During this lecture presentation, Boaz Levin and Vera Tollmann, co-founders of the Research Center for Proxy Politics, will develop the proxy as a figure of thought by spinning and testing it in different contexts.
The Research Center for Proxy Politics aims to explore and reflect upon the nature of networks and their actors, that is, machines and things as well as humans. The proxy, a decoy or surrogate, is today often used to designate a computer server acting as an intermediary for requests from clients. Originating in the Latin procurator, an agent representing others in a court of law, proxies are now emblematic of a post-representational political age, one increasingly populated by bot militias, puppet states, ghostwriters, and communication relays. During the period of the project (September 2014 to August 2017) the center hosts a series of workshops at the Universität der Künste, Berlin, revolving around a wide range of relevant topics including the politics of digital networks, the political economy of crypto-currencies, the genealogy of networked thought, the mediality of physical landscapes and strategies of opacity. The center also conducts material, experimental, investigations into the conception and construction of alternative networks, or alternets.
Speakers: Vera Tollmann Boaz Levin