Biopolitics is a modelling of the biological body and of the social body.

Franco Berardi

“We are intertwined with all of humanity, and the whole of humanity with us,” predicted Marshall McLuhan almost fifty years ago. Today, thanks to the different forms of real-time media and networks, we can be anywhere at once. This hyper-presence has become a central aspect of our social practice. To be here, now, and to be online at the same time, changes our understanding of physicality and presence as individuals and as part of a community. What effect does this hybrid, transformative condition of digital liveness have on the concepts of identity in our society?

This new quality that we call Digital liveness, fundamentally changes the relationship between body and technology, between the individual and society. The gendered and biogenetic characteristics of the biological body as much as the legal definitions of the social and political body are in flux and the cybernetic, cognitive-psychological and affective qualities of the live, digital hooking-up of our society must be expanded. What kind of transpersonality emerges here?

Against this background, we need to rethink the significance of the political, namely as intervention (RESPONSE) and competence (ABILITY) in the info-genetic relationship between body, the biomedial universe and in the ecology of our cognitive layers.

Under the title BODY:RESPONSE – Biomedial Politics in the Age of Digital Liveness, the transmediale.11 Conference investigates the biopolitical and psycho-political power configurations in the age of the Web which result from increasing biologisation of media (immersion, tactility) and communication technology and the hybridisation of real and virtual spaces with location-based social media forms like foursquare. 

How, in this new political configuration, can the disposition to act be mobilised? How would the form of resistance and the subversion of biopolitical power structures look, representing the biological and social body at the heart of its claim to power and control?

In the first path, Track 1: Bios and Presence, hybrid identity configurations between on and offline levels are studied and artistic practices dealing with the social dynamics of distance and telepresence and the production of authenticity and identity are presented.

• Focus Discussion: Social ID
Salvatore Iaconesi (it), Derrick de Kerckhove (ca), Ursula Endlicher (at), Heath Bunting (uk), Moderation: Alessandro Ludovico (it)

Thu, 3.2.2011 - 11:00, K1

• KEYNOTE Conversation tm / CTM: Digital Liveness – Realtime, Desire and Sociability
Erik Kluitenberg (nl), Mushon Zer-Aviv (il), Philip Auslander (us), Moderation: Drew Hemment (uk)

Thu, 3.2.2011 - 16:00, Auditorium

• Focus Discussion: Fingerprints? Identity, Indexicality and Bio Media 
Jens Hauser (de), Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (ch), Paul Vanouse (us), Moderation: Marie-Luise Angerer (de)

Fri, 4.2.2011 - 14:00, Auditorium

• KEYNOTE Conversation: Testing Presence: The Unfolding Exchange
Tim Etchells (uk), Adrian Heathfield (uk)
Moderation: Clara Völker (de)

Fri, 4.2.2011 - 17:00, Auditorium
• Lecture: „What is Live?“ Von der Aura zum Avatar
Dieter Daniels (de)
Sat, 5.2.2011 - 18:00, K1 - German language only! -

The second path focuses on psycho-political dimensions – labour, economy and society. Track 2: Bios and Power discusses absence and disaffection as possible strategies of resistance to the psycho-economic capitalism of contemporary information societies.

• Focus Discussion: The Right to Exit
Les Liens Invisible (it), Alessandro Ludovico (it), Paolo Cirio (it), Nathaniel Stern (us), Scott Kildall (us), Jens Best (de),
Moderation: Daphne Dragona (gr)

Sat, 5.2.2011 - 11:00, K1
• KEYNOTE Conversation: Life at Work: Bioeconomy and the Crisis of Cognitive Capitalism
Franco Berardi (it), Maurizio Lazzarato (it)
Moderation: Matteo Pasquinelli (it)
Sat, 5.2.2011 - 17:00, Auditorium
• Focus Discussion: Life in Excess: Transpersonality and Autonomy in the Age of Biopower
Roberto Esposito (it), Judith Revel (fr)
Moderation: Matteo Pasquinelli (it)    

Sun, 6.2.2011 - 14:00, Auditorium

The third path, Track 3: Bios and Technology, ultimately questions how the body itself experiences and adapts to such a digital (Um)Welt (environment). Here, the affect is investigated as a medium between life and technology, which opens a new space for dealing with the post-human interplay of forces between ruler and subject, knowledge and distribution.

• Focus Discussion: Democratic:Ability
Garnet Hertz (ca), Tapio Mäkelä (fi), Nancy Mauro-Flude (au), Jürgen Neumann (de), Moderation: Alison Powell (ca)
Fri, 4.2.2011 - 15:00, K1
• Focus Discussion: Access denied – DI_Yourself
Carolyn Guertin (ca), Stefanie Wuschitz (at), Franca Formenti (Biodoll) (it)
Moderation: Verena Kuni (de)
Sat, 5.2.2011 - 14:00, Auditorium

• KEYNOTE Conversation: Delimination of Life - Affective Bodies and Biomedia
Marie-Luise Angerer (at/de), Mark Hansen (us)
Moderation: Jens Hauser (fr/de)
Sun, 6.2.2011 - 17:00

In cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education

Simultaneous translation German / English and partly Italian / English during the conference sessions in the Auditorium