Saturday 12 July 12noon-5pm
The Way We Live Now: Environmental and Social Consequences

Click here for our Eventbrite page to book return coach travel from Cambridge train station for this event. The coach will leave Cambridge station at 11.30am and return to the station at 5pm. Trains from London Kings Cross travel to Cambridge every 30 mins and the journey time is 45 mins. This event is FREE.

The third event in our Futurecamp series includes contributions from Dr Richard Barbrook, Bonnie Camplin, Louise Carver, David Raymond Conroy, Prof Ian Hodge, Daniel Keller, Dr Isaac Marrero-Guillamón and Ben Vickers.

Click above for the archived broadcast of the event 12-4.05pm.

Premise of the event:

The environments we live in, be they man-made or natural, are essential to our future development, and possibly our survival. The design and construction methods of the places and spaces we inhabit affect our physical and psychological experience by framing the way we live, alongside their long-term sustainability and impact on the environment. These methods are therefore inextricable from the social, political and environmental eco-systems we inhabit.

The increasing lack of affordable socially and economically viable alternatives has led to many people being unable to sustain a reasonable standard of living. As such, what are the alternative ways of living and who will propose and instrumentalise these?

Event schedule:

12.00pm: Introduction from Wysing Curators Kathy Noble and Gareth Bell Jones

12.10pm: Dr Richard Barbrook, senior lecturer in the department of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages at University of Westminster, will present a talk updating his 1995 essay The Californian Ideology on the eve of its twentieth anniversary. Co-written with Andy Cameron, the original essay is a critique of dotcom neoliberalism. This new paper, The Californian Ideology 20.0, updates the essay to argue for rational and conscious control over the shape of the digital future, an inclusive and universal cyberspace and a rebirth of the Modern.

12.40pm: Dr Isaac Marrero-Guillamón, lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths College will present a talk entitled London’s Olympic Re-Development: Legal Architectures, Grand Narratives and Disobedient Artifacts. This presentation discusses the legal architecture of the Lower Lea Valley Olympic “regeneration” project, as well as some of the ways in which a series of disobeying artifacts articulated a counter-narrative of the transformation of this part of East London. These works were part of a larger constellation of critical practices that challenged the politics of effacement and the cartography of consensus enacted by the Games.

1.10pm: Open discussion chaired by Gareth Bell-Jones.

1.25pm: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available.

1.55pm: Prof Ian Hodge, Professor of Rural Economics at the Department of Land Economy at University of Cambridge, will reflect on the way in which environmental issues are discussed in terms of ecosystems services and the implications of valuations and payments for ecosystems services approaches.

2.15pm: Louise Carver is a doctoral researcher with the Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value, and based in the Department of Geography, Environment and Development studies, at Birkbeck College. Biodiversity offsetting is frequently critiqued as the commodification of biotic life through the entangled logics of capitalism and conservation, or defended as a pragmatic solution compatible with development and growth. Carver will discuss the framing and narratives that sustain the idea of biodiversity as amenable to market based values and those that offer scope to articulate alternatives.

2.35pm: Open discussion chaired by Kathy Noble

2.50: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available

3.05pm: Futurecamp residency artist David Raymond Conroy presents a performance lecture investigating analysis paralysis within behavioural economics. Analysis paralysis is the state of over-analysing (or over-thinking) a situation so that a decision or action is never taken. In an economic context it refers to the escalation of the increase of choice, the increased profit margins that this brings and the increased dissatisfaction and confusion on the part of consumers. Through examples in popular culture, Conroy will display how psychological, social, and emotional responses are affected by the economic decisions of individuals and institutions, market prices and returns.

3.25pm: Ben Vickers, co-founder of the unMonastery and Curator of Digital at Serpentine Gallery will present a talk focusing on the unMonastery, an ambitious and radical response to the challenge of bridging the gap between working to make a living and working to make meaning. It draws inspiration from the 10th century monastic life to encourage radical forms of social innovation and collaboration. Vickers will breakdown how different methodologies can be used to demonstrate the existing capacity for a bottom up smart city and what this could begin to look like. Followed by a Q&A.

4.05pm: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available.

4.20pm: Futurecamp residency artist Daniel Keller will present a new performance entitled An iDrive. Using a script by Daniel Keller and Ella Plevin, this work is a speculation on the future of the Californian Ideology in the form of a short sci-fi stage performance. The scene takes place at the beginning of a self-driving Tesla car journey from Freistadt Cupertino to the Autonomous Kingdom of Nevada. It features a dialogue between Kai Zuckerberg, the hacktivist daughter of Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg and Dalston Kutcher (son of Ashton and Mila), her air-headed AbEx painter boyfriend who recently got super into Ayn Rand.

