Towards the Operative Objects of Post-Capitalism: A Critical Cultural- And Media-Theoretical Refusal on the Chilean Case (1973-2023)

This essay aims to unfold a refusal on what we understand have been the historical hegemonic modes of social and cultural research under capitalist realism; that is, the politico-economic system ruling the West and beyond since the 1970s onwards. To do so, we present an updated approach to analyze Chilean social and cultural history during this period, insofar as it is, we argue, a paradigmatic case to critically understand capitalist realism in general. Thus, the essay is formed by three main parts: a) a historical presentation and contextualization of the case in that period, deployed in three fragments; b) the development of a critical cultural- and media-theoretical set of concepts that are instrumental to analyze the case; and c) a proposal that allows us to project the analysis’ insights towards the present and beyond. Particularly from this latter part, but more clearly in a final short conclusion, the proposal and its potential stems from a theory-fiction approach.

Refusing the Burden of Computation: Edge Computing and Sustainable ICT

This paper asks what we can learn from edge computing about the commitment of Big Tech to diminish its ecological footprint. The text starts with the COVID-19 pandemic being framed as opportunity for more sustainability and unpacks edge computing as one of the elements proposed as a solution, next to working from home. It interrogates the discourse behind these solutions, one of technological fixes that allow ‘business as usual’ to continue, undisturbed by government regulations, outsourcing the burden of environmental responsibility to citizens. The paper draws parallels between edge computing, Big Tech’s approach to sustainability and the history of the Sustainable ICT discourse and proposes that to truly diminish ICT’s footprint, a refusal of the burden of computation and digital enclosure (vendor lock-in) is needed, by collectively building and financing network services.

Towards Refusing as a Critical Technical Practice: Struggling With Hegemonic Computer Vision

Computer Vision (CV) algorithms are overwhelmingly presented as efficient, impartial, and desirable further developments of datafication and automation. In reality, hegemonic CV is a particular way of seeing that operates under the goal of identifying and naming, classifying and quantifying, and generally organizing the visual world to support surveillance, be it military or commercial. This paradigm of Computer Vision forms a ‘common sense’ that is difficult to break from, and thus requires radical forms of antagonism. The goal of this article is to sketch how refusing CV can be part of a counter-hegemonic practice – be it the refusal to work or other, more creative, responses. The article begins by defining hegemonic CV, the ‘common sense’ that frames machine seeing as neutral and impartial, while ignoring its wide application for surveillance. Then, it discusses the emergent notion of refusal, and why critical technical practice can be a useful framework for questioning hegemonic sociotechnical systems. Finally, several potential paths for refusing hegemonic CV are outlined by engaging with different layers of the systems’ 'stack.'

How To Refuse Research from The Ruins of Its Own Production

Writing in 1965, Mario Tronti’s claim was that the greatest power of the working class is refusal: the refusal of work, the refusal of capitalist development, and the refusal to bargain within a capitalist framework. One can see how this "strategy of refusal" has been utilised in all sorts of instances by social movements, but how does this play out now in the context of wider struggles over autonomy today – not just in terms of labour power and class struggles; but also intersectional feminism and queer politics; race and decolonialism, geopolitics, populism, environmental concerns; and the current pandemic? In what ways does a refusal of production manifest itself in contemporary artistic, political, social, cultural, or other movements? And, how might a refusal of certain forms of production come together with a politics of care and "social closeness" – also when thinking of how research itself might be refused?

Enmeshed in the Borders: The Para-Institutional Practices of Alternative Arts Education Online

This article takes up new online experiments in alternative arts education as examples of para-institutional practice, arguing that the online experiments discussed can be understood as enacting modes of border dwelling. In this context, the para-institution acknowledges and works with the tensions and compromises that exist in attempting to operate besides and beyond gatekeeping art world structures, rather than enacting a total refusal of these institutions. As an example of how these tensions play out in practice, the article focuses on the wiki Mesh: a sharing hub for emerging artists, initially developed out of the Into the Wild alternative arts education programme. Mesh was conceived by Esther McManus, who spoke with the author for the purposes of exploring the Mesh project as a case study for this article. In re-articulating para-institutional practices as forms of border dwelling within the ontology of the pluriverse, this article aims to demonstrate how borders of institutional practice are a fertile space to question the terms of the conversation when exploring institutional processes and parameters, as part of an ethically engaged project seeking more inclusive and pluriversal artworlds.

