Paper short abstract:

This paper will inquire into aspects of the commodification of natural resources, such as trees. It will examine the media-based infra-, socio-epistemic suprastructures, models and circuitries eco-capitalism is based on and tentatively propose alternative strategies of practice-based critique.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing from Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval's critique of neoliberalism this paper will tentatively inquire into aspects of competitiveness, in the context of the commodification of natural landscapes, ecologies and resources such as trees or air. It will excavate, examine and analyze the media technological infrastructures (sensors, networks etc.), socio-epistemic suprastructures and the models (business, network, logistical, data-based, cybernetic, cognitive) architectures, networks and systems of eco-capitalism are based on. Historical and media archaeological methodologies will be blended with approaches by Bruno Latour, Karen Barad, Andrew Pickering, Peter Haff or Keller Easterling. The paper will tentatively propose alternative strategies of practice-based critique in the fields of experimental design and artistic research that interprets eco-capitalism as a matter of concern (Latour). It will do this by exploring, misusing, re-appropriating and re-modeling the affordances and circuitries the infra- and suprastructures of this mindless and greedy form of neoliberalism offer.

Sensor networks and the involved mechanisms of transduction are theorized as derived from laboratory settings, more or less freed from political issues into highly politicized and valorized fields such as eco-capitalism. In the paper it is argued that although experimental systems and transductive apparatuses have their own sociopolitical protocols (Galloway), it is only the highly volatile environment of late capitalism that perpetuates and accelerates harmless feedback systems into the obscene and catastrophic circuitries of eco-capitalism.