The Messy Edge — Exploring the Frontiers of Digital Culture
On 13 October 2017 we’ll be holding our first in house Brighton Digital Festival conference at the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts.
Entitled The Messy Edge, the conference will explore the frontiers of digital culture, challenge dominant perspectives and provide a space to think about how we run the risk, despite the opportunities that digital gives us, of building a future on the deeply flawed foundations of the present.
In urgent times, many of us are tempted to address trouble in terms of making an imagined future safe……of clearing away the present and the past in order to make futures…..Staying with the trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future.
Donna Haraway — Staying with the Trouble
We’re thrilled to be able to announce the first two confirmed speakers for the conference.
Tabita Rezaire is a video artist, health-tech-politics practitioner, doula and Kemetic/ Kundalini Yoga teacher based in Johannesburg. Her practices unearth the possibilities of decolonial healing through the politics of technology. Navigating architectures of power — online and offline — her work tackles the pervasive matrix of coloniality and its affects on identity, technology, sexuality, health and spirituality.
Artsy declared her among the ‘emerging artists to watch for in 2017’, Artnet among the ‘international Black artists of 2016’, and True Africa amid the ‘top opinion makers of the African continent in 2015.
Usman Haque is founding partner of Umbrellium and Thingful a search engine for the Internet of Things. Trained as an architect, he has created responsive environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices and dozens of mass-participation initiatives throughout the world.
He received the 2008 Design of the Year Award (interactive) from the Design Museum, UK, a 2009 World Technology Award (art), the Japan Media Arts Festival Excellence prize and the Asia Digital Art Award Grand Prize.
Stay tuned as more information is released in the coming weeks.
