Masterclass with Ofri Cnaani and Annet Dekker (15:00 – 16:30)

In recent years, developing critique from scholars and digital activists has focused on the problematic idea of progress that is often presented in relation to computation. This critique proposes that recent technological solutions, which are often based on data extraction, relate to colonial practices and forms of representation. The term “data colonialism” argues that the tech ecosystem has extended the technical and architectural infrastructure of colonialism through contemporary technologies that are often based on data extraction, as well as the use of proprietary software, corporate cloud services, and centralized internet services to control and trade. Recent publications propose that aspects of colonialism, including dispossession of land and property, exploitation of labor, and the exercising of extraterritorial governance, are being replicated and often amplified by a new ruling class of information capitalism in the technosphere. This afternoon seminar will focus on aspects of digital colonialism in memory intuitions including museums, archives and libraries. Though reading and study of some exemplary cases, we will consider the colonial conditions of cultural institutions in the age of algorithmic governmentality.

To obtain 1 ECTS for this masterclass students will read three texts and write a review of the masterclass in which they reflect on the concept of digital colonialism in cultural institutional contexts. Registration is required: get in touch with Annet Dekker if you’re interested in joining this masterclass (adekker@uva.nl).

Public lecture/discussion with Ofri Cnaani and Noa Roei (17:00 – 18:30)

In the alarming phenomenon of endangered cultural heritage, whether through loss, neglect, or environmental catastrophe, institutions often turn to digital solutions for the preservation of knowledge and the repair of contested pasts. The notion of Digital Afterness explores how the loss or removal of physical artifacts can both engender and reveal intricate frameworks of lingering colonial residues that proliferate throughout the techno sphere. Using the notion of Afterness, Cnaani will explore how the demise of cultural collections due to climate crisis, governmental apathy, and the ravages of political violence can be traced back to the colonial practices that originally gave rise to their conditions of existence. Afterness critically engages with the state of incompletion that follows the dissolution of an institutional site, asking: in the collapse of spatial infrastructure, how do the orders and relations that shaped and conditioned its existence live on, mutate into new forms, or even multiply? Driven by a specific interest on how such violence continues to reverberate through pervasive techno-financial infrastructure, she thereby asks how we might envision and facilitate alternative routes for the use of these collective resources.

About

Ofri Cnaani is an artist and researcher. Cnaani writes about data and coloniality, institutional practices in the algorithmic turn, and performance as a model to create critical technology. She is a visiting professor at the Institute of Visual Culture, TU Wien, Austria. Cnaani’s work appeared at Tate Britain, UK; Venice Architecture Biennale; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; Inhotim Institute, Brazil; PS1/MoMA, NYC; BMW Guggenheim Lab, NYC; and Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, among others. She is the co-organizer of ‘Choreographic Devices’, an annual chorographic symposium at ICA, London, and recently completed a project at the International Space Station.

This event is made possible with the support of Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA).