[spectre] call: Latour: overcoming representation

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Subject: <nettime-ann> 	[call] Bruno Latour: 'A Parliament of
	Parliaments ' How to Overcome	the Crisis of Representation


http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/expositions/002_parliament.html

An exhibition at ZKM Karslruhe Fall 2004
(Title and dates are provisional.)
Curators: Peter Weibel & Bruno Latour; commissioned contributors: list to
be defined;

First proposition: call for ideas
Contact: at ZKM: Sabine Himmelsbach (head of exhibition department),
Margit Rosen ; in Paris : ValÈrie Pihet. Send all e-mail correspondance to
pihet at zkm.de or pihet at csi.ensmp.fr

'Democracy', as Winston Churchill, famously said: "is the worst form of
government, except for all the others". It would of course be much better
if we, ordinary myopic citizens, would delegate our lives to the care of
our betters and elders. But these super-lucid caretakers seem to have
disappeared in the turmoil of the last century, together with the dream of
a
superior caste, superior avant-garde, superior science of history.
Recently, even confidence in the benevolent invisible hand of superhumanly
wise market forces has waned somewhat. Of course, it would be much more
comfortable if we could still confide our biology, our ecology, our
industry, our
computers, our economies and our politics to scientists and engineers who
know better and see farther. But the sciences that were part of the
solution have become, one after the other, part of the problem. The
objects of science and technology have become so controversial and so
entangled that the delegation of power to experts appears no easier than
the older delegation of power to members of parliament. This is has been
diagnosed as
the 'crisis of representation'.

So where does that leave us ? From now on, the blind are leading the
blind. Good. At least we are freed from the nightmare scenarios concocted
for us by the know-it-alls. And yet we have to be led; we have to come to
some sort of agreement about controversial states of affairs. Although the
crisis of
representation is everywhere in science, in law, in ethics, in art, in
politics, it has to be somehow overcome. Democracy has to be extended, it
seems, to things of science and technology, even though it will certainly
prove to be politically dire - but, here again, less dire than all the
others. Another constitutional arrangement has become necessary -
provided
we somewhat extend what is usually meant by a Constitution.

Classical questions of politics were usually solved by theories of
representation - leading finally to the institution of the Parliament as
hortus sublimus of the Constitution. We wish to extend the search for
solution by including many other technologies of representation, modeling,
simulation, delegation, manipulation, influencing, selecting. The dynamics
of
science cannot be conceived without politics nor the dynamics of politics
without science. The social, the scientific, the technological, the
theoretical and the practical blend together. We want to make an
exhibition where politics, science and technology explore a new future
based on a diagnosis of present practices illuminated through the
perspective of material history.

Hence the format of this proposed exhibition : allowing the comparison to
be made not at the grandiose level of theories of representation in
science, politics and art, but through the humble back door of how
collective representation of things is made practically possible. For
example, the invention of voting machines will interest us more than
Rousseau's sublime
'general will'; the African palabre tree more than the extension of the
State of Law; the scholastic disputatio techniques more than the question
of religion in general; the 3D datascape of some new scientific
instruments more than the question of knowing whether science offers a
true representation of the world or not.

In politics, we will not be interested in the whole debate about
representative democracy, but only in the intersection of those debates
with the question of bringing in the public space the technical issues
that have to be collectively disputed and on which conditions are the
parties, lobbies, partisans, special interest group able to change their
minds.

In science,
<snip??>