Semester Topics

Every semester the DCRL organizes its collective research under a semester theme, under which a series of events then take place. These themes allow us to develop coherent research thematics while flexibly engaging with a number of subsidiary themes. We usually organize symposia, workshops and lectures, as well as a variety of more experimental and open event formats, such as conversations or barcamps.

The central ‘spine’ of the recent semester themes have been the DCRLectures. A “research lecture” is a hybrid conversation format that is both strict and flexible, frontal and collaborative, and addresses the central cluster of questions which form the foundation of the DCRL: Re-Thinking the Technological Condition, Methods, the Political, and Sociality.

View all Lectures on Vimeo

October 10–12, 2019
Modeling The Pacific. Oceanic Research in Science, Technology, and Humanities
Conference
In Cooperation with UCSB
Mosher Alumni Hall, Santa Barbara

October 22, 2019, 6pm
The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child
Lecture by Morgan Ames (Berkeley)
CDC I MECS Office

October 23, 2019, 8pm
In Search of Media
Book Launch
Bar Blaenk

beginning October 24, 2019, Thursdays 12:15pm
Digitale Kulturen
weekly lecture series with Olga Goriunova, Martina Leeker, Kathrin Passig and others
(see below)
HS 1

October 30, 2019, 12pm
Platform Worlds
Lecture by Marc Steinberg (Concordia)
CDC I MECS Office

November 7–8, 2019
Windkanäle. Wissen, Politik und Ästhetik bewegter Luft
Workshop in Cooperation with ZHdK
C 7.320 and CDC I MECS Office

November 7–13, 2019, opening November 7, 2019, from 6pm
Filme des Windes
Exhibition with Christoph Oeschger and Florian Dombois
Kunstraum Leuphana

November 13, 2019, 4pm
Exhaustion of Copyright in Digital Objects
Lecture by Dan L. Burk (Irvine)
CDC I MECS Office

November 13, 2019, 6pm
Im Paradis des Taktilen. Reale Experimentalsubjekte und spekulative Assistenzmedien
Lecture by Karin Harrasser (Linz)
C 40.256

November 20–22, 2019
Digitalität in den Geisteswissenschaften
DFG-Symposium
C 40.704

December 11, 2019, 6pm
Virtual U: Simulating Higher Education
Lecture by Peter Krapp (Irvine I MECS)
CDC I MECS Office

December 12, 2019, 2.30pm
Ephemera. Data & Drama
Workshop
CDC I MECS Office

December 18, 2019, 6.30pm
The Oxford Handbook of Media, Technology, and Organization Studies
Book Launch
Bar Blaenk

24.10.2019–30.1.2020, donnerstags
12:15–13:45 Uhr, Hörsaal 1

24.10.
Einführung: Was sind digitale Kulturen?
ANDREAS BERNARD, LISA CONRAD, DANIELA WENTZ

7.11.
Digitalisierung und die geschichtlichen Grundbegriffe des kalten Krieges
CLAUS PIAS

14.11.
Überwachen und Unterhalten. Organisation in digitalen Kulturen
TIMON BEYES

21.11.
Performing posthuman für digitale Kulturen. Episoden einer großangelegten Umstellung 1966 – 2019
MARTINA LEEKER (Berlin)

28.11.
Software, Sociality, and Digital Cultures
PAULA BIALSKI

5.12.
Algorithmisches Management in digitalen Kulturen
ARMIN BEVERUNGEN

12.12.
Trial and Lots of Error. Governance in Digital Cultures
KATHRIN PASSIG (Berlin)

19.12.
Reichweitenangst. Batterien und Akkus als Medien digitaler Kulturen
JAN MÜGGENBURG

9.1.
Digital Age. Geschichtskonzepte digitaler Kulturen
GOTTFRIED SCHNÖDL

16.1.
Kritik der Environmentalität. Über den neuen Vereinnahmungsapparat in digitalen Kulturen
ERICH HÖRL

23.1.
Computersimulation als Erkenntnismethode der digitalen Kulturen
MARTIN WARNKE

30.1.
Abstract Subjects. How an I becomes an X in new data calculations
OLGA GORIUNOVA (London)

from April 10, 2019
LECTURE SERIES “Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit 2.0”
Campus: Room C6.320, every Wednesday, 12.30–2pm

