{"id":42398,"date":"2022-12-05T16:38:12","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T15:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/prospections\/on-digital-discomfort-editorial\/"},"modified":"2024-01-02T13:01:41","modified_gmt":"2024-01-02T12:01:41","slug":"on-digital-discomfort-editorial","status":"publish","type":"prospection","link":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/nl\/prospections\/on-digital-discomfort-editorial\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Discomfort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">There\u2019s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can\u2019t take part; you can\u2019t even passively take part, and you\u2019ve got to put your bodies against the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers and upon all the apparatus; and you\u2019ve got to make it stop. And you\u2019ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you\u2019re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">\u2014Mario Savio, \u201cBodies Upon the Gears,\u201d&nbsp;1964<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In what can be regarded as an incendiary prelude to the 1968 student movement, activist Mario Savio\u2019s words invoke a redistribution of agency that both revolts against the hierarchical optimization of social production by means of knowledge acquisition and also reveals the individualistic subject-oriented techno-politics of the time. This is one of the many manifestations of a countercultural spirit that mobilized and connected important forces at the time. In 2022, a contemporary countercultural struggle perhaps needs to start by honoring, yet also mourning, these kinds of revolutionary and antagonistic attitudes by understanding that it is nowadays quite unimaginable, techno-politically speaking, to put any body against any gear to make \u201cit\u201d stop.<\/p>\n<p>Formed as part of the 2021\/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice, the Cell for Digital Discomfort (CfDD)\u2014composed of Cristina Cochior, Karl Moubarak, and Jara Rocha\u2014are the guest editors of this special <em>Prospections<\/em> focus \u201cDigital Discomfort,\u201d a compilation of newly commissioned and archival resources such as texts, interviews, and videos that allow for a collective exploration of sensibilities around an affirmative repoliticization and redefinition of compu-relational practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"778\" height=\"558\" src=\"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-1-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42135\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-1-1.png 778w, https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-1-1-300x215.png 300w, https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-1-1-768x551.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 706px) 89vw, (max-width: 767px) 82vw, 740px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Cell for Digital Discomfort (as part of the 2021\/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice),&nbsp;<em>Ghastly Infrastructures of Delay<\/em>,&nbsp;2022, meme.&nbsp; &nbsp;                                                                                The image shows a graphical painting depicting two people\u2019s arms coming in from the left and right edges of the image; their hands are grasped together at the center of the image. They are clasping their arms together in a way that represents unity, solidarity, and agreement. Alternatively, this clasping gesture could be interpreted as arm wrestling. One of the arms has the words \u201cNS TRAINS\u201d written over it, referring to the Dutch railway company, while the other arm has the word \u201cINDIEHOME\u201d over it, referring to the Indonesian home networking provider. Where both hands are joined together, the words \u201cMAKING PPL BE LATE\u201d are written, \u201cPPL\u201d here being a slang term for \u201cpeople.\u201d This image suggests that the separate monopolies of both the NS company on the Dutch railway systems and the IndieHome company on the Indonesian networking systems create the same kinds of delays.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>During their fellowship for Situated Practice, the CfDD learnt, dialogued, and experimented with ways to refuse compliance with what science and technology scholar and ecofeminist Donna Haraway calls the \u201cinformatics of domination,\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a> and what could be referred to as \u201ctotalitarian innovation.