Coding Resistance

Coding Resistance is a new study program exposing coded inequalities and reimagining technologies for better, brighter, and more just futures. You can be part of Coding Resistance starting from September 24th, 2021. So take your chance and apply now!

Under the guise of machine neutrality, technology captivates, fascinates, and entails a promise of imagined objectivity. At the same time, oppressive social structures are coded into technological tools that further reproduce social, spatial, and environmental inequality, subduing and subjugating racialized, gendered and non-abled bodies. The very design of artificial intelligence embeds human biases, which in turn creates harmful, destructive material and digital infrastructure.

Against the backdrop of algorithmic discrimination, reinforced by state and corporate surveillance, many activists and civil society movements have been striving to reimagine the relation between society and technology. Futuress wants to help connect and amplify the voices of designers, researchers, and activists who critically examine the politics of digital tools and seek to build more equitable and just practices.

The new study program, Coding Resistance aims to expose design’s role in sustaining inequalities, while at the same time imagining how technologies can be used to envision new futures.

Starting on September 24th, 2021 and for the following nine weeks, different inspiring speakers will be taking on a journey through complex multifaceted topics including discriminating algorithms, digital colonialism, emancipatory potential of virtual reality, interdependence as a political technology, speculative queer and trans futurities, and more.

Bringing insights from their activism, lived experiences, and research, the speakers will reflect upon the social implications of technology hardwired with racism, sexism, classism, and other systems of oppression and the harmful, destructive digital and material reality it creates. They reveal multiple interconnected social justice struggles that reimagine digital tools and engage in “coding resistance” toward more just futures.

Each lecture is followed by a discussion, where question can be asked to the lecturer as well as to the other participants from all over the world. All lectures will be available synchronously and asynchronously. In addition, by registering for the lectures, you not only enter a transnational community centered around design-politics, but also help to sponsor 59 participants to join the fellowship and craft their own unique counter-narratives. Their research will be honed into stories for a broad audience, which you can soon read on Futuress.

Coding Resistance

Where?
Online

When?
September 24th to November 19th, 2021
Always held on Fridays or Saturdays

Apply here!