Category: Art

Migration, mobility and aircraft, sea serpents, deep time, Covid, poetry and Notre Dame de Paris ‘entangled’ – Anthropocenes Journal 2021 contents
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Migration, mobility and aircraft, sea serpents, deep time, Covid, poetry and Notre Dame de Paris ‘entangled’ – Anthropocenes Journal 2021 contents

Seven new research articles/contributions have been published in UWP’s journal Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman. Journal authors continue to rethink in the words of the editors (about the journal) ‘abstraction, art, architecture, design, governance, ecology, law, politics and discourses of science in the context of human, inhuman and posthuman frameworks’. And this is showcased in an eclectic and uniquely interdisciplinary mix of material published in Vol 2 issue 1 which covers January 2021 to the end of July so far.

See here for the new issue contents for this year and here for 2020.

Readers have enthusiastically responded to the journal’s mix of material that mirrors and interprets the Anthropocene; that have reflected on the significance of eels, ‘sea serpents’, polar bears, invasive insects and human bodies; considered urban, mixed-use, dune, river and post-industrial landscapes; presented material as poetry, audio essays, visual essays, book reviews and creative writing on science. And of course reflected broadly on the key issues of climate change disasters, deep time, culture and the uses of architecture, data aesthetics, frontier technology, hyperobjects, Covid-19 and how to move beyond anthropocentricism.

New Law for Intellectual Commons Needed – Broumas
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New Law for Intellectual Commons Needed – Broumas

Released this week the latest title in the CDSMS series edited by Christian Fuchs by lawyer and activist Antonios Broumas makes the case for a new body of law to harness the potential and social value of the intellectual commons. Using case studies of cultural commons initiatives it clearly articulates why the commons have intrinsic value deserving of legal protection. At the heart of these new proposals is a recognition and expansion of the public domain and the need for greater personal and social rights and freedoms for individuals to properly participate in the realms of culture and science.

Extracts from the book titled Intellectual Commons and the Law: A Normative Theory for Commons-Based Peer Production follow:

[T]he intellectual commons are suppressed by the dominant value system of commodity markets and its universal equivalent of value in the form of money upon the intellectual commons. Such pressure, which may even lead to the extinction of intellectual commons communities, comes into contradiction with the overall conclusion regarding their social value and potential. Even though such communities may as a rule not be as productive as corporations in terms of money circulation, profits, jobs and taxes, this does not make them unproductive in terms of social value. On the contrary, the communities of the intellectual commons contain and emanate a wealth of social values, which ought to be protected through legal means.

***

Rather than proposing reforms within the property-oriented framework of contemporary expansive intellectual property laws, the current book advances a normative line of argumentation in favour of an independent body of law for the regulation of the intellectual commons, i.e. both the open access commons of the public domain and any other type of regime oriented towards the shared use of intellectual works. The appropriate protection and promotion of these two sectors of our intellectual commonwealth aspires to construct a vibrant non-commercial zone of creativity and innovation in parallel to intellectual property-enabled commodity markets of intellectual works.

***

Following the above, it is held that states are morally committed to respecting, protecting and fulfilling the freedom to contribute to the intellectual commons, thereby abstaining from its restriction through intellectual property laws, which are not compatible with international human rights treaties. In addition, the critical normative theory of the intellectual commons holds that the freedom to contribute to the intellectual commons ought to acquire statutory content substantive enough to give commoners the ability for its meaningful practice.

UWP has published several book titles all available open access including Peer to Peer (Bauwens et al), Incorporating the Digital Commons by Benjamin Birkinbine, The Commons: Economic Alternatives in the Digital Age (Vangelis Papadimitropoulos). Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory also discusses the ‘Communication Society as a Society of the Commons’.

Intellectual Commons and the Law was published on the 25 November 2020.

TOUCH makes three

TOUCH makes three

The Law and the Senses series has now reached out to three of the five canonical senses with the publication of TOUCH, after SEE and TASTE. The series comes from the University of Westminster’s Law and Theory Lab.

Contributions in TOUCH consider many themes including brass rubbing, the layers of urban history and touch; a contract with nature unfolded via touch; desire, touch and a kind of vertical leap of consciousness that gazes on an object of knowledge in literary thought; brain stimulation within certain psychiatric regimes; and the illicit touch of books bound in human skin and narratives surrounding Auschwitz victims’ tattoos. Erin Manning’s consideration of synaesthesia and other ways of knowing develops the idea of ‘distantism’ at the heart of accounts of body-world separation.

In her introduction Caterina Nirta also reflects on why touch is the ‘essential’ sense according to Aristotle and others and the ‘tactful intrusions of the law and the untactful movement of touch’.

CONTENTS

Crowdfunding for culture: Origins of a new system or no alternative at all?

Crowdfunding for culture: Origins of a new system or no alternative at all?

What follows from decisions to outsource modes of creation and funding to consumers? This is the question posed by a new open access book –CULTURAL CROWDFUNDING: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization that considers how platforms are used to organize cultural labour following a logic of suggestion rather than overt injunction.

