It is no longer clear how the axiom “money is power” still holds—if it ever did—in an era of cryptocurrencies, local currencies, free trade zones as financial instruments, “cheap nature” and resource extraction, offshore tax havens, and their leaks in things like the paradise papers. The terms “making” and “money” both mutate with their globally distributed technological, financial and legal frameworks now independent of national regulations.
Common to and between all these mutations, a new relationship to the physicality of money appears: what is the matter and materiality of money? What is the current physicality of value? Currency and matter both resonate with multiple significations today, and invoke the need to examine the “making of money” from multiple disciplinary perspectives. This symposium brings together a range of voices contributing to possible answers for these questions, from fields including Philosophy, Art, Architecture, Computer Science, Community Activism and more. Participants will variously examine different forms of money—objects, life and spaces—for their physicalities, or matters.
Through workshops, talks and panel discussions, “Matters of Currency” will shed new light on money- power relations as mirrored in changing relations to technological and material transformations in the world today.
PROGRAM
Friday, April 27
Locations:
Squeaky Wheel (617 Main Street) &
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (341 Delaware Avenue)
9:00–9:30 am | Coffee/Check-in at Squeaky Wheel
9:30–9:45 am | Welcome
9:45–11:15 am | Workshop 1: Cassie Thornton
11:15–11:30 am | Break
11:30 am – 12:30 pm | Workshop 2: LittleSis
12:30–1:30 pm | Lunch
1:30–2:30 pm | Workshop 3: Paul Kolling/Terra0
2:30–3:00 pm | Change of Venues to Hallwalls + Coffee Break
3:00–4:00 pm | Screening: Love & Labor, Stephanie Andreou & Sarah Keeling, 2017
4:00–5:00 pm | UB Plenary: Jordan Geiger, Chris Lee, Stephanie Rothenberg and UB Faculty
5:00–7:00 pm | Keynote: Jason Moore
Saturday, April 28
Location: Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 341 Delaware Avenue
9:00–9:30 am | Coffee/Check-in at Hallwalls
9:30–10:00 am | Welcome
10:00 am – 12:00 pm | Panel 1 | Money: Matters of Objects with Fran Ilich & Gabriela Ceja, Max Haiven, and Brett Scott | Moderator: Leigh Claire La Berge
12:00–1:30 pm | Lunch
1:30–3:30 pm | Panel 2 | Money: Matters of Life with Paul Kolling/Terra0, Cassie Thornton, UB Faculty | Moderator: Jason Moore
3:30–4:00 pm | Coffee Break
4:00–6:00 pm | Panel 3 | Money: Matters of Spaces with Patricia de Vries, Adrian Blackwell, Caitlin Blanchfield, Caroline Woolard | Moderator: Abigail Cooke
Speakers bios:
Jason W. Moore – environmental historian and historical geographer at Binghamton University and author of several books including “Capitalism and the Web of Life.”
Caroline Woolard – artist and organizer who works collaboratively and collectively as a founding member of Trade School, OurGoods, and BFAMFAPhD.
Leigh Claire La Berge – professes at the intersection of arts, literature, visual culture and political economy. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at BMCC CUNY.
Cassie Thornton – artist and founder of Feminist Economics Department
Max Haiven – author of several books including “Cultures of Financialization”
Fran Illich and Gabriela Ceja – artists and founders of the digital material sunflower, alternative currency as well as coffee and film co-ops. Read a review on the Aridoamérica project here.
Patricia de Vries – PhD candidate in algorithmic art and researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures
Paul Kolling from Terra0 – blockchain developers for environmental management and tokenizing of natural resources.
Caitlin Blanchfield – PhD in architectural history and comparative literature and society at Columbia University and a contributing editor to the Avery Review.
Adrian Blackwell – artist, designer and urban theorist whose work focuses on the relation between physical space and political economic forces. He is co-editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy.
LittleSis (Public Accountability Initiative) – Based in Buffalo, creators of free database that power maps influential social networks.
Organizers’ Bios: Jordan Geiger – Assistant Professor of Architecture, University at Buffalo, Editor of “Entr’acte: Performing Publics, Pervasive Media and Architecture.”
Chris Lee – Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, University at Buffalo, Research Fellow at Het Nieuwe Instituut (2017/2018), considers graphic design’s entanglements with power through the intersection of typography, money, and the document.
Stephanie Rothenberg – Associate Professor of Art, University at Buffalo, Artist and researcher investigating the intersections between socio-economic systems, technology and non-human ecologies.
Organized by:
Jordan Geiger, Chris Lee and Stephanie Rothenberg of the University at Buffalo Humanities Institute’s Research Workshop “Making Money: Critical Research into Cultures of Exchange.” A project of the Technē Institute for Art and Emerging Technologies in conjunction with the Institute of Network Cultures at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam.
