https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/titipi.HDI2

>way in which - Veale - google and apple what kind of power it is.. stop thinking about privacy and security but these other questions.. data is not the thing.. because of advertising they needed personal data - just say data, doesn't do justice. They need operational data.. data is more like a lubricant.. makes operations possible.. the operation it makes possible is extractivism.. data is enabler of operation for extractivism.. which is why data as oil misleading.. 
distinction.. personal data wtf that is us vs data that the fact we re in touch or that we reacted that allows these operations to continue to extract value.. data ethics.. a way to come to infratructure ethics.. data lubricant... complete misunderstanding.. and what these industries.. in this environment that is about some starting from personal data.. combine infrastucture ethics and data thinking // finding cases around// getting hands into how it happens and what ways// where to begin to repsond to it to make other practices... 

Data as lubricant
site of devastation = public life (not publishing / media anymore)
the pivot - saying: we care for you - but they are redy to move because media/publishing is sucked dry.

apple making the ads opt in - sucked it dry.. why apple did this.. 
would do it to health .. 
extractivism of confidence or having something to say.. courage.. creative force.. 
ebenfit from the lethargy of institutions.. without excusing or celebrating institutions.. they have also plundered public life.. but wiht a different -- benovalent.. neo-liberalism.. play the game.. leathargy.. 
when there is no life possible.. 
when everything has already been depleted by these economies.. barren.. 
convenience.. 
would be unthinkable to do it 5-6 years ago .. 
massaged to come to this.. 


the cycle coop keeping your own resources / the problem of thinking you need to build your own bar.
unregulated practice 

extracting courage, creative 

the ability to have a voice -- not being able to speak. confidence.
who wants msteams, really. 

in this moment what is happening, personal data is chicken feed next to what is in your infrastructures. fuck your fitbit data, this has much more potential to extract

if you have your data, you have the convenience of looking at it on your app.
it would be unthinkable t think, that you would upload your health data 
has been massaged to be a good idea
or like universities putting everything in microsoft team

the black board thing has been there for a while
in the art schools, you also have the move from adobe suit going online
going from buying licenses to buying subscriptions
this all has been part of the preparation for this
in KASK, there is a realization
they are paying immense amounts of money
they are thinking about it
with that money, which is a lot of money, what they could do and how they coudl use that differently they blank out


blood infrastructure -- dependencies
i would like to formulate this with people
that are living this and that are thinking this
and, like the coop that tries to find a different practice
and where that works and fails

one of my colleagues said that u of london does online courses
and you can trace it back to a victorian education, colonial imperial project

the colonial imperial impulse

companies are ok for BLM for creating categories -- govern everything and everywhere.. identity mechanisms. tracking and identity.. fairness... 
notion of identity ahistorical.. metis righsts
applying for rights -- hunting.
identity and categories and how companies play in to it, managing populations.
categories not based on history of struggles
allocating resources based on identity data points.. 

tech industry entering 
setting a ruleset for distribution -- not governments, but tech. No contestation possible. They need to establish, once that is done it is done. then the infrastructure is what governs.

infrastructural ethics could be a way to also think about this
what would it be then? 
where we want to go into that

basic income, handed out through tech companies

what is interesting is that, governance and public infrastructures that we have been told are not the profitable things are the things that they want to get their hands on

free software, basic income, feminism, blacklives matter
basic income it is clear as a story why they would want it
it is so much more efficient than anything else
the problem is that we  might need it

here is there also a jump, this is not extractivism, this is something else

take the example of basic income, this is something else

extractivism is not, it is collaboration to govern
but the aim is not governance
it is extracting governance to go bare
it is not to become the governance, the governance as the site of extraction
this is what we see
something we could not imagine

we will try to bite a piece out of that for an application

i am interested in our practice, too
we can do policy advising
but we can also do practice of confidence, narration, expertise switching
and, so in this case, i am wondering, how we can bring the technologists in
it is interesting to think about the coop as an attempt to do different and not to break it down

