Tag: CPU

CPU Workshop on “Self-Organized Criticality”

As Catie Cuan (@CatieCuan) writes over on twitter:

Critical Practices Unit (CPU) @CPUStanford gathered last week [February 25, 2020] for our first workshop on the topic of “SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY”. Humans from 11 disciplines attended…

The inimitable @h_gerba opened with, “The idea is to generate a space, or more precisely an occasion, which allows us to disturb institutional distinctions between scholarship and other forms of creative work. We don’t suppose to know what critical practices means in advance nor reduce it to any meaning in particular. Axiomatics depend on an unwarranted sense of self-sufficiency and solidity, a law of non-contradiction which says A=A, full stop. We are much more interested in a fluid space which enjoys the oscillatory generativity of exploded contradiction.” (!!!)

And quoting Fred Moten, “It might be worthwhile to think of the gathering as contested matter, to linger in the break—the distance and nearness—between the thing and the case in the interest of the ones who are without interests but who are nevertheless a concern precisely because they gather, as they are gathered matter, the internally differentiated materiality of a collective head.”

Let us unfold! Much more to follow…journey along here @CPUStanford

CFP(articipants): CPU Media/Arts Workshop on SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY

CPU, the Critical Practices Unit, is bifurcating. In addition to hosting events, such as last quarter’s exploration of robotics and performativity, CPU is inaugurating a media/arts workshop.

This will be a space, organized around periodic themes, in which we will plan, discuss, and create projects which disturb the unhappily inherited oppositions of theory/practice, life/art, art/science, and scholarship/the rest. Writers, artists, coders, musicians, everybody (anybody), with a desire to explore alternate ways of making-alongside-theory is welcome. We are looking for critical making, art, manifestos, noise, digital humanities, novel forms of publication, works in progress, and more. There will be no imposed limitation to the scale, medium, or temporality of these projects—only a dotted timeline of informal get-togethers (with snacks) in which we can provide feedback, support, and a shared (if distributed) space for one another. If you’re already working on something (or know someone who is (please forward widely !)), or want to start something, let us know !

CPU’s first workshop theme will be SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY.

Plucked from complexity sciences, SoC is a speculative mechanism which describes how “natural systems,” such as life, might form out of chaos. The term prompts, among many potential questions: How do we(?) position criticality (historically, socially, ontologically) ? Is there any pleasure in critique ? How to navigate porosities or closures between the humanities and sciences (physis/nomos, physis/techne) ? What does it mean for material to gather ? Can material be maternal, or sex abstract ? Who is the ‘self’ which organizes, and how is it oriented (toward/against futures, origins, vortices, decay) ? What does it mean to do all this at Stanford ? Word-play is encouraged—no association is too loose.

We’ll be organizing a first get-together soon.

Again, if interested, please reach out to Hank Gerba: hankg@stanford.edu

Critical Practices Unit (CPU)

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I am excited to announce the inaugural session of Critical Practices Unit (CPU), on November 19 at 6:30pm (in McMurtry 360).

In this interdisciplinary and practice-based group, with support from the Vice President for the Arts, we hope to stage collisions between the various epistemes and critical frameworks we all know and love through performances, art-objects, interactive media, and “critical making” projects, which, in some sense to be explored, materialize critical reflection.

In fidelity to these objects’ disobedience to any specific field, we want to stress that CPU is for those in the humanities, sciences, and arts. These conversations—spanning computation, performance, race, personhood, gesture, interaction, and more—will be made all the richer by a diversity of perspectives.

For our first event, we will be playing with haptic devices for underwater robots graciously loaned by The Stanford Robotics Lab, involving ourselves in a live performance piece / installation by Catie Cuan, and settling into a conversation about the grafting of robotics and performativity. We are overjoyed that situating this discussion will be Sydney Skybetter, Lecturer in Theater and Performance Studies at Brown University, and Matthew Wilson Smith, Professor of German Studies and Performance Studies here at Stanford.