Collective Agency in an Era of Authoritarian Automation: Artistic Research on Protest, Populism, Migration and the Computational Simulation of Crowds

Connecting artistic research and practice to aesthetics, sociology and computational modeling and visualization, this project asks: What is a crowd in the 21st century?

By setting up an experimental space for artistic practice and theoretical dialogue, we explore how collective protests, migration and authoritarian populism shape today´s politics while also being modelled by algorithmic systems in digital infrastructures.Our aims:To understand  the impact on today´s democracy of collective protest, authoritarianism, migration and computational modeling.To investigate the ways in which collective behavior generated by digital technologies align crowd behavior with political programs and market strategies that defy democratic values.To investigate how embodied subjective agency and collective assembly interrupts such processes of collective automation.To show the ability of artistic research to spark conceptual development, innovative methodologies and theoretical insights into the relation of aesthetic expression and democracy.Over 3-years, the project will assemble input from artistic practices in photography, film, digital aesthetics, poetry, literary fiction, essay, choreography, and dance, organize workshops, performances and theoretical debates, gradually shaping a theoretical investigation and artistic montage of the 21st-century crowd and its algorithmic modelling.

Final output is a collaborative film essay, a literary essay and anthology, as well as an exhibition.