En español:
Conferencia de Contratecnologías en Tierras Limítrofes
(28 y 29 Feb)
Registration is now closed. We are unfortunately at capacity but we welcome you to come by to see if there is space available, as we foresee people will come and go throughout the day. Space is not guaranteed.
February 28, 2020 (Friday) – San Diego
Location:
United Women of East Africa Center,
6523 University Ave., San Diego, CA 92115
(map)
9:30am: Registration
9:50am: Welcome/introduction
10-11:30am: Panel 1: Labor
* What have changing technologies meant for workers livelihoods and well being?
* How are workers responding to these shifts?
* How are workers responding to these shifts?
Introduced by: Aaron Ngan, UCSD
Featuring: Carlos Pelayo, Organizer, Rideshare Drivers United
Mikaiil Hussein, President/CEO, United Taxi Workers of San Diego
Veena Dubal, Associate Professor of Law, U.C. Hastings
Khea Pollard and Cynthia Ajani, Co-Owners, Café X: By Any Beans Necessary
11:30am-12:30pm: Lunch at UWEAST (for attendees who reserved on Eventbrite)
12:30-2pm: Panel 2: En/Countering Policing
*What is the intersection of policing, technology, and race?
*How has the increasing use of surveillance technologies by local police in San Diego and at the US-Mexico border created oppressive and stigmatizing environments for unjustly targeted communities?
*What are the counter-technologies deployed by unjustly targeted communities to end the mass surveillance of their communities?
Introduced by: Henry Pham-Tran, UCSD
Featuring: Mohamed Abumaye, Assistant Professor, Sociology, California State University, San Marcos
Ramla Sahid, Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA)
Graciela Zamudio, Executive Director and Founder, Alma Migrante (Tijuana)
Kelly Gates, Associate Professor of Communication, U.C. San Diego
2-2:15pm: Break
2:15-3:45pm: Panel 3: Making Life in Zones of Abandonment
*Borderlands and militarized landscapes are often rendered as zones of death, destruction and abandonment, but how do these spaces simultaneously become productive of life-affirming practices, labor, care and ethics?
* How do creative modes of life and relationality sprout up in the aftermaths of violence and occupation?
*What kinds of mobilizations–small and large–exceed juridical modes of human rights and humanitarian logics, producing tenuous but new forms of life in these spaces?
*How do individuals and communities not only unsettle coloniality’s negations, but create and cultivate modes of existence, being and thought otherwise?
Introduced by: Mariana Gomez-Hernandez, UCSD
Featuring: Davorn Sisavath, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, California State University, Fresno
Sergio de la Torre, Associate Professor, University of San Francisco
Jennifer Terry, Professor, Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of California, Irvine
3:45-4pm: Tea and Sambusas Break
4-5pm: Roundtable/activity
Introduced by: Cinthia Agredano
Featuring: Alfredo González Reynoso, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California
Kalindi Vora, Associate Professor, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, U.C. Davis
Ricardo Dominguez, Associate Professor, Visual Arts, U.C. San Diego
5pm: Printmaking Workshop with Sergio de la Torre and Chris Treggiari (Sanctuary City Project)
February 29, 2020 (Saturday) – Tijuana
Location:
Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura
Calle Benito Juárez 2da y Constitución s/n, Zona Centro, C.P. 22000, Tijuana, MX
9-10am: Crossing the US-Mexico border, with presentation by David Morison Portillo. Conference participants will meet at Virginia Avenue & Camino de la Plaza. Please read these directions to cross the border.
10:30am-12pm: Panel 4: Borders and Global Militarisms
* What counter/technological dynamics do state projects to secure, surveil, control and impede movement do borders set in motion? Is movement (of matter and of bodies) the key point of counter/technological intervention that borders lead us to focus on, or would you propose another?
* If militarized borders militarize life, how do concretely do they do so? What is the role of, for instance, ritual, repetition, or routine? How does everyday discipline work together with spectacularized violence?
* What opportunities for counter-interventions do these processes afford? What are the points at which the technologies and techniques of militarized borders can be pivoted to counter the intents for which they were invented?
* Finally, to what extent do countertechnologies play the same game established by border technologies? Or to what extent do they truly repurpose “the master’s tools” (in Audrey Lord’s words) to make new forms of life?
Introduced by: Christopher Magana, UCSD
Featuring: Rana A. Sharif, Faculty in Departments of Communication, Gender and Women’s Studies, and the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program at CSU Northridge
Samuel Rivera, Ph.D. Student, Centro de Estudios Antropológicos, El Colegio de Michoacán
Suchitra Vijayan, Founder of The Polis Project
Mael Vizcarra, filmmaker and anthropologist
12-1pm: Lunch *Please note, seats are limited. Reservations required before February 27.
1-2:30pm: Panel 5: Solidarity as Counter-technology
* When is solidarity needed to survive and transform policies and structures?
* When capitalist processes organize who we work and live with, how can solidarity generate unexpected power?
* How do we create and sustain solidarity in our work?
* How do you deal with different privileges and forms of access within your community?
Introduced by: Crystal Romero, UCSD
Featuring: Gaba Cortés, Border Angels
Aidan McKay and Jack Ran, UCSD Solidarity Coalition, United Students against Sweatshops
Yesenia Padilla, Alliance San Diego
Adriana Huerta, Community Health Educator, Employee Rights Center / Justice Overcoming Boundaries
2:30-2:45pm: Break
2:45-4:15pm: Panel 6: Art and Aesthetics at the Edgelands
*Is art a technology? What does this description mean for either term?
*What does it mean to think of art and aesthetics as counter-technologies? What is art’s relationship to visibility and surveillance, for example?
*What concerns about care, making life, and otherwiseness are embedded in your work?
* The border wall is material reality and metaphor, a condition of existence and the instigator of the will to bring it down. What are the artistic and aesthetic interventions that fit the border region, and what are the limitations of art in this place?
* How does border art disturb, provoke or relate to issues of labor and property?
*Does border art nurture and reinforce the wall?
Introduced by: Aidan McKay, UCSD
Featuring: Cognate Collective
Sara Solaimani, Ph.D. Candidate, Visual Arts, U.C. San Diego
Jhonnatan Curiel, Artist, Colectivo Intransigente
David Morison Portillo, Border Looping Project (with Rihan Yeh)
4:15-4:30: Tea Break
4:30-5:30pm: Wrap-up Roundtable
Introduced by: Siddhi Salunke
Featuring: Lorena Gomez Mostajo, editor and photographer,
Visual Arts, U.C. San Diego and Taller California
Amira Jarmakani, Professor, Women’s Studies, San Diego State University
Veena Dubal, Associate Professor of Law, U.C. Hastings
Schedule is subject to change.
email: countertechsdtj@gmail.com
Vision Statement
We hope that you will join us for a conversation that stretches across the various panels and days of the conference.
Co-sponsored by UCSD Institute for Practical Ethics, Design Lab, Division of Social Sciences, Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Center for Global Justice, Communication, History, Visual Arts, Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, Science Studies, Music, Arts and Humanities, International Institute, Institute of Arts and Humanities, Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, SPACES, South Asia Initiative, Cross Cultural Center, Groundwork Books; Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura (Tijuana).
This program is supported in part by a co-sponsorship from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Any views or opinions expressed in this program are solely those of the speaker(s) and/or organizer(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Office of the Vice Chancellor.