Hi!
This is a lightweight newsletter that will bring you up to date with what we’re planning for this September.
Chances are you have already read Fino alla Fine / Until the end (sorry, it’s only in italian: it’s a letter Salvatore prepared for our friends; if you have any trouble translating it or in understanding what it says, please ask, as it’s very important for us that you know what’s happening to us).
If you did, you already know that HER: She Loves Data / Nuovo Abitare is on the move! We’re updating the plan to creating a non-profit organization: we’re creating a foundation!
Follow us in this wonderful and important journey!
In this newsletter you will find:
Until the End, an open letter in which Salvatore tells everyone how his health condition got worse, to drive us to avoiding wasting time. For us, this translates into scaling up our plans and creating the Nuovo Abitare Foundation!
We have created the Principles of Nuovo Abitare for everyone to discuss, so we can make them better together.
Some updates about Antitesi, the love story between Plant ad AI to fight climate change.
Platforms again, with some considerations about Italy’s newest efforts to create democratic platforms.
And, last but not least, some of the things we liked around the web.
But, before we begin: if you haven’t done so already, why not subrscribe to our wonderful, not invasive, less-than-monthly newsletter?
Let’s begin!
Until the End
Until the End / Fino alla Fine is a letter that Salvatore Iaconesi wrote to his friends to tell how his medical condition got worse. It begins like this:
And so, it happened: the magnetic resonance did not go well.
It’s not a pessimistic letter. Disease transforms, and becomes a form of knowledge in the flesh that unites us all into doing what’s urgent and important. For us it’s an important drive, and we used it to upgrade our desire for transformation.
All comes together in the ending of the letter, in which Salvatore tells us how:
We are creating the Nuovo Abitare Foundation, to host the research on this topic
The Foundation will host ARNA, the Archive of the Rituals of Nuovo Abitare. It will be the Foundation’s main asset. In the beginning it will contain our works and research, as a definition of the approach, sensibility and methodology, but then will be open to other researchers, artists, practitioners and theorists who share the same methods, vision and sensibilities. It will have a physical location as well as a digital one. It will be a new kind of Archive: we’re very excited!
Starting around October, we will begin funding and co-funding theses, PhD’s and research on Nuovo Abitare.
In the Foundation’s headquarters that we will bring up soon, we will start working together with other artists and researchers the Rituals for the End. (and we’ll just leave a cliffhanger on that :) )
If you can and you haven’t done already: read the letter. It’s very important. Use Google Translate or ask us if you want to know more. And contact us if you want to participate!
The Principles of Nuovo Abitare
We have started to work on defining the Principles of Nuovo Abitare. You can find them here:
These are not final. They are intended to start conversations and to make them better.
Don’t be shy and feel free to comment and to write to us, to suggest critiques, modifications, updates, additions and removals. We would like to include a first official version of the Principles by the time we start the Foundation, around October.
Antitesi: Wisteria Furibonda
Antitesi is back again!
The love story between Plant and AI to fight climate change never fails to trigger active responses.
This time it has been shown in Turin at Polo del ‘900 and it has been acquired by Università Federico II di Napoli for its Ruralhack/Societing 4.0 laboratories.
Go to this link to know more and follow the story to see how it goes.
Political Platforms in Italy
We wrote an article on Il Manifesto in Italy titled “I limiti delle Agorà democratiche di Enrico Letta” (“The limits of Enrico Letta’s Agorà democratiche”, you can register for free to read it).
In Italy we have a peculiar situation with political platforms, with the populist leading coalition having its decision making processes made using a platform which is not transparent nor open source.
The secretary of the moderated left, Enrico Letta, recently proposed the Agorà Digitali, a platform for political participation which is indeed open source.
Is it enough?
We don’t think so, and in the article we explain the dangers that come by maintaining the same populistic paradigms, transforming politics into a matter of customer satisfaction.
The article also includes the definition of a very important concept for Nuovo Abitare: interoperable cyberdiversity (cyberdiversità interoperabile): can we imagine different forms of what we are currently calling AI (which is a mono-definition) that are capable of bringing substantial differences into our information ecosystem? Read more about Cyberdiversity in the Principles of Nuovo Abitare, above.
Read the article and let us know what you think.
Things we liked
And here’s a selection of the things we liked around the web since the last newsletter:
How to Disappear by Total Refusal (this is really beautiful and insightful)
Imminent’s report 2021: language and translation as infrastructure for access and inclusion
Detecting cryptocurrency pump-and-dump frauds using market and social signals
Earth 2 (we don’t really like this one, and we put it here just as yet another sign of the crisis of imagination: can’t you imagine anything but “inventing” another life in which earth is parcelized and on sale, reduced only into a matter of consumption? There would be tons to talk about this…)
Disnovation.org (this one is not new)
Vladan Joler’s “New Extractivism” (and check this twitter out, too)