4.40: Futurecamp residency artist Bonnie Camplin will give her attention to the correlations between two books. The first, Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1979) is a novel about a thirty-seven year old Mexican-American woman who, under great duress, experiences different sci-fi and utopian visions of the future. The second, Dr. Richard Alan Miller's Power Tools for the 21st Century (2013) shows the protocols developed for the Navy SEALs to create super soldiers.

5.00pm: Event ends

Click here for our Eventbrite page to book return coach travel from Cambridge train station for this event. Trains from London Kings Cross travel to Cambridge every 30 mins and the journey time is 45 mins.

Contributors Biographies:

Dr Richard Barbrook is an academic in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages at the University of Westminster. Working with Andy Cameron, he wrote The Californian Ideology a pioneering critique of the neo-liberal politics of Wired magazine. His other important writings about the Net include The Hi-Tech Gift Economy, Cyber-communism, The Regulation of Liberty, and The Class of the New and in 2007 published Imaginary Futures. In the early 1980s, he was involved with pirate and community radio broadcasting, helping to set up Spectrum Radio station in London. In 1995, he became the coordinator of the Hypermedia Research Centre at Westminster's Media School.

Bonnie Camplin is an artist based in London. She broadly describes her work as ‘The Invented Life’, which has included eight years as a para-theatrical producer, director, dancer and performer of experimental club nights as well as work across the disciplines of drawing, film and video, performance, music and writing. She exhibits internationally and her work has included collaborations with artists Enrico David, Mark Leckey, Lucy McKenzie and Paulina Olowska. She is currently a Lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and was Guest Professor of the Film-Class at Städelschule Frankfurt from 2008 to 2010.

Louise Carver is a doctoral researcher with the Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value based in the Department of Geography, Environment and Development studies, at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her research concerns the valuation processes involved in biodiversity offsetting, an emergent approach towards conservation. Louise organises NATURES, a travelling music and arts festival venue that hosts speakers and panel discussions around social science perspectives on society’s relationship with science, technology and mainstream views on sustainability.

David Raymond Conroy is an artist based in London. His compositions investigate the performance and construction of subjectivity within shared social space. Conroy presented the solo project, PPE, or It is spring and I am blind at Modern Art Oxford in 2013, other projects include a solo presentation L’homme qui voulait savoir at GP & N Vallois, Paris, a staged reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, (with Andy Holden), ICA, London and Arnolfini and the exhibition A Plea for Tenderness, Seventeen Gallery, London. He lives and works in London.

Prof Ian Hodge is Professor of Rural Economics at the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. His positions include: fellow at Hughes Hall; fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors; member of the management board at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership; member of the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs Economics Advisory Panel; member of the  Cambridge Conservation Initiative University Working Group; and also board member of the Nene Park Trust. He was head of the Department of Land Economy, from 2002 to 2011 and was a Cambridge Fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, Feb-May 2013.

Daniel Keller is an artist from Chicago based in Berlin. His wide-ranging output engages with issues at the intersection of economics, technology, culture and collaboration. His current focus of research is on notions of progress, technological disruption and the role of the post-studio 'prosumer imagineer' artist in the global networked economy. As Aids-3D, he has exhibited throughout Europe and the United States since 2006. Recent solo exhibtions include eVita, Casa Maauad, Mexico City (2014); 63rd-77th steps, Bari, Italy (2014); Lazy Ocean Drift, New Galerie, Paris (2013); abc, art berlin contemporary, with Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2013). He lives and works in Berlin.

Dr Isaac Marrero-Guillamón is lecturer in anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. His main areas of interest are urban regeneration, documentary practices and experimental ethnography. He is the editor, with Hilary Powell, of The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London´s Olympic State (Marshgate Press, 2012).

Ben Vickers is a curator, writer, network analyst, technologist and luddite. Currently Curator of Digital at the Serpentine Gallery, he co-runs LIMAZULU Project Space, is NearNow Fellow and facilitates the development of unMonastery, a new civically minded social space based in Matera, Southern Italy.

Jessica Lack will live blog this event. Jessica Lack is a freelance arts writer for the Guardian. She was the previews arts editor of The Guide for ten years and now contributes to G2 and the arts and culture section online. She also contributes to various art and culture magazines including Dazed and Confused, ID Magazine and World of Interiors. She was Deputy Editor of Tate Magazine for five years and has published various catalogue essays and art books. She was writer-in-residence at Jerwood in September 2012.