Diskurs: M.E.D.I.E.N

Diskurs: M.E.D.I.E.N - is a preparing and temporary internet site. Its function is to ask the possibilities of a discoursive platform for Berlin and to provide a first forum for the development of such a platform. Neither the valid title nor the legal form is already fixed. Fixed is however that it is about an attempt to link global approaches with the local culture or discourse and to enable a platform on which the different institutions, initiatives and groups find themselves represented or represent themselves. Fixed is also that the thematic complex of Media - Education - Democratic Research - Intelligent & experimental use of Media - Emancipation - No-Border-Movement shall be treated both theoretically and practically and that also political and artistic practice will play a part in it. This heterogenic platform could have so different tasks as continuing discourses (for example after colloquia or panel discussions) in the internet, creating connections between different approaches with similar targets or perhaps even provide a space, where corresponding projects originate.

The conception of the platform is now developing as a theory blog.

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Since the 19th Century societal developments and political fights always possess a cultural technical aspect, too, the other way round the development of the technique must not be separated from institutional and economic interests, from the history of the media use and from societal conventions. [more]

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:The law of the speakable "NOX" *** I to myself: Was habWhat have the sound of the wave, the noise of a train and the voice of Michel Foucaults in common? Myself to I: All three occur in the following audiotrack! [audio]

In the conversation series
> Media theretical DIALOGUES - Dialogical media theory <
it is about the testing of new forms of scientific collaboration, about the liquefying of the border between speaking and writing. One function of the media theoretical dialogues is to give an undogmatic introduction into different media theories and to examine the complex of media – communication – society in multiple perspectives. The title media theoretical dialogues – dialogical media theory shall signal that we understand media theory by theory in media and therefore pick out the use of media in conversations about media as one more central theme.[more]

VIDEOLETTERS

From the 5th international summer academy for performance artists and theatre makers (23th-28th/08/04, Frankfurt/Main) video letters were sent. The action was part of the Ad-hoc-Academy and presented a cooperation of the Expertenmobil and the team of the NEUEN METHODE. Videoletter put the format Media for one on the test. [to the project]

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Internet colloquium

Target of the colloquium
is to provoke a discourse about media across all subject areas. We understand media by the constructive latent conditions of the discourse that means as a problem concept. [to the colloquium]

Performativity always also means to be hard enough to break a convention.

: K i t t l e r
> From the god of thieves to the calculated space Akademie der Künste
Friedrich Kittler talks about the physical conditions of sound and because of that of music: the SPACE – and bridges to mythical prehistoric times (and the birth of the lyre out of the spirit of the turtle murder by Hermes, the god of the travellers, the thieves and the poets) up to the future of the calculated and worked out space. The point of the lecture is that – although the space is the basis of the natural sound – the other way round a certain sound could be calculated back to this space.
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>Alan Turing - Intelligence Service Fiedrich Kittler talks about Alan Turing and asks the constant of nature and mathematics, the code of the world...
[AUDIO (29 min, 20MB) | VIDEO (coming soon)]
The conference was initiated and led by Wolfgang Coy and took place in the rooms of the Helmholtz Zentrums für Kulturtechnik.

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>Thinking colours and/or mashines
Clemens-Sels-Museum, Neuss

"Thinking colours and/or machines" is one of Kittler’s central texts, in which he delimits his method from the idealistic, hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches. Thrilling like a crime thriller Kittler talks of the fight between philosophic and natural science faculty. Doing this he stands out due to “aufheben” in a dialectic way (and by that keeping and lifting to a higher level) exactly the opponents abused by him (Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger). One could also see in this lecture an example for how the identity, in this case a position, has to include again on a different level what it excludes in order to be what it is.
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>Computered Images, Sophie Scholl Straße 1, München
A knee walks through the world
Friedrich Kittler talks about the history of the calculated pictures, which started in 1836 with the brothers Weber. For the first time pictures emerge from an equation system. These pictures made by hand, following the results of the calculation, lay the foundation stone for the calculating of pictures and by this for picture giving computer procedures which today not only are used in medicine and entertaining industry but which make our culture outstanding before all others. But what does it mean that we are the first culture having at our disposal calculated pictures?

