HMKA03243U Digital Cultural Politics

This course approaches the question of digital cultural politics from two angles, both dealing with digital media’s influence on the notion and practice of cultural politics.

                      Firstly the course examines the practice of cultural politics “after digitization”, raising questions concerning the impact of digitization on concrete cultural political practices and policies: In what way has digitization affected media policies? How much public funding does the production and exhibition of digital art receive relative to other forms of art? Why do we digitize cultural heritage and what kind of memory spaces do digitization processes create?

                      In addition the course deals with theoretical contexts, practices and processes for rethinking the notion of cultural politics in the digital environment. This focus considers the connective nature of the digital and how it engenders not only technological but also political convergences in which actors and structures cross the boundaries of hitherto relatively stable cultural political structures within and beyond institutional frames. From this reconfigured political landscape, which modulates hierarchies and facilitate commercialization and globalization, questions arise such as: How should we conceive of national and international spaces on the Internet? Can we speak of digital public spheres? What is Internet censorship? Is the Internet a playground or a factory? What and where is the Internet Commons? What is the cultural politics of software and code?