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< Back Shore Seeing Stillness 15 Dec 2021 Ash Moniz Jumping Ship For many companies its important to locate instances of loss. Which stages of a process or which assets are wasting time or money, can be crucial to identify. Preventing loss is one of the most strategic things that a company can do, and finding the weak spots in a system is necessary for this. Making visible wasted time/money is at the core of managerial processes of commodity circulation, and this is no coincidence considering the role that visualizing lost time played within the material history of representing motion in general. A process map, for example, is “a visual aid for picturing work processes . . . developed from the need to generate visibility of where time is used [so that …] the removal of wasted time from the business processes, could then be applied [1 ] ”. A member of Tylos company, was struggling with one of his assets for years now. After it was originally set up in 1999, it was doing ok for a while, but started to deteriorate as time went on. By the summer of 2017, this Tylos manager was facing severe financial difficulties, and it seemed like his business venture was going to fail. It got to the point where the cost of the repairs necessary to hold on to this asset would be greater than the cost of simply letting it go, which is a common phenomenon in this industry. Once an asset has been around longer than the time that it was originally built to last, then it becomes more expensive to actually maintain, and harder to acquire safety certification. The owner of the company could see that it was going to be way too costly to keep it up, so he decided to count his losses before it got any worse. In the summer of 2017 he decided to jump ship . From this point this asset was no longer owned by anyone, and therefore was no longer registered to operate. To “jump ship” is an English expression that means “to leave an organization because you think its going to fail or because you want to join a rival organization [2] . While the traditional historical meaning referred to an escape from forced captivity, over time the connotation has shifted towards the avoidance of failure (insinuating the desire for success), or in some [3 ] to “leave a difficult situation when you should stay and deal with it” (insinuating neglect for responsibility). Witnessing Stillness Here we have an image. There’s nothing in the image that visually denotes whether or not it was taken as a photograph, or if it is a still from a moving image. If it were a still frame then it would be an interruption of the flow of the moving image. A coming from and leading towards of time outside of the moment in front of us. It would be indexical to the time that it is not. If it were a photograph, it would encompass it’s own time, as it’s own enclosure (beginning and end) of duration. This stillness is indexical only to the “singular” moment that it aims to capture. The most probable signifier of still frame or photograph, is the aspect ratio of the image itself. As a general rule of thumb, it is common that moving image is shot in 16:9 and photographs in 4:3. While there is no signifier of motion in the background, in the foreground we can see motion in the postures of those swimming, the splash of water frozen in mid-air, and the recognizable shape of waves. What is the representational literacy required to read the temporal phenomenon that this image documents? According to film critic Mary Ann Doane [4 ] , if movement were “represented as the eye “really” sees it, it would be characterized by a certain illegibility, constituting itself as blur” Jumping Ship When Mohammed Aisha had to jump ship, he could only legally be on land for very short intervals of time (enough to charge phone, find drinking water, etc.) but then would have to return immediately, and remain on board. Due to Aisha involuntarily being designated as the “legal guardian” of the MV Aman in 2017, after Tylos Shipping and Maritime Services had abandoned ownership of it, Aisha was trapped on board all alone with no electricity or fuel, for four years. In March 2021, journalistic articles came out that spoke of Aisha’s situation (at the end of his fourth year stranded). But regardless of media attention, the only two options for his rescue were if someone volunteered to purchase the ship and become its owner, or if they volunteered to take Mohammed Aisha’s place as legal guardian. In April 2021, the International Transport Workers’ Federation found a representation of theirs to take his place. As such Aisha finally went home to Syria, after losing four years of his life in captivity. However, the ship still remains in place to this day, with an Egyptian volunteer now as its legal guardian. “He was abandoned for four years, and he is still waiting to get paid. We helped him with a lawyer to go to court and claim his wages. But is not enough to say oh this is absolutely criminal, this is absolutely unjust, this is not enough! Because there are people with obligations and responsibilities! Why didn’t the flag do anything, why didn’t the Egyptian maritime authorities do anything? This is where the focus should go!” [5 ] Standing from the shoreline, I am staring at an incarcerative stillness. But how can I witness the temporality of 4.5 years? Witnessing Stillness The imaging of stillness requires a posture of stillness. There’s a video on YouTube of a “Freeze Flash Mob”. It is one of those organized activities where a large group of people come together to freeze in place, mid-action, in the middle of a public area. In one still-frame, we can see a young girl posing in a still position, holding a camera in front of her face. However, if we unpause the image, we can see the she was not a part of the Freeze Mob, but that her stillness was simply to hold a stable position for the few seconds that it takes to take a photograph. (With a camera, one has to perform the stillness that they aim to document.) As we unpause we can see her camera phone flash, as if having taken a photograph to document the surprising historical event of stillness that she sees in front of her. After this flash, she resumed motion (defining her as a spectator, as a non-participant in the event.) The camera aims to capture the event in front of her, as a moment in time that actually happened. But with this photograph she will not have captured the stillness of the historical event that she aimed to. Because we can’t see stillness in a still image. It might be capturing the stillness produced by the photograph, but it is not actually capturing the stillness that of the event to be witnessed. The stillness that actually provides the magnitude of this historical moment. Even if we could see the other ships moving by (which I did standing on the shore taking this photo), we would have no literacy for the precise incarcerative stillness of the MV Aman. Stillness as Location in Time “In absence of the responsibilities of the owner, who is the first to be made responsible, is Bahrian, because this flag under the registration of Bahrain. But if Bahrain is slow, or doesn’t care or doesn’t don’t do what they should do, then we go and ask where the vessel is, thats why we went and knocked the door of Egyptian authorities, because the vessel is under sovereign waters of Egypt.” [6 ] I went to this exact location because where I lived was only an hour and a half away. My own physical proximity meant there was no reason that I wouldn’t have gone to see the ship. But what does proximity provide? No matter how close you get to the incident that is happening in front of you, you still can’t see anything. But what is the location of this violence? How do we locate a Syrian man, on board Bahraini flagged territory, with a Lebanese contractor, stuck in Egyptian waters? How do we locate responsibility, when the ship owner, the flag-state, the national waters, the recruitment agency, the nation of the abandoned, are all completely different. Even though this location is only a couple hundred metres from shore, it is unlocatable within records, as its no longer registered to its ownership. In general, while the shoreline is a defined locality, the visual particularities of an image from shore are quite similar anywhere in the world. The