Agency. Digitalität und Handlungsfähigkeit.
Felix Stalder
Der englischsprachige Begriff agency hat keine direkte deutschsprachige Entsprechung. Er wird meist mit Handlungsfähigkeit, Handlungsvermögen oder auch Handlungsmacht übersetzt. Gemeint ist damit die Fähigkeit eines Akteurs, innerhalb einer gegeben Situation nicht nur determiniert zu reagieren, sondern mit einer gewissen Offenheit auf sich selbst und andere Einfluss zu nehmen. Warum taucht dieser Begriff nun in einem Band zu Kulturöffentlichkeit und Digitalisierung auf? Wir gehen davon aus, dass durch den zentralen Stellenwert, den komplexe, dynamische Technologien der Kommunikation in der Konstitution von Öffentlichkeit(en) spielen, neue Formen von Handlungsfähigkeit entstehen. Die Digitalisierung verändert also die Akteure und damit die Dynamiken, wie Kultur wahrgenommen und reflektiert wird, tiefgreifend. Um diese besser zu fassen, ist eine Klärung des Begriffs für diesen Kontext sinnvoll.
Agency and the digital condition
The term agency is particular to the English language. It has, for example, no direct German equivalent. It is usually rendered by the German words Handlungsfähigkeit (ability to act), Handlungsvermögen (faculty for acting), and even Handlungsmacht (power to act). What is meant is the ability of an agent within a given situation to react not only in a predetermined way but also to influence oneself and others with a certain degree of freedom. Why, then, does this term appear in a book about the cultural public sphere and digitalization? We start from the assumption that as complex, dynamic technologies of communication play in central tole in constituting the public sphere(s), new forms of agency emerge. The digital condition thus profoundly affects the agents and dynamics in which culture is perceived and reflected. To better understand this, it makes sense to clarify the concept of agency in this context. Guerilla Girls, 1989
Monkey Selfie, 2011 By felix on 13 Nov 2017 Der Geheimdienstler 10.11. Hybernormal Hybrids (Wien)
World-Information Institute in cooperation with springerin and WERK X:
Friday 10.11. 2017, Petersplatz 1, A-1010, Vienna
Lectures, Discussion, Screenings, Performance 18h – 24h
Boundaries between humans and machines are blurring. Complex assemblages from biological agents, communicating objects, technical protocols, and automated decision-making processes become “hypernormal hybrids”. In the mechanical logic of this augmented reality, however, the dimension of the social is not to be grasped. Between super-empowered individuals and the “obsolescence of man” this results in unpredictable turbulences. How to identify the fault lines of these hybrid systems and what options of human action remain?
Prisoners of Reason: S. M. Amadae
Moderator: Christian Hoeller
Animal & Machine Intelligence: Stefan Woltran,Susana Monsó
Moderator: Felix Stalder
Screening/Performance: Napalm Tree, ca.tter & mstep, Boris Kopeinig, Plak, u.a.
Videoinstallation: Painted by Numbers
Hosted by Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder
Commons Are not the Sharing Economy. A comment to Ossewaarde & Reijers (2017)
This was written in the context of the research project"Creating Commons". And while the paper I'm commenting on is not particularly good, it's symptomatic for a lazy-left critique of the commons and thus warrants the comments.
Ossewaarde, Marinus und Wessel Reijers (2017): „The illusion of the digital commons: ‘False consciousness’ in online alternative economies“, Organization 24/5, S. 609–628. (paywalled)
“Digital commons such as Wikipedia, open-source software, and hospitality exchanges are frequently seen as forms of resistance to capitalist modes of production and consumption, as elements of alternative economies. In this article, however, we argue that the digital commons cannot by themselves constitute genuine forms of resistance for they are vulnerable to what we call ‘the illusion of the digital commons’, which leads to a form of ‘false consciousness’.”
This is both an interesting and annoying article. It's interesting as it details how „sharing“ can be put into the service of profit-driven centralization. It's annoying because it uses a small number of cases to make sweeping claims that feel more than a little disingenuous.
For example, while Wikipedia and Open Source Software are mentioned in the first line of the abstract, they play no role in the subsequent analysis. That focuses entirely on three “hospitality exchanges”: Airbnb, Couchsurfing and BeWelcome.