The Politics Of Irresponsibility: Human Rights & The Commons

As part of The Public Domain’s Open Studio programme, Lorenzo Pezzani looks at the sea as a space that, far from being undivided and lawless, is instead being appropriated and policed through a vast process of imaging and data-isation. This event will use Pezzani’s project and research to expand on the notion of a “global commons”, and its implications in digital domains. Pezzani will be joined by Basia Lewandowska Cummings and Juha van ’t Zelfde.

The film Liquid Traces: The left-to-die boat case (18 min) which is based on a report by Forensic Oceanography will be on view in the Open Studio from noon on Tuesday 6 May 2014. We encourage visitors to see this film prior to the talk.

Biographies

Lorenzo Pezzani is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths University’s Centre for Research Architecture and a UK Associate of The Public Domain. He is part of the research team at Forensic Oceanography, an initiative with Charles Heller, produced in the frame of the ERC funded project “Forensic Architecture – Goldsmiths, Centre for Research Architecture”.  Forensic Oceanography critically investigates the militarised border regime in the Mediterranean Sea, mapping the liquid geographies of maritime jurisdictions in order to document the violence perpetrated against migrants at sea. By producing maps, visualisations, human right reports, videos, articles, exhibitions and websites, Forensic Oceanography interrogates this maritime sensorium in the attempt to challenge the regime of visibility imposed by surveillance means and become a tool in the struggle for freedom of movement.  He is a UK Associate of The Public Domain.

Basia Lewandowska Cummings is a writer, editor and film curator based in London. She contributes to frieze, Contemporary &, and The Wire. In 2013, she co-authored a book with Hisham Awad on film and editing titled Four Ways to Read the Cut, which was published by 98weeks in Beirut. She has curated various film programmes, including discussions and events for Bold Tendencies, Film Africa, the New York Africa Film Festival, Gasworks gallery, Beirut Art Centre, and the Southbank Centre. In January 2014 she became writer-in-residence at Jerwood Visual Arts, London, and she is currently Associate Editor at Noch Publishing.  She is a UK Associate of The Public Domain.

Juha van ‘t Zelfde is a Dutch-Finnish curator and cultural innovator with an interest in new developments in art, music, technology, economics and the public domain.  He is Artistic Director of Lighthouse, the digital culture agency in Brighton, which supports, commissions and exhibit works by artists and filmmakers. He is co-founder and partner of cultural innovation studio Non-fiction, and is the New Institute Ambassador in Finland for architecture, design and digital media. In 2013 he curated the groundbreaking digital culture exhibition Dread, Fear in the age of technological acceleration, at De Hallen Haarlem. He has worked with the Stedelijk Museum, Marres, Stroom and The New Institute, and with a multitude of internationally renowned artists, including Thomas Hirschhorn, Haroon Mirza, Metahaven, Trevor Paglen, James Bridle and Micol Assaël. He has written articles about the cultural implications of new technologies for VICE magazine, Metropolis M, Volume, MONU, Tate Modern, and has lectured at leading international festivals such as Open Knowledge Festival, FutureEverything, and Ars Electronica. His book Dread – The Dizziness of Freedom was published in 2013.