almost flag-like archetype of three horizontal stripes stacked on top of each other (sand, water, sky), exists romantically in the minds of most, even as an imaginary image. This reflects the illocatability of how spectators of the container are easily “mesmerized by its modularity, homogeneity and opacity.” [7 ] The locality of this beach can be defined as a position of spectatorship for viewing the site of incarcerative stillness, the MV Aman, along with many other arrested ships. It can also be defined, by being one of the only public (or non-private) beaches from the Suez Canal to Hurghada, or by being sandwiched between a military base and a highway. Witnessing Lost Time Here we can see the position of spectatorship from which a historical event was witnessed. We can see the viewpoint, the site from which the evidence of lost-time (the historical event of spectacular stillness) was witnessed by Mohammed Aisha. After having been on the ship for four years, one day he saw a massive backlog encroaching upon him, as the entire sea turned into a parking lot of immobile ships, from the entrance of the Suez Canal (a couple km away), all the way down the Red Sea. The stillness produced during these 6 days, became one of the biggest global moments in supply chain history. Only weeks later he was able to go home, thanks to the International Transport Workers Federation. Standing in front of the exact location where the Evergiven was stuck in the Suez Canal, villagers of Mansheyat El Ragoula pointed out to me where it was, and where it could be seen from. We stood on their doorstep practicing looking for something that was no longer there. When asking them how they felt about having taken part in such a global moment, they said that it meant absolutely nothing to them. All they cared about was how difficult it became to talk to people since then. Every time a journalist would come the village, the police would show up immediately. One person I spoke to was arrested for talking to a journalist. [8 ] The spectacle of this stillness brought global traffic to the small village, unlike any other point in its history. The place became temporally and spatially dominated by the schedules of journalists. I Interviewed a journalists’ driver [9 ] who worked during the 6 days of the Evergiven’s interruption, who spoke of the speed and urgency of driving to the hotels, to press conferences, and to find interviewees, etc. But the spectacle of this specific type of stillness, that of global supply-chain interruption, is connected to need, or demand. This stillness is indexical to lost time, to the motion that is not occurring. But what happens when the stillness is no longer a threat; no longer indexical to its potential continuation? Stillness that is not Lost Time Rather than through an increase in ship-engines’ speed capacities over the past decades, the primary site for the shipping industry’s increase in speed is the labour time at each port (the intervals of stillness). This acceleration was accomplished by decreasing workers’ access to shore leave and intensifying the workloads in shorter periods of time. It isn’t about making the motion of a trajectory faster; it’s about diminishing the loss between each trajectory [10 ] . Akinetopsia is an optical term that refers to the inability to see stillness. I have been thinking of this term while producing my archive of instances of supply chain interruptions in Egypt ( for example from strikes and work stoppages in Port Said and Sokhna.) The representation of work stoppages, interruptions, and inventorial losses in the supply chain has a history rooted in mechanisms of visuality and legibility in the quest to represent lost time. In the supply chain, we can easily interpret all non-motion as loss, or interruption. This is exemplified in the “Move Or Die” motto of the UPS-sponsored TV series Great Migrations, morbidly equating all supply-chain stillness to loss, or death. [11 ] But not all stillness in the supply chain is lost-time. Much of the supply-chain’s stillness is not indexical to the continuative motion that would otherwise be assumed. If a ship stops moving due to abandonment, such as the case of Mohammed Aisha, the time is no longer considered lost, because the ship is no longer needed, or demanded. While the case of the MV Aman was one of the worst in history, seafarer abandonment is one the rise. In fact, the Tylos Company alone had 3 other ships abandoned during the same year, with others stranded for up to 2 years. Storage in Motion Its important to see the how the incarcerative mechanics of both stillness and motion intersect through maritime labour, to extend the question of “stillness that is not lost time”, to think of how stillness is in fact produced in transit. Through the mass of interviews [12 ] that I conducted with workers on board a container ship, one of the main statements that came up across the different discussions, was that the ship is like a prison. Some had expressed that at least prisons were on land, within the borders of a nation, had an outdoor yard, and received visits/calls/etc, (which are all largely impossible at sea). The incarcerative attributes of this strict stillness are specifically due to the accelerative motion, because of the decreasing opportunities to ever leave the ship. Shore-leave serves as a “non- time” form of temporality that helps prevent the ship from being such an incarcerate space. If we think of how the stillness in motion and the stillness in stillness interact as different types of temporalities, much of this comes from how the ship as a technology of discipline on its own is a site that has incarcerative qualities. The fact that this stillness exists in motion is also not surprising, for the mere fact of physics. In physics we have concepts such as the Principle of Stationary Action, or Lagrangian. Mechanics, which are generally based around the way that when a constant motion of an object reaches an stable velocity, it appears as still when seen from an object travelling at the same velocity. It maintains a stationary position in motion. That stillness is a significant part of accelerative speed can also be seen within much of the development of what is known as “Just-In-Time” Logistics, which (in simplified terms) is largely based on the idea of compressing the time of storage into the time of transit. As such the idle time of storage-warehousing is then placed into idle time of ships in transit. The time of waiting to be needed sharing its emptiness with the time of waiting to arrive. I wonder if the incarcerative temporalities imposed on maritime-workers share some of the same stillness as the time of storage that was compressed into transit. The literacy of time (stillness/motion) is crucial to the representability of logistics: from the interruptive stillness of worker’s strikes and blockages, to the incarcerative stillness of seafarer abandonment and lack of shore-leave. For the Maritime Portal Residency, I conducted interviews and field work all along the coast from Port Said, to Ragoula, to Adabiya, to Sokhna (from Mediterranean to Red Sea). While the initial intention was to focus on the interviews as a performative practice, the political state in Egypt and the specific danger for researchers made it very difficult to do so (having researcher friends of mine in prison or held by the police during the time I was conducting this). After a few set-backs (being followed by the police on multiple occasions), I tried to think about how to work more with the materials that I had, rather than the materials I wanted. This project will be a film, that incorporates some of these interviews and the research, along with a weaving together of some of the topics that I wrote about here, but in film. I’m interested in how historical moments (of six days or four years), intersect between the different constitutions of time that shape logistical and historical temporalities. The project looks at the greater history of representing motion within the supply chain, in order to think through stillness not as lost time. [1] Deborah Cowen, The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 126. [2] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/jump-ship [3] https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/jump-ship [4] Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 82. [5] An interview that I conducted (in August 2021), with Mohamed Arrechidi, the representative of the International Transportation Workers Federation who coordinated the relief effort to send Aisha home. [6] Same interview with Arrechidi from the ITF [7] Alberto Toscano and Jeff Kinkle, Cartographies of the Absolute (London: Zero Books, 2015), 347. [8] Interview with residents of Mansheyat El Regoula (4 different groups of people) in August 2021 [9] Interview with journalist’s driver in August 2021 [10] Akinestopia in the Management of Loss, Ash Moniz, MIT Press: Thresholds (2021) (49): 103– 108. [11] Cowen, The Deadly Life of Logistics, 262. [12] Interviews that I conducted with about 20 of the seafarers on board CMA CGM container ship in April 2019 Previous Next

