Manuel Beltrán - Institute of Human Obsolescence - Cartographies of Dispossession
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from 05:00 PM to 07:00 PM
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Image credit: Manuel Beltrán
Institute of Human Obsolescence - Cartographies of Dispossession
The Institute of Human Obsolescence (IoHO) explores the future of labour and the changing relationship between humans and machine. Our work develops from a scenario in which forms of manual and intellectual labour traditionally performed by humans are increasingly automated by new technologies. In this context we investigate and challenge the socio-political and economic implications of new forms of labour, such as the production of data. The IoHO developed several projects exploring the production of data as a form of labour, as a different paradigm through which to interrogate and challenge dynamics of ownership over the production of data and the economic and governance objects emerging through it. Previous lines of inquiry around the framework of Data Labour Rights include Data Basic Income, Data Cooperative, Data Production Labour series, Investigative Discussion Sessions and Data Workers Union.
In this talk founder of the IoHO Manuel Beltrán, will introduce the work of the IoHO and discuss their current project Cartographies of Dispossession (CoD). CoD explores the forms of systematic data dispossession that different humans are subject to, and investigates how data becomes both the means of production as much as the means of governance. The project looks at the implications of how the dispossession of data unequally occurs in different contexts, through different means and for different purposes.
Instruments such as the Right Of Access provided by GDPR emerge from a European context but the flows of data operate in a transnational scale. We are exploring the potential and limits of this instrument in combination with others such as the Right To Information in India as tools to investigate and repossess our production of data across borders. We are particularly interested in feedback and discussing in how to think further about this last part.
Manuel Beltrán
Manuel is an artist and activist. He researches and lectures on contemporary art, activism, contemporary social movements, post-digital culture and new media. As an activist, he was involved in the Indignados movement in Spain, the Gezi Park protests in Turkey and several forms of independent activism and cyber-activism in Europe and beyond. In 2012 he co-founded the art collective Plastic Crowds and since 2013 he is head and co-founder of the nomadic school and artistic organization Alternative Learning Tank. In 2015 he founded the Institute of Human Obsolescence, through which he explores the future of labour, the social and political implications regarding our relationship with technology and the economic and governance systems surrounding the production of data.
