Conference
BODY:RESPONSE – Biomedial Politics in the Age of Digital Liveness

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

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 biologization of media and the communication- technological hybridisation of real and virtual spaces.

With four moderated keynote talks and a total of six focus discussions, three complementary paths are followed exploring individual and collective responsibilities towards such a ‘biopower’.

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.

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.

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.

With Franco 'BIFO' Berardi, Tim Etchells, Carolyn Guertin, Maurizio Lazzarato, Tapio Mäkelä, Verena Kuni, Garnet Hertz, Roberto Esposito, Judith Revel, Eric Kluitenberg, Mushon Zer-Aviv, Marie-Luise Angerer, Adrian Heathfield, Franca Formenti, Mark Hansen, Derrick de Kerckhove, Heath Bunting, Ursula Endlicher, Alessandro Ludovico, Paolo Cirio a.o.