Machine Fetish making session

Join us for an afternoon of machine fetish making in preparation for our evening fundraiser!

We’re interested in tech fetishism in all its forms. What exploitative practices lie behind the presentation of technology as sleek and polished commodities? To what extent is the contemporary conflation of ‘technology’ with electric gadgets itself a fetish, one that obscures the full effects and potentials of today’s technics? Or to view