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a> From within and beyond the fellowship, CfDD\u2019s drive is to operate as an agitator of disobedient, practice-based, para-academic research on, across, and despite the techno-colonial establishment of BigTech. CfDD undertakes mundane but attentive experiments to collectively study non-Eurocentric white origins of computational paradigms and to propose instead trans*feminist infrastructural entanglements,<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> anti-extractivist connecting cultures, and intersectional notions of hosting and hostility in the online structures we inhabit.<\/p>\n<p>With \u201cDigital Discomfort,\u201d CfDD continue their collective study of cultures and practices of computation and invites other reflections, grammars, and actions that contribute to a plurality of inter-dependent, anti-colonial, trans*feminist, anti-ableist, and environmentally just worldmaking practices of computation. These contributions grapple with the complex distribution of agencies and stakeholders, even if it\u2019s technically impossible to make <em>the apparatus<\/em> just \u201cstop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"734\" src=\"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-2-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42145\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-2-2.png 1000w, https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-2-2-300x220.png 300w, https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-2-2-768x564.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 706px) 89vw, (max-width: 767px) 82vw, 740px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Cell for Digital Discomfort (as part of the 2021\/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice), diagram of \u201cConditions for Connectivity,\u201d&nbsp;2021, digital rendering of an abstract plain-text diagram. The image shows a diagram illustrating someone\u2019s conditions for connectivity. This diagram is formed from several different layered box-shaped islands, all of which are related to each other in one way or another. Starting at the top-left island, the root word is \u201ccounterculture.\u201d Counterculture extends toward hardware and software companionship, which appear on the top-right-side island. Underneath counterculture is \u201cyears vs assimilation of developmentalist values,\u201d after which a series of seemingly abstract linked collections of the letters \u201cxx,\u201d \u201cxxx,\u201d and \u201cxxxx\u201d drizzle diagonally across the figure, leading to the opposite side of the diagram. Here \u201cauthoritarian infrastructuring vs defenders territory\u201d sits aptly next to \u201clife,\u201d \u201cinapproriate\/d,\u201d \u201ccomplexity,\u201d and \u201cotherway.\u201d The two corners of this diagram are in dialogue with each other. An arrow leads back to the left side of the diagram, where an island of relations between \u201cmutual constitution,\u201d \u201coperations,\u201d \u201cprotocols,\u201d \u201ctechniques,\u201d and \u201ctactics\u201d sits. And at the very bottom-left edge of the diagram is \u201cproductive connectivity\u201d placed in relation with \u201creproductive networking\u201d\u2014using the same \u201cxx\u201d bridging technique as earlier. This last island seems to also branch from the very first, \u201ccounterculture\u201d island.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In <em>The Cultural Politics of Emotions<\/em> (2004), feminist scholar and author Sara Ahmed proposes a definition of discomfort in which she theorizes its generative potential. According to Ahmed, this potential lies in developing possibilities of living that stray from the normative: \u201cTo feel uncomfortable is precisely to be affected by that which persists in the shaping of bodies and lives. Discomfort is hence not about assimilation or resistance, <em>but about inhabiting norms differently<\/em>. The inhabitance is generative insofar as it does not end with the failure of norms to be secured, but with possibilities of living that do not \u2018follow\u2019 these norms through.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a> Folding this conceptualization into the digital realm raises the question of what new \u201cavailable scripts for living and loving\u201d discomfort might lead to that allow moving closer toward a more situated, diverse, radical, careful, and attuned cohabiting of everyday digital space-times.