La Cura will be at the Festival della Creatività in Ariccia from 27 to 29 May 2016.

More info here.

We will be present there with a workshop titled “La Cura: Patient X and biopolitics in hospitals” ( “La Cura: il Paziente X e la biopolitica negli ospedali” ).

The workshop will be a practical exploration on the theme of “Interface Politics”, which is all of those ways in which interfaces exercise control and power onto people, due to the ways in which they are designed and deployed.

We are surrounded by interfaces, both physical and digital, whether we realize it or not. Clear and visible ones, like the ones on social networks and online services. Physical ones, like the ones at post offices, supermarkets, in the offices where we work, in the schools where we learn, and which allow us to interact with processes and procedures of which they are a manifestation. Or even ones which are completely invisible to our perception, or which are algorithmic and which act on the data we produce, on our images, or even in our minds and thoughts.

Designing an interface has a high political valence, as it implies influencing people’s freedoms, self-representation, expression, determination, communication, participation and inclusion. If there is not button for the X function I will not be able to use that function. If a shelf is too high I will not be able to access it. If on a form only “M/F” are provided as options to indicate my gender, I will not be able to express otherwise. If a procedure in a post office works in a certain way I will not be able to do otherwise, even if the procedure is not right for me. If an algorithm interprets my data in a certain way and uses this interpretation to shape the world around me, I will be constrained to act according to those ways.

These – and more – are very important political – or, better, biopolitical –  implications.

During the workshop we will start from a case which we particularly care about: Hospitals.

We will start from visual materials (images, videos, sketches) of hospitals to try to recognize and analyse the biopolitical manifestations in the hospital’s interfaces. We will look for them in the ways in which the environments are made, in furniture, objects, interactions, procedures, times, processes and in all of those physical, immaterial, personal elements which are in the hospital.

Once we identify them, we will make hypotheses about how to rethink them and, then, redesign them, in different ways, producing different usage grammars for spaces, times, objects, in ways and logics which are inclusive, constructive, transgressive, innovative.

Here you can find more information about the festival and on how to participate.

Here you can find all the education and workshop paths included in the festival.