i was telling the story of the early OSP days
kleiner came and said we had to own the beer company that we were designing the labels for
we were deflated
that is not the point
that is where the feminisms need to come in
understanding this not as an alternative practice
but how to survive and try even knowing that this is upon us

maybe even the cycle coop is the old kind of site
rather than public infrastructures site
there is no
i think, certainly, it would be interesting

there is something around the conceptualization of, the ethical conceptualization
the shifting of that
that needs some creative practice around

if we think about, gathering some practices that try to push back on this
also that we put our energy in supporting discussions and thinking with
i don't know examples of successful practices

or even failed practices would be interesting to think with
sites of resistance and reformulated ethics
there is no successful practice, in a lot of ways
that logic is broken

i think what we were onto before
like inviting those people
to have those discussions

i think about this collective in brussels
that tries to do other infrastructures

research itself is a extractive practice
to not make that happen
to address the site of the workshop and interview through different imaginary practices
so that it is not just about the extraction of that research data

training for going to the center of earth
gumbs
she writes about training
we are all in training now
also futures in terms of 
tiffany ... kings
is writing about extractivism
her black fungibility
is also, the other temporality is already there
the other temporality is already there
that is the space for survival as well
other temporalities and futures

which can be somehow supporting initiatives that are already there
to try to think with them how to continue
and to think about other alliances that we can support


https://nubo.coop/nl/ ?









An infrastructural ethics (that can deal with extractivism of data)
temporary structures: social and political processes. Scenes of devastation in which life cannot be lived
from data extractivism to labour to mining practices.
Queering damage, right?
What do the infrastructures around it look like?
Framed by anti colonial and anti imperial practice
Engaging with extractivist theories and infrastructural ethics.. 

Develop a set of practices that can map/trace the different ways data infrastructures act upon public life and the possibility to have public life. Through work with others understand what sites of resistance (such as POTS) to this exist and to imagine an infrastructuringring otherwise to generate an infrastrutural ethics.. 

Three lines run through the workshops and interviews:
- care not just for bodies 
- non-extractivist data practices - i.e. research practices, ...
- intervention beyond action - 

Collaborations with: Cycle coop, DP3T, ....
different... sites multi site... engagement.. 

Extractivism cannot simply be equated to mining (and/or destructive forms of farming, logging, rubber tapping, fishing, etc.). It is mining (or farming, etc.) that is patterned in a particular way. It is an economic system that shows the following features: 
        •  (1)  It includes the creation of a monopoly over the resources that are (to be) extracted. As a consequence, the benefits obtained are concentrated and appropriated in the hands of a limited number of beneficiaries, whilst the costs are externalized (Velt- meyer and Bowles 2014, 5). 

        •        (2)  Itdependsuponcloseintertwinementsbetweenstateandprivatecapitalgroups(be they national or international). 

        •        (3)  It is made possible by the availability of the required infrastructural elements (har- bours, transport systems, electricity, security, a docile labour force, etc.). 

        •        (4)  There is an ‘operational centre’ that is able to tie different infrastructural elements together into a well-functioning series of connections (a ‘chain’) that allows the extracted products to be transported from places of poverty to places of richness, where high prices can be obtained for them. The control over these connections con- stitutes the monopoly position (see point 1 above).2 Other actors (not linked to the operational centre) do not have access to the resources to be extracted, or networks needed to transport the obtained products to places of richness. 

        •        (5)  The wealth obtained through these processes is accumulated in the operational centre and by capital groups participating in it. The obtained wealth is definitely not channelled towards the people negatively affected by the extractivist activities nor to the people (and/or institutions) who could legitimately claim a share. 

        •        (6)  Thepreviouspoints(notably1,4and5)implythatextractivismisconstitutedby,and through, inequalities, and that it creates and deepens such inequalities.3 

2There are examples of small-scale mining that follow a completely different pattern and which result in a significantly different distribution of the obtained wealth. See e.g. Donaldson (2011) on small-scale mining in Guizhou, which he con- trasts with large-scale and centralized mining in the neighbouring province of Yunnan. 
3In the literature this is known as the resource-curse. The wealth of available resources translates into widespread margin- alization, deprivation and poverty (Ross 1999; Melhum, Moene, and Torvik 2006; Zhang et al. 2007). 
     •        (7)  In particular instances, the obtained wealth is partly used by the state for social dis- tribution4 and/or development-oriented investments. This is referred to, in the litera- ture, as ‘progressive extractivism’ or ‘neo-extractivism’ and is claimed to feed ‘developmentalism’ and redistributive policies (North and Grinspun 2016). 

