Aarhus University

This Friday I’ll give a lecture at Aarhus University in Denmark, speaking about software, the unified logics of capitalism and computing, and artistic tactics of bounding that employ degrowth aesthetics as a countering practice.

Title:
From Forever More to Degrowth Aesthetics: Tactics of Bounding in the Digital Infinite

Abstract:
Despite their lofty mission statements, today’s leading social media platforms primarily emphasize one singular concept: more . These capitalist software machines are designed to stoke an insatiable cycle of production and consumption in order to maximize corporate growth and profit. To achieve this, they leverage data and scale to produce signals and interface patterns that keep users engaged, promising connection and joy in exchange for growing shares of our time and attention. This talk presents a series of art projects that resist these accumulative logics, works that employ an aesthetics of degrowth that reconfigures and/or reimagines the social apps that aim to trap us in endless loops—until there’s no more time left to give.

Time/Place:
14:15-16:00
17 November
Peter Bøgh Andersen Auditorium (5335-016)

Details:
https://cc.au.dk/aktuelt/arrangementer/vis-arrangement/artikel/friday-lecture-ben-grosser-from-forever-more-to-degrowth-aesthetics-tactics-of-bounding-in-the-digital-infinite

Data and (Dis)Obedience Conference at Northeastern

On 15 March I’ll be on a panel at the Data and (Dis)Obedience Conference at Northeastern University, talking about artistic approaches to data surveillance. Keynote is by Marek Tuszynski from Tactical Tech. Conference is organized by Jen Gradecki, and is being streamed online if you’re not in Boston. Register here.

Geert Lovink will be performing his work We Are Not Sick at REDCAT in Los Angeles. I’m excited to be a part of the event, giving a short presentation on my own platform resistance projects and then moderating a dialogue with Geert after. We Are Not Sick is a real-time multimedia lecture/performance version of Geert’s book Sad by Design, bringing spoken word, music, and image together in a reflection on the sadness-inducing states of today’s big social platforms.

This event is the closing event of a day-long symposium called Staying on the Grid: Platforms, Psyches, and Paths, whose panels include scholar Dr Sarah T Roberts and artist Lauren McCarthy, both UCLA profs.