Helge Peters – Lecture: Counter-mapping (in) the control society

Lecture: Counter-mapping (in) the control society
Helge Peters

Sun 27th 3pm – 3.20pm
Open Platform Stage

Mapping practices of locative media artists often promised more democratic representations of space. Consequently, participatory and networked modes of mapping spatial mobility, affective experience and subjective meaning were employed by a range of artists and activists. However, the advent of ‚big data’ analysis is challenging the supposedly liberatory potential of these mapping practices: if power, as Deleuze suggests, increasingly operates by means of data analysis and pre-programming rather than by disciplinary coercion, the very production of machine-readable, participatory and subjective counter- maps can feed back into a flexible regulation of space. By revisiting the discourse of liberation around locative media art and investigating recent examples of urban control, the links between networked technology, space and contemporary control regimes will be mapped out. Furthermore, possible trajectories for subversive uses of locative media will be explored in the context of surveillance and social conflict.

Image: Helge Peters