Team Twitterati: Eric Barry Drasin (MFA candidate, UB Department of Art) and Yvette Granata (PhD candidate, UB Department of Media Study)
Contact information: For questions about the event please email the MoneyLab Buffalo team at moneylab5buffalo@gmail.com
**This post is co-authored by Gabriel Solomon Mindel and Alexander J. Ullman
On February 2, 2017, thousands of protesters took to the University of California Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza to protest and ultimately shut down a planned talk by the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Captured in real time,its dark and blurry image projected to screens across the world, this gathering dumped fuel on a fire that had been burning slowly for many years. Conservative and predominantly “white-male” resentment against the mainstreaming of “politically correct” speech had become the basis for an inchoate community via the internet and was now emerging as a socially acceptable sentiment in the era of Trump. For those protesting at Berkeley, the silencing of Yiannopoulos was not intended simply to condemn the content of his speech, but to intervene preemptively in the culture-wide “fascist creep” disguising itself as humour and taboo breaking. It called into question the actual meaning of both speech and freedom in a place that had become synonymous with the struggle for both.
Viewed by some as a riot, the militant protest tactics evoked scorn, distress, and confusion from a wide spectrum of respondents. Conservative audiences were horrified by the self-evident violence of the Left, even while enjoying a laugh with Milo at the various fails of “SJW’s” and “snowflakes”. Meanwhile Liberals couldn’t seem to fathom the expressions of anger and nihilism evinced by the black-clad mass celebrating in front of the shattered windows of the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, who set a fire at the very steps upon which the Free Speech Movement of 1964 had been birthed. The cancellation of Yiannopoulos’s talk has since set off a chain of rhetorical and physical confrontations resulting in the cancellation of Conservative speeches on campus and multiple “free speech” rallies which have devolved into street battles between amotley cohort of alt-right groups and various counter-protesters surrounding a park that was also named after MLK.
Sproul Plaza Protests, UC Berkeley, September 24, 2017, Image by Pax Ahimsa Gethen, (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Coincident with the events that same spring, Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre stagedTempleby British playwrightSteve Waters, a revisiting of 2011’s Occupy London protests whose encampments surrounded the area of St. Paul’s Cathedral. First performed in London in 2015, the play speculates that the swirling circumstances of the ten-day period leading up to thedean’s resignation (including the cathedral’sclosing on October 21; the Canon Chancellor’sabrupt resignation on the morning of October 28; and thereopening of the cathedral later that day, effectively evicting the protesters) had something to do with the church’s own struggle to reconcile its responsibility to serve both God and his people in the face of ethical contradictions.
Seeing Temple on Aurora Street, barely two weeks and two blocks from the “Patriot’s Day” melee on April 15, provoked us to consider what resonances seemed to be emerging between places and times evoked in the play and humming in the streets. Thinking comparatively between Berkeley in 2017 and Temple yields historical and political synchronicities, between protest movements and the institutions which arbitrate public space and public speech. Temple offers a critique of how the discourse of “free speech” is naturalized, even weaponized, by historical actors; yet it also imagines speech as sonic form never separate from its ethical content. The play exposes how “free speech” often serves as an empty signifier mobilized for political purposes, how it always risks being separated from its material and ethical consequences. Against this, the play pits the noise ofprotest as a powerful riposte to these abstractions.
“Preaching at. St. Paul’s Church”–Folkmoot
Temple’sstory centers around the personal conflict of the Dean, who vacillates between support for the protests surrounding the church and for the city eager to evict them, dramatizing how London’s Occupy movement, displaced from its original encampment outside the London Stock Exchange, took refuge in the courtyards surrounding St. Paul’s Cathedral, replacing one symbolic institution of power with another. As the Dean reminds us, this debating throng gathered on the church’s doorstep is an echo of thefolkmoot at St. Paul’s Cross from nearly 800 years before: “In the Reformation era firebrands would preach against usury, against merchants in the very presence of the Mayor…doubtless a riotous affair…” Thus Temple situates Occupy as not an impediment to the functioning of the Church, but a revival of “a tradition of free, even odious utterance… of untrammelled public speech” (41-42).
Despite this sympathetic gesture, the Dean struggles against the unremitting noise of the current protestors outside his window. He frequently sits on the window ledge, holding his head as he peers out toward the loud chanting in what otherwise would be moments of silence: “This drumming, the music, the occasional shout…every night this fitful rhythm of noise, shouts, cries” (34). The polyphonic mass is yet another ethically demanding voice fighting for the dean’s attention. So too the other church leaders, the city lawyer arguing for the camp’s eviction, and the Canon Chancellor’s resort to Twitter where the realm of appearances seems to dictate political decisions because “like thewhispering gallery …everything we do is broadcast …amplified …reverberating around the world” (42). Should the dean re-open the church and have the protest camp removed? Should he resign? What would Jesus do?
Still from Aurora Theater’s production of Temple, Berkeley, CA, Image courtesy of authors
This interior struggle is formalized in the clash between the sound of protesters and the ritualized sounds of the church. The play compresses the drama of a three hour period into an hour and a half, and every quarter hourthe bells at St. Paul’s ring, marking the ritualized time structure of the church and its domination over the city’s soundscape. R. Murray Schafer points out inThe Soundscape that “time is always running out in the Christian system,” (i.e. its inevitable destiny in the apocalypse) “and the clock bell punctuates this fact” (56). The bells mark time, but they also mark power, for they are the “Sacred Noise” that Schafer claims societies “deliberately invoked as a break from the tedium of tranquility” – the silent world of the profane (51). The Church’s ability to determine time and disturb the peace is the (sound)mark of its power, yet the sound of the London protest encampment frequently disrupts its claim to sovereignty. The sonic agon of the play allegorized the one in the street: as Occupy’s cacophony challenged St. Paul’s exclusive right to make noise without censure, so too can the free speech protests be heard as a kind of sonic riposte to the institutionalized soundscape of the university, a sparse scholarly murmur punctuated by the bells of Berkeley’s Sather Tower.
