master-platform.ch

Pool 6: Post-Blockchain: Art and the Politics of Entanglement

Semester
Spring Term 2019
Dates

Time: 10:00 - 17:00 o'clock

05 / 12 / 30 April
03 May

ECTS
3
Kunsthochschule
Universität / Haute École
Zürcher Hochschule der Künste
Website
intern.zhdk.ch/?vorlesungsverzeichnis&semester_id=151058&cc_page_id=-1987&course_id=199650
Teacher
Johanna Bruckner
Contact email
for student applications
studium.dkm@zhdk.ch
Content description

This seminar investigates the social role of new cryptocurrencies and critically looks into the emerging and existing infrastructures of post-monetary value production. Which are the social transformations based on new cryptocurrencies? Which are the frameworks and conditions under which cryptocurrencies challenge the conditions of art production, debt and capital’s exploitation of subjectivities? The formation of collective entities and ways of relating to each other?

This seminar will discuss post-monetary forms of value production from various artistic, anthropological and discursive perspectives. It will begin with discussing the problem of value in post-fordist labour and affective economies, and will then emphasize on emerging cryptocurrencies that are attached to community surplus, supposed to work independently from global financial players. Central to the operation of these processes are gift economies and anthropomorphic cell-to-cell contact. Hence, this seminar will discuss relevant perspectives of an Anthropology of Entanglement and critically examines emerging artificial, automated and quantum life forms.

In sum, central to this seminar is to dismantle the concept of crypto finance and to consider the manifold molecular, affective and relational processes that have always been forming the principles of non-monetary exchange.

These approaches will be discussed by closely looking into works and texts by Hito Steyerl, Ho Rui An, Bahar Noorizadeh, Pedro Moraes, Cecile B. Evans, Terra Zero, Jonas Lund, by Unai Alvarez-Rodriguez, Anna Tsing, among others, and inquieries on the politics of affection.

The seminar will be held in English and consists of theoretical and discursive parts.

Remarks