At the initiative of WP 2 and WP 5, Irena Charwilska, Rick Dolphijn and Raúl Matta set up a monthly close-reading seminar📖 which will be used to give rise to the key concepts of the CONVIVIUM PROJECT, to read those texts in which it is creatively launched and to get inspiration from artworks that somehow deal with these issues and make us think💡.

The fourth reading seminar, chaired by Raúl Matta from the Institut Lyfe Research Center, focused on the concept of “convivial technologies”.

Our capitalistic society is overloaded with technologies we are meant to master and use to carry out our will. Yet, more often than not, it is the opposite: we embrace technologies with a false impression of freedom and control, unaware that, in reality, we are acting against our personal autonomy. A growing number of us are experiencing the feeling that it’s not we who control the tool but that it’s the tool that controls us. However, people and technologies also come together not to exert power against each other but to cooperate in interaction.

The CONVIVIUM Reading Group IV discussed the importance of designing “convivial technologies”, those which “preserve or enhance ecosystems, enable users’ autonomy and control, disrupt unequal power relationships and are robust and durable” (Vetter, 2018). We commented the article “The Matrix of Convivial Technology” by Andrea Vetter in connection with the seminal work by Ivan Illich “Tools for Conviviality”. The topic was illustrated by real-life applications of convivial technologies by alternative farmers in the land, and by artists in exhibition spaces.