Sonic ritual and sacred noise bookend Temple: the sound of a church choir opening it and the bells in closing. However, the play’s critique of such ritual occurs through constant sonic disruption and the unremitting attack on silence in the final stage direction (“the noise builds”). Therefore, as the Dean’s decision to reopen the cathedral suggests that the church’s rituals have won out, Temple insinuates that Occupy’s struggle was as much about the power to disrupt the peace with speech as it was to preserve its camp. This disruptive quality of ‘noise’ in the play calls attention to protest’s spatial capacities: the ability for sounding to extend beyond the limits of the body, to challenge the very architectures of power. We never see the protesters in the play, yet their acousmatic noise is manifest as if a distinct body were sharing space within the rectory. . Yet what are the limits of this ghostly aurality? Does the noise of the crowd simply become metaphor? We might ask the same thing of the protests at Berkeley, their proximity to the halls of power – university buildings, city hall, police stations – not compensating for their simultaneous containment in public space and exclusion from power’s internal deliberation. How does this risk metaphorizing the very material presence of these protests, the people who were using their actions and bodies to protest against the right’s usurpation of the term “free speech”?
Image of Dean Knowles courtesy of authors
The contest between the pew and the street in Temple exposed how the term “free speech” is metaphorically mobilized for political and ethical convenience. In a way, Temple is a critique of the Dean Graeme Knowles’s actualhomily given on October 28th, 2011, just before the church reopened and just after the diegetic time of the play closes. In this homily, Knowles appropriates the language of testimony while at the same time appealing to a more abstract notion of “free speech”:
We are called out to be witnesses, to speak out, to testify…like Simon and Jude, many of us will be anonymous, but like them, our voices need to be heard. Because of their testimony, we are here today. Without their voice, the good news of the gospel would not have reached us.
While the church’s reopening (and the concomitant removal of Occupy) may actually appear like a restriction on free speech, the dean reassures congregants that the church is itself a testament to it. “World leaders have spoken under this throne,” he says, at once emphasizing the church’s personal importance to Christians who feel silenced by the church’s closing and the political importance of an otherwise “neutral” institution.
St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, England, Image courtesy of authors
Waters’s play attempts to resolve the church/streets binary by filling hollow calls to testimony with multiple voices across a political spectrum, offering a polyvocality that helps to unpack this contradiction of the church standing up for free speech while simultaneously denying it. Through the clash of sounds and the characters voices, Temple exposes how Knowles’s homily is actually covering up a historical contradiction between numerous relations: between various iterations of what “free speech” means; between who controls the soundscape; between various iterations of free speech movements throughout history. It is here that the link to what is happening in Berkeley in 2017 is most poignant, in the resonance between the church’s past and its conflicted present on the one hand, and the dissonance between the historic memory of the UC Berkeley-based Free Speech Movement (FSM) of the fall of 1964 and how the “New Free Speech Movement” of the “alt-right” has effortlessly yet inaccurately usurped its language and moral ground.
If the Church and the University are spaces of exception, institutions that are both public and private, their responsibility to democratized speech is premised on ethical and legal principles that are not the same as the constitution-bound worlds around them. It is this being of the world and not that incites the agonism around who can speak and what they can say: according to Jesus in John 15:19 “… because you do not belong to the world…therefore the world hates you.”
The Free Speech Movement of 1964 advocated for the ability to offer persuasive speech with social consequences–rather than mere talk–carried forth by an uneasy alliance of liberal and conservative students brought together by the simultaneity of the Civil Rights Movement and Republican Party election campaigns. Campus administrators and the economic and political elite of the day claimed that students were being persuaded to perform illegal activities off campus, while it was the FSM leadership’s assertion that civil disobedience and direct action of the type being developed in civil rights and labor struggles was in fact defensible “free expression.” 50 years agotactics such as sit-ins, occupations, blocking an arrest, and transforming a police car into a stage were seen by moderate and conservative commentators as coercive and violent forms of rebellion, but for activists they paled in comparison to the everyday racist violence affecting Black people in America, the imperial violence of the Vietnam War, or the total annihilation promised by a potential nuclear war. Similarly today,Antifa accept pre-emptive and coercive violence as necessitated by the potential violence summoned by the “alt-right,” whether in the form of lone individuals inspired by their white supremacist ideology or thespectre of a large scale fascist transformation of American society.
Though protest songs provided the background music to the FSM of the 60’s, the current debate and protests over “free speech” call attention to another constitutive relationship between sound and protest, between noise and power. Behind the liberal plea to “lower the voices” and heighten the reason in political discourse is a reminder that sound has an ability to interact with consciousness in non-rational, even hypnotic ways. We see a kind of hypnosis in the very language of “free speech” today, a term invoked by the alt-right and the university to protect certain political agendas similar to the way that the term “objectivity” was deployed mid-century. Stanley Fish made a similar argument in the 1990’s amidst that moment’s culture wars, arguing that because all speech is socially constructed and ideologically asserted “there’s no such thing as Free Speech.”
