Movable Borders: The Reposition Matrix Workshop with Dave Young

About

Part of the Movable Borders: Here Come the Drones! exhibition at Furtherfield Gallery.

In a post-national age, where "territorial and political boundaries are increasingly permeable"[1], what has become of the borderline? How is it defined, and what technologies are used to control it?

Movable Borders is an ongoing research project that begins to explore possible answers to these questions through facilitating discussions around the 'reterritorialisation' of the borderline in the information age. Participants are invited to investigate the use of cybernetic military systems such as remotely piloted aircraft (drones) and the Disposition Matrix, a dynamic database of intelligence that produces protocological kill-lists for the US Department of Defense.

The Reposition Matrix aims to reterritorialise the drone as a physical, industrially-produced technology of war through the creation of an open-access database: a 'reposition matrix' that geopolitically situates the organisations, locations, and trading networks that play a role in the production of military drone technologies.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN?
During the workshop, participants will investigate the weapons industry and intelligence agencies that operate in the background of the drone campaigns ongoing in the Middle East. Information will be gathered through a diverse range of sources - from corporate publications to leaked document repositories. The information gathered during the research session will then be used as the basis for the collaborative development of a new world map: a diagram that exposes the complex networks of control and influence that exist at the core of the drone campaigns.

WHO IS THIS FOR?
Cartographers, designers, artists, activists, political scientists, journalists, and anybody with a strong interest in understanding and discussing the materiality of the drone wars are invited to participate.

WHERE AND WHEN?
Furtherfield Gallery - Saturday 18 May 2013, 1-5pm
Visiting information http://www.furtherfield.org/gallery/visit

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Dave Young is an artist, musician and researcher currently studying the Networked Media course at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, NL. His research deals with the Cold War history of networked culture, exploring the emergence of cybernetic theory as an ideology of the information age and the influence of military technologies on popular culture.