        •        (8)  In terms of the process of production in senso stricto, extractivism represents pro- duction without reproduction. We are not referring here to the reproduction of the social relations of production (like wage relations) but to the material reproduction of the resources involved. In the case of mining, such reproduction is, to a degree5, impossible. However, when it comes to activities such as forestry, fishery and agriculture, the separation of production from reproduction and the neglect of the latter set extractivism apart: resulting in deserts, empty seas and ‘dustbowl- agriculture’ (Steinbeck 1939). Extractivism centres on the use of the already available resources, it does not invest in the material reproduction of these resources. The neglect of reproduction turns extractivism into a destructive phenomenon. 

        •        (9)  As a consequence, extractivism creates huge windfall profits. This also explains the ‘boom-like’ nature of extractivism, which Veltmeyer and Bowles refer to as the ‘boom–bust cycle’ (2014, 14). 

        •        (10)  It results in barrenness: the destruction of landscapes and biodiversity, widespread pollution, the depletion of important resources, unemployment, a degrading quality of work, displacement of indigenous peoples and ‘wasted lives’ (Bauman 2004). It might bring as well complex patterns of inclusion and exclusion. 













Qs:
- Is this about Covid helath data, human health data or human data?
- What workshop exercises could be performed where the influence of the facilitator is deminished?
- "We want to" or "We will"?  

Research Proposal Funding Application Form

Theme:  Ethics and Data: Concepts, Provocations and Solutions
 
Please submit to:  Alan.J.Munro {at} glasgow.ac.uk
 
 
Title of project: 
Non-Action As Response
 
Associate/Partner Organisation(s): 



 
Name of Primary Applicant: 
Job title: 
School: 
Subject Area/Centre/Institute: 
Email:                                             
Telephone:   
                                                                                                   
Project Start Date:
Project End Date:
 
Total Grant requested:
 
 10k
 
 
1.     Project Aims and Objectives
 
The aim is to investigate ways of dismantling power asymmetries through:
1) Rejection of the expert; recognise the validity of non-academic, non-western, non-English sources of knowledge. 
2) Non-action; explore responses beyond taking action. Break the vicious loop of action-response-reaction that reinforces power dynamics. Work togards generating a methodology of alterity ethics with political agency. 
3) Situating our enquiry; challenge the assumptions around Covid health data specifically.
4) Bringing together individuals from very different spaces; technology practitioners, health industry workers and artists. 

 
2.     Project Summary (500 words max)
 

Choosing to not participate in a system is to challenge the validity of that system.

Holders of power and knowledge in tech right now need to be confronted with other logics. 

What would radical inclusion look like?

Much action around addressing data ethics has not had the desired effects, namely, to produce more ethical data practices through agency, legibility and negotiability.
Participating in debates on data justice reinforces power imbalances that exist between individual angents and data-driven systems. To be involved is to uphold current infrastructures. 

We want to acknowledge, but not participate in power asymmetries.

We want to explore new approaches as responses to power asymmetries which move away from "action as response" and towards "non-action" responses.  

1) How can we, as investigators, develop a process of inqiry that doesn't entangle us in the system we are trying to investigate. 
2) What new forms of knowledge can be generated, how can they influance each other and how could they be utilised to challenge power asymmetries?
3) Challenge assumptions related to the nature of data (that it is inherently valuable, tethered to reality, capturable and a source of knowledge).
4) Reflections; consider non-dynamics; sitting still with data as a form political agency.  

