Open #19 Beyond Privacy
New Perspectives of the Private and Public Domains
Cahier on Art and the Public Domain
For information, ordering and subscriptions see:
www.opencahier.nl
www.naipublishers.nl/open
www.skor.nl
Privacy, the main theme of Open #19, is a right that protects one’s private life, a right that is not only established by law but also has political and social significance. It can be experienced and observed differently by individuals and groups, depending upon their position in society and the desires and interests involved.
In this issue, the concept of privacy is examined and reconsidered from legal, sociological, media-theoretical and activist perspectives. The focus is not so much on deploring the loss of privacy but on taking the present situation of ‘post-privacy’ for what it is and trying to gain insight into what is on the horizon in terms of new subjectivities and power constructions. The issue includes contributions by Maurizio Lazzarato, Felix Stalder, Armin Medosch, Daniel Solove and others.
Open: Cahier on Art and the Public Domain reflects on contemporary public space from a cultural perspective. Through a thematic investigation into the changing conditions of public space and through new ideas relating to this space, Open aims to make a structural contribution to the development of theories about these subjects and to function as a platform for reflection on sociocultural and artistic practices.
Open is an initiative of SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space, Amsterdam) published by NAi Publishers.
Book Launch at Berlin Biennale
Date and time: 12 June, 4:00–6:30 pm
Location: Elisabeth Villa, Invalidenstrasse 3, 10115 Berlin-Mitte (next to the St. Elisabeth-Kirche, U: Rosenthalerplatz, S: Nordbahnhof, Tram: Brunnen/Invalidenstrasse)
SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space) invites you to the presentation of Open #19: Beyond Privacy: New Perspectives on the Public and Private Domain, and a lecture by Gerald Raunig, ‘Beyond Privacy: Desiring DIVIDUALITY’.
Lecture
In a small section of Human, All Too Human entitled ‘Morality as the Self-Division of Man’, Friedrich Nietzsche points out that “in morality man treats himself not as individuum but as dividuum.” More than 100 years later, the concept of the dividuum turns up again in the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Deleuze asserts in his Postscript on the Societies of Control, “Individuals have become ‘dividuals’, and masses [have become] samples, data, markets, or ‘banks’.”
The sharing of personal data as a self-chosen self-division of man – this is what privacy looks like today. But what seems like perfect grounds for never-ending complaints by cultural pessimists about the loss of privacy and its partner, the public sphere, may turn out to be deeply ambivalent: dividuality is not only a threat to the old concept of privacy, it is in fact also a trace of new modes of social recomposition.
Gerald Raunig is a philosopher and art theorist. He works at the Zurich University of the Arts and at the EIPCP (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies). He is co-editor of the multilingual webjournal Transversal and coordinator of the transnational research project Creating Worlds. His recent books in English include Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century, translated by Aileen Derieg (New York/Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)/MIT Press, 2007); Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, co-edited with Gene Ray (London: mayflybooks, 2009); and A Thousand Machines, translated by Aileen Derieg (New York/Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)/MIT Press, 2010).
For information, ordering and subscriptions, see www.opencahier.nl and www.naipublishers.nl/open. For general information or contact details for SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space), see www.skor.nl.