Four key areas are considered: the history of crowdfunding as a system; whose interests crowdfunding may serve; the implications for digital labour and lastly crowdfunding’s interface with globalization and contemporary capitalism. The book concludes with an assessment of claims that crowdfunding can democratize culture.

CONTENTS
1. Introduction Vincent Rouzé 2. Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding: The Origins of a New System? Vincent Rouzé 3. Far from an Alternative: New Cultural Intermediaries Vincent Rouzé 4. Participatory Cultural Platforms and Labour Jacob Matthews and Vincent Rouzé 5. Globalization and the Logics of Capitalism Jacob Matthews, Stéphane Costantini and Alix Bénistant 6. General Conclusion  Vincent Rouzé   Index

EDITOR
Vincent Rouzé is Associate Professor of Information and Communication Sciences at the University of Paris 8 and a member of the Centre for Media, Technology and Internationalization Studies (Cemti). Contributors: Jacob Matthews, Stéphane Costantini, Alix Bénistant.

Published open access by the University of Westminster Press. Published 29 November 2019

This book is published in the Critical Digital and Social Media Studies Series

FORMAT
128 pages paperback 229 x 152mm
978-1-912656-38-7    £19.99

OPEN ACCESS 
PDF, EPub and kindle versions available Free From uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site books: PDF 978-1-912656-39-4; ePub 978-1-912656-40-0 Kindle 978-1-912656-41-7: DOI:10.16997/book34

Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman

Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman

UWP launched a brand new journal today, now open for submissions.

Editors David Chandler, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and Jane Lewis of the University of Westminster explain the background and their thinking that led to its creation:

‘Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman’ seeks to explore the implications of the Anthropocene from the perspectives of the social and life sciences, arts and humanities. We see the Anthropocene as an invitation to think differently about ways of being in the world and how we operate within, across and beyond our disciplinary framings. We take inspiration from Val Plumwood’s view that the Anthropocene poses the question: ‘Is it to be a posture of openness, of welcoming, of invitation, toward earth others, or is it to be a stance of prejudged superiority, of deafness, of closure?’ At present we feel that there is too little invitation: work on the Anthropocene often seems divided between climate scientists working along technical and managerial lines and, what can come across as, fairly aloof and abstract philosophical approaches. We seek to work to expand the area of Anthropocene work which can often be obscured by this divide; working out from the middle as it were.

For us, the Anthropocene poses questions that go far beyond narrow technical or governmental concerns of how to address issues such as climate change and global warming. While some contributors may, no doubt, be concerned with preventing, slowing or opposing the Anthropocene as a future to come, we hope that others will provide a critical, constructive and exploratory focus upon what it means to live within the Anthropocene as a time in which the certainties of the modernist world are becoming undone. Our desire is that this journal will pursue the open-ended and future-oriented invitations of the Anthropocene through building new cross-disciplinary research communities, facilitated through publishing in an open access format available to all.

We feel that the time is right to establish a world-leading interdisciplinary journal placing the University of Westminster at the centre of contemporary conceptual debates and practices. Drawing upon our unique strengths across diverse fields from the arts and media to the human sciences, via law, architecture and politics, Anthropocenes will engage and work with leading and upcoming international academics and practitioners looking for an interdisciplinary outlet and keen to develop and initiate debate through traditional and non-traditional forms of publication including visual and audio links.’

New series on ‘Law & the Senses’ from Westminster Law & Theory Lab

New series on ‘Law & the Senses’ from Westminster Law & Theory Lab

The first title in an ambitious new interdisciplinary series from the University of Westminster’s Law and Theory Lab has been published. Called simply SEE it is one of five volumes that will explore the terrain of law and each of the five senses. SEE  is available open access, free to read and download at goo.gl/nDD7TT.  The print version of SEE appears in an elegant black and white livery and in the unusually svelte dimensions (for a book) of 108 x 178mm.The series is described as follows:

The LAW AND THE SENSES series aims to reflect critically on the relationship between law and the senses by gathering contributions from a wide range of critical fields, and intersecting contemporary debates alimented by spatial, material, affective and post-human turns in philosophy, social and legal theory, critical geography, arts and the humanities.

The growing ‘sensory turn’ across different scholarly disciplines has been followed by an increasing  number of publications that engage with the senses.The series contributes to the developing scholarship investigating law and the senses. The established literature deals with the relation between law and the senses from phenomenological positions, or taking the senses as objects of legal regulation. In contrast, this series makes an important contribution by taking a trans-disciplinary approach that is critically underpinned with a main purpose to introduce new perspectives and engage in shaping future debates on the topic.

In that regard, books in the series provide original and diverse research that will appeal to scholarly communities and students from across different disciplines, in particular: law, anthropology, art, philosophy, cultural studies, and social sciences.

EDITORS: Dr Danilo Mandic, University of Westminster; Dr Caterina Nirta, Roehampton University; Dr Andrea Pavoni, ISCTE University Institute of Lisbon; Professor Andreas
Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, University of Westminster