April 10, 2019
WORKSHOP “Data and Drama. Scenes from Ethnographic Field Work” (with Lisa Conrad, Randi Heinrichs, Boukje Cnossen et al.)
CDC Office, Am Sande 5, 11am–6pm

April 24, 2019
EVENING COLLOQUIUM w/ Gottfried Schnödl “Naturalisieren, Ontologisieren, Ökologisieren. Zu Naturvorstellungen in Technik- und Medientheorie”
CDC Office, Am Sande 5, 6pm

May 8, 2019
EVENING COLLOQUIUM w/ Rupert Gaderer “Shitstorm. Agitation, Simulation und Kampf in digitalen Lebenswelten”
CDC Office, Am Sande 5, 6pm

May 15, 2019
EVENING COLLOQUIUM w/ Gabriele Schabacher “Digital Regimes of Control. Between Social Utopia and Technical Failure”
CDC Office, Am Sande 5, 6pm

May 22, 2019
EVENING COLLOQUIUM w/ Ben Peters “On the Proverbial Stupid History of Smart Technology”
CDC Office, Am Sande 5, 6pm

June 5, 2019
EVENING COLLOQUIUM w/ Martin Woesler “Society 5.0 in China”
CDC Office, Am Sande 5, 6pm

June 12/13, 2019
WORKSHOP “Making Sense(s). Die Medialität der Nahsinne” (with Marie-Luise Angerer, Andreas Bernard, Wolfgang Hagen, Stefan Rieger, Rahel Schnitter, Sebastian Vehlken, Daniela Wentz, Anna-Lena Wichern et al.)
CDC Office, Am Sande 5

June 18, 2019
WORKSHOP “Disconnection“ (with Tero Karppi)
CDC Office, Am Sande 5, 6pm

July 3, 2019
EVENING COLLOQUIUM w/ Shane Denson “Images of Discorrelation”
CDC Office, Am Sande 5, 6pm

October 4–12, 2018
LEUPHANA OPENING WEEK. Digital Futures
Leuphana Campus, Central Building

October 17, 20180
BOOK LAUNCH. Andreas Bernard: Das Diktat des Hashtags
blaenk, 8pm

October 24, 2018
MECS LECTURE. Rudolf Seising: Anfänge von Digitalisierung und Algorithmisierung der Mustererkennung
CDC Office, 6pm

November 21, 2018
WORKSHOP. The Arcanum in Digital Cultures with Howard Caygill, Claus Pias, Timon Beyes and others
CDC Office, 1:30pm

BOOK LAUNCH. Timon Beyes/Jörg Metelmann. The Creativity Complex: A Companion to Contemporary Culture
blaenk, 8pm

December 7, 2018
WORKSHOP. Phänomene digitaler Kulturen with Manuela Bojazijev, Jan Müggenburg, Wolfgang Hagen, Mathias Fuchs and others
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 11am

December 12, 2018
MECS LECTURE. Patrick Vonderau: Spotify Teardown: Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music
CDC Office, 6pm

December 18, 2018
Eva Illouz: Parting Ways: Authenticity vs. Social Critique
Leuphana Campus | Central Building, 6pm

December 19, 2018
BOOK SERIES LAUNCH. In Search of Media (University of Minnesota Press / meson Press)
Volume 1: Pattern Discrimination
Volume 2: Communication
Volume 3: Remain
blaenk, 7pm

January 9, 2019
MECS LECTURE. Stefan Willer: Verhinderte Zukunft. Präventionsfantasien in der Gegenwartsliteratur
CDC Office, 6pm

January 24–26, 2019
WORKSHOP. Batterien enthalten? Elektrochemische Zellen als Medien des digitalen Zeitalters with Stefan Rieger, Florian Sprenger, Laura Hille, Frank Dittmann and others
Leuphana Campus | Central Building

From Organization, over Non-knowledge to Critique the CDC Summer Events offer a collage of the research topics around recent developments in digital cultures, which are mapped at the Centre for Digital Culture. 

