https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f6lxFx39E9c29vQoemm2rz3DttACGv6NuySCMLRxlNQ/edit

Universalism is not rejected but particularized; what is needed is a new kind of articulation between the universal and the particular (Chantal Mouffe in: The Return of the political, 1993) 

Xenofeminism precisely aims for an intersectional universal--what  we describe in the manifesto as a "politics assembled from the needs of  every human, cutting across race, ability, economic standing, and  geographical position." This is in direct opposition to the bloated  particularity that has conventionally been passed off as the universal  and which has largely cornered the market on popular understandings of  the generic since the Enlightenment.' (Francis Tseng interview with Helen Hester, Laboria Cuboniks) https://tni-back-soon.github.io/features/particular-universals/index.html

Identity is the demand made by power—­tell us who you are so we can tell you what you can do. And by complying with that demand, by parsing endlessly the particulars that make our identity different from one another’s, we are slotting into a power structure, not dismantling it. We should never have to choose between good and bad identity, difference and universalism, but rather, our interrogation should focus on what subtends the demand for identity and difference. (...) The universalism of noncohering particulars is queer, then, because it shows up the futility of using partition as a bulwark against the migration of peoples, ideas, and desires. A queer universalism does not belong anywhere, and it is owned by no one. (Indifference to Difference: On Queer Universalism, Madhavi Menon)


Modifying the Universal
Discussion and workshop, 20-25 participants
1er février 09:30h -- 13h
Introduction: EN, atelier: FR

This workshop is part of a collective and ongoing research* on how diversity gets implemented in technological systems, and specifically in systems for digital communication. The work started from a close reading of the process of implementing emoji modifiers in 2015. After a public outcry against the perceived lack of diversity  in emoji characters available on smartphones, the Unicode Consortium added five “Skin tone modifiers” to the set and considered the issue resolved.

Modifying the Universal asks how and why mainstream communication infrastructures promote universalist values and at the same time provide means for separating users along fault lines of race, gender and age. While the “modifiers” function within the universalist belief-system of Unicode, they start to function as encoded means for segregation instead of a response to the  increasing complexity of cross-device and cross-cultural computing. This situation demands a re-imagination of compatibility in terms of difference.

The workshop will be an occasion to think together on what technological infrastructures we can imagine that not only represent multiplicity but allow us to materialise it. What universal(izing) assumptions creep into our designs and how could we challenge them? How to design with bias in mind? What tactics can we imagine for developing systems that are politically, aesthetically and ethically generative?

*Peggy Pierrot, Roel Roscam Abbing, Femke Snelting

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1. Draw a picture of who you are and how you feel (10m). Take a random picture from the stack, and interpret.
2. Form groups. Imagine a system to communicate across spaces (so without seeing/touching/hearing each others' bodies) about identities and feelings. Test out the system. Discuss the possible bias (technological, historical, social), misunderstanding, limits, orientations of the system.

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Reading

*Unicode comment: http://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/feedback.html 
*Turing Complete User, Olia Lialina http://contemporary-home-computing.org/turing-complete-user/
*ASCII Imperialism, Daniel Pargman https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzSX1UzPXs2MY0VldVRZRzZNMXM
*Gender and Race Online, Lisa Nakamura https://lnakamur.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/nakamura-dutton-internet-and-society-anthology-chapter.pdf
*Internationalization, Adrian Mackenzie http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/mackenza/papers/Mackenzie_internationalization_oct06_web.pdf
*Adaptation and Its Discontents, Victor Bascara and Lisa Nakamura https://lnakamur.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/40-2-intro.pdf
*Modifying the universal, Roel Roscam Abbing, Peggy Pierrot, Femke Snelting  http://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/files/modifyingtheuniversal_prepub.pdf


http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/modifying.workshop Malmo, exec
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/behindthenet Arnhem, ArtEZ
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/modifying.apass Brussels, a.pass


*Obligatory modifiers for everyone (you cannot not choose)
*Randomize gender/skin-tone/...
*Make everything related to skin blue/transparent/... (the Microsoft solution)
*Use skin tone modifiers (they do bring up the trouble of representation)
*Avoid representing human bodies
*Refuse representation alltogether (abstract visual language)
*Modify different paradigms (season, temperature, ...)
*Complicate the modifications, interrelate modifications, allow super modification
*Potatohead: provide an endless system of combinable elements
*...