 
 
3.     Project Rationale (1000 words max)
(e.g. why is this project important to the HDI agenda? Which of the 3 tenets, ‘agency, legibility, negotiability’, does it address)

The Covid pandemic has seen an unquestioning adherence to the usual data processes; linear and circular flows of health data, intercepted by govenments, scientists, tech companies, activist organisations and individuals. All are concerned with the process, and all serve to reinforce the power asymmetries inherent in this system simply by playing their part. It is difficult to imagine an alternative practice; one that could exist outside of this system, yet still incorporate it. A practice where agents can participate, but are not active. Where knowledge systems aren't necessarily founded on Western notions of the nature of facts, but rather could also incorporate abstract concepts, feelings, the non-human, non-machine and the informal.

There are assumptions around human health data, for example, that it is a true representation of the self and the world, that it has inherent value, a permanence, that it is meant to be exploited and instumantalised in the pursuit of knowledge and change. What would result if these assumptions were challenged? The framing of data is prescriptive. The harvesting of personal data is likened to harvesting rare minerals, with persistent myths around ownership and anonymity.  

We want to investigate the onthology of data as a participatory process. Technological practice structures information in a particular way. There are performative aspects of data handling that we have come to accept. There is opportunity for hybrid practices, and indeed potential for such practices to be taken out of the hands of humans and machines entirely.

We want to move away from solutionism, and enquire about indeterminate practices, to generate an ethics for data practices that is not merely gestural.

Over the last few months, power asymmetries involved in the handling of personal health data have hardened. The interactions between academia, government and private enterprise have reinforced power structures that take agency away from members of the public. There is a sense of frustration associated with the powelessnes that comes with not having the right type of knowledge in order to express concern. How can non-technology workers participate in the conversation? What would radical inclusion look like? If powerless agents had power, how would they behave?  
 
Our enquiry is situated; our site, and point of departure, is a politicised response to data practice in Covid contact tracing.

 Agency:
 The research will generate tools for political and creative agency in situations perceived as in the public interest but outside of public intervention, strengthening collectives' understanding of themselves as publics, which can intervene in technological development. It takes into account the complex differing social relations, and outlines the importance of involving various voices, not just those of governments, engineers, epidemiologists and other authorities. 
 
 Legibility:
The project is embedded within the creative, technological and activist communities they propose to work with and therefore through a situated and partcipatory approach can develop methods from the inside of community practices.  
 
 Negotiability:
 The project evidences the importance of creative methods in imagining public health technologies.
 
 
4.     Target group and partnership with external organisations
 
 
 
 
5.     Activities and methods of working (1500 Words max)
The project objective would be achieved through application of the following methods:
 
Activities/
Objectives
Research Methods
 
 
 1) Activity / Objective: To create an opportunity for conversations to take place where individuals can be presented presented with new ways of knowning and given the space to play, to sit, to test epistimological practices as they concern Covid tracing. The would be no prescribed outcomes, and only light-touch facilitation on our part.  
 Research Method: Workshops; in-person and online. 
 
 2) Activity / Objective: Epistemological research into data processes; identify traditional and non-traditional types of knowledge practice and human interaction.    
 Research Method: Literature and social outreach. 
 
 3) Activity / Objective: Produce a working anthology of data practice that involves, but is not limited to common forms of data practice. A space to think together.
 Research Method: Develop a curated online resource that concerned indiviuals can learn from and contribute to.  
 
 
 
6.     Ethics (600 words max)
To cover both institutional ethical approval and how the project plans to reflect Responsible Research hand Innovation in their project – see
https://www.orbit-rri.org/self-assessment/
https://www.orbit-rri.org/about-rri/area-4p-framework/
for examples.
 
 
 
 
 
 
7.     Prospective Timeline/Milestones
 
 
 
 
 
 
8.     Anticipated impact and how this will be evidenced (600 words max)
 

 As academic practitioners, we want to acknowledge that our processes alone are unable to resolve the concerns around power asymmetries in data practice.

Outcomes:
An exploration of the nature of knowledge as it relates to human health data processing. Using small scale practical interventions (facilitate workshops that bring together individuals of different disciplines who have a stake in the data process) to interpret current data processes and conceptualise beyond current data practice. 