Alumni 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2019 Alumni Aigerim Kapar is an independent curator, cultural activist, and founder of the creative communication platform Artcom. She was born in 1987 in Kazakhstan and continues to live and work in Astana. Kapar curates and organizes exhibitions, urban art interventions, discussions, lectures, and workshops. To accomplish such wide-ranging initiatives she often collaborates closely with art and educational institutions, as well as scientific apparatuses. In 2015, she founded the open online platform Artcom in conjunction with the local art community. The platform brings together different cultural figures to share experiences and discover channels for greater interaction within society in order to develop and promote contemporary art and culture. In 2017, Aigerim initiated the Art Collider informal school—when art meets science. Through this initiative artists and scientists jointly conduct research and present lectures and discussions related to current issues. The results of the school are presented through exhibitions, publications, and audio-visual materials. Ana Roman has a Master’s degree in Human Geography from São Paulo University and is a doctoral student in Art History at the University of Essex. Her current research focuses on contemporary art and curatorship. Previously, she was an assistant curator for Between Construction and Appropriation: Antonio Dias, Geraldo de Barros and Rubens Gerchman in the 60s (SESC Pinheiros, São Paulo, Brazil, 2018), and researcher/assistant curator for Ready Made in Brasil(Centro Cultural Fiesp, São Paulo, Brazil, 2017); Rever_Augusto de Campos (SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil, 2016); and Lina Grafica (SESC Pompeia, São Paulo , Brazil, 2014), among others. She was the head curator for Whereabouts (Zipper Gallery, 2018) with works by David Almeida; Mirages (Baro Gallery, 2018) with works by Amanda Mei; and Small Formats (Baro Gallery, 2018) with works by Alexandre Wagner, to name a few. She also writes critical texts for different media outlets. Since 2014, she has been a participant in Sem Titulo, s.d., a production and research collective focused on contemporary art with whom she organized the exhibitions What is not performance? (Centro Universitário Maria Antonia, São Paulo, Brazil, 2015) and Tuiuiu, with works by Alice Shintani (ABER, São Paulo, Brazil, 2017). Bermet Borubaeva is a curator, researcher, and artist. She was born in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and gained her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, and Master’s of Arts focusing on “Political analysis and public policy,” from the High School of Economics in Moscow. She graduated from the Bishkek “Art East” School of Contemporary Art in 2009 and studied at First Moscow Curatorial Summer School for their program “Doing Exhibitions Politically,” initiated by Victor Miziano and V-A-C Foundation. Borubaeva also participated in the curatorial research residency “ReDirecting East” at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw. Borubaeva has also taken part in different exhibitions and projects, such as the First Youth Central Asian exhibition of Contemporary Art, ON/OFF; the eco-festival, Trash; and an exchange project in collaboration with Focus-Art Association, titled TET A TET #2 (Vevey, Switzerland). Recent projects include the Education Program for Lingua Franca/франк тили’, the re-exhibition project for the Central Asia Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, done in collaboration with Oxana Kapishnikova and Ukhina Diana (2012); the exhibitions Artists-in-Residence at CCI Fabrika (2014–2016 Moscow); the exhibition PAS DE DEUX—KG. CH. at the Center of Contemporary Art Yverdon-Les-Bains, Switzerland; and the performance Café “Non-seller,” addressing the problem of food waste in conjunction with the documentary film “Eco Cup” (Moscow), as part of the Curatorial Research Program, CPR-2017: Mexico. She has also contributed to several publications in the fields of art, political science, and urban environment. Ewa Borysiewicz studied art history at the University of Warsaw and Freie Universität Berlin. She was a member of the curatorial team for Side by Side: Poland—Germany. A 1000 Years of Art and History (Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin), led by Anda Rottenberg. She is the author of Rausz kinetyczny (2013), a book exploring the political and emancipatory aspects of non-camera animation. From 2012–2019, she worked at the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw as the curator for visual arts. Her duties included establishing international partnerships, programming the international visitors’ program, facilitating artistic residencies, and enabling presentations of Polish art worldwide. She is presently co-organizing (with galleries Stereo and Wschód) the exhibition Friend of a Friend, a gallery-share initiative in Warsaw that has been taking place since 2018. Borysiewicz has also curated and co-curated exhibitions at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Polish Institute in Düsseldorf, and the Museum Jerke in Recklinghausen. She is the author of many texts and catalogue entries. Mateja Smic is a Dublin-based artist working with coffee, gelatin and other, often non-traditional materials, chosen by principles of association within her subject matter. Her recent subjects range from geopolitics to national identity. Through printmaking, digital collage, video and animation, Smic’s installations combine philosophical and psychological questions around experience, the phenomenon of Othering, and tensions between the real subject and its mediated representations. Consisting of intensive cycles and processes of intuitive and experimental engagement with her materials, which become a metaphor for an intangible subject, Smic’s reflexive and multi-layered art practice parallels with her contextual research and writing. Having graduated from the National College of Art and Design in Fine Print and Critical Cultures, her thesis and professional practice project focused on the creation of the image of the Balkans in the West and the portrayal of the region through various art forms and curatorial activities. Tomek Pawlowski is a curator, and events and meeting producer. In 2018 he participated in the curatorial program at Swimming Pool, Sofia. He is the curator of numerous exhibitions, performances, and projects in collaboration with artists from younger generations, groups, independent galleries, and institutions in Poland. He uses collective practices, critical entertainment, and politics of friendship as his main guiding framework. From 2016–2018 he ran Cycle, a program of micro-residencies and events in the apartments where he lived. In 2017 co-curated (along with Romuald Demidenko and Aurelia Nowak) The Open Triennial: the 8th Young Triennial at the Center for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. He is also the co-curator (with Magdalena Adameczek and Ola Polerowicz) of Sandra Art Gallery, the nomadic agency associating with and supporting emerging female artists from Poznań. He currently resides between Białystok and Poznań. Shasta Stevic is an artist and curator from Melbourne, Australia. She is the co-founder, co-curator, and creative director of IntraLiminal—an ongoing project that showcases the work of talented young artists from regional Australia. She is passionate about providing opportunities for young