Free speech, for Fish, only exists as an ideal construct outside of history in which voices are pure “noise,” separated from consequences and assertions. But his notion of “noise” and “free speech” again are too metaphorical, separated from the uneven histories of protected speech and the materiality of noisy protests. As Jonathan Sterne writes, out of the perceived noise and meaninglessness of protests there emerge rhythms and grooves that can be heard farther than they can be seen, that invite participation and resistance. In the context of Temple and the UC Berkeley protests, the “noise” created within and against the term “free speech” should not simply be dialed down or declared a realm of meaningless utterance, but unpacked as an important opening in to how power is both employed and resisted by institutions like the university and the church.
Berkeley Free Speech Protests of 1964, Image courtesy of author
The Chancellors of UC Berkeley have never been averse to using violence to correct and regulate speech on its campuses, whether it be Chancellor Strong’s eviction of the FSM’s occupation of Sproul Hall in 1964, orthe brutalization of student protesters by campus police under the watchful eye of Chancellor Birgeneau in 2009. The Dean of St. Paul’s agony could give us insight into what went into Chancellor Christ’s ambivalent publicletter that assures us that “free speech” and “safety” will come at a cost. In ‘64 the discourse of “free speech” became a platform for political dialogue and social transformation, not for usurping the language of testimony and personal experience while abstracting real societal power. What the “alt-right” frames as a common struggle for a moral and legal principle only disguises the balances of power that determine who can speak without the consequence of violence: white people or people of color; governments or protestors; bankers or the poor.
“Free Speech” is the domain of a particular sacred noise, one that has the power to disrupt whatMartin Luther King Jr. himself described as the “appalling silence and indifference of good people who sit around saying ‘wait on time’.” In this recently discovered speech, given in London just after he spoke at St. Paul’s in December 1964, MLK goes on to say that “human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability,” retroactively giving moral weight to Mario Savio’s demand that “you’ve got to put your bodies […] upon the wheels.” We can see this spirit of rebellion in the counter-rhythms of London’s anti-austerity occupations, rising up to meet the bells of St. Paul’s, and as well in the “rough music” of outraged students rising up to meet theSather Tower Carillon as it insistently keeps time.
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Featured Image: Still from video of Berkeley Protests, February 2017
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Gabriel Salomon Mindel is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar whose research considers ways that people produce and struggle for space using sound to extend beyond the limits of their bodies, particularly in formal and informal modes of protest. He received an MFA in Visual Arts from Simon Fraser University where his work focused on the production of visual artworks from time-based phenomena such as sound composition, dance, social practices and protest. He has also spent nearly two decades exhibiting artwork, performing improvised music and composing for dance and film. Images, writings and recordings can be found at https://diademdiscos.com/gms/.
Alexander J. Ullmanis a PhD student at UC Berkeley’s Department of English where he researches Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-first Century Literatures.
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Het publiek is steeds vaker een actor in het kunstenveld. In het theater participeert ze, in het museum cureert ze, met designers ontwerpt ze. In de kritische reflectie op die kunst is haar rol echter marginaal, zeker als actor. In de dynamiek van het terreinverlies van de old school kritiek won het pleidooi voor een democratische kunstkritiek aan kracht. Tussen ideaal en uitvoering liggen nog een flink aantal vragen, maar inmiddels ook pogingen tot een antwoord.
Ons antwoord is de hybride kritiek, een die op uiteenlopende plekken, via alle mogelijke media off- en online netwerken infiltreert en tot kritisch (mee)denken uitnodigt. De gelegenheidssamenwerking Laboratorium Actuele Kunstkritiek (LAK) nam het initiatief tot een hands-on onderzoek dat de tools moest leveren om zo’n hybride praktijk te faciliteren. Het maken van een online how-to vormde de laatste fase in een onderzoekstraject van drie jaar waarin het Instituut voor Netwerkcultuur, PublishingLab, rekto:verso en Domein voor Kunstkritiek met verschillende kunst- en cultuurredacties digitale technologieën onderzochten op hun waarde voor de kritiek. In expertmeetings, workshops en masterclasses werden verschillende tools ontwikkeld en vervolgens samen met culturele instellingen in de praktijk getest.
Op donderdag 19 april 17:00-19:00 lanceren we in SPUI25 de How To Kunstkritiek. Dan voor iedereen vrij beschikbaar. Jenny Mijnhijmer, de nieuwe secretaris Theater Podiumkunsten en haar voorganger Corien Baart mogen als eerste klikken. Het debat en de lancering zijn gratis bij te wonen, maar meld je van te voren aan via de website van SPUI25.
De How To Digitale Kunstkritiek is een praktische guideline die de tools en werkwijzen bespreekt die het meest gebruiksvriendelijk bleken. Wie een extra zetje wil om die tools en software in de vingers te krijgen kan van mei tot oktober terecht in workshops.