Impacts:
·    Build better collective understanding for the organisations involved of the needs for and implications of contact tracing, providing enhanced social capital. 
·     Enable organisations not directly involved in the project to learn from and work with the methods changing their organisational approaches. 
·    Strengthen network between community organisations, academic institutions and creative SME's generating new content for the cultural industries. 
·    Develop a pilot for the emerging Institute for Technology in the Public Interest, and forming the basis for larger grants.
 
 
 
 
 
9.     Administrative support
(This section is really there as a reminder of your institutional needs. Some academic institutions require, in any grant proposal, explicit mention of admin support and what funds are allocated to them, and require any proposer to cost this in.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
10.   Project Sustainability
(This is about how your proposed project feeds into the ‘ecology’ of your research beyond its initial life/the funding period. There are notes on the web page to help with this category.)
 
 The outcomes from this project will orient the direction and research questions for a participatory multi-year research project on technology in the public interest. The workshops will act as a pilot for developing methodologies for working with stakeholders across Europe. The project will be extended into an application for AHRC Research Grant (£350,000). In the long term, Technology in the public interest will generate long term networking between European research organisations and cultural actors, which will result in an application for Innovatieve Partnerprojecten (Flemish Government, 15 July 2021, €35.000) and ultimately a proposal for the new ERC Horizon programme (deadline tba for 2021, £1.500.000).
 
 
 
[Please see next page for budget breakdown]
 
 
 
11.           Budget
 
Item and justification // Cost // In-Kind

 
Total applied for
 
Please would your project/finance people also make this breakdown of costs:
 
 
100% FEC
80% FEC
Directly Incurred Costs:
[Description]
 
 
Directly Allocated Cost
[Description]
 
 
Indirect Costs
[Description]
 
 
Total
 
 
(Please remember that these projects are funded on a FEC- Full Economic Cost - basis, and are funded at 80% of Full Economic Cost. Please see the guide on the web site for more information. https://hdi-network.org/projects-detailed-guide/)
 

Meeting 25 June

  
instead of having back and forth debate 
participation 
other forms of reaction, not necessarily action
participation
other forms that recognise power structures
not participate in where they work
-> Heather Love, Feeling Backwards
--> work against expertise 
--> how to think differently about expertise 
--> breaking the viscous loop of response
--> Peripheral politics --> abdou malik simone 
-->activism that is not neccesaily action
-->methdologies for dealing differently with expertise 
--> non western medicine forms, 
-->validation of medicine in data 
-->choosing not to participate in the system 

 
 
--> in the pandemic.. shift towards seperating quite harshly official scienece and not, what can be trusted or not, offically validated, everything outside of that.. in between space of other practices that can some how work around is suddenly broken 
--Stengers Ecologies of Practice
--difficult to imagine healthpractice around covid when that space is eradicated by the ways in which its given into the hands of data brokers.. 
-- rethinking the relation of informal and formal practices..
-- not wanting to swop the currently formal for the currently informal
-- we are concered about the erasure of public space for the approaching for different types of knowlegde... 
Peripheral practices vs action-reaction
public spaces where these conversations are taking place, are not considered revelavant,
breaking loops.. care and knowledge making outside of 
3 dimensional model above.. thinking about our relationship with knowledge itself.. at a more conceptual level.. outside of it .. and above it is a giant thing that can be tapped into transcends human bodies thinking outside bodies and ourselves... 
black fungability 
mother knowledge.. gives birth .. too..and outside of.. power dynamics and lack of power.. 
to get around it might be to tap into the higher power.. can still access and utilise it someway.. 
--> ways in which these different types of knowledge can be intrainfluencing each other.. 
--> different levels of powers, over the last months these dynamics have hardened
friends who are worried about catching a virus and feeling completely powerless 
what type of practice can shift the agency and the sense of control and how we live in it.. 
however irritated, with academic discussions also feeds the blob of knowledge and spaces that can bring these things into contact with each other 
similar with tech work and tech workers.. programmers can put themselves in the world its that their knowledge is invalid its just that its not the only knowledge .. what kind of other practices 
technological work is structuring things
money is only flowing one way and that is unacceptable--

practical-- 10,000 
something that includes relections, work on methdology and practice
small in scale and conceptual scale
with 10,000 euro we cannot do so much -- host a workshop and capture what happened in a way to be used further on.. 
to bring together experts from very different spaces 
people working as technologists
people concerned with power structures
hybrid practices in different places
even when at home needs different places to think together
---

