We are proud to host a round-table discussion with Auto Italia (Kate Cooper, Marianne Forrest and Marleen Boschen) and Paul Feigelfeld at ACUD Studio.
 
In the context of the group show IMAGE IS A VIRUS // ON ACTIVISM of lensbased class of Hito Steyerl the round-table discussion focusses on the the activist potential of the image in a contemporary discourse of hypercirculation.
 
What are the possibilities and difficulties of activism in the digital age?
 
What strategies can be used to create activism by means of the image in the context of an excessive demand of involvement on the one hand and "the fear of missing out"
on the other hand?
 
Does the shift in our approach to the image from representation to participation necessarily create a greater activist potential?
 
How do we deal with the problem of the supposed anarchic sphere of circulation in the network space, that increasingly seems to reveal itself as a control apparatus collecting relational metadata?
 
AUTO ITALIA is a London based artist-run project and studio led by Kate Cooper, Marianne Forrest and Marleen Boschen.
 
Founded in 2007, Auto Italia's work has taken on various formats ranging from collaborative public programming in temporary spaces, commissions and presentations in institutions and galleries, and the production of collaborative projects through working online.
 
Throughout the history of the project there has been a questioning of how artists can work together to develop new formats for artistic production. At the heart of this has been a negotiation of the city as a space for working and living, exploring its accessible cultural space and asking what the terms for accessing this might be. Recent projects include On Coping (2015), a collaboration initiated as a space for thinking through strategies available to artists within increasingly difficult economic working conditions and Meet Z (2014), an online piece examining contemporary cultural production and space.
 
Auto Italia’s work has been shown nationally and internationally at Tate Modern, ICA, London; ABC, Berlin; Artissima, Turin; CSS Bard, US and Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo amongst others. Most recently they have presented iterations of On Coping at Ithuba Arts, Johannesburg; Primary, Nottingham, MaMBO, Bologna; and The Royal Standard, Liverpool.
 
Recent projects include Polymyth x Miss Information, a multi-authored exhibition space exploring new scripted realities, Golden Age Problems, a series of live performances and exhibitions questioning the tropes of cultural institutions and Opti-Me*, a project interrogating the role of the artist as model for radical change and as self-promotional strategist (all 2014).
 
PAUL FEIGELFELD is currently the academic coordinator of the Digital Cultures Research Lab at the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He studied Cultural Studies and Computer Science at Humboldt University in Berlin. Between 2004 and 2011, he worked for German media theorist Friedrich Kittler and is currently part of the team of editors of his complete works as well as head of a think tank, which aims to create a hybrid edition of Kittler’s texts and program source code. From 2010 to 2013, he was a teacher and researcher at Humboldt’s Institute for Media Theories with Prof. Dr. Wolfgang ernst. He is working on his PhD thesis titled The Great Loop Forward. Incompleteness and Media between China and the West. He is one of the editors of the newly founded open access web journal spheres, which focuses on post-media discourses, politics after networks, infrastructures, and ecologies. Besides his academic work, he works as a writer, translator and editor. He teaches at Institut Kunst in Basel and UdK Berlin.
 
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