Short Abstract:

This workshop discusses questions of un/commoning of media and curatorial practices. How do multimodal and media-related projects – as forms of knowledge production – critically engage with questions of solidarity, responsibility and mutual care, but also the perpetuation of power structures?

Long Abstract:

In this workshop, we invite contributions that discuss the un/commoning of media and curatorial practices. Media practices of curating and exhibiting often embrace multimodality, reflecting diverse modes of fieldwork, production and representation that transcend the often implied online/offline divide. Multimodality is often recognized as fostering new forms of knowledge production, as an attempt at collaborative, co-creative, decentring and more egalitarian modes of knowing. Yet acknowledging its embeddedness in global capitalism and technoscience, we also have to ask ourselves how and when these multimodal media and curatorial practices inadvertently perpetuate, reproduce, or reinforce existing power structures, extractivist logics, or experiences of violence and exclusion. With regard to the un/commoning of media and curatorial practices we ask the question of how can or should these practices contribute to new forms of solidarity, responsibility and mutual care? We invite discussions of multimodal and media-related projects that critically relate to questions of un/commoning through media and curatorial practices, or that thematically engage with global debates around un/commoning. What does un/commoning mean in the context of media anthropology? How can questions of un/commoning be approached through our practice as media anthropologists (methodologically and thematically)? The workshop is related to the exhibition "Out of focus. Blurring the lines of media practices and curatorial spaces” that will take place during the conference (see separate exhibition call). Multimodal/media/curatorial projects discussed in the workshop can be displayed in the exhibition. If you wish to do so, please indicate this in your abstract and additionally respond to the exhibition call.

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