Collective Agency in an era of Authoritarian Automation: Artistic Research on Protest, Populism, Migration and the Computational Simulation of Crowds

Abstract

Connecting artistic research and practice to aesthetics, sociology and computational modeling and visualization, this project asks: What is a crowd in the 21st century? We explore how collective protests, migration and authoritarian populism shape today’s politics while also being modelled by digital infrastructures and automated systems.
Aims:

To understand the impact on democracy of collective protest, authoritarianism, migration and computational modeling.

To investigate how collective behavior generated by digital technologies align crowd behavior with political programs and market strategies that defy democratic values.

To investigate how embodied subjective agency and collective assembly interrupts such processes of collective automation.

To show the ability of artistic research to spark conceptual development, innovative methodologies and theoretical insights into the relation of aesthetic expression and democracy.

The project assembles photography, film, digital aesthetics, literary essay, choreography. It will organize workshops, performances and theoretical debates. Output is a collaborative film essay, a literary essay and anthology, and exhibition.

Keywords

Civil society, Governance, Populism, Digital humanities, Aesthetics

Publications

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