Van de lancering van de How To maken we graag een moment om na te denken over het: en nu? Want hoe geef je in de praktijk handen en voeten aan het ideaal van een democratische kunstkritiek?
Graag stellen we ons panel voor:
Elsbeth Ronner is architect, verbonden aan architectenbureau Lilith Ronner van Hooijdonk. Ze doceert aan de TU Delft en de Academie van Bouwkunst in Amsterdam. Ze is publicist en secretaris van het Genootschap Architectura et Amicitia. Elsbeth Ronner initieerde samen met Sereh Mandias Windoog, een podcast voor divers geluid die architectuurkritiek weer aansprekend moet maken voor een algemeen publiek.
Heleen Volman is artistiek leider van DansBrabant. Ze is mede-initiatiefnemer van het Moving Futures netwerk, een coalitie van vijf talentontwikkelaars in de dans. Het netwerk en jaarlijkse festival fungeren als ontmoetingsplek voor makers, publiek, programmeurs en producenten. Het netwerk ziet het publiek als een onmisbare actor in het dansveld. Daarom fungeerde hun reizende festival MFF in 2017 als laboratorium voor de tool Edit this Post, collectief schrijven in real time.
Rogier Brom is onderzoeker en projectcoördinator bij de Boekmanstichting. Hier onderzoekt hij onder andere actuele ontwikkelingen in de Nederlandse cultuursector. Eerder werkte hij als docent aan oa de University College Utrecht en de HKU, bij het Centraal Museum Utrecht en als zelfstandig onderzoeker. In 2017 publiceerde hij met Jeroen Boomgaard Being Public. How Art Creates the Public bij Valiz Publishers.
Moderator: Sonja van der Valk
Laboratorium Actuele Kunstkritiek (LAK) is een Vlaams-Nederlandse gelegenheidssamenwerking van het Domein voor Kunstkritiek, Instituut voor Netwerkcultuur/PublishingLab, rekto;verso en de redacties van verschillende (online) publicaties. Als platform wil het denken over cultuur en kunst opfrissen, intensiveren en optimaliseren, door de gereedschapskist van de kritiek te verruimen.
De how-to kwam tot stand met ondersteuning van het Mondriaan Fonds, Fonds Podiumkunsten, Moving Futures Festival en Amsterdam Creative Industries Network. De Nieuwe Garde financiert mede het workshopprogramma.
Join host James Tlsty in the second installment of his podcast miniseries–“Listening In with Sounding Out!” In this miniseries Tlsty and co-host Shauna Bahssin dig deep into the archives of Sounding Out! and interview authors to get a sense of what they were thinking as they wrote their essays. In this episode Tlsty and Bahssininterview one of our favorite contributors, Marlen Rios.
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James Tlsty is a Junior studying English and Philosophy, Politics and Law (PPL) at Binghamton University. James draws from literature and philosophy for pragmatic applications in social policy and activism. James is an active champion of the arts, as evidenced by his work with on-campus art initiative OPEN, a hybrid art gallery and open mic. He is also the resident Pop Music Department Director and an E-Board member at WHRW, where he is a registered radio engineer and programmer.
Shauna Bahssin is a junior double-majoring in English and art history. She currently serves as the managing editor for Binghamton University’s student newspaper, Pipe Dream, after maintaining the position of copy desk chief for three semesters. Outside of the paper, she helps supervise student fundraising initiatives through the Binghamton Telefund, and she hopes to work within the field of arts advancement after she graduates.
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Projet d’un ouvrage collectif sous la direction de Victorine Ghislaine NZINO MUNONGO, chercheuse au Ministère de la Recherche Scientifique et de l’Innovation, Cameroun, Martial JEUGUE DOUNGUE, PhD, Chercheur-Enseignant, L. Christelle BELPORO, Université de Montréal, Québec, Canada et Hermann NANAN LEKOGMO, PhD, Université Catholique d’Afrique Centrale (UCAC-APDHAC)
Parution prévue : décembre 2018
Argumentaire
Considérant, d’une part, le village global actuel en construction dans lequel sont appelées à interagir plusieurs parties prenantes vers la concrétisation d’un destin commun et, d’autre part, le souci de préservation des ressources locales, il émerge la nécessité d’une implémentation plus concrète du principe d’intégration. Les Objectifs de développement durable (ODD) furent ainsi adoptés avec comme objectif, d’ici 2030, d’éliminer la pauvreté sous toutes ses formes par la promotion d’une industrialisation durable qui profite à tous et encourage l’innovation et la recherche et d’encourager les grandes entreprises et les sociétés transnationales à adopter et intégrer des pratiques viables. La visée essentielle des objectifs fixés est la création d’emplois, l’augmentation de la richesse locale par le Produit intérieur brut (PIB) et une utilisation plus rationnelle des ressources par l’usage de technologies et procédés industriels propres, socialement inclusifs et respectueux de l’environnement.
Le contexte économique actuel en Afrique subsaharienne est confronté à plusieurs défis :
Une explosion démographique estimée à 1,1 milliards d’habitants avec une projection de 2,4 milliards en 2050[1], ce qui représente un tiers de la population mondiale. Par ailleurs, 60% de la population africaine a moins de 35 ans[2] et est constituée de jeunes avides de biens et de consommation.