<a href=\"#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The urgency of CfDD\u2019s inquiry is prompted by the contemporary stage of rampant global digitization based on the dominant logic of coercion, quantification, and the mass capture of all aspects of more than human existence: the lack of exteriority within cloud-computing, the imperativeness of hyper-availability, the apparently unquestionable \u201cfixes\u201d brought by agile flow-management, the solutionism of optimized planetary computing, and so forth. Digital discomfort is a mode of dealing with, resisting, attending to, and intervening into the sneaky moments of techno-capitalist innovation,<a href=\"#_ftn7\" name=\"_ftnref7\">[7]<\/a> linear solutionism, and ostensibly seamless operations of digital infrastructures. Activating the latent epistemic potential of roughness, \u201cseamfulness,\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn8\" name=\"_ftnref8\">[8]<\/a> and friction, digital discomfort builds with trans*feminist practices toward non-universalist propositions for computation and algorithmic practice\u2014either through interventions in existing dominant infrastructures, such as The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest\u2019s Counter Cloud Action Plan,<a href=\"#_ftn9\" name=\"_ftnref9\">[9]<\/a> or through the bottom-up building of infrastructure by communities, such as the endeavors of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers.<a href=\"#_ftn10\" name=\"_ftnref10\">[10]<\/a> Here, discomfort is conceived as a generative space-time where the relation to norms of computing has the potential to be redefined.<\/p>\n<p>Digital discomfort, like physical discomfort, can come from a politicized rearrangement of an environment: the agential trail toward the abolition of inherited structures in order for other modes of existence to emerge. Such rearrangement needs to entail a double move of, on the one hand, remembering and reactivating ways of doing that have stayed latent despite violent operations of techno-cultural erasure,<a href=\"#_ftn11\" name=\"_ftnref11\">[11]<\/a> and on the other hand, taking responsibility for the degrees of privilege in attempts to let go of cis-hetero-able-western-anthropocentric epistemic assumptions, oppressions, inertias, and all sorts of impositions for what it means to be technologically engaged in the complex realities of the contemporary mundane.<a href=\"#_ftn12\" name=\"_ftnref12\">[12]<\/a> As artist and educator Romi Ron Morrison puts it: \u201ctoday . . . is not a time of futility but of radical reimagining and visceral reconnection.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn13\" name=\"_ftnref13\">[13]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"910\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-3.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42154\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-3.png 910w, https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-3-300x172.png 300w, https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-3-768x441.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 706px) 89vw, (max-width: 767px) 82vw, 740px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Cell for Digital Discomfort (as part of the 2021\/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice), \u201cComputing&nbsp;and Calculating&nbsp;Otherwise\u201d&nbsp;online environment, 2022, digital rendering of cells on spreadsheet software Ethercalc. The image shows rows and columns forming square-shaped cells constitute a spreadsheet. The top row reads \u201cWe are at row 370; computing otherwise,\u201d indicating a seemingly plurivocal presence on the spreadsheet. Two quotes populate the center of the spreadsheet. The first is from writer and scholar Syed Mustafa Ali\u2019s \u201c<em>A Brief Introduction to Decolonial Computing<\/em>\u201d (2016) and reads: \u201cdecolonial computing attempts to engage with the phenomenon of computing from a perspective informed by (even if not situated at) the margins or periphery of the modern world system wherein issues of body-politics and geo-politics are analytically fore-grounded. Put differently, decolonial computing, as a \u2018critical\u2019 project, is about interrogating who is doing computing, where they are doing it, and, thereby, what computing means both epistemologically (i.e. in relation to knowing) and ontologically (i.e. in relation to being).\u201d The second quote is from Dilan D. Mahendran\u2019s <em>Race and Computation: An Existential Phenomenological Inquiry Concerning Man, Mind, and the Body<\/em> (2011) and reads: \u201cOn the one hand the digital computer decouples the bodily from existence, proof of the teleological development of a technological rational humanity. On the other hand, race limits existence to the bodily, as a fundamental barrier to humanity. It can be said that modern computation is the angelic ascent from one\u2019s body, while race is the hellish descent into one\u2019s body.