April 18, 2018
Booklaunch Meson Press
Martin Degeling / Julius Othmer / Andreas Weich / Bianca Westermann (eds.)
Profile
***
Howard Caygill / Martina Leeker / Tobias Schulze (eds.)
Interventions in Digital Cultures: Technology, the Political, Methods
***
Andreas Bernard / Matthias Koch / Martina Leeker (eds.)
Non-Knowledge
***
Alexander Friedrich / Petra Löffler / Niklas Schrape / Florian Sprenger (eds.)
Ökologien der Erde
Blaenk, 8-11pm

April 24, 2018
Nikolaus Wegmann (Princeton) – Alles eine Frage der Skalierung? Zur Faszinationsgeschichte der Selbst-Dokumentation
Leuphana Central Building C40.154, 6-8pm

May 16, 2018
Dieter Mersch (Zurich) – Digital Lives. Einige Aspekte einer Kritik
in cooperation with the DFG-funded Research Training Group Cultures of Critique
Leuphana Central Building C40.154, 6-8pm

May 23, 2018
Daniela Wentz (CDC) – Dating Cultures. Szenen einer Mediengeschichte des Liebeswerbens
Leuphana Central Building C40.154, 6-8pm

June 7-8, 2018
Workshop: Organizing Digital Cultures: Histories, Ethnographies, Materialities

Opening Lecture: June 7, CDC Office, 6-8pm
Elisa Giardina Papa (Berkeley) – Affective Labor and Automation

Main Workshop: June 8, CDC Office, 9am-5pm
with Clemens Apprich (ICAM), Götz Bachmann (ICAM), Armin Beverungen (Siegen), Timon Beyes (ISKO), Paula Bialski (ICAM), Lisa Conrad (ISKO), Monika Dommann (Zurich), Florian Hoof (MECS), Robin Holt (Copenhagen), Elisa Giardina Papa (Berkeley), Claus Pias (ICAM), Annika Skoglund (Uppsala), and others.

June 13-14, 2018
Workshop: Digital Labour and Migration
with with Johan Lindquist & Patrick Vonderau (Stockholm), Stephan Scheel (Goldsmiths), Astrid Schmidt (ver.di), and Alex Wood (Oxford)
CDC Office

June 27, 2018
Martina Leeker (CDC) – Kritik in digitalen Kulturen (Lecture in German)
CDC Office, 6-8pm

July 6-11, 2018
Undergraduate Summer School // Sound and Vision in Digital Cultures
Leuphana Central Building

September 16-19, 2018
Summer School // Historiographies of Digital Cultures
Leuphana Central Building

September 19-22, 2018
Conference // Digital Cultures: Knowledge / Culture / Technology
for more information see official website
Leuphana Central Building
 

This semester deals with the place of critique in today's digital society. What happens to this crucial concept of modernity when it encounters computers, networks and platforms? Does the new technological infrastructure demand new practices of critique or even a new concept of critique?

October 17, 2017
Booklaunch – Martina Leeker / Imanuel Schipper / Timon Beyes (eds.): Performing the Digital. Performativity and Performance Studies in Digital Cultures and Claus Pias / Jörg Metelmann / Timon Beyes: Nach der Revolution
Blaenk, 6-8 pm 

October 25, 2017
Workshop – Silicon Trolls. Net Cultures, Neo-Fascism and Technological Determinism
with Götz Bachmann, Laura Hille, Dominik Maeder, Angela Nagle, Nina Power & Daniela Wentz
1.30-7pm, CDC Office 

