• 00:01 Navigating through three different languages
  • 04:50 The preciousness of being a non-English native: tackling technocolonialism
  • 08:17 To code or not to code: understanding the technical infrastructures
  • 10:39 When we operate these systems, we are them: an attempt to define technocolonialism
  • 16:45 Technocolonialism is essential to technocapitalism
  • 17:34 Mediated by electronic devices: processes that have a deep political, social and environmental impact
  • 21:23 Art is a very powerful tool to speculate and navigate between disciplines
  • 26:55 Reducing unnecessary noise
  • 28:19 On media art: basically, I’m sending links everywhere
  • 30:22 Irony as a cure for cynicism, via Bifo
  • 35:48 Early electromagnetic experiments: revealing invisible layers
  • 38:58 Things in your pocket
  • 40:55 Hands-on aproach
  • 42:45 “GO2GLE”, 2013: the environmental impact of Internet
  • 49:10 Displaying facts vs course of action
  • 52:19 Tackling the environmental impact of tracking surveillance
  • 59:09 “Dating Brokers”, 2018: “buy dat…” and then Google filled in the rest
  • 67:59 Google knocking at your door
  • 72:05 A crisis of imagination: technosolutionism and Covid19
  • 75:15 Tracking objects getting to close to our bodies: on the verge of breaking the ultimate border in terms of surveillance.
27/05/2020 79' 6''
English
Joana Moll "DEFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOREST", 2016

This podcast is part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. Produced in collaboration with Disruption Network Lab.

It is somewhat paradoxical that humans are able to smash particle beams together to study the structure of the subatomic world, and map the genomic sequence of a novel virus in a matter of days, yet human-made macrostructures such as tech companies remain opaque and inscrutable, but at the same time omnipresent. We seem to know more about the topography of Mars and the bonds in common polymers than we do about the inner workings of Silicon Valley. Tech companies are in fact also a type of polymer (from the Greek “poly”, many, and “mer”, part): infinitely fractional on the inside, infinitely stuck to us but also infinitely withdrawn.

These macroeconomic polymers operate under a thick crust of legal smoke and mirrors which obfuscates not just their trade secrets, but above all their supply chains, their personal data collection processes, and their environmental impact. Barcelona-based artist and researcher Joana Moll focuses on different aspects of this hermetic web of infrastructures, prodding various online platforms to probe into their services, practices, malpractices and repercussions at different levels. From the privacy breaches at the core of the online dating ecosystem to the carbon footprint of tech giants like Google and the vast, largely invisible web of data collection processes (and its accompanying energy by-products) embedded in seemingly inconsequential Amazon purchases. 

Through a combination of artistic research, detective work, and an almost forensic approach to our own data trail, Joana’s work exposes some of the most pressing issues of our data-driven, data-centric existence. Her research projects, talks, workshops and art pieces slip through the cracks of corporate behemoths to make sense of their polymorphic nature and reveal some of the hidden layers that shape and sustain the hypercapitalist fractal. In this podcast, we talk to Joana Moll about interfaces and their social implications, about technocolonialism, agency, surveillance, exploitation, speculation and, why not, about laughter.

Son[i]aJoana MollClimate changetechnocolonialismtechnologycovid-19Re-Imagine Europe+listened-june-2020+listened-july-2020

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