Contemporaneity in Embodied Data Practices: 20 (Sternberg Press / The Contemporary Condition)

On the relationship between quantifiable and experiential knowledge as entanglement of multiple temporalities.

What parallels are there between a human pranayama practitioner and a migratory bird in heavily datafied environments? And what can they tell us about the need to reorient our thinking towards the planetary?

In Contemporaneity in Embodied Data Practices, two artistic field studies provide the starting point for a dialogical reflection on the entanglement of diverse temporalities in body-related, datafied, and experiential practices. Shifting through lived, historical, evolutionary, and technological rhythms, Cornelia Sollfrank and Felix Stalder unfold their respective more-than-human frames of reference, and arrive at specific forms of agency in the contemporary moment.

Published in partnership with the Centre for Research in Artistic Practice under Contemporary Conditions at Aarhus University.

Cornelia Sollfrank (PhD) is an artist, researcher and writer, living in Berlin. Recurring subjects in her artistic and academic work in and about digital cultures are artistic infrastructures, new forms of (political) self-organization, critical authorship, aesthetics of the commons, and techno-feminist practice and theory. Her projects net.art generator—a web-based art-producing "machine"—and Female Extension have earned her a reputation as a pioneer of net art. Recent open access publications include The Beautiful Warriors: Technofeminist Practice in the 21st Century, Aesthetics of the Commons, and Fix My Code with Winnie Soon.

Felix Stalder is a professor teaching Digital Culture at the Zurich University of the Arts. His work focuses on the intersection of cultural, political and technological dynamics, in particular new modes of commons-based production, copyright, datafication, and transformation of subjectivity. He is the author/editor of numerous books, including Deep Search: The Politics of Search Beyond Google (2009), Digital Solidarity (2014), Digital Condition (2018), Aesthetics of the Commons (2021), Digital Unconscious (2021) and From Commons to NFTS (2022).