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hostartist.network / sessions

Reconstructing reality & virtual instruments

 

hostartist.network brainstorming sessions are a series of online discussions unravelling the issues that the developing virtual landscape is projecting on the organisation of communities, complex social dynamics and the construction of value.  

The exchange between aspects of reality (physical, virtual, psychic), is speed generating new spaces of action. hostartist.network sessions are a critical examination of the opportunities at hand.  

The vacuum created by three decades of technological integration in everyday life and the assumption of virtual environments intrinsic for the functioning of the world, present a leap in our relationship: the passage from an initial argument to that of engrained social, emotional, and functional dependency.  

Pandemic has accelerated the transformation in our relationship and use of virtual solutions. It has also laid open the essence of our times: the resignification of value. hostartist.network sessions look to generate an open discussion on grounding issues whilst evoking a heightened frequency of ideas. 

#1. Construction of value

held: Sunday, January 16th, 2022

Monetary systems, commodities, price systems, drift further away from the actual value of exchange. The manner in which we relate to our economies allows for other aspects, essential to life, to become entirely significant and non purchasable. Money is no longer the center of resources, it is shifting to become another means of possibilities. How we organize, understand, share, and construct value is paired to the extraordinary complexification of our social and economic structures. 

With: Nicolás Zaharya, Kevin Merz, Conor Irwin, Dr. Jan Eckert, Dr. Francesco Carrino, Felix Bachmann Quadros.

Moderator: Felix Bachmann Quadros 

Access themes: An introduction / what is value? / value and social integration / artistic phenomena and transcendence / cryptocurrency, non –fungible tokens, tokens and the development of financial exchange / displacing of money and capital as fundamental structure for creation: rediscovering the value of resources / how does our relationship with the virtual (including VR) allow for a re-signification of the physical? / the construction of value as key to the perpetuation of art, community and process / encounter vs. production / new models for exchange / void as potential.  

READ NOTES AND REFERENCES

#2.  Virtual as potential

held: Sunday, February 6 2022

There are means, definitions, traditional and even primitive knowledge we need to access to take conscience of what we have created as humanity and placed in the verge of our existence towards the virtual worlds and environments. Our instruments, screens and multiple dimensional access to the virtual relate constantly to our cognition and understanding of reality. Defined as a mirror, skewed and perhaps potential, the virtual image of ourselves seems to dominate us. Our illusion, our demons (psychological traits), have delivered a war upon our own selves. We are the future aliens we would not like to encounter. Yet it is also seeing further, beyond the simple algorithmic dogma, that allows for the virtual to become an instrument to fulfil our human potential. 

With: Prof. Kathleen RogersNicole SeilerManuela BernasconiMaf'j AlvarezFelix Bachmann Quadros

Moderator: Felix Bachmann Quadros

Access themes: Redefining virtual as potential / creative and evolving relationships / the transformative power of vision, new grounds for equality, opportunity / dynamos as agent for transformation / origin and myth in the virtual world / the opening of spaces between aspects of reality / time as place / re-structuring of the self and identity appreciation / solution vs. control / re-construction of reality. 

#3. Participation vs. Speculation 

held: Sunday, February 20th, 2022

As the virtual becomes more and more interconnected with the physical world, paradoxically through the very dissociation between them, we are progressively transferring wealth towards the virtual. NFT are prompting the setting up of communities dependent on virtual propagation. Commercialization seems perched on the exacerbation of desire, isolation, temptation and attention harvesting. But what if the virtual landscape adjusts to the construction of a proposition, rather than simply rejecting or accepting: engage in the process to create and relate. 

With: Nema Stojanović, Conor Irwin, Jena Axelrod, Simon Perdisat

Moderator: Felix Bachmann Quadros. 

Access themes: Virtual environments as relational understanding / weaving communities vs. consequential society / creative exchange vs. attention harvesting / social platform vs. dynamic instrument / art as principle for convivial dialogue, the provision of points of view / establishing for an evolving creative process: how is it engrained in real life encounters, examining perpetuation of value / new models for creation, sharing, proprietorship, non-violent communication / the levelling of economic stratification and novel arguments in value / cryptocurrency, NFT, community & disinterested action. 

#4. Ecologies 

date & time: tbc

«No one deliberately creates those problems, no one wants them to persist, but they persist nonetheless. That is because they are intrinsically systems problems—undesirable behaviours characteristic of the system structures that produce them»

 

What at first glance might sound as an excuse, indeed, is Donella Meadows' fundamental statement on conflicts emerging from the (intentionally and unintentionally) built-in frictions into our eco-socio-economic systems. Frictions that nowadays have grown into global clusters of inter-related conflicts in between planetary and social boundaries (Raworth).

This session starts with questioning our views onto our world amidst these boundaries and how these views are biased by multiple factors. Furthermore we'll try to discuss potential pathways towards a transition that can help us to either adapt to some of the inevitable consequences, mitigate into emerging futures avoiding further conflicts and first and foremost limit the ongoing suffering of human and non-human entities.

Moderator: Dr. Jan Eckert

Where does our argument for a sustainable world start, and towards what ends? / Conscious action as constant self-assessment / finding neutrality / pathways for transition / mitigation - suffering - adaptation / areas of friction / boundaries / complexification as key to the development of humanity and encounter with technology / colonisation of belief. 

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