November 14, 2017
Sigrid Weigel: On the Rise of Digital Stupidity 
An Archaeology of ‚Emotion Detection’-Programms and their Epistemic Foundations
Wasserturm, 6-8pm 

lecture recording

November 15, 2017
Workshop – Sigrid Weigel: Grammatology of Images
10-12 am, CDC Office

November 15, 2017
Mara Mills: Speed Listening by Blind Readers and the History of Audio Time Compression
Wasserturm, 6-8pm

+ Booklaunch – Andreas Bernard: Komplizen des Erkennungsdienstes. Das Selbst in der digitalen Kultur
Moderation: Claus Pias
Blaenk, 8 pm 

November 21-23, 2017
Workshop – Post-X Politics
Discussion with Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Hito Steyerl & Clemens Apprich: Pattern Discrimination - How to Queer Homophily?
November 21, Wasserturm, 6-8pm
See opening discussion on vimeo

+ Booklaunch – Clemens Apprich: Technotopia: A Media Genealogy of Net Cultures 
November 21, CDC Office, 8pm

+ Readings & Presentations
in cooperation with the DFG Research Training Group Cultures of Critique & the Global Emergent Media Lab
with Heba Y. Amin, Clemens Apprich, Migle Bareikyte, Konrad Becker, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Daphne Dragona, Yuriko Furuhata, Baruch Gottlieb, Dmytri Kleiner, Diana McCarty, Joshua Neves, Nelly Y. Pinkrah, Oleksiy Radynski, Marc Steinberg, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Nishant Shah & Zeerak Waseem
November 22 & 23, Leuphana Kunstraum, 10am-5pm

+ Lecture Performance by Konrad Becker: Theaters of Reality - Deep Politics and Cultural Intelligence
November 22, Leuphana Kunstraum, 6-8pm

December 5, 2017
Thomas Lemke: Suspended Life: Exploring Cryopreservation Practices in Contemporary Societies
Campus Lecture Hall 5, 6-8pm 

December 13, 2017
CDC reading group with Megan Fernandes
CDC Office, Am Sande 5, 2-4pm 

December 20, 2017
CDC reading group with Dennis Tenen
CDC Office, Am Sande 5, 2-4pm 

January 10, 2018
CDC reading group with Stefan Römer
CDC Office, Am Sande 5, 2-4pm 

January 10, 2018
Chris Tedjasukmana: Carnal Networks - Affectice Counterpublics and the Activist Videos of #BlackLivesMatter
Campus Lecture Hall 5, 6-8pm  

January 11-12, 2018
Workshop – CritiqueLab. Toolkits for Critique in Digital Cultures
in cooperation with the DFG Research Training Group Cultures of Critique
with Marie-Luise Angerer, Clemens Apprich, David Berry, Timon Beyes, Alex Demirovic, Gabriele Gramelsberger, Frédéric Martel, Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, Roberto Nigro, Stefan Römer, Jutta Weber, Carolin Wiedemann & Ulf Wuggenig

Evening talk – Digital Critique or Critique of the Digital? 
Inputs and Discussion by David Berry & Frédéric Martel
Moderation: Roberto Nigro & Martina Leeker
January 11, Leuphana Kunstraum, 6-8pm

Main workshop:  January 12, CDC Office, 9.30am-6pm 

January 17, 2018
Workshop – Politische Öffentlichkeit und Medientechnologien (in German)
with Andreas Bernard, Philipp Felsch, Ethel Matala de Mazza, Jens Schröter, Christian Voller, Daniela Wentz & Christina Wessely
Wasserturm, 11am-7pm 

January 24, 2018
CDC reading group with Fiorenzo Iuliano
CDC Office, 2-4pm 

January 30, 2018
Oliver Nachtwey: Production Models of Digital Capitalism
Campus Lecture Hall 5, 6-8pm

Operations, work and labour in digital cultures, provide us with three interconnected angles to explore how socio-economic relations are being rearranged through digital media technologies. The lecture series investigates the operations of platforms and blockchains, the fantasies of automation and postwork, global division of labour, and the politics of reproduction and care.