artists to share their work publicly and supporting the development of ongoing creative practices in younger generations. Having completed degrees in science and law, she sees art as an important vehicle for the exploration of social issues including the environment and sustainability, civilization and progress, so-called technological and scientific advancement, and the worrying divide between humans and nature. She is particularly interested in using unconventional methods of storytelling and installation to bring about social change. Stevic has studied at the LungA School, an experimental art school in Seydisfjordur, Iceland, and has curated exhibitions for a mid-winter festival in Northern Iceland. Sasha Puchkova is an artist and curator based in Moscow. As an artist, Puchkova works with different media: sound, video, objects, performative communication and experiments. She explores phenomena related to different points of connection and the linking of digital and offline processes, as well as the space between these realms, and the interdependent influence of cyberspace on social norms. Key topics are particular interest to her are the plasticity of the laws of the digital system; the body in online space; new materialism; artificial synesthesia; decolonial pathways; post-cyberfeminist practices; and post-anthropocene practices. The pivot of her curatorial practice revolves around an experimental, expositional approach, which has been realized in such projects as a series of performative actions, ideas around the “exhibition as living space,” long-term laboratories, and the development of theatrical exhibitions-in-real-time, among other things. Her curated projects include Syntax (a series of performances and laboratory); (Im)-possible object (research and exhibition projects); and Capture Map (performative project and communication platform). Puchkova is also a member of the research group “Speculative Practices of Corporal Mutations” (with Katya Pislari and Daria Yuriychuk). Victoria Vargas Downing is a Chilean art historian, heritage researcher and independent curator based Leeds in the UK. She holds a BA in Fine Theory and History of Art at the University of Chile, a Curating Diploma and MA in Arts Management and Heritages studies at Leeds University. Has participated in art projects in Chile, Sao Paulo, Los Angeles CA, Vienna and The UK where she co-curated Imtiaz Dharker Exhibition and participated in the process and management of Chilean Mural restoration at the Leeds Students Union. She has worked as teacher and research assistant in different projects and art organisations in Chile (museums, galleries and non-profit organisations). She is PhD candidate at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at Leeds University. Her research verse on the relationship between contemporary art and heritage, particularly, in non-Western cultures. Seda Yıldız is a Hamburg-based artist-curator. Her multidisciplinary practice focuses on exploring the art of shaping (collective) memory, language, and the politics of the city. She is interested in the poetics of politics and frequently uses humor and abstraction as a tool in her artistic practice, working primarily with video, text, installation, and the form of the artist book. Her curatorial practice focuses on exploring the clash and intersection between the local and global, and aims to reach a heterogeneous audience while giving voice to the silenced. She is particularly is interested to take part in process-oriented, open and experimental projects that foster collaboration and exchange. Yıldız has exhibited her work and joined various editorial and curatorial projects internationally. In 2018, she was selected as an emerging curator by PARALLEL Photo Platform, co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union. Occasionally she writes about design, architecture, and urbanism, and contributed to Brownbook Magazine, MONU Magazine, Kajet Journal, and Freunde von Freunden. Yıldız holds an MA in Contemporary Artistic Practices from Haute école d’art et de design Geneva (2014) and a BA in Communication and Design from Bilkent University (2011). http://yildizseda.com Zulfikar Filandra is a film and theatre-maker based in Sarajevo. Filandra was educated at Griffith College Dublin, the Academy of Performing Arts Sarajevo, and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering Sarajevo. As a collaborator and member of several local and several international art collectives, he has worked with all the relevant mainstream art and cultural institutions in Sarajevo and is also active in Sarajevo’s underground art scene. Aside from directing in film and theatre, and assistant directing, Filandra also works as a screenwriter, lecturer, producer, editor, musician, actor, promoter, event organizer, and photographer. As a member of the youngest generation of Bosnian directors his topics touch on the legacy of war in Bosnia, but through a more intimate view of living in contemporary times and the position of a small culture like Bosnia in a globalizing world. Currently, he is actively collaborating with the Experimental Film Society (based in Dublin, Ireland) and Outline (based in Amsterdam, Netherlands). Filandra completed two short films in 2018 and is currently working on two more short films, while also developing his first feature project, titled Shipbuilding. At the moment, Filandra is in the process of founding and starting the first full-time artist-in-residence program in Sarajevo. Martina Yordanova is a curator, writer, and researcher based in Sofia, Bulgaria. She graduated from the University of Vienna in Publicity and Communication Sciences in 2014. She went on to do her postgraduate studies in Cultural Management and Curatorial Practices at different European educational institutions, including the University of Arts Berlin, Goldsmiths University, Institute for Cultural Concepts Vienna, and The Cultural Academy in Salzburg. Currently, she works in Sofia where in 2016, together with architects Galya Krumova and exhibition designer Petya Krumova, she established a non-profit foundation for contemporary art and media. Since then, Yordanova has been initiating different art events and exhibitions with international and Bulgarian artists, mostly living abroad. She is also the founder and curator of “1m2 of Art”—a project based in Veliko Tarnovo wherein every month a different artist from the local art scene presents their work in a space no bigger than its name. < Participants Educational Program Programs >

(LAST) THINGS As a final gesture to wrap up the program we propose an online collective session. Its aim is to share some of the individual writing or exercises and receive feedback from tutors and colleagues, as well as to collectively create a poetic text based on the main topics and questions aroused during the course. The meeting is a recurring event with a limitation of 10 participants. Estimated duration: around 2 hrs. To take part subscribe for a proposed time in the table below. Form: Date/ Time (GMT)/ Number of places left/ (organizer provides nearest time/date options and limits the number of attendants) Empty text field: Enter an email to receive a zoom link for the meeting. (user receives a zoom link for a set time) If by any reason you decide to not take part in the online meeting, we can provide you with instructions for individual work. Empty text field: Enter an email to receive an individual task. Online session content: (LAST) THINGS TO BE SAID This session will be led by program initiator Biljana Ciric. Meeting duration: 1 hr. Please prepare and send your selected task from any Block of the program via email wcscd.online@gmail.com . It can be a pdf/word file or a link to video or any multimedia file. A folder with participant’s presentations will be sent to your email for preliminary review. During the session you will have 5 minutes to present and 5 minutes for collective feedback. (LAST) THINGS TO BE WRITTEN This session will be led by Anastasia Albokrinova. Meeting duration: 1 hr. This session will be dedicated to writing a collective poem in relation to educational practice. You don’t need any prior experience in poetry, but be ready to brainstorm and improvise. Please have your tasks done previously for the program nearby. They may be needed.

