Research the Research / Capitalist City as Urban Utopia

Workshop (german)
With: Yvonne P. Doderer
January 17 – 18, 2009, each day 12 – 6 pm
Registration till Friday, December 19, 2008

The digital material made available by Daniel García Andújar in his project “Postcapital Archive 1989–2001” incites a wide range of questions and opportunities for critical reflection.

Part 1: Researching Research (January 17, 2009)
One initial explorative topic relates to the archive itself. How are digital archives structured? In which respects do digital archives differ from other archives? Who has access to digital archives and information? Which strategies for indexing and appropriation are necessary to be able to generate knowledge from data? If we are already living in networked archives: Which realities and life-forms are construed here? Is the data flood confronting us today merely an expression of a technological promise of heightened control or does it also lead to an increase in participatory power of agency—especially in urban spaces?

Part 2: The Capitalist City as Urban Utopia (January 18, 2009)
In this workshop section we move to the inside of the archive: Which images of cities/urban spaces are portrayed here and put to use? Do the observed transformations of capitalist societies and their metropolises lead to a departure from previously valid spatial-urban and societal-social categories? To what extent does capitalism, now virtually operating on a global scale, actually redeem its promise of modernization? Is the capitalism of today a utopia of yesterday?

The objective of this workshop is concerned less with conclusively answering these questions and moreover with jointly working through the questions, sounding them out, and discussing their shallows.