Outcomes
----
Risk falling into the risk of response.. 
how can we redefine outcomes or results for intervention 
so that it upholds the idea that there is other types of knowledge 
Methdology for changing for responsive action to 
Methdology for generating alterity ethics with Political agency 
consideration for no dynamics.. sitting still with things as a response.. 
response-ability thinking 
shifting of response to the ability to respond.. ---> what would the other version be.. 
can be the work to be done
dynamics.. 
---work with bug reports.. 
-- what would it mean to sit still with data and for it to have political agency 
assumptions around data -- valuable, acnhored to reality.. 
to get it out of the gestural dimensions.. what if data was ephemeral.. what if data was analysed ny non machine, non human minds.. 
what data are we talking about.. what it human data 
"medical data"
performative aspects of data and data handling that we have come to accept as relations with data
what if it was taken out the hands of humans and machines. 
what data and in what context
to work in interesting ways in this data to bring in people who have something at stake with data.. the validation processes around it.. 
the way in which proximity is processed or not.. those situations.. bringing together people have a belief or hope for a certain data practice, where the assumptions should be broken or are breaking.. 
nonlinear data wihin covid tracking.. this is where we canthen think with 
setting up these questions.. developing such apps.. or not to use them.. also hard.. a worl otoo 
of interest to different people 
MZ - framing of data, data harversting like minerals, data is like the sun and is just there.. 
looking at the ways different people frame data .. groups of people who are concerned 
-- data doesn't belong to anyone -- myth making.. 
--material-semiotics.. 
o

not-solutionist
indeterminate practices
other operations, what infrastructures
generating an ethics for other data practices
not just gestural

what would it mean to sit still with data, but it should have political agency.


privacy, data and crossing the boundary of the body
another ethics: another way of generating ethics
onthology of data as a participatory process
what is a concrete site for it

ontology of data within particular concrete site.. 
need to be thought in relation to a site.. politicise immediately.. 
how we bring the ontology and the site into conversation with each other.. 
both at the same time.. 


-- Data and assumptions of the boundary of the body
-- proximity 
-- the idea of the body as a seperate entity 
-- other ontologies from Black feminist theory and indigenous theory and transfemisnittechnoscience

indentify groups in sites and present alternatives to them or how they play with it -- 

different ways of calculating distances, bodies and spaces

integrity in transmission.. 
systems where we aren't so detached.. systems to explore rather than be handed.. 
we are not taking information.. 

a commitment to a collaborative process. No repackaging. 

confronting on other logics. not as a making fair of their not so fair technologies
how the ground assumptions might be wrong and how to rethink them 

proximity... >> 

from migrants, to infected bodies, to packages (and back)
dangers of reframing.. 
reframing to influence ethics.. robust.. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

hi Helen,

That’s fantastic
Quickly, to answer your questions:
- a series of workshops would be excellent - other projects I have seen funded do similar. It could include Brussels, but that would need to be justified (why there? what gives added value to go international?)

- for the award amount, your chances will be more difficult if you go for the most expensive award, as they will only fund one of those. Meanwhile they will fund multiple projects at the middle level

I’m happy to do a call 
Perhaps what you could in preparation for that is to sketch out a project plan and associated costs.
You can cost it for a “big” project, and we can see together how to trim it down to a “medium” project. I did that for my arts/culture/music theme with several proposals.
Once that’s done, Catherine Bellamy can help you generate an official costing. It would be good to get that going in parallel while you write the bid.

best
Atau

Hi Atau, 
cc: Yasmine

Thanks for getting in touch about this, offering your support and suggesting the collaboration with Yasmine --we've been in touch, and we will all work together on a bid from Goldsmiths. 

