JCU Welcomes Professor Vladan Joler for a Talk on Critical Cartography

John Cabot University's Department of Communication and Media Studies welcomed Professor Vladan Joler for a talk called "Critical Cartography of Technology and Power Across Space and Time," on April 3, 2024. The talk was part of the Spring 2024 edition of the Digital Delights and Disturbances (DDD) lecture series, which has been dubbed "Decolonize! Digital Delights & Disturbances," and features a journey through technology with a decolonial and anticolonial gaze, weaving through the intricate narratives of race, gender, and our planet's wellbeing.

The year's Digital Delights and Disturbances (DDD) lecture series is in collaboration with NERO magazine. In addition, all the DDD events from now on will be organized in collaboration with CRiTT (Centro Tecnoculture Transnazionali), a new interuniversity center that has been launched in collaboration with the University of Naples "L'Orientale," the University of Venice "Ca' Foscari," and the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence.

Critical cartography is one of the possible methods to examine, explore, and think about the relations between technology and power, not just to document and visualize those relations but also as a toolbox that can enable people to rethink underlying concepts and meanings. Calculating Empires, an artwork that Professor Joler produced in collaboration with critical AI scholar Kate Crawford, and recently exhibited at Fondazione Prada in Milan, examines, maps, and critiques the relationship between technology and power over the last five centuries. Like a detailed circuit diagram, it follows the imperial pathways of power across many systems - colonialism, militarization, automation, and enclosure - to show how they still subjugate and how they might be unwound.

Vladan Joler is co-founder of SHARE Foundation and professor at the New Media Department of the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. He is the head of SHARE Lab, a research and data investigation lab for exploring different technical and social aspects of algorithmic transparency, digital labor exploitation, invisible infrastructures, black boxes, and many other contemporary phenomena at the intersection of technology and society.