”,<br/>
Joseph says about his ID card.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We read the embedded signs, symbols, categories, texts, magical
numbers in our passports that construct our profiles. Seeing someone’s
passport, ID cards, visas, travel documents might mean that you are able
to understand how easy or not is for them to move, what are their travel
paths, how departure or arrival is smooth or cruel. Are there emotions
along the way? For some people these are documents “that embody power —
minimal or no waiting, peaceful departure, warm and confident arrival”
(Khosravi, 2021).</p>
<p><ahref="../aglaia/passport1.png">Part of the A6 booklet of the
transcription of the passport readings session</a></p>
<p><ahref="../aglaia/passport2.png"></a></p>
<h4id="section-3">4.</h4>
<p>Title: “Postal Address Application Scenario” When: February 2024
<imgsrc="../images/../images/../stephen/wood-keyboard.jpeg"alt="Keyboard of things designers have said. Our feelings about work."/><figcaption>Keyboard of things designers have said. Our feelings about work.</figcaption>
<imgsrc="../images/../images/../stephen/wood-keyboard.jpeg"alt="Keyboard of things designers have said. Our feelings about work."/><figcaption>Keyboard of things designers have said. Our feelings about work.</figcaption>
*What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!?* is an assessment of what the term "graphic design" means to its practitioners today. Through experimental ethnographic research methods and the development of reflexive tools, the project highlights and questions the boundaries that exist around this apparent category. The research focuses on my own practices as well as other people and groups that identify with "graphic designer" as a label. The research was both conducted by and shared with interested parties in the form of the tools themselves, as well as a series of performances. There is no strict distinction between the research and its publication. The tools were released in an iterative cycle throughout the process of the project, and the research is conducted through the performative use and development of these tools.
*What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!?* is an assessment of what the term "graphic design" means to its practitioners today. Through experimental ethnographic research methods and the development of reflexive tools, the project highlights and questions the boundaries that exist around this apparent category. The research focuses on my own practices as well as other people and groups that identify with "graphic designer" as a label. The research was both conducted by and shared with interested parties in the form of the tools themselves, as well as a series of performances. There is no strict distinction between the research and its publication. The tools were released in an iterative cycle throughout the process of the project, and the research is conducted through the performative use and development of these tools.
@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ Excerpt from xpub application letter, March 15th 2022.
<sectionid="keylogger">
2023-11-24 17:52:55,103 - Key.tab
2023-11-24 17:52:55,103 - Key.tab
2023-11-24 17:52:57,175 - Key.alt_l
2023-11-24 17:52:57,175 - Key.alt_l
2023-11-24 17:52:57,368 - Key.tab
2023-11-24 17:52:57,368 - Key.tab
@ -412,6 +413,8 @@ Excerpt from xpub application letter, March 15th 2022.
2024-06-06 15:55:33,281 - Key.cmd
2024-06-06 15:55:33,281 - Key.cmd
2024-06-06 15:55:33,617 - 'e'
2024-06-06 15:55:33,617 - 'e'
</section>
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*What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!?* is an assessment of what the term "graphic design" means to its practitioners today. Through experimental ethnographic research methods and the development of reflexive tools, the project highlights and questions the boundaries that exist around this apparent category. The research focuses on my own practices as well as other people and groups that identify with "graphic designer" as a label. The research was both conducted by and shared with interested parties in the form of the tools themselves, as well as a series of performances. There is no strict distinction between the research and its publication. The tools were released in an iterative cycle throughout the process of the project, and the research is conducted through the performative use and development of these tools.
*What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!?* is an assessment of what the term "graphic design" means to its practitioners today. Through experimental ethnographic research methods and the development of reflexive tools, the project highlights and questions the boundaries that exist around this apparent category. The research focuses on my own practices as well as other people and groups that identify with "graphic designer" as a label. The research was both conducted by and shared with interested parties in the form of the tools themselves, as well as a series of performances. There is no strict distinction between the research and its publication. The tools were released in an iterative cycle throughout the process of the project, and the research is conducted through the performative use and development of these tools.
