NNN PODCASTS: Distributed Critique

As we come to the conclusion of our European partnership, The New Network Normal, we reflect on our final exhibition FREEPORT: Terminal MCR and the accompanying talks programme FREEPORT: Critical, with the release of Distributed Critique. 

A pair of pilot podcast episodes, Distributed Critique explores the potential of interdisciplinary discourse around contemporary new media artworks. They are hosted by Nathan Jones, Fellow of the Institute Social Futures and Lecturer in Fine Art at Lancaster University.

New Media art today engages with a vastly distributed spectrum of ideas, and emerges from technical and knowledge cultures that are themselves often far from the scenes we associate with art.

The intention with these experimental podcasts, is to use a single artwork to bring two divergent disciplinary expertises together, to see how they might enlighten us on some of the technical or semiotic implications of the works themselves; but also to use the artwork as a point of entry into the wider world of ideas that might normally exist in separate spheres.

We present here, podcasts that use Kyriaki Goni’s Network of Trust, and Geocinema’s Framing Territories as their starting point, with contributions from Christy Constantakopoulou, Emmanouil Tranos, Mitra Azar and Jennifer Gabrys. The artworks featured in these podcasts were both exhibited as part of FREEPORT: Terminal MCR. 

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Episode 1: On Kyriaki Goni’s Networks of Trusts

With guests 

Christy Constantakopoulou is an ancient historian. Her published work focuses on the history of the Aegean sea and its islands in the period between the 8th and the 3rd century BC. She is currently a Reader in Classics and Ancient History in Birkbeck College, University of London. 

Dr Emmanouil Tranos is an economic geographer and his research focuses on the spatiality of the digital economy. He has published on the geography of the internet infrastructure, the economic impacts that this digital infrastructure can generate on cities and regions and the position of cities within spatial, complex networks.

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Episode 2: On Geocinema’s Framing Territories

With guests

Mitra Azar is a young artist with an eclectic formation. As a philosopher, his research spans across cultural studies, critical theory and media philosophy, within a strong political commitment. His research focuses on the idea of borders as fluid, flexible, amorphous entities between media, languages and identities.

Jennifer Gabrys is chair in media, culture, and environment in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She is author of Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet and Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics.

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The Distributed Critique podcasts were commissioned and produced by Abandon Normal Devices, curated and hosted by Nathan Jones, Fellow of the Institute Social Futures and Lecturer in Fine Art at Lancaster University. Co-funded with support from the Creative Europe programme and with public funding from Arts Council England.

These podcasts and the artworks discussed in it, are part of The New Networked Normal (NNN) www.thennn.eu. 

The New Networked Normal explores art, technology and citizenship in the age of the Internet, a partnership project by, Abandon Normal Devices (UK) Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (ES), The Influencers (ES), Transmediale (DE) and STRP (NL).  This project has been co-funded with support from the Creative Europe programme.