\u201d On the very right side of the spreadsheet is a column-shaped space titled \u201cchat,\u201d with rows for people and messages, indicating a dedicated space for conversation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Reimagining means placing a focus on the experiences, aesthetics, and vernacular diversities of more exuberant techniques. This involves problematizing the individualized rigidness of the emergent subjectivity of the computer-user; cracking open the often false and mystifying fairy tales of telecom companies; adding categories of analysis to a big but simplistic quantify-all system; and reshuffling tactics of social movements to make them useful in relation to computational techno-ecologies that extend far beyond the actions of CfDD, into a network of networks.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cDigital Discomfort\u201d focus gathers voices, perspectives, and analyses that generate polyphonic imaginations and\u2014always partial\u2014definitions of digital discomfort. This is hence a proposal to do an exercise in the juxtaposition of\u2014echoing philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva\u2014differentiated but inseparable sensibilities.<a href=\"#_ftn14\" name=\"_ftnref14\">[14]<\/a> Cultural agents, theorists, artists, and system administrators\u2014some already known to CfDD and others floating in the not-yet-known area of potential relationality\u2014are invited to bring their practices into conversation with digital discomfort and contribute to the many definitions that this term can encompass. Some materials are republished, some emerge out of more or less intimate exchanges, and others assume a dialogic response with what has already been circulating through BAK\u2019s publishing and discursive archives. Contributions constellate around four thematized axes: \u201cConditions for Connectivity: On Infrastructural Interdependencies,\u201d \u201cComputing and Calculating Otherwise: On Decolonial Informatics,\u201d \u201cIntersectional Notions of Hosting and Hostipitality: On Trans*Feminist Serverhoods,\u201d and \u201cSeamfulness, Awelessness, and Underwhelmedness in Computational Practices: On Embracing Discomfort as a Transformative Aesthetics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"964\" height=\"716\" src=\"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-4.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42149\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-4.png 964w, https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-4-300x223.png 300w, https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Picture-4-768x570.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 706px) 89vw, (max-width: 767px) 82vw, 740px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">      Cell for Digital Discomfort (as part of the 2021\/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice, together&nbsp;with the&nbsp;other Cells in the BAK&nbsp;Fellowship for Situated Practice&nbsp;2022),&nbsp;\u201cA&nbsp;Wishlist for Trans*feminst Servers\u201d in the making<em>,&nbsp;<\/em>2022, digital rendering&nbsp;of the&nbsp;wish list being edited in the&nbsp;collaborative online document editor Collabora\/NextCloud.&nbsp;The image shows a section from a digital document is laid out in full view, with its contents in the center and added comments populating the right side of the screen. It seems like several authors are wrestling with the contents of this document simultaneously; collective text-editing and annotation processes are in full swing. Some of the contents of the text in question are bullet points, for example: \u201cAre run for and by communities that care enough for them in order to make them(selves) exist\u201d; \u201cOpen themselves to set processes, tools, sources, habits, patterns and memories in circulation\u201d; \u201cDo not strive for seamlessness, linear smoothness or uninterrupted relationality: They rather take a walk on the rough side (or two, or never come back!)\u201d; and \u201cAvoid efficiency, efficacy, ease-of-use, scalability: They can be traps. They often are traps.\u201d These points are wishes being formulated collectively. Even more so, we can observe a lot of annotative activity overlaying the central text, such as the quote \u201cmolecular arrangements,\u201d miscellaneous colorful graphic figures, and an even a still frame from director Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s film <em>Spirited Away <\/em>(2001) depicting the character Kaonashi and accompanied by a fragment of text which reads, \u201cMany footed spiders on the web.\u201d Some of the comments beside the main text refer to specific points or words. One of the many comments in this chaos is a semi-anonymous response to the wish for less seamlessness: \u201cHow to not let go of accessibility through this?