Digital Ascetic – CMCI Conference Kings College

I’m presenting a paper titled Becoming Invisble: Towards a Digital Ascetic at Kings College as part of (In)Visible Cultures conference organised by the Center for Media and Creative Industries. It draws parallels between the tensions inherent in the 11-12th century catholic church, between form of life as advocated by St Francis and rule of life as advocated by the wider Roman Curia and the tension between freedom of expression and control in contemporary networked culture. It then argues for a contemporary, digital asceticism that allows for both individual fulfilment and networked co-operation. The paper references Agamben’s The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and the Form of Life along with the first volume of Bernard Stielger’s Symbolic Misery Series. I also draw in Galloway’s observations on the difficulty of establishing a machine poetics outlines in The Interface Effect and offer up asceticism as a potential solution.

The conference is on the 12th/13thof June – Info here

Update: Here’s a link to the paper.