Nothing Re-Fused: Performing the Neo-Institution

In this paper, we outline the shape of a new institutional structure born of neo-liberal precariousness that we call the neo-institution. The neo-institution is immune to refusal, while at the same time an expert in extracting labor, time, knowledge, and attention. Because there is no way out of the aporia that is the neo-institution—no practical way to re-shape or refuse it—we propose to partly subtract ourselves from it by instigating another way to assemble. We advance the theoretical practice of stitching as a form of assembling that does not erase traces of labor and fight and that eludes any totalizing tendency. Understood as a way of assembling and writing, stitching is a practice of repairing, repurposing, and holding together. Finally, while fatigue, exhaustion, burnout, and depression are the inescapable result of neo-liberal precariousness, we praise the entropic ability of the body to refuse to be treated like refuse.

Con(fuse)ing and Re(fusing) Barriers

In "Con(fuse)ing and Re(fusing) Barriers", we activate the practice of coalescing to discuss and propose trans* and neuroqueer ways of refusing access barriers and normative expectations. Drawing from trans* feminism, crip technoscience, embodied experiences and our arts-design practice as MELT, we attend to ritual making as a crip and trans* site of resistance. Rituals are activated throughout the text as practices that reduce access barriers, change habits, slow things down, or enact community rites of passage. We refuse (as in: fuse again) and confuse (as in: reconsider assumptions) separability, and trace how materials unfold in our arts-design experiments: concrete and errors become soft, rituals disorder normative space, and cosmic rays embrace neuroqueer understandings of computing. This text is an invitation to share and embrace rituals and refusal as interrelated modes that can make space for other worlds.

Two Decades of Tactical Media and Art in Brazil Enhancing a Feminist Perspective

This article narrates our work through archive and cartography to discuss a body of research that runs throughout our lives - as producers, developers, non-artists, artists, archivists, researchers. We have been engaging in networks that develop the internet, tactical media, and free knowledge since the beginning of 2000 in Brazil, in a series of festivals, projects, platforms and other forms of gatherings. A lot of this history is lost in databases and we have been putting our efforts together to bring this digital and material archive together, republishing, editing and re activating it. At the same time, it is inevitable that we bring our own perspective to building the archive, what we identify as a feminist perspective, a weaving of histories (reinventeceduras) and modes of production that are also a “maintenance” of technical infrastructure as a practice of care, connected to the reproduction of our own lives. Cartography is a concept and tool that allows for the gathering of the polyphony of the voices engaged, a cartography that is not total, opening up for collective analysis and for the intervention in the present and future.

Revisiting Cognitive Mapping

The increasingly complex, algorithmically mediated operations of global capital have only deepened the gap between the social order as a whole and its lived experience. Yet, Fredric Jameson’s notion of cognitive mapping, attentive to the conflicting tendencies of capitalist operations, is still helpful for addressing the local instantiations of capital’s expanding frontiers of extraction. I am interested in tracing the historicity of those operations as well as the totality they are actively part of in the present from the vantage point of the Middle East, especially along with the entangled trajectories of oil, finance, and militarism. To this end, I examine countervisual practices in the realm of media arts that contest the aesthetic regime through which the state-capital nexus attempts to legitimize its imperial logic and violence. My reconfiguration of cognitive mapping as countervisuality in Nicholas Mirzoeff’s terms demonstrates that there is no privileged position or method of cognitive mapping, which ultimately corresponds to an active negotiation of urban space across the Global North/ South divide.