Curatorial project developed together with the Zentrum Für Netzkunst in Berlin. Consisting of exhibitions at the Haus der Statistik and online, conference, unconference and publication.

I was mainly responsible for the unconference organization, which we called Cybernetics embodied in everyday life (mimetics, empathy and hacking).

Taking up the cybernetic logic of self-regulating systems, the unconference is a collective, collaborative, undisciplinary and multiperspective summit that aims to produce embodied knowledge about statistics in its broader contexts and its links to everyday life. With experimental formats, we encourage dynamic exchange between bodies and things, ideas and places, practices and theories.

See project page

About project

From 1970 to 1989, Haus der Statistik operated as the Central Administrative Headquarters for Statistics in the German Democratic Republic: an institution for the cybernetic regulation of society and everyday life.

Working from the site-specific history of Haus der Statistik, Calculating Control explores the impact of cybernetics on artistic and social practices, networks, and technology. Connecting Haus der Statistik with other locations and histories of cybernetic ideals, Calculating Control draws a trajectory from this building to contemporary algorithmic practices and their socio-political effects, many of which mark a crucial point of reference for netart.

As an artistic practice of network society, netart traces systems of cybernetic administration and renders their forms visible and subject to revision. Over the duration of six months, Calculating Control will unravel cybernetic thinking in the space of two separate exhibitions, a symposium, an unconference, as well as an online journal. These various formats are connected and contextualized by further research material available in the archive section of this site.