\u201d                                                                                                                                                             <br><em> <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cConditions for Connectivity: On Infrastructural Interdependencies\u201d makes space for observing, situating, attuning to, and \u201cinstalling\u201d a sense for how technological infrastructures are assembled today, populated by local telecommunication providers, network transfer protocols, domestic devices, improvised architectures, vernacular genealogies, and so on. Through these contributions, the aim is to address the hegemonic reach of techno-capitalism into the mediation of everyday life; recurrent negotiations around the accessibility of free, <em>libre<\/em>, and open source software alternatives, and the direct implications of infra-geopolitical bodies that mediate and limit connectivity\u2014understanding infra-geopolitical bodies as the complex infrastructural reality of those modes of existence and governance affected by geopolitical distributions of power. For this thematic axis, CfDD interviews the system administrators of conferencing software meet.coop about the techno-geopolitics of Big Blue Button, which was a software CfDD tentatively tried to use with the entire BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice cohort at the beginning of the fellowship, and struggled to get it working for some fellows outside of Europe. In this interview, meet.coop also elaborate on their cooperative infrastructural financing model. The axis \u201cComputing and Calculating Otherwise: On Decolonial Informatics\u201d explores writings around the relations between informatic technologies and colonialism; the inherent non-western algorithmic origins of computational paradigms; and the ways in which we can use abstraction in computation and the arts\u2014abstraction that remains close to computation\u2019s complex origins, the structures of multiplicity, the flesh, and other materialities. What we get to abstract, where we abstract from, and with what incentive, matters (literally). The republication of software artist and writer Marloes de Valk\u2019s 2021 study \u201cA Pluriverse of Local Worlds: A Review of Computing within Limits-Related Terminology and Practices,\u201d is therefore an important contribution to this constellation.<\/p>\n<p>Serving and being served, being response-able and careful\u2014computationally speaking or not\u2014are relationalities which invoke, reproduce, and stimulate specific worlds. \u201cIntersectional Notions of Hosting and Hospitality: On Trans*Feminist Serverhoods\u201d asks: How can the cycle of serving and subalternity be broken by engaging in a thick number of semiotic and material relationships, and by activating a set of protocols and conditions for togetherness? Using this topic, CfDD expands on their own collaborative re-writing of the <em>Feminist Server Manifesto<\/em> (2013) into an unordered list of wishes for trans*feminist servers, which they initiated together with the entire cohort of fellows before revisiting it with contributors to the original text.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSeamfulness, Awelessness, and Underwhelmedness in Computational Practices: On Embracing Discomfort as a Transformative Aesthetics\u201d asks: Can digital discomfort be understood as a transformative aesthetics that disregards smoothness, agility, and generalized optimization as a desired path for an open-ended negotiation of always-already-complex modes of existence? Here, CfDD enters into conversation around digital discomfort together with the group ORACLES, who use their bibliomancy method to generate possible answers to these questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ftn13\" name=\"_ftnref13\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In embodiment of the digital-discomforting practice, this text, along with the ensuing contributions, hold a Collective Conditions for Reuse (CC4r) license,<a href=\"#_ftn15\" name=\"_ftnref15\">[15]<\/a> unless otherwise mentioned.<\/p>\n<p>Collectively and tentatively, \u201cDigital Discomfort\u201d broaches a number of definitions and political positions for the urgent widening of techno-political imaginaries and imaginations in a contemporary momentum. Through this <em>Prospections<\/em> focus and beyond, CfDD hopes to articulate attentions together with any agents who potentially could position themselves in non-alignment with the overarching patriarchal-colonial regimes of contemporary technocracy\u2014back and forth along genealogies, operative logistics, speculative forkings, and surprise onto-epistemologies to widely share a tentative-yet-critical field for radical engagement.