Articles by: Maria-Cecilia Quadri

Maria-Cecilia Quadri studied Media Art and Theatre at the Zurich University of the Arts. As a freelance curator and dramaturge, she questions the notion of authorship. She seeks collaborative work, participating in projects such as SchwarzenbachKomplex and Raum//Station in Zurich (2016-20), a project space where she co-develops the series Digital Narrations. Quadri has worked as a cultural mediator at the Volksbühne Berlin, TanzPlanOst and the Theater Spektakel Zurich. In addition to her curatorial work, she is co-managing director of the think and act tank Institut Neue Schweiz INES, which works at the intersection of science, activism, and cultural politics to deal with post-migration, anti-racism, and diversity.

01-Dec-2022

Democratise the Cyberspace!

Democratise the Cyberspace!

‘Democratise the Cyberspace!’ is a personal reflection on the larger technological developments that fundamentally shape how we tell stories. It draws on discourses from media theory, art, activism, and media. I describe three phenomena that I identify as failures and errors, reflecting on how they influence storytelling. The first is the invisibilities of subjects and their lives that accompany these technological developments, which are reinforced along imperial and postcolonial axes. The second error is the public’s widespread digital illiteracy due to a lack of a broader discourse and the manifestation of micro-temporal processing in digital devices. The final error is the potential for distortion of realities through artificial intelligence and the overreliance on the accuracy of numbers. The essay ends with a suggestion of how cultural workers can face these shortcomings.