7/28/2019 Simondon Workshop Blurb

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Workshop: Simondon and Digital Culture

21-22 November, 2013

Centre for Digital CulturesLeuphana University Lneburg** places limited, further details about participation will be announced 2 months prior to the event

Organizers: Yuk Hui (Leuphana Universitt), Erich Hrl(Ruhr-Universitt Bochum)Jeremy Gilbert(New Formations/University of East London)

Confrmed Speakers:Jean-Hugues Barthlmy (FR), Anne Sauvagnargues(FR), Ludoric

Duhem(FR), Erich Hrl(DE), Yuk Hui (DE), Michael Cuntz (DE) Jeremy Gilbert (UK), AndyGoffey(UK), Luciana Parisi (UK), Christoph Brunner(CH),

This workshop is dedicated to Gilbert Simondon: our contemporary. It will explore and delineatethe signicance of his work for the analysis of our contemporary techno-medial condition.Therefore it focuses on the question of the digital, and aims to put forward a critical agenda for

research into digital cultures, informed by Simondon's thought.

InDu Mode d'Existence des Objets Techniques(1958), Simondon showed us a new approach to theunderstanding of technical objects, and rethought the relation between humans and machines,

cultures and technologies. Today we are witnessing the proliferation of types of object - digitalobjects in particular - while the very notions of object and objectivity are being transformed by

digitizing processes.

This has inevitable implications for experiences and concepts of subjectivity, and Simondons workon individuation - in particular inL'individuation: la lumire des notions de forme et d'information (2005) -remains one of the most original and complete, yet one of the most neglected, explorations of thistopic in the history of Western philosophy. This work remains particularly invaluable for its

compatibility with his work on technical systems and technological culture.

What do terms such as object and subject mean today? If they are undergoing a displacement inthe era of digital cultures, then this issue was perhaps most obviously pre-gured by Felix Guattarisanticipation of a post-media age when we wrote: one can hope, from there that operates arevision of power of mass media which crashes the contemporary subjectivity and a new entry

toward a post-media age consisting of an individual-collective re-appropriation and an interactiveusage of machines of information, communication, intelligence, art and of culture.

While the adventures of post-humanism and cyber-feminism have explored this territory for several

decades already, we contend that Simondons work - like Guattari's - remains a crucially under-exploited resource for understanding the post-media age, its consequences for subjectivity, the

politics of networks, the nature of digital objects, and the role of imaginations, innovation andparticipation in the information society (L'invention dans les Techniques, 2005;Imagination et Invention,2008 ) (Communication et Information, 2010). While Simondons work is known indirectly by readers ofStiegler, Hansen ,and Massumi, very little has been done to develop his ideas for the analysis of

contemporary digital culture and its political implications, despite its obvious relevance. We proposethis workshop as a rst step towards rectifying this situation.

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7/28/2019 Simondon Workshop Blurb

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