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: L U H M A N N + +

Dhe system theory of Niklas Luhmann is one of the great sociological theories of the 20th . 1984 his pioneering book “Social Systems” appears. “This book suggests to sociology adopting the concept autopoiesis and by this gaining a deeper laid, also elementary operations including theory of self referential systems. The concept autopoiesis blows up the ontological thinking tradition; it gives up, in a radical way and carried out up into the physics, the assumption of a world being, that connects being and thinking, and it leaves the logical tradition which allows in regard to given being only right or wrong judgements, excluding third possibilities.

There are three excellent audio tracks about resp. with Niklas Luhmann and the system theory:

"Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst" - Eine Einführung in (I see something, that you don't see - an introduction) Niklas Luhmann's system theory (feature by Peter Zudeick) [AUDIO]

"Es gibt keine Biographie" (There is no biography) A personal conversation with Wolfgang Hagen about an with Niklas Luhmann [AUDIO]

"Die Realität der Massenmedien" (The reality of the mass media) Niklas Luhmann and Wolfgang Hagen in conversation. What we know about the society and the world, we know nearly exclusively from the mass media. At the same time we suspect that this knowledge is manipulated or is at least made in an extremely selective way. What selection mechanisms are here at work? Can we understand the mass media by an operatively closed system? What would be the smallest elements of such a system? Is there any possibility of expressing the selection mechanism of the mass media in an abstraction? [AUDIO]

Scripts and a survey over the programme are available at Radio Bremen.

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: Toni Negri
Multitude, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
[in italian language]
In his lecture, Toni Negri starts from the contradiction between Capital and Work expressing itself today in a global proportion. He describes this proportion as an argument between two sides opposing each other: the Multitude, a productive crowd which – in difference to the revolutionary subjects of the past (especially the proletariat) - is understood by a heterogenic body, and which both creates and is able to abolish in a subversive way the conditions in which it is standing. Opposite to this network of singular subjectivities stands the network of the global player, the Empire. Negri’s claim is it to configurate Marxism with Foucault/Deleuze, feministic theory and cultural science. The problem of this update is that it cannot prove successfully that the Multitude possesses as much production force as the proletariat did. On one hand Negri tries to prove to the Multitude a similarly central position in economic processes, on the other hand the question arises what is to be done with this ‘crowd of poor people’ who are no longer in classical production conditions. In order to include also them, society is understood by a productive entire body. The concepts, so often wandering like a ghost through the debates, of ‘immaterial work’ and ‘bio production’ are in some way connected with that.
Together with Foucault one should be sceptical against the existence of historical tendencies, especially when Negri /Hardt connect them again and again with a central societal antagonism. One could ask the question, why subjectivities in the end again have to be explained by the concept of productivity and could not be understood as acting – for example - on the basis of sexual desire.

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Information: Data in the Context
About the differenciation of information processing in the animal & the machines
Typical for Theory-Disko: Not five meters from the stage where a live band is playing Andreas Schaale and Till Nikolaus von Heiseler are talking about Shannon and Luhmann, data and information.

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:Downloads
Technical requirements
For the faultless use of this plattform you need the Mozilla web browser and the Ogg Vobis media player. Es handelt sich um Open Source Programme, die Sie kostenlos herunterladen können: They are Open Source Programs which you may download without charge. In case you meet technical difficulties please send us an e-mail.

What means Open Source?