< Back Stories from the room - Conversation 21 Feb 2022 Jasphy Zheng https://vimeo.com/680478437 Stories from the Room project by Jasphy Zheng has been implemented in many locations including Shanghai, Addis Ababa and Bor among others. Participants and organizers of the project in different locals gathered to reflect on situating the project locally. After this meeting, we continue to work on a permanent home for Stories from the Room achieve in Public Library Bor. Participants in conversation were Jasphy Zheng (artist), Violeta Stojmenovic (Public Library, Bor), Larys Frogier (director Rockbund Art Museum), and Dawit Seto and Sarah Bushra (Contemporary Nights, Addis Ababa) and Biljana Ciric (WCSCD). Previous Next

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Curators: Biljana Ciric, Larys Frogier, Billy Tang < Back Newly commissioned project by RAM Jasphy Zheng: Stories from the Room 7 Nov 2020 Rockbund Art Museum is very pleased to announce our collaboration with Jasphy Zheng on Stories from the Room (Shanghai), 2020 , a newly commissioned project initiated by the artist and supported by RAM CURTAIN New Commissions Series . Invited by Larys Frogier, director of Rockbund Art Museum, Stories from the Room is an ongoing work conceived by Jasphy Zheng, who will present her two-year Stories from the Room project as a temporary installation hosted by the museum. Her project will be occupy the museum building during its temporary closure from 2020.11.07 to 2021.01.03. With the current situation of uncertainty, where we are subjected to varying degrees of isolation, the project is a process to connect various places and people together, beginning with the motivation to archive a growing collection of personal writing responding to lived experiences of the current ‘new normal’. Re-defining the engagement between artist, institution and the audience by going beyond the conventional exhibition structure, Stories from the Room will be extended through the As you go… roads under your feet towards the new future research platform initiated by independent curator Biljana Ciric, and the project will be presented across multiple countries including Japan, Australia, China, Kazakhstan, Serbia and Ethiopia. Initially staged at the CCA Kitakyushu early this year , Stories from the Room was first realized as a response to the outbreak of the pandemic. The project has since expanded as a concept beyond a traditional archival in collaboration with a community of contributors spanning different continents and regions. Through this dialogue, the archive encompasses many different forms and languages through each encounter with a different public space – many of these spaces have faced different degrees of opening and closure that have influenced how the audience is able to engage with her project. Participants have been encouraged to contribute daily to share personal observations, memories, and reflections, with each contributor having a dedicated folder as a permanent part of the archive. In this way, Zheng provides a vital conduit for a diverse collection of voices to convene together in order to express, challenge, or respond to the difficulties of our current situation. Through each iteration, the archive raises different questions, reflecting the divergent realities and experiences of people and places who contribute to the development of this project. In the moment of closure before the Rockbund Art Museum’s renovation, the artist has fabricated a series of delicately-made copper objects to occupy the space for Stories from the Room (Shanghai), 2020 . As custodians of the archive, we will continue the work of updating and regularly maintaining the archive as it grows through the iteration that occupies our space in Shanghai. Scattered across the floors of our empty museum building, the metallic objects add a sculptural dimension to the project for audiences to explore freely. This subtle interaction with the museum adds another layer to the project as slowly, long-lasting ties begin to emerge between our staff and the archive. We sincerely welcome you to join this journey, exploring questions related to the boundaries between public and privacy, distance and intimacy during these uncertain times. May we embrace the uncertainties and challenges together. Please note that we do not accept on-site registration, kindly make an appointment before your visit. Access is limited. For more information, please refer to the rules and information available at “Booking Registration” below. Stories from the Room (Shanghai), 2020 is produced with generous support from Longlati Foundation. Booking Registration To visit Stories from the Room (Shanghai), 2020 at the Rockbund Art Museum, contributors to the open call related to this project will need to book in advance through email. Booking requests are subjected to a first come first serve booking process. If unable to attend, these contributors will also receive the ability to transfer the invitation to another person to attend on their behalf. Contributors can contact via email jasphy.opencall@gmail.com for more details related to the reservation procedure. Please note that we do not accept on-site registration. Please contribute in advance and visit the archive in accordance to our guidelines after receiving this confirmation. Appointments are open to RAM members, sponsors and friends. For more information, please inquire 021-63216251. Answering time: Monday to Friday 11:00-18:00. Submission Information If you would like to participate in this ongoing project, please refer to guidance below: Write about your days, thoughts or feelings, at any length and in any language you prefer Ensure your submission includes a name, location and date Send your writings to jasphy.opencall@gmail.com Each contributor will have a dedicated folder in the archive and multiple submissions over time are welcomed Please note that we are unable to include contributions in the form of image only. This open call in collaboration with RAM is a two-year project with the deadline of December 30th, 2022. The archives in the space will continue to expand with successive iterations as the project is displayed around the world. Please note: contributors volunteer free of charge to contribute to this project with the understanding their writing will be visible to different public displays as an on-going project by the artist Jasphy Zheng. Therefore, participants confirm their consent for the reproduction and usage of the content submitted for the display at Rockbund Art Museum, but also including future usages elsewhere as part of a continuous archival project initiated by the artist. Contributors must ensure to avoid the disclosure of private information in the submission. Submissions will not be returned to the contributor and will remain as part of the artwork. Submitted writings will be organized into the archive at Rockbund Art Museum weekly. About the Artist Living between the US and China, Jasphy Zheng is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice most recently explores the inevitable failure of communication, both on an interpersonal and collective level. Using social installations, unannounced performances, sculptural objects, and artist’s books, Zheng constructs situations as public interventions that aim to raise awareness of our social and cultural environment, both in and out of the context of contemporary art. Zheng graduated with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Stories from the Room Project Plan Center for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu, Japan, 2020.05.18 – 2020.09.25 Rockbund Art Museum, China, 2020.11.07 – 2021.01.03 TarraWarra Museum of Art, Australia, 2020.08.30 – 2021.07.11 Ethiopia, October 2020 – ongoing Kazakhstan, End of 2020 – ongoing Serbia, End of 2020 – ongoing CURTAIN As you go… roads under your feet towards the new future Click to read Chinese version Previous Next

Mentors Mentors Lecture Series Participant Activities < Mentors Educational Program Menu >