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014Cell for Digital Discomfort (Cristina Cochior, Karl Moubarak, and Jara Rocha), autumn 2022<\/p>\n<h6>Formed as part of the 2021\/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice, the Cell for Digital Discomfort\u2014composed of Cristina Cochior, Karl Moubarak, and Jara Rocha\u2014continue their collective practice of digital discomfort. Their website Digital Discomfort is forthcoming: <span style=\"color: #f36a4f;\"><a style=\"color: #f36a4f;\" href=\"https:\/\/digitaldiscomfort.run\">https:\/\/digitaldiscomfort.run<\/a><\/span>.<\/h6>\n<h6>This publication of the \u201cDigital Discomfort\u201d focus on <em>Prospections<\/em> as well as the research leading up to it\u2014conducted as part of the 2021\/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice\u2014has been made possible with extra financial support from the Programme for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture (PICE) granted by AC\/E\u2013Acci\u00f3n Cultural Espa\u00f1ola.<\/h6>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Mario Savio, \u201cBodies Upon The Gears\u201d (speech on the steps of Sproul Plaza at University of California, Berkeley, 2 December 1964)<em>, <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xz7KLSOJaTE\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xz7KLSOJaTE<\/a>. See also: Robo, <em>Your Bodies (tu barco)<\/em> (2012), <a href=\"https:\/\/esunrobo.bandcamp.com\/track\/your-bodies-tu-barco\">https:\/\/esunrobo.bandcamp.com\/track\/your-bodies-tu-barco<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> \u201cInformatics of domination\u201d is a term coined by Haraway and then retaken by artist and writer Zach Blas. See: Zach Blas, \u201cInformatics of Domination: A lecture series organized and introduced by Zach Blas,\u201d in <em>e-flux<\/em> (January 2017), <a href=\"https:\/\/conversations.e-flux.com\/t\/informatics-of-domination-a-lecture-series-organized-and-introduced-by-zach-blas\/5890\">https:\/\/conversations.e-flux.com\/t\/informatics-of-domination-a-lecture-series-organized-and-introduced-by-zach-blas\/5890<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> Totalitarian innovation is \u201ca provocative shortcut which calls to mind the rampant hegemonic continuities between sovereignty, domination and absolutism, and how they play together in the ongoing naturalized acceleration of technologies and techno-ecologies. Innovation assumes a particular one-directional relation to futurity, and relies heavily on solutionism, optimization, techno-fix and limitless growth. Totalitarian innovation actively imposes \u2018developmentalism\u2019 as the only option, and technically prohibits emerging experiments with organizing life in ways that are complex, renegotiable or non-aligned (c.f. Informatics of domination). Totalitarian innovation leads to the persistence of mono-cultural forms, and paves the way for the elitist formulas of eco-fascism. This term fires up a public conversation on the need to disinvest innovation, and to instead organize with the latencies, discontinuities, recursions and absences of techno-nature entanglements.\u201d Entry by Possible Bodies (Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting), in Jane Prophet and Helen Pritchard, eds., <em>Plants by Numbers<\/em> (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), forthcoming.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> See \u201cThe Extended Trans*Feminist Rendering Program\u201d by The Underground Division, <a href=\"https:\/\/possiblebodies.constantvzw.org\/rendering\">https:\/\/possiblebodies.constantvzw.org\/rendering<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> Sara Ahmed, <em>The Cultural Politics of Emotion<\/em> (Edinburgh and London: Edinburgh University Press and Routlege, 2004), p. 155.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> Ahmed, <em>The Cultural Politics of Emotion<\/em>, p. 155.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref7\" name=\"_ftn7\">[7]<\/a>\u201cSneaky moments\u201d is a term used by The Darmstadt Delegation to refer to moments of separation. See Miriyam Aouragh, Seda G\u00fcrses, Jara Rocha, and Femke Snelting, \u201cLet\u2019s First Get Things Done! On Division of Labour and Techno-political Practices of Delegation in Times of Crisis,\u201d <em>The Fibreculture Journal<\/em> 26 (2015), <a href=\"https:\/\/twentysix.fibreculturejournal.org\/fcj-196-lets-first-get-things-done-on-division-of-labour-and-techno-political-practices-of-delegation-in-times-of-crisis\">https:\/\/twentysix.fibreculturejournal.org\/fcj-196-lets-first-get-things-done-on-division-of-labour-and-techno-political-practices-of-delegation-in-times-of-crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref8\" name=\"_ftn8\">[8]<\/a> Janet Vertesi, \u201cSeamful Spaces: Heterogeneous Infrastructures in Interaction,\u201d <em>Science, Technology, &amp; Human Values<\/em> 39, no. 2 (March 2014).