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Ecologies of Media Practices

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Materiality of Cooperation

Part of the book series: Medien der Kooperation – Media of Cooperation ((MEKOO))

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Abstract

The contribution demonstrates how cooperative practices are embedded in media ecologies. By drawing on Isabelle Stenger’s influential term ‘ecology of practices,’ practices are considered to be conditioned both by multiple options for action and by constraints, requirements, and obligations that need to be negotiated. They thus become part of a media ecology that understands media as socio-technical environments equally shaped by specific materials, technologies, networked infrastructures, and subjectivations. Special attention is paid to digital media practices and network politics of sharing and distributing images on social media. Besides digital practices of photo sharing on Flickr the long-term collaborative project “Man with a Movie Camera: The Global Remake” by the Canadian artist Perry Bard dedicated to Dziga Vertov’s film classic is analyzed in detail. The contribution ends with an outlook on a media praxeology of relations that aims at constructing ‘new practical identities’ both for collaborative and cooperative media practices and thereby makes suggestions for a new cosmopolitics in Stenger’s sense.

‘What I call an ecology of practice is a tool for thinking, and a tool is never neutral.’ (Stengers, 2005a, p. 185)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Accordingly, Stengers (2008, p. 174, trans. PL) has described chemistry as an ‘art of cumstances’, which aims to create for chemical agents the kind of ‘circumstances in which they are enabled to produce what the chemist wants’ by doing ‘what they can do’. For a shorter version of this section see Stengers (2005b, p. 1001).

  2. 2.

    Stengers’ term ‘reciprocal capture’ has parallels to Karen Barad’s scientific concept of the ‘entanglement’. Stengers emphasises that in elementary particle physics ‘the neutrino exists for the physicists, and, somewhat differently, the physicists exist for the neutrino’ (2010, p. 38).

  3. 3.

    I use the term ‘situated’ in reference to Donna Haraway’s concept of ‘situated knowledges’ (Haraway, 1988).

  4. 4.

    For an earlier, different English version of the essay see Reckwitz 2002.

  5. 5.

    For Harrasser and Solhdju (2016), the concept of effectiveness is at the centre of an ecological epistemology that ties its concept of truth to relationships between practical experiences.

  6. 6.

    Tim O’Reilly has described Web 2.0 accordingly as an ‘architecture of participation’ (2005).

  7. 7.

     The forwarding of 87 million user profiles to Cambridge Analytica in 2016 has been criminally investigated. In October 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a UK fine over £500,000. See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-britain-idCAKBN1X913O (access 19 July 2023).

  8. 8.

    Here, Deleuze refers back to studies in cultural history by Fernand Braudel and Jean-Pierre Vernant.

  9. 9.

    Ghanbari et al. (2018) emphasize in their introduction that collaborations question or undermine common hierarchies and focus on inclusive participation in work processes.

  10. 10.

    Bruno Latour has also developed the idea of an altering of technical ensembles and has described ways to ‘ecologise’ technology as an alternative to ‘modernis[ing]’ it (2013, p. 231).

  11. 11.

    The following takes up my argumentation in Gerling et al. (2018, pp. 207–257). On the history and present of archival practices, see Wimmer (2012) and Melone (2018).

  12. 12.

    The group has been in existence since 2006 and currently has 251 members, many of whom, however, are currently not active; see https://www.flickr.com/groups/49143820@N00. The group the Coffee Collective has existed since 2007 and currently has 373 members; see https://www.flickr.com/photos/coffeecollective. The Ost Collective, which joined in 2009, describes itself decidedly as ‘Ateliers partizipatifs’; see https://www.flickr.com/people/ostcollective (access 29 March 2018).

  13. 13.

    There we can read the following: ‘this is a tribute to collectors. an investigation into what we collect. our collections reveal a great deal about who we are. so join our assembly of assemblies, collection of collections… and post pictures of whatever you collect’; cf. https://www.flickr.com/groups/49143820@N00 (access 30 March 2018).

  14. 14.

    This digital platform was created in cooperation with the Video Pool Media Arts Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which is dedicated to insdependent artistic multimedia projects. It was also supported by the Arts Council of England and the Canada Arts Council.

  15. 15.

    See http://www.perrybard.net/man-with-a-movie-camera (access 29 March 2018). Web archiving is carried out by the archive collective Rhizome: http://webenact.rhizome.org/man-with-a-movie-camera-the-global-remake/20160217142125/http://dziga.perrsybard.net. A current version of the remake (from 16 January 2017) is available at https://vimeo.com/224732919.

  16. 16.

    In the run-up to the digital remake, Bard worked with various groups who wanted to film portraits of their cities in Vertov’s tradition.

  17. 17.

    Bard says she was inspired by Manovich (2001), who compares Vertov’s film montage with the construction of databases.

  18. 18.

    Lovink refers to the 2013 Accelerate Manifesto by Alex Williams and Nick Smicek; see http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/accelerate-manifesto-for-an-accelerationist-politics (access 12 June 2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany

    Petra Löffler

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  1. Petra Löffler
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Correspondence to Petra Löffler .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fakultät I: Medienwissenschaftliches Seminar, Universität Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Sebastian Gießmann

  2. Zentrum Bildung und Digitaler Wandel, PH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Tobias Röhl

  3. Fakultät Sozialwissenschaften, Technische Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Ronja Trischler

  4. Philosophische Fakultät: Institut für Ethnologie, Universität zu Köln, Köln, Germany

    Martin Zillinger

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Löffler, P. (2023). Ecologies of Media Practices. In: Gießmann, S., Röhl, T., Trischler, R., Zillinger, M. (eds) Materiality of Cooperation. Medien der Kooperation – Media of Cooperation. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39468-4_12

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