I was thinking about applying to the scheme and its a good context for the work I'm doing together with "The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest" - Miriyam Aouragh (Reader, Dept. Media, Westminster), Seda Guerses, (Associate Professor, Department of Multi-Actor Systems at TU Delft at the Faculty of Technology Policy and Management), Femke Snelting, (Artistic Director, Constant, Brussels). Possibly also collaborating with Seeta Peña Gangadharan (Associate Professor) in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Perhaps when we have drafted some ideas after 2 July, we could have a call?  

Following a brief discussion with Yasmine and her research interests and the work of the institute, I think at present we are considering working towards a proposal that would explore, through participatory research with communities, methodologies for generating an ethics for data in the public interest--one that recognises the "deep implicancies" of data and takes a process based approach to caring for damage and harm. Methodologically working in less determinate and technosolutionist modes, through creative practice and co-creation.  

This would build on some of the work from my research on Queer Analytics (an ethical framework); data practices with Citizen Sense, the worksessions methods from Constant, Miriyam's work on anti-racist grassroots organising and decolonialism and Seda's work on interventions into optimising technologies. 


A couple of initial questions:

Would a structure of three process based and exploratory workshops with creative practitioners and the outcome of a workbook or set of films documenting methods for researchers and communities and one paper, sound like a suitable objective for this funding stream? 

Would it be possible to co-host workshops in London and Brussels--or does the research need to all be UK based?

Could we aim for the largest award - or should we aim for a smaller one?

Thanks for your help! If its easier  --happier just to speak on the phone about those questions. 
best,
Helen


Hi Yasmine, 

Thanks for getting in touch again with these ideas also! So I spoke to my collaborators and we are all committed to putting something together with you for the bid. I'll speak further with Atau about it also tomorrow, as he was in touch. We have quite a complicated schedule between us, but have put in some dates we could work on it between now and the deadline. 

We also have a draft bid we just put into another funder we could use some parts of for this. 

I think that all these ideas great but we had a chat and we think that 3) could be really good to work on -- as its something we also have an interest in and in some ways the other axis of the purpose of setting up the institute. 

Its a bit short notice but would you be available to meet tomorrow evening with at least Femke and I, perhaps Seda or Miriyam might be able to join also, just to have a chat and discuss possible ideas and directions. If not just tell me when you are available this week and I'll try and find a time that work for me and at least one of the others. 

Also we have been working on some ideas around unknowing and peripheral politics which fit well here too.  

I have attached a few things for you - the almost final version of a small funding bid we put in recently, the queering damage manual, a pop article Loren Britton and I just wrote for Interactions on "care as unknowing" and the first draft of a shortform paper we have written for Environmental Media, which is now in press. You'll see they have the editors comments on them (so please don't share any of these further) but I thought it might be interesting for you to see. 

Speak soon
Helen 

Hi Helen,

I'd love to be involved with the institute in some way... do let me know how I can help.
Perhaps I should also contact Seeta and see how they're getting on?

Something I had in mind was a continuation of my research essay; exploring society's relationship with data harvesting practices, with 3 tenets:

1) Symbols and abstraction; using symbols and abstraction to describe the process of data extraction, so that it can be compared to other, more familiar processes, so people can have a conceptual understanding of processes rather than necessarily having to understand details. Mathematical modelling would be explored that can incorporate agents, power, process and time. 
2) Collective design; where possible, have contributors from social groups concerned contribute to the design of output, such as people in industry, patients, academics.
3) Alternatives to action; so much of our reaction to processes we find unsettling but don't fully understand is "what can we do about it?" It would be interesting to explore ways of non-doing as responses, eg practicing how to sit still with feelings of discomfort? Or react with satire rather than counter-points? Given structural inequalities in society, sometime it feels (to me) like participating in the usual ways only props up what it is you're trying to destroy. What can we do with information (in the form of knowledge / feeling / instinct) that's beyond writing a paper, making a piece of art or running a workshop? 

That's what I'm thinking...!

Best,