26.4.
Workshop The Hedging of the University: Deep Financialization and Agency of Care in Platform-Academia to Come
With Valeria Graziano, Gary Hall, Tomislav Medak and Marcell Mars
2-6 pm (Freiraum) 

30.5.
Quinn DuPont
Algorithmic Governance in The DAO: A Case Study of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
6-8 pm (DCRL Office, Am Sande 5) 

06.06.
Silvia Federici
Between the Wage and the Commons
In cooperation with the Gender and Diversity Research Network’s lecture series “Work, Gender, and Social Reproduction" and the DFG Research Group “Cultures of Critique”
6:15-8 pm (Leuphana Campus, Lecture Hall 3)

8.6.
Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis & Anthony Iles
Recollecting Midnight Notes
10-12 am (DCRL Office, Am Sande 5)

13.6.
Pun Ngai
Dying for iPhone: Foxconn and the Struggle of Chinese Workers
6-8 pm (Wasserturm)

20.6.
Kalindi Vora
Surrogate Effects: The Politics of Labor, Reproduction, Protest and Difference in Social Technologies
6-8 pm (Wasserturm)

27.6.
Anja Kanngieser
Listening in a Time of Crisis: The Operation of Sound in Understanding Climate Change
Booklaunch: Martina Leeker / Imanuel Schipper / Timon Beyes (eds.), Performing the Digital. Performativity and Performance Studies in Digital Cultures
6-9 pm (Wasserturm)

28.6.
Helen Hester
Technology Becomes Her: Changing Understandings of Women, Machines, and Work in the Era of the Digital Assistant
In cooperation with the Gender and Diversity Research Network’s lecture series "Work, Gender, and Social Reproduction"
4-6 pm (Leuphana Campus, Lecture Hall 5) 

4.7.
Alex Rosenblat
The Taking Economy: Uber, Information, and Power
6-8 pm (DCRL Office, Am Sande 5)

Digital cultures pose questions of design – of surfaces, interfaces, hardware, software, and platforms. In the presence of glitches, malfunctions, and incompatibilities, repair becomes designs’ counterpart. What are the freedoms and constraints of design and repair? 

25.10.2016
“Transforming Matter” – Felipe Fonseca

16.11.2016
“Designing Feminist Futures” – Kat Jungnickel

29.11.2016
Workshop “Designing the Self” – with Paula Bialski, Laura Hille, Andreas Bernard and others

6.12.2016
“Designing the Humanities” – Tara McPherson

13.12.2016
“Repairing Futures: Anticipation, Participation and Speculation” – Laura Forlano

20.12.2016
“The Ragpicker Meets the Composter: Maintenance, Repair and Transformation” – Kristina Lindström & Åsa Ståhl

10.1.2017
“The Politics and Aesthetics of Inventive Infrastructures of Repair” – Lara Houston

24.1.2017
“Working on ENIAC: Design, Repair and Maintenance in the Early  Digital” – Thomas Haigh

31.1.2017
“Reparations” – Steve Kurtz

What economic logics and organisational forms are precipitated by ecological media? What cybernetic dreams and logistical nightmares become reality?

19.–20.05.2016

Re-thinking Relationality in the Sociotechnological Condition. Symposium by Boris Traue and Götz Bachmann

31.05.2016
Jason W. Moore in conversation with Erich Hörl: World-Ecology, General Ecology and Cyberneticization

01.06.2016
The Cybernetic Hypothesis: Workshop by DCRL, ICAM, MECS and the DFG-projekt “Technoecologies of Participation”

08.–09.06.2016
Reading Algorithms. Queer and Transgressive Encountes. Workshop by Martina Leeker, Orit Halpern, Irina Kaldrack, Lisa Conrad

22.06.2016
Tracing Bergson. Perspectives on Life and the Living. Workshop by Clemens Apprich, Christina Vagt, Moritz Gansen

