The Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society is organizing its 2022 annual conference on the subject of “Practicing Sovereignty. Interventions for open digital futures”.
Hybrid Space Lab is contributing with a lecture on Kiez Lab.
Lecture @ Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, Annual Conference Practicing Sovereignty, Berlin, 9-10 June 2022
The challenges of digital transformation are becoming more and more tangible in the daily lives of Berliners. There is an increasing need to get involved and take the city’s digital future into one’s own hands.
Kiez-Labs are hybrid (combined physical-digital) low-threshold cross-sector neighbourhood labs with inclusive co-creative formats to permanently bring local perspectives and experiences of civil society into the digital transformation of the city of Berlin. They are pop-up workshops embedded in the urban context with analogue points of contact in the neighbourhood – in typical neighbourhood locations such as libraries, hospitals, old people’s homes, schools or parks. The Kiez-Lab concept was developed in the context of the Alliance Digital City Berlin and the Kiez-Labs are much more than decentralised digital citizens’ offices. Such socio-spatially embedded neighbourhood labs, which reflect the urban society, are combined physical and digital, i.e. hybrid co-creative tools and communication spaces to accompany the digital transformation.
Conference
The Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society is pleased to announce this year’s Weizenbaum Conference titled “Practicing Sovereignty. Interventions for open digital futures.” The event will take place at the „Alte Münze“ (Molkenmarkt 2, 10179 Berlin) on the 9th and 10th of June 2022.
Digital sovereignty is a process constantly in the making. It is a fundamental prerequisite to partaking critically in digital transformation. This international symposium and exhibition will investigate – through various perspectives – new opportunities and challenges for the future(s) of digital participation and policymaking. It will provide an open space for multi- and transdisciplinary reflection and confrontation on current conversations around possible alternatives to technological and social practices. Ultimately, the conference will bring together scholars, artists, activists, and human rights advocates to facilitate a broader discussion on their practices and to further develop transformative processes fostering digital involvement.
The international conference and exhibition will investigate new opportunities for digital participation and policymaking and discuss alternative technological and social practices from various fields and disciplines. We frame digital sovereignty as a right to be claimed and a process constantly in the making, as a condition of the ability to critically partake in the digital transformation.
The conference will provide a transdisciplinary platform for scholars, artists, activists, and human rights advocates who develop transformative practices spaces to foster digital involvement. Grassroots initiatives, community projects, and participatory practices in design, art, and activism appear as collective counter strategies and bottom-up interventions that challenge the normalization of inequalities and insecurities and push back against threats to an open society. They lay the groundwork for new forms of agency, paving novel ways of practicing sovereignty – both in the sense of collective activities as well as in terms of public education and experimentation.
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