Living The Emo Social Networks and Constant Need for Social Change

Symposium:


Session Title:
  • Social Media and Digital Identities

Presentation Title:
  • Living The Emo Social Networks and Constant Need for Social Change

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Abstract:

  • The new media art lacks discourse on ’emotional intelligence and/or emotion(s)’, the subject on which Web 2.0 is based on, and Web 3.0 will function as. While used mostly as populist element in new age, marketing, …?or even as pejorative aspect of feminism, the power structures (CIA and similar power services) are all doing wide research on our emotions and their effect in social strata, often connected to decision making. In the 90ties we called for new methods, strategies and tactics deriving from online world, to be grasped and used elsewhere, since it was believed that Internet might enable global social change on pragmatical level. It did and it didnt. Soon after 2000 it got clear that rather a small amount of subversive practices succeded and that digital divide didnt get any smaller (see text Chaos Computer Club, We Lost The War, 2005 – it’s acctually about the failure of empoering momnet for possible transfer of ideas like sharing, commons and open source into the material world).

    This text would be the continuation of the last keynote lecture at the conference of ISEA2010 held by Harald Welzer and Marko Peljhan. The initial diagnosis of the world today (reffering to Harald Welzer) is that we acctually all know what is to be done, even in various geopolitical contexts (social equality, equal possibilities, ecological and climate issues, decolonialization …) but the question remains why we do not do it. Harald Welzer forms the clue around our indiference, the others proposed (among them Marina Grzinic, Slavoj Žižek…) that the clue for that is hidden in omnipresence of mass media, what acctually results in indiference as well.

    With this paper I would like to propose that the clue – for our indiference, an emotional domain as well, for our not-doing, and the basic difference between us as individuals – is hiding in the sphere of emotional inteligence and emotions. In the lack of emotional awarness, of talking, discussing, theorizing and writing about it.

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