The Trouble with Visibility

The Trouble with Visibility
with Ramon Amaro and Tiara Roxanne
Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab

This event is part of the series Decolonizing Technology in cooperation with the Department of Media Theory of the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Moderation: Nelly Y. Pinkrah, Scientific Associate TU Dresden, Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change

Welcome and Introduction: Clemens Apprich, Head of the Media Theory Department and Elisabeth Falkensteiner, Co-Head and Curator of Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab

Ramon Amaro will talk about his upcoming book The Black Technical Object: On Machine Learning and the Aspiration of Black Being (MIT Press), which explores how the history of data and statistical analysis informs the complex relationship between race and machine learning. The book juxtaposes a practical analysis of machine learning with a theory of Black alienation in order to inspire alternative approaches to contemporary algorithmic practice. In doing so, Amaro contemplates the abstruse nature of programming and mathematics, as well as the deep incursion of racial hierarchies.

Tiara Roxanne illustrates through performance the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Indigeneity – this is part of an ongoing project entitled Red. Roxanne’s work contends that AI is colonial in creation and nature, as its invention is founded on a settler colonial paradigm. In performance, Roxanne is (dis)entangled within material and digital colonial borders of the past, present and future.

Interview zur Reihe: https://ail.angewandte.at/explore/in-conversation-with-clemens-apprich