Access Denied – DI_Yourself (Focus Discussion, Track 3)

Access Denied – DI_Yourself
Panel (Track 3)
Participants: Carolyn Guertin (ca), Stefanie Wuschitz (at), Franca Formenti (it)
Moderation: Verena Kuni (de)

We are currently witnessing an increasing biologisation of the media through sensory, tactile and emotional integration of our physical action and reaction patterns in this environment of biomedia. Computer and brain have achieved an inescapable synthesis, integrating the human body with all its senses into the apparatus, says Derrick de Kerckhove.
 
In this panel, therefore, info-genetic, technological and medial self-empowerment strategies that could possibly be a response to this remodelling of the biological and social bodies are presented and discussed. The DIY culture can here be understood as a playful, artistic, everyday practice that in an experimental sense can deal with these changing technological, biological and info-genetic conditions for body, gender and identity and undermine the current biopolitical power configuration. According to Antonio Negri, “The communal space is the site of biopolitical production, because we live in it together, because we share resources, communicate and exchange goods and ideas.” This room, however, has no gender.