Keynote Conversation: Anxious to Make

New technological and business frameworks such as Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things entail an unprecedented integration of cybernetics, large-scale industrial production, urban development, and DIY media culture.

Physical infrastructures, people and cycles of production become implicated in networked environments that facilitate processes of automation and efficiency, which are the essential building blocks of global capitalism.The term “maker culture” was originally connected to assumed creative and democratizing capacities of digital fabrication, distribution and automation. But what do we mean when we speak of a contemporary maker culture? The speakers in this keynote conversation will focus on the historical and political agency of the maker and of making in different situations, scales, and temporalities, from the workplace to the networked city.