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Alexander Roesler | Stefan Münker
What is a Medium?
- Inter disciplinary conference -

Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche / Weimar
Friday 16th to Sunday 18th of December 2005
[more]

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: Saskia Sassen
Fear and Camouflage
Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
"The mobilisation of panic and fear serves to stabilize the crumbling away of the consent with the present conditions. At the same time Saskia Sassen will talk about how just in and through this crisis new free spaces and possibilities of emancipatory acting will open.” (Thomas Atzert about Saskia Sassen)

[AUDIO (50 min, 38MB) | VIDEO (50 min, 170MB)]

Introduction by Thomas Atzert
Thomas Atzert translated inter alia Empire (2001) and Multitude (2004). Important publications: „Umherschweifende Produzenten, Immaterielle Arbeit und Subversion", Berlin 1998 and „Kritik der Weltordnung", Berlin 2003. http://www.kein.org/keinwiki/ThomasAtzert

[AUDIO (7 min, 6MB)| TEXT |VIDEO (7 min, 10MB)] * in German language

: Derrida Conference
Berlin, 7th December 2005 HAU 1

>Dirk Baecker (soziologist), >Elisa Barth (cultural scientist), >Tom Lamberty (editor, Merve Verlag Berlin), >Susanne Lüdemann (literary theorist, Derrida translator) und >Hanns Zischler (author, Derrida translator, actor).

Aus der Ankündigung: "Reading Jacques Derrida means giving him back to scripture, to which he devoted his life, but also means to give voices a chance to speak, the intervention of which, turning to the other and strange home, was all his life his fascination in always insufficiently familiar language." Dirk Baecker will read from the book “Religion“ published by Derrida together with Gianni Vattimo . Interesting for Baecker are the passages about the evil of abstraction, about number and witnessing and about the universe as a machine that produces gods. Elisa Barth will present a musical reading from Derrida’s homage to Ornette Coleman. Qu'est-ce qui arrive? Derrida asks. In 1997 he improvized for one evening together with the saxophonist Ornette Coleman in and about music. Susanne Lüdemann reads passages from “Marx’ Ghosts“, and reports about her work translating this book.
Tom Lamberty will read two passages from „Eine gewisse unmögliche Möglichkeit, vom Ereignis zu sprechen“ and from „Einige Statements und Binsenwahrheiten über Neologismen, New-Ismen, Post-Ismen, Parasitismen und andere kleine Seismen“ and by that play music from CD or from turntable.

Hanns Zischler will read and comment on a passage from „Grammatologie“ (edited by Suhrkamp Edition) translated by him and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger.
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[more]

Coming soon:

:On Constructing Realities
CYBERNETICS-COLLOQUIUM –
18. März 2005 HAU 1

"In arts subjects at present the natural sciences are in fashion, in art the political, in philosophy the media theory. When will be in fashion in the art the science, in arts subject and philosophy the political, societal and artistic action direct?" (Carl von Cahdeus)

>Dirk Baecker (soziologist): introduction, >Ranulph Glanville (cybernetician and architect), >Frank Kirchner (computer scientist & robotician), >Joseph Vogl (germanist & media theorist), >Claus Pias (communication- & media theorist), Discussion

Survey & Abstracts

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: Universal Machine Alan M. Turing 1912- 1954 CYBERNETICS-COLLOQUIUM
10th December 2004 Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin

>Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Coy, Introduction
>Prof. Dr. Friedrich Kittler (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): Alan Turing - Intelligence Service
>Prof. Dr. Bernd Mahr (TU Berlin):
Turingmaschinen as model and as game,
> Prof. Dr. Roland Vollmar (TU Karlsruhe): On „forgetful" Turing machines, >Prof. Dr. Jörg-Martin Pflüger (TU Wien)
Machines & metaphors. Turing’s problem of undecidedness >Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Coy, (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Turing’s calculator architecturs

:Sloterdijk

Topos SPACE- The Actuality of Space in the Arts of the Presence

Audio (55 min, 41 MB, ogg) + + + Video (55 min, 157 MB, mp4)

[more]

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This platform doesn’t want to present solutions but it wants to cultivate thoughtfulnesses. It wants to bring people into connection, launch the discourse about media, emancipatory processes and society and provoke common projects. By important societal cristallisation points we understand education and learning, participatory models, alternative recording, art as a model of an other culture, the No-Border movement, medial exploration and the discourse of society and media theory.