Annika Haas
Technology, Economics, and (Bad) Feelings
Seminar, English, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS, 5 Plätze
Wednesdays, 16-17:45 Uhr, weekly, starts 19.04.2023
Grunewaldstr. 2-5, room 306
Registration via Moodle until 19.4.2023: https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/index.php?categoryid=22

Digital technologies have an increasing impact on our everyday lives. This includes how they shape our artistic and design practices and how we perceive of the labour connected to that. While a lot of attention goes to so-called technological progress, along with narratives that frame digitization as a success story that is beneficial for all, this seminar asks why using digital platforms, communication tools and underlying infrastructures are not just facilitating what we do and wish for, but also tend to increase already existing precarious working conditions, cause stress, make us sad, or even sick.

Departing from specific affects, feelings and states of being—such as digital fatigue, exhaustion, “digital lethargy” (Tung-Hui Hu), or being “technoprecarious” (Precarity Lab)—we will examine why and how digital platforms, tools, infrastructures, and applications are not neutral, but part of (imbalanced) power relations. Special attention will be given to economical aspects, and the ways that so-called digital economies affect the very reality of different communities, bodies and ecologies, and not at least the way we work.

The preliminary reading list includes Digital Lethargy (Tung-Hui Hu), Sad By Design (Geert Lovink), Digitizing Race (Lisa Nakamura), Entreprecariat (Silvio Lorusso), Surveillance Capitalism (Shoshana Zuboff), Digital Precarity Manifesto (Precarity Lab), and readings on electronic colonialism. 

The seminar takes place weekly, alternating between reading sessions and sessions that will provide the opportunity to discuss the participants’ projects related to the topic, and to view artworks and exhibitions together. Each class starts with an offering of simply body and mind exercises. Class duration 16:00–17:45.
The course language is English. Other languages can be used for group work and written assignments.

Leistungsanforderungen: regular, active participation, short presentation, or short writing assignment.

Annika Haas ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Geschichte und Theorie der Gestaltung an der Universität der Künste Berlin. Sie hat Medienwissenschaft sowie Kunst und Medien studiert. In ihrer Forschung beschäftigt sie sich mit den ästhetischen Dimensionen bei Hélène Cixous und künstlerischen Wissenspraktiken. Weitere Informationen und Publikationen unter https://visuellekultur.udk-berlin.de/personen/annika-haas.