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Paper short abstract:

I situate embodied knowledge practices of artistic-material research in the context of classic anthropological themes of political-economic transformation exploring how the relationship between sociality and materiality alters due to affordances of technologies generated by the digital revolution.

Paper long abstract:

The impact of the digital revolution in generating the field of computational or digital art and architecture, its affordances for form and content production and the conditions of work in this relatively new profession have been little discussed within anthropology. Currently on Ph.D. field research in Barcelona, I explore forms of artistic and material research with a particular emphasis on agency and knowledge practices in the mediation of global cultural flows under the conditions of contemporary capitalism in a shifting regime of artistic production.

In this paper, I propose to discuss how artists and "makers" turn an idea into a physical object. Which technologies and techniques are valued in the process? Which debates are drawn upon and which methods are developed and applied in the process? How are alternative forms of knowledge generated through these artistic and material research practices? I collaborate with international artists and "makers" who are socially embedded in Barcelona´s networked and increasingly globalised digital art and fabrication community and who actively aim to change the world for the better, in resistance to or in negotiation with the hegemonic discourse of neoliberal global governance.