28.06.2016
Jennifer Gabrys in conversation with Andreas Broeckmann: Program Earth. Book Launch & Conversation

29.06.2016
Unpacking Organization: The Labour of Circulation. Cybernetics, Logistics and the Labour of Circulation. Workshop with Armin Beverungen, Lilly Irani, Ann-Christina Lange, Matteo Pasquinelli, Ned Rossiter, Trebor Scholz

01.–02.07.2016
Ecologies of Existence. Symposium with the Archipelago Lab

Digital technology today provides us with an abundance of knowledge that seems to be eliminating all gaps of non-knowledge. The Digital Cultures Research Lab tries to review this diagnosis and to analyze the precise functions of non-knowledge in digital cultures.

27.10.2015
Goeffrey Winthrop-Young: On Not(-)Knowing Animals and Environments. Kulturtechniken and posthumanities

03.11.2015
Antoinette Rouvroy: Algorithmic governmentality and the images of thought: A few thoughts about law in a world of Big Data

10.11.2015
Jeannie Moser: On the of non-knowledge: Mistrust

24.11.2015
Bernhard Herborth & Melanie Mohren: Institutions between Delusion and Vision

08.12.2015
Albrecht Koschorke: Being a Subject in the Algorithmic Age

12.01.2016
Wolfgang Schäffner: Hardware, Everywhere

26.01.2016
Non-knowledge and digital cultures. Symposium with Timon Beyes, John Durham Peters, Ute Holl, Eva Illouz, Claus Pias, Christoph Wulf

Infrastructures intersect, reinforce, transform, compete and unfold in time and space. As structures in the making they provide the operational backbone of digital cultures, always under negotiation between civic, governmental and corporate interests.

14.04.2015
Sebastian Gießmann: Fluctuating Networks. Un/stable Platforms, and the Internet of Things

05.05.2015
Nathalie Bredella: Architectual Infrastructures and Media Ensembles

12.05.2015
Marcell Mars/Rafico Ruiz/Harald Staun: Structures In The Making: A Roundtable Discussion

19.05.2015
Fred Turner: The Democratic Surround and the Forgotten History of Multimedia

23.06.2015
Mark Hansen: Digital Promiscuity and Database Culture

30.06.2015
Shannon Mattern: Epistemic Sync: Realigning the Library’s Entagled Infrastructures

08.07.2015
Un/Stable Infrastructures: Closing Workshop. With: Kat Jungnickel, Renée Ridgway, Trevor Pinch, Urs Stäheli, Felix Stalder

If any collectivity is linked to its technological and political connectivity, the promise of ubiquitous access offered by the cloud demands an examination of this current constellation.

25.11.2014
Imanuel Schipper: Walking the City & Performing the World Climate Conference. On Contemporary Performances and their Publics

09.12.2014
Kavita Philip: Making History: Re-coding Geeks.

06.01.2015
Jochen Venus: The Media and/as Collective Intentionalities

20.01.2015
John Durham Peters: The Marvelous Cloud. Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media

27.01.2015
Karin Harrasser: Obviously Obscure. Poetics of the Hyperfactual

Other Lectures

27.11.2013
Paul Feigelfeld: The Great Loop Forward. Stille Post, Unvollständigkeit und digitale Kulturen zwischen China und Europa

29.01.2014
Bo Reimer: Collaborative Media Interventions Design, Production, Consumption and the Role of the Collaborative Media Researcher

08.04.2014
Andreas Bernard: Selbstdesign. Über das Menschenbild der Gegenwart

09.04.2014
Bernard Stiegler: About a Philosophy of the Automata and Automaticy

29.04.2014
Gabriele Klein: Soziale Choreografie. Zum Verhältnis von Körpern, Medien und Szene

27.05.2014
Timon Beyes: Aestethics, Organization and Digital Cultures. What makes sense and what can be sensed – Reconsidering the question of organization

17.06.2014
Baruch Gottlieb: Quanta of Sorge, Quanta of Cruelty, Toward labour models of digital aesthetics