Une urbanisation qui se fait à grande vitesse en termes d’occupation d’espace par les populations : les statistiques font mention de 472 millions d’habitants vivant en zone urbaine et le double de ce chiffre d’ici les vingt-cinq prochaines années[3]. Ces chiffres dénotent l’existence d’une concentration graduelle non négligeable de la demande et l’offre des biens et services en zone urbaine et partant une économie croissante dont les prévisions sont fixées à 2,6% en 2017[4]. Selon la Banque mondiale, cette croissance est ralentie par le déficit des infrastructures, ce qui a pour impact de limiter la productivité des entreprises jusqu’à 40%[5].
Un manque assez flagrant d’infrastructures. Il y a par conséquent un besoin vital d’investir massivement pour la construction des espaces viables pouvant accueillir cette population croissante et répondre aux attentes des entreprises. Toutefois, la facture de ces opérations sera sans doute assez salée. Selon les experts financiers, le besoin d’investissements dans la construction des infrastructures en Afrique s’évaluent à la hauteur de 93 milliards de Dollars par an[6]. Dans un environnement où 43 % de la population totale vit en dessous du seuil de pauvreté[7], l’enjeu est non seulement celui de poser les jalons d’une économie dite inclusive mais également un système de production, de vente et de consommation qui respecte la dignité humaine tout en préservant l’environnement. D’où la référence faite à la Responsabilité Sociétale des Entreprises/Organisations.
Selon Bambara et ses collègues, la Responsabilité sociale des organisations (RSO) s’appréhende comme étant la « responsabilité d’une organisation vis-à-vis des impacts de ses décisions et de ses activités sur la société et sur l’environnement, se traduisant par un comportement transparent et éthique qui contribue au développement durable y compris à la santé des personnes et au bien-être de la société, prend en compte les attentes des parties prenantes, respecte les lois en vigueur et est compatible avec les normes internationales et est intégré dans l’ensemble de l’organisation et mis en œuvre dans ses relations »[8]. Par ailleurs, selon l’Organisation internationale du travail (OIT), la Responsabilité sociétale des entreprises/organisations (RSE) traduit «… la façon dont les entreprises prennent en considération les effets de leurs activités sur la société et affirment leurs principes et leurs valeurs tant dans l’application de leurs méthodes et procédés internes que dans leurs relations avec d’autres acteurs »[9]. La définition énoncée par l’OIT aborde l’approche sociologique de la RSE qui présente ce concept « …comme une question de régulation sociale faisant intervenir, derrière l’institution que constitue l’entreprise, des acteurs sociaux en conflit »[10]. Désormais, comme le diraient Mc William et Siegel, il est question de considérer la RSE « … comme des actions permettant d’améliorer le bien-être social au-delà des intérêts de la firme et de ce qui est requis par la loi»[11]. Cette présentation du concept énonce de manière globale l’enjeu de l’insertion d’une RSE/RSO au sein d’une société.
L’encadrement juridico-politique de la RSE/RSO en Afrique est un véritable défi. Si la perception qu’ont les États de cet outil est nuancée, il en est de même de sa perception par les entreprises. Les outils de gestion et de mise en place d’une RSE/RSO dans les pays et les entreprises d’Afrique méritent d’être analysés afin de comprendre et de traduire la portée de la RSE/RSO en Afrique subsaharienne. Malgré le caractère innovateur du concept occidental qu’est la RSE/RSO en Afrique et l’appréhension changeante de ce dernier en fonction des réalités sociales, il existe des approches d’implémentation qui positionnent les entreprises en acteurs ayant pour responsabilité de contribuer à l’éradication de la pauvreté.
Cet ouvrage a pour objectif d’aborder les réponses offertes par la RSE/RSO en Afrique subsaharienne sous le prisme des différents défis auxquels cette dernière est confrontée. Nous souhaitons mieux comprendre les échanges d’influence existant entre ce concept et l’environnement africain subsaharien, autrement dit, analyser l’apport de la RSE/RSO en milieu africain subsaharien et en retour, les mutations subies par ce concept du fait de son adaptation à son milieu d’implantation.
Cet ouvrage s’adressera aux parties prenantes que sont les administrations publiques et parapubliques, le secteur privé, les institutions académiques et professionnelles, la société civile, etc.
Les contributions attendues doivent concerner prioritairement l’un des aspects suivants :
RSE/RSO et Objectifs de développement durable, horizon 2030 en Afrique subsaharienne;
RSE/RSO et lutte contre la pauvreté dans les pays subsahariens ;
RSE/RSO dans le secteur forestier en Afrique subsaharienne;
Industrialisation, technologie propre et croissance économique dans les pays subsahariens ;
Industrialisation durable, recherche et innovation dans les pays subsahariens ;
Grandes entreprises, sociétés transnationales et les Droits de l’Homme;
La politique de la production durable dans les PMI/PME en Afrique subsaharienne ;
Protection des moyens de substances et de la production basique face aux crises écologiques au Cameroun ; etc.
Les chapitres seront évalués selon la méthode ouverte croisée des Éditions science et bien commun (entre auteurs et auteures du livre, avec publication d’un résumé des évaluations).
