Common Media Lab
The Common Media Lab (CML) is exploring the notion of the common as the democratic potential immanent in practices that yield new kinds of self-managed resources and infrastructural media spheres that are neither private nor state-owned. Hence, the common as material good (i.e. the commons) and immaterial social relation (i.e. equal open access) poses the question of democracy in such a way that it is possible to root it in specific local, historical, and social contexts.
As integral part of the Centre for Digital Culture at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, the Common Media Lab investigates and builds collaborative resources that provide the basis for our Digital Cultures. Questioning the newness of new media, the lab is interested in everyday media practices, their history, and multiplicity. The aim is to scrutinise alternative infrastructures for media production and to actively engage in these autonomous media spheres.
Projects
Measurements
This research project by Miya Yoshida (2011–2013) engaged the theme “Art & Measurement” and attempts to creatively link imagination, affect and ongoing transformation in measurement. It addressed the ambivalence of measurement and measurability in contemporary realities, and experimented with different concepts of measurement from the positions of arts. more
Making Change
Working with distributed networks of researchers, activists, practitioners, civil society actors and policy makers, the aim of the Making Change (2013–2015) was to investigate mechanics of change creation, conditions that favour positive change, the role that technologies and new forms of knowledge have to play in conceiving change processes. By doing this, the project wanted to scrutinize prevalent assumptions about citizen action in emerging network societies in the Global South. more
Vulnerabilities
Grounded in feminist theory and learning from post-colonial theory the research project by Magdalena Freudenschuß develops the concept of vulnerabilities with regard to digitalized societies. The concept of vulnerabilities is linked to a previous research project on precarity/precarization. In this transdisciplinary strand of research, insecurity and vulnerability are considered core moments of social change and its critical analysis. more
reSource for transmedial culture
From September 2011 to February 2014 the transmediale reSource was curated and developed by Tatiana Bazzichelli in cooperation with CTM/DISK, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, and the Post-Media Lab of the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. The objective of the reSource for transmedial culture is to act as a link between the cultural production of art festivals and collaborative networks in the field of art and technology, hacktivism and politics. It now continues as the framework for transmediale’s all-year programme activities. transmediale.de/resource
The projects of the Common Media Lab were part of the research project Art and Civic Media within the EU major project Innovation Incubator.