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref9\" name=\"_ftn9\">[9]<\/a> The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest, <em>Counter-Cloud Action Plan<\/em> (2022), <a href=\"https:\/\/titipi.org\/pub\/Counter_Cloud_Action_Plan.pdf\">https:\/\/titipi.org\/pub\/Counter_Cloud_Action_Plan.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref10\" name=\"_ftn10\">[10]<\/a> \u201cA Transversal Network of Feminist Servers,\u201d <em>European Cultural Foundation<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/culturalfoundation.eu\/stories\/cosround4_atnofs\">https:\/\/culturalfoundation.eu\/stories\/cosround4_atnofs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref11\" name=\"_ftn11\">[11]<\/a> Varia and accomplices, \u201cDigital Solidarity Networks,\u201d 2020\u2013ongoing, <a href=\"https:\/\/pad.vvvvvvaria.org\/digital-solidarity-networks\">https:\/\/pad.vvvvvvaria.org\/digital-solidarity-networks<\/a>. See \u201clatencies\u201d section of the page.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref12\" name=\"_ftn12\">[12]<\/a> Romi Ron Morrison, Helen Pritchard, Eric Snodgrass, and Ren Loren Britton, <em>ORACLE(S)<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lorenbritton.com\/projects\/oracle-s\">https:\/\/www.lorenbritton.com\/projects\/oracle-s<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref13\" name=\"_ftn13\">[13]<\/a> Romi Ron Morrison, \u201cVoluptuous Disintegration: A Future History of Black Computational Thought,\u201d <em>Digital Humanities Quarterly<\/em> 16, no. 3 (2022), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.digitalhumanities.org\/dhq\/vol\/16\/3\/000634\/000634.html\">http:\/\/www.digitalhumanities.org\/dhq\/vol\/16\/3\/000634\/000634.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref14\" name=\"_ftn14\">[14]<\/a> Denise Ferreira Da Silva, \u201cOn Difference Without Separability,\u201d <em>Incerteza Viva: 32nd Bienal De S\u00e3o Paulo<\/em>, Jochen Volz, et al., eds. (S\u00e3o Paulo: Funda\u00e7ao Bienal De S\u00e3o Paulo, 2016), pp. 57\u201365.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref15\" name=\"_ftn15\">[15]<\/a> Collective Conditions for Reuse: \u201cThe CC4r considers authorship to be part of a collective cultural effort and rejects authorship as ownership derived from individual genius. This means to recognize that it is situated in social and historical conditions and that there may be reasons to refrain from release and re-use.\u201d See <a href=\"https:\/\/constantvzw.org\/wefts\/cc4r.en.htm\">https:\/\/constantvzw.org\/wefts\/cc4r.en.htm<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h6 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u00a02022 (<\/strong><span style=\"color: #f36a4f;\"><a style=\"color: #f36a4f;\" href=\"http:\/\/Collective Conditions for Reuse (CC4r) BAK and authors\" data-wplink-url-error=\"true\">CC4r<\/a><\/span>) BAK and authors<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Formed as part of the 2021\/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice, the Cell for Digital Discomfort (CfDD)\u2014composed of Cristina Cochior, Karl Moubarak, and Jara Rocha\u2014are the guest editors of this special Prospections focus \u201cOn Digital Discomfort,\u201d a compilation of newly commissioned and archival resources such as essays, interviews, <em>poethic<\/em> video experiments, and collective annotations that allow for a collective exploration and affirmative re-politicization and redefinition of compu-relational practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"focus":[329,321],"prospection_category":[183],"class_list":["post-42398","prospection","type-prospection","status-publish","hentry","focus-on-digital-discomfort-nl","focus-the-hauntologists-nl","prospection_category-editorial-nl"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/prospection\/42398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/prospection"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/prospection"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42398"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/prospection\/42398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42722,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/prospection\/42398\/revisions\/42722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"focus","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/focus?post=42398"},{"taxonomy":"prospection_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.bakonline.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/prospection_category?post=42398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}