Processus de création du livre
Ce projet de livre est ouvert à tous et toutes, dans un état d’esprit qui rejette toute perspective de compétition ou d’exclusion. Au contraire, la visée de justice cognitive de ce livre nous amène à vouloir l’ouvrir à tous les savoirs et à toutes les épistémologies, pour autant que cela nous aide à comprendre son objet. Nous travaillerons donc avec tous les auteurs et auteures qui veulent participer à cette aventure pour améliorer leur proposition ou leur texte afin que ce livre devienne une ressource précieuse.
Sur le plan des consignes d’écriture, il est tout à fait possible d’inclure des photos ou d’autres images. Il est également possible de proposer, en guise de chapitre, la transcription d’une entrevue ou d’un témoignage ou encore une vidéo pour la version en ligne, si cela permet à des savoirs d’entrer dans notre livre. Par contre, afin de maximiser l’accessibilité et l’utilisation du livre, nous demandons de restreindre l’usage de tout jargon spécialisé.
La circulation de cet appel dans toutes les universités africaines est cruciale pour respecter la visée de justice cognitive et de circulation régionale de l’information.
À noter que la rédaction de ces chapitres est bénévole et ne sera pas rémunérée. La gratification des auteurs et auteures sera de voir leur chapitre circuler et être utilisé au service du bien commun de l’Afrique.
Les auteures et auteurs participant au livre seront invités à échanger tout au long du processus d’écriture et d’édition dans un groupe Facebook ou WhatsApp, afin de partager des idées, des références et des premières versions, dans l’esprit d’entraide et de collaboration qui est promu par la justice cognitive.
Calendrier
Mars 2018 : Lancement de l’appel
30 juin 2018 : Date limite pour envoyer une proposition (un résumé de quelques phrases) ou un chapitre
31 juillet 2018 : Réponse aux propositions et réception des chapitres jusqu’au 31 octobre 2018.
Décembre 2018 : Publication d’une version complète en ligne et impression d’exemplaires sur demande.
Pour participer
Dès que possible, envoyez un message à l’adresse propositions@editionscienceetbiencommun.org avec votre biographie (en quelques lignes), les coordonnées complètes de votre institution ou de votre association et un résumé du chapitre (ou des chapitres) que vous souhaitez proposer. Ce résumé consiste à présenter en quelques phrases le contenu du texte que vous souhaitez proposer, en l’associant, dans la mesure du possible, à une des thématiques proposées.
Les valeurs et le projet éditorial des Éditions science et bien commun
[8] M. BAMBARA et A. SENE, « L’évolution de la responsabilité sociétale de l’entreprise à la faveur du développement durable: vers une juridicisation de la RSE » in Revue Africaine du Droit de l’Environnement, nᵒ 00, 2012, p.100.
[10] Emmanuelle Champion et al., Les représentations de la responsabilité sociale des entreprises : un éclairage sociologique, Les cahiers de la Chaire de responsabilité sociale et développement durable ESG-UQÀM – collection recherche No 05-2005, p.4.
[11] MacWilliams, A. & Siegel, D., cité par Marianne Rubinstein, « Le développement de la responsabilité sociale de l’entreprise », Revue d’économie industrielle [En ligne], 113 | 1er trimestre 2006, mis en ligne le 21 avril 2008, consulté le 18 janvier 2015. URL :http://rei.revues.org/295.
De Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA) is voor FDMCI, het lectoraat Netwerkcultuur (Institute of Network Cultures), onderdeel van het Kenniscentrum (CREATE-IT), per 1 juni 2018 op zoek naar
onderzoeksmedewerker (0,8 fte)
De Faculteit Digitale Media en Creatieve Industrie (FDMCI) is onderdeel van de Hogeschool van Amsterdam en telt ruim 6.600 studenten en 425 medewerkers. De faculteit, met een sterke crossmediale, mode en ICT-focus, is ambitieus en wil op alle fronten kwaliteit uitdragen.
De functie
Als onderzoeksmedewerker werk je samen met de lector en onderzoekers aan de opzet, uitvoering en administratie van verschillende projecten van het lectoraat. De lopende projecten van het lectoraat hebben te maken met alternatieve verdienmodellen, digitaal uitgeven en kunstkritiek. Je ontwikkelt en produceert bijeenkomsten, workshops en andere activiteiten rondom het onderzoek. Je werkt ook mee aan het realiseren van de publicaties van het lectoraat, zowel online als op papier. Een belangrijk deel van je werk bestaat uit het contact leggen met en onderhouden van netwerken van onderzoekers, kunstenaars, activisten, programmeurs, en docenten en studenten. Daarnaast denk je mee over nieuw op te zetten projecten en werk je aan de uitwerking daarvan in projectplannen, fondsaanvragen en begrotingen.
Naast de coördinerende en inhoudelijke taken draagt de onderzoeksmedewerker zorg voor een goede communicatieve en administratieve begeleiding van de projecten. Je verzorgt de communicatie rondom activiteiten van het lectoraat, zoals het schrijven van persberichten en nieuwsbrieven, het onderhouden van social media en het up-to-date houden van het blog van het lectoraat. Daarnaast onderhoud je contacten met interne en externe relaties. Ten slotte zorg je voor een goede documentatie van de activiteiten en de resultaten van de projecten, ten behoeve van kennisopbouw en -verspreiding.