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Lecture by Dorothea von Hantelmann / The Exhibition. A Lecture Demonstration Saša Tkačenko, Flags from the WCSCD series, 2018. Photo by Ivan Zupanc THE CURATORIAL COURSE WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? IS GLAD TO ANNOUNCE A PUBLIC TALK BY Dorothea von Hantelmann The Exhibition. A Lecture Demonstration MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART BELGRADE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2018 AT 6 PM Art institutions are deeply connected to core socio-economic parameters of their time, which they symbolically cultivate and ritually enact. Looking at art spaces as a series of decisive moments of transformation, I will pose the question if the transformations of our epoch are asking for a new kind of ritual, after that of the exhibition. (The Exhibition. A Lecture Demonstration by Dorothea von Hantelmann) In collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, the second lecture within the series of public programs organized by WCSCD will be presented by Dorothea von Hantelmann (Professor of Art and Society at Bard College Berlin, A Liberal Arts University gGmbH). The series is designed to offer new and different perspectives on the theories and practices of exhibition-making. An esteemed theorist, scholar, writer, and curator, von Hantelmann’s work is at the forefront of conversations around the rethinking and retooling of exhibition rituals in contemporary art and the cultures of exhibition-making in general. For this occasion, von Hantelmann will deliver a lecture titled The Exhibition. A Lecture Demonstration. As she explains: “We can, and this is the perspective of art history, understand museums and exhibitions as places, as repositories for art objects, which classify and present important treasures of a cultural heritage. Or we can, and this is a more sociological and anthropological approach, see them as institutions that derive their social function from the fact that they carry specific values and concepts into society. My lecture both explores and demonstrates certain aspects of this second perspective. It analyses the cultural format of the museum and the exhibition as a specifically modern ritual in the historical and contemporary context of Western liberalism. Art institutions are deeply connected to core socio-economic parameters of their time, which they symbolically cultivate and ritually enact. Looking at art spaces as a series of decisive moments of transformation, I will pose the question if the transformations of our epoch are asking for a new kind of ritual, after that of the exhibition.” ABOUT THE LECTURER: Dorothea von Hantelmann is Professor of Art and Society at Bard College Berlin. Before taking the position at Bard College Berlin she was documenta Professor at the Art Academy/University of Kassel where she lectured on the history and meaning of documenta and was involved in the constitution of a documenta research institute. Her main fields of research are contemporary art and theory as well as the history and theory of exhibitions. She is the author of How to Do Things with Art, one of the seminal works on performativity within contemporary art; co-editor of The exhibition. Politics of a Ritual; and has written on artists such as Daniel Buren, Jeff Koons, Philippe Parreno, and James Coleman. Her current book project is titled The exhibition: Transformations of a ritual, which explores exhibitions as ritual spaces in which fundamental values and categories of modern, liberal, and market-based societies historically have been, and continue to be, practiced and reflected. Her curatorial work includes such projects and exhibitions as I promise it’s political (Museum Ludwig, Cologne 2002); Elective Affinities (Vienna Festival 1999); and I like Theater & Theater likes me (Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg 2001). She was a co-curator of A Prelude for The Shed, a multidisciplinary arts project that took place in the framework of The Shed, a new institution for the arts in New York City, scheduled to open in 2019. The WCSCD curatorial course and series of public lectures are initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric together with Supervizuelna. The lecture by Niels Van Tomme is made possible with the help of MoCAB and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with the additional support of Zepter Museum and Zepter Hotel. Project partners: The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; GRAD—European Center for Culture and Debate; EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial, ’Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’ Foundation and Zepter Museum. The project is supported by: the Goethe Institute in Belgrade; Istituto Italiano di Cultura Belgrado; the Embassy of Sweden; the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; the Embassy of Ireland in Greece; the Embassy of Indonesia; the EU Info Centre; Pro Helvetia – Swiss Art Council; and galleries Eugster || Belgrade, HESTIA Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau, and Zepter Hotel, Royal Inn Hotel and CAR:GO. Media partners: EUNIC Serbia, RTS3. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

< Back “Bor is burning” [1]: the political economy of IT in the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia 20 Dec 2020 Robert Bobnič and Kaja Kraner Back to the future! At the entrance to the Bor copper mining complex (RTB Bor) where one of the pits is situated, a large board reads, “Politics of security and protection of the environment: life first, we have to care for our environment.” The signage is in Chinese and Serbian (though not its Cyrillic script). Nearby lies a monument to the victims of a labor camp in the Bor mine during World War II. The Third Reich was one of many who had dug a mine at this location within the past 7, 000 years, and when the Kingdom of Yugoslavia capitulated in 1941, they took over the mine shortly after, establishing around twenty labor camps known for a special kind of torture. People had to work barefoot and naked – some were executed: hung with their heads towards the ground as if to be some kind of monument. It is very quiet – almost too quiet – for a mine. As we look at the empty halls (which in the socialist heyday would have been filled with workers dining and changing clothes), two young engineers – one of them emphasizing that nowadays more female engineers work at the mine – ironically say, “we are going back to the eighties. ” After the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia, during the isolation of Serbia (owing to the international sanctions during the 1990s) and their period of privatization, RTB Bor was sold to the Chinese state-owned Zinjin corporation in 2017. Bor mining facilities is now under the process of reconstruction and automation as a part of Chinese investment in the Balkan region. Is this the coming of another wave of modernization, another acceleration – another colonization – as suggested by the vague perception of a Chinese techno-capitalist entry (through the Balkans) into Europe? Discussing the question of Sinofuturism, Chinese philosopher of technology, Yuk Hui, claims it “runs in the opposite direction to moral cosmotechnical thinking – ultimately, it is only an acceleration of the European modern project.” [2] It is therefore a project, which according to the moral attitude in the current age of ecological thinking, cares neither for life nor for the environment. Monument of the victims of labor camp at the entrance in Bor mine (left). Zinjin headquarter in Bor (right). One mine, 7, 000 years of cosmos A penetrated surface – the hole in the earth. Mankind not only got to his feet and looked up to the sky where he was blinded by the sun, but also began to dig into the earth’s past to exploit it for his own (re)production and preservation . We could say that to enter the mine is to enter geological and cosmological deep time – [the] accumulated dead labor of the cosmic economy, accessible only by the technics of mining conducted by the living labor of humans, tools, science, and machines. The latter is quite clear in the case of RTB Bor, where copper and gold mining dates back to at least 5000 BC. Nowadays, we can only imagine the importance of mining in the formation of different cosmologies from surrounding cultures during the prehistoric and historic, or premodern and modern, periods. During the modern era, the technics of mining not only became industrialized, but functioned as the basis for industrial technological development – mining, and nature in general, is a standing reserve for energetic and infrastructural potential. The latter holds true both for the heavily industrialized 19th century and heavily informationalized 21stcentury, where mining and data mining came to form a particular synthesis. Strictly speaking, mining could be understood as one of the most fundamental practices underpinning cosmotechnics. The concept of cosmotechnics was coined by Yuk Hui as a departure from the epistemological, social, and material framework of the European project of modernization. The latter was based on the ontological difference between nature and culture by means of modern technological development and its corresponding way of technological thinking, in which technics is understood as a mediation tool between the order of nature and order of culture. In this regard, it is important to note that cosmotechnics (as a concept and methodology) emphasizes a cosmological understanding of technology, not an anthropological one. This fundamental change in conceptualization – the elimination of the basic human-centricity, characteristic of Western modernity – became possible when the whole world (nature and cosmos included) began to function as a giant computational machine. For this reason, Hui is not conducting a backdoor exit through some nontechnological return, but rather, suggests an exit through technics itself. In the middle of technological geneses – as is modern technology – lies an entire cosmos of the totality of nature and technics: a particular technological genesis as well as a particular cosmology, i.e., the way different cultures understand the universe and comprehend the order of things, be it in the form of myth, magic, or science. In the specific case of Europe, the entire cosmic totality of nature and technics includes understanding the technology which endowed particular nation states with their competitive advantage in the colonial and economic subjection of the rest of the world. These are indistinguishable from capitalist modes of production. While developing the concept of cosmotechnics, Hui’s initial question asks why there was no technological development in China as it happened in the West, given that China had material conditions for such a development. In embarking on an answer, he suggests that the reason lies in the different cosmology of Chinese culture. It is devoid of the concept of technology as operated and understood in the West (beginning with the famous Greek techne , until its synthetic finalization at the start of the 20th Century with the end of metaphysics by cybernetics, as understood by philosopher Martin Heidegger). In this sense, China’s current technocapital power, and corresponding Sinofuturism, is therefore based on the appropriation and acceleration of the Western concept of technology after the Opium wars and late socialist modernization. Cosmotechnics encapsulates diversity, however not in the form of cultural diversity (the idea of multiculturalism itself being the product of modernization and colonialism), but in the form of technological diversity. Thus, the question of locality is wedged open (again, not locality as a result of cultural identity, but locality as the product of technical means). However, Hui states: “Cosmotechnics is not simply about different ways of making things, for example, different techniques of knitting or dying,” it is above all, “the unification of the moral and the cosmic through technical activities. […] This cosmological specificity must be rethought beyond astral physics, beyond the conceptualization of the universe as a thermodynamic system; it also reopens the question of morality beyond ethical rules, which are added posteriorly as constraints to new technologies. Technical activities unify the moral order and the cosmic order; and by unification, I mean reciprocal processes which constantly enforce each other to acquire new meanings.” [3] This is one way to say that technology is not neutral – not only in the sense of its use but also its existence. Perhaps this also means that cosmotechnics functions more as a perspective and less as a concept, and for that reason cannot be transmitted from one place or history to another without alteration. Prehistoric mining tools in Museum of mining and metallurgy Bor (left). Zinjin flag at the entrance to the mining hole (right). Balkan, time and (deep) time again This is where our initial question comes in: can we reconstruct a specific Balkan cosmotechnics? The formulation of this question emerged precisely from the specific case of RTB Bor and is of particular importance when considering at least two distinct elements: (1) the extreme duration of mining activities and natural resource exploitation ranging through many different cosmologies, cultures, politics, and economies; (2) the period of modernization, which unfolded during the existence of socialist Yugoslavia. The latter is the focus of the current stage of our research. The modern history of mining in Bor started in the late 19th century, when a rich Serbian industrialist, Djordje Vajfert, was looking for gold. He [mostly] found copper, though some gold as well. French capital soon entered and the French Company of the Bor Mines, the Concession St. George, began mining in 1904. In Bor you can still see the old flamboyant French houses where French management lived. In comparison, workers were all living in wooden housing. But technological development and modernization in Bor came with the birth of socialist Yugoslavia. The mine was nationalized in 1945, and the industrial town was gradually built around it. Due to the importance of mining in modern industry and the resulting “cult of work”, Bor attained a special status within Yugoslav culture and its collective imagination. It is this status, and subsequent turbulence of the postsocialist period, that now leads it to face Chinese technological investment as the inscription of Bor in global technocapitalistic unification (which rejects cosmotechnical difference). This is the starting point for opening an inquiry of whether we can speak of a specific Balkan socialist cosmotechnics, i.e., a specific local understanding of technology. The question is important because it transcends the entrapment of Balkan and socialist Yugoslavia tradition in the form of cultural curiosity (from being part of the globalized multicultural world in which socialism ceased to represent a threat to the Western capitalist – and from the start, a technocapitalist – project). Still, Balkans is the name of a specific cultural and political locality where mainly South Slavs have resided for centuries under distinct mythological traditions and religious cultures. Due to its geographical position (and resulting unique political and economic position), the Balkans has been of special importance for many imperialist powers. The region as a whole also holds the position of the Other to either/both the West or the East, and besides that, has always been “out[side] of the world”: free-floating in space, endowed with a nonhuman and noncivilized imaginary. After the period of political unification in the 19th century and the consequently established Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century, the region fully integrated under the banner of [a] socialist project, which in case of Yugoslavia acquired a specific positionality between the Western and Eastern bloc – clear in the fact that they implemented a Western technoscientific (cosmotechnical) projection in a supposedly socialist way. If we propose the idea in this way, we must differentiate the alleged unity of the European modern objective based on a specific unifying concept of technology. In other words: we must consider – and question – the difference between the capitalist and socialist objective of modernization. The key question is therefore: are there any differences in how socialist projects enacted an understanding of cosmos and nature through technical means? Since there exists an overlapping sphere of technological thinking between capitalist and socialist alternatives – materialized especially in the totalizing science of cybernetics, which functions as an epistemic unified cosmotechnics without a specific locality – we can also pose an additional question: did socialism enact specific cosmotechnics when it implemented technological and cybernetic thinking? Since [the] Bor mine was one of the first industries in Yugoslavia where cybernetic thinking and computer technology had been installed (the earliest example of Yugoslav computational modernization), we can lay the basic methodological groundwork: contrasting Heidegger’s understanding of technology (which already totalizes the concept of technology on a philosophical level) with Marx’s understanding of technology. From this, and by referring to the implementation of computer technology and management automatization in the industry when examining the Bor mine, we can pose the following question: why did technological progress in the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia slow down at some point? Components from Univac computer, installed in Bor mine in late 1950s. Source: Visa Tasič, Principal Research Fellow of Mining and Metallurgy Institute Bor. Why did technological progress in the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia slow down at some point? By posing this question, we are directly referring to the development of computer technology at RTB Bor as explained by one of our colleagues, a researcher and a former employee at the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Bor, dr. Dragan R. Milivojević: When I wrote the article “Half a Century of Computing in the Serbian Copper Mining and Metallurgy Industry” [4] for a very reputable American journal IEEE Annals of the History of Computering… and – when you write such an article, you send it and it is reviewed by the peer reviewers [who] demand you correct something, etc. – the thing they asked me the most was to explain where this interruption of our development occurred. They remembered us in the rank of Finland and Czechoslovakia, because from 1946 to 1950 those three countries – Yugoslavia, Finland and Czechoslovakia – were technologically at the same