Wij zoeken
Een veelzijdige collega met belangstelling voor de culturele, maatschappelijke en academische ontwikkelingen in de nieuwe media en netwerkcultuur. Je bent organisatorisch sterk en hebt ervaring met de productie van bijvoorbeeld (internationale) symposia, tentoonstellingen, workshops of andere publieksprogramma’s. Bij voorkeur heb je ervaring met het schrijven van projectvoorstellen en subsidieaanvragen. Je houdt van netwerken en staat graag in contact met verschillende soorten mensen op allerlei niveaus. Je kunt overweg met verschillende communicatiemethoden zoals bloggen, sociale media, nieuwsbrieven en het benaderen van de pers. Je bent flexibel, proactief, enthousiast en ondernemend en werkt goed samen in een klein team. Je beheerst Nederlands en Engels op hoog niveau en beschikt over minimaal bachelor werk- en denkniveau. Ten slotte heb je affiniteit met een complexe onderwijs- en onderzoeksomgeving zoals de Hogeschool van Amsterdam.
De afdeling
Het Instituut voor Netwerkcultuur (INC) maakt onderdeel uit van het Kenniscentrum Create-IT. Tot de werkzaamheden van het lectoraat behoren onderzoek, het organiseren van theoretisch onderwijs en het ontwikkelen en uitvoeren van een programma van seminars, conferenties, evenementen en publicaties ten behoeve van kennisontwikkeling en kennisoverdracht. Het lectoraat bestaat uit een team van vijf medewerkers. Daarnaast werkt het lectoraat regelmatig met (internationale) stagiair(e)s en gastonderzoekers.
Create-IT Applied Research is het kenniscentrum van de faculteit. Studenten en onderzoekers werken samen in uitdagende projecten op het gebied van media, mode en IT. Het centrum wordt gekenmerkt door een ondernemende instelling en multidisciplinaire aanpak. Het onderzoek vindt zoveel mogelijk plaats binnen de bedrijven en instellingen waarmee samengewerkt wordt, maar er zijn ook verschillende labs, waar nieuwe technologieën onderzocht worden en waar studenten (afstudeer)opdrachten uitvoeren.
Wij bieden
Het betreft in eerste instantie een dienstverband voor een jaar. De werkzaamheden maken deel uit van de organieke functie Onderwijs- en onderzoeksmedewerker 2. De bij deze functie behorende loonschaal is 9 (cao hbo). Het salaris bedraagt maximaal € 3635,- bruto per maand bij een volledige aanstelling en is afhankelijk van opleiding en ervaring. De HvA kent een uitgebreid pakket aan secundaire arbeidsvoorwaarden, waaronder een ruime vakantieregeling en een 13e maand.
Informatie
Nadere informatie per e-mail aan Miriam Rasch: vacatures@hva.nl (niet gebruiken om te solliciteren).
Klik hier om online te solliciteren. Sollicitaties die rechtstreeks naar de contactpersoon of op een andere wijze worden verstuurd, worden niet verwerkt.
Bij de werving en selectie ter invulling van deze vacature, houden wij de HvA Sollicitatiecode aan. Acquisitie naar aanleiding van deze advertentie wordt niet op prijs gesteld.
A sound art multimedia piece by Anthony William Rasmussen
Funded by the UC MEXUS Dissertation Research Grant
Map graphics by Julie K. Wesp
Additional Footage by Oswaldo Mejía
The megalopolis of Mexico City is experienced by many who live there as a network of “known” places, laden with both personal memory and collective meaning. Sounds provide inhabitants with a powerful means of navigation: the unique calls of street vendors, song fragments, speech, and protest chants echolocate the listener within a vast spatiotemporal grid. The title of this piece (“the snail/the shell”) refers to the prolific spiral motif in Mesoamerican cosmology and alludes to a nonlinear vision of time and space.
El Caracol, Sounding Board Installation, 2015, Image by Leo Cardoso
The piece consists of four journeys, each beginning at the outskirts of the city and ending in or near the Zócalo—Mexico City’s central plaza and the symbolic heart of the nation. The video element consists of footage captured while walking through various sites in Mexico City and represents the phenomenological present. The audio element provides a counterpoint to the visual: sounds meander and drift from the visual field; occasional ruptures of historical sound expose layers of this audible palimpsest.
Sounding Out! is thrilled to host a virtual installation of “El Caracol” right here, right now:
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Featured Image: Screen Capture from El Caracol
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Anthony W. Rasmussen is a musician, educator, and postdoctoral fellow at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Currently, he is investigating the transformation of whistles from a rural system of long-distance communication to an aesthetic/symbolic practice in Mexico City. In 2017, he completed a PhD in ethnomusicology from UC Riverside with a dissertation on sound culture and urban conflict, “Resistance Resounds: Hearing Power in Mexico City.” His work can be found in Ethnomusicology Forum. Anthony also holds an MFA from UC Irvine where he studied Persian classical music, music composition, and interactive arts technology. He has composed for film, a range of traditional and experimental ensembles, and is singer/songwriter for the pop group, The Fantastic Toes.
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