level. This is what they were most interested in, and of course I had to explain it a little bit, I had to find the literature on what was in those other countries, and I found out we really haven’t lagged behind at all. We are suggesting that the answer to this question can present a good starting point to emphasize specific understandings of science and technology within the framework of Marxism – the official ideologic, economic and political basis of “real existing socialism”. In the first phase, Marx’s, or more broadly, Marxist understanding of technology (from which the socialist policies regarding technological development in Yugoslavia stemmed) must be differentiated from Heidegger’s (who is predominantly considered the key philosophical representative of the modern Western understanding of technology). The main difference emerges from the fact that Marxism perceives science and technology in its indistinguishable relation to the capitalist mode of production, marked with the broader move from the perception of natural resources as the main source of value towards human resources as the main source of value . Science and technology in Marxism are therefore not so much understood in its relation to nature, but in relation to human nature, whereby presupposing the context of (in Foucauldian terms) governmentality and biopolitics – characteristic of the (Western) modern period. The latter can be understood as a condition of the possibility for Marx’s labor theory of value; Marxist perception of science-technology relation; the linkage of scientific-technological development with the problem of alienation; and especially the ‘institutionalization’ of the split between the manual and intellectual labor – broadly speaking: class perspective on technological development. The establishment of “human capital” (if we would use the classic neoliberal term) as a fundamental of Marxist understanding of technology and technology-nature relations, inevitably led to the (self)limitation of potentially exponential, technological socialist progress. Socialist technological “catching up” since the mid-20th century, driven by the logic of economic rationality, at some point clashed with the logic of the development of social relations. In the specific case of self-governing, socialist Yugoslavia, the latter can be especially seen in the formal equalization of IT experts with all other employees, which led to difficulties implementing critical technological innovation on a micro social level. Dragan R. Milivojević explains this as: […] It was a time of socialist self-management. That period was very interesting. I am not qualified to talk about it, but I can talk about my experience of that period because I’ve lived and worked in [it]: we had terrible difficulty putting an expert idea into practice because at [the] time it was ideologically necessary for all the working people to agree with that idea – all those employed in [the] particular organization. […] The complex organization of the joint work RTB Bor had 23,000 employees, in each relatively autonomous unit of RTB Bor, an assembly of working people had to happen – an assembly of all of the employees – and more than 50% of them [must] vote for this idea. The voice of the lady who [made] coffee and my voice were considered equal. It’s funny but it was a reality. [5] The Socialist “monopole” of state politics/party over the economy, or more specifically, workers’ involvement in the management of factories and their development, in its first phase (at least in theory) tried to reduce established differentiation between intellectual and manual labor by including workers in the decision-making processes. In the case of RTB Bor, the latter can be explicitly perceived by (in all the big factories in Yugoslavia) the mandatory worker’s magazine which shared all crucial information regarding the company’s leadership; investments; its annual loses and profits, etc. The transparency of the factory’s management established this as a common matter, which effectively activated [the] worker’s sense of responsibility (worker’s self-management goes hand in hand with the production of their responsibility [i.e., moral training], which is specific to the socialization rather than individualization of responsibility), and presented that company or factory as a collective. Worker’s magazine “Rudar” (“The Miner”). Source: Bor Library (Bor, Serbia). Did socialism enact specific cosmotechnics when it implemented technological and cybernetic thinking? And could a Marxist understanding of scientific and technological development be the starting point to answer this question? At current stage of our research, we cannot fully answer to the complexities these questions unravel, and in general we see our outlined inquiry as relatively modest: primarily questioning the unification of modern Western cosmotechnics. However, we can further emphasize the Marxist determination of scientific and technological progress in four main goals and its consequences (consequences that can be also seen in specific case of RTB Bor’s socialist period). Those goals are: (1) joint control, (2) rational regulation, (3) minimum power consumption, (4) conditions that are most worthy of human nature and are best suited to it (i.e. demand creative work). [6] Technology itself is largely understood as a synonym for material production (and the opposite of a spiritual one), whereby the main idea is that a society’s material foundations (technical included) are closely related to social change. Technological and scientific development and progress are therefore potential tools for social development and progress; they are seen as a moving force of history, rather than mere liberation of humankind from nature. The industrial revolution of the 19th century, which established the idea of nature as a form of energy in service to the needs of humankind, is defined as a condition for the possibility of a higher form of society, i.e. communist society based on the ideal of creative work (for instance, as manifested in arts). Technology in Marxism is therefore not so much understood within the framework of the Greek techne (an activity that does not satisfy in itself and is, above all, the means of developing other activities. [7] For instance, ars as an activity where human freedom is manifested and this freedom is understood as freedom from the natural laws of necessity , or human’s general susceptibility to nature – including his own). Marxist understanding of technics and technology is not strictly instrumental, objectivist (nature as a means of supply for humans), or idealist. Namely, at least in principle and programmatic terms, Marxism eliminated the differentiation between techne and physis . Technology is therefore a means of human expression, a channel where human activity comes within proximity to the autopoietic creativity of nature, characterized by the merging of techne, poiesis and physis . Since the concept of cosmotechnics encapsulates the nature-technics relation, in this regard we could add that in a socialist society, the ideal of nature’s productivity is established as the very basis for [a] communist society ideal. Naturally, this is all theory, though it does prompt us to think on (socialist) practice or – better yet – real, existing socialist technics? Robert Bobnič is a Ph.D. Kaja Kraner is an independent researcher, lecturer, and curator. [1] The phrase is a reference to the Serbian alternative rock band, Goribor (literally translates to: Burning Bor ) originating from the town of Bor. The band got its name based on the impression of a large fire over the town due to the process of copper smelting slag being separated from copper. [2] Yuk Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics , Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2018, p. 297. [3] Yuk Hui, Machine and Ecology, Angelaki 25:4, 2020, p. 54-66. [4] The article “Half a Century of Computing in the Serbian Copper Mining and Metallurgy Industry” was published in co-authorship with Dragan R. Milivojević, Marijana Pavlov (Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Bor, Serbia), Vladimir Despotović (University of Belgrade, Serbia) and Visa Tasić (Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Bor, Serbia) in IEEE Annals of the History of Computering in 2012. [5] From the interview with Dragan R. Milivojević, retired researcher of Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Bor, Serbia conducted in Belgrade (Serbia) on 22th of October 2020. [6] Andrej Kirn, Marxovo razumevanje znanosti in tehnike (Marx’s understanding of science and technology) , Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1978, p. 226. [7] It is quite evident, Greek understanding of technics follows an already established class division of labor as the basis of antient Greek society: among others, the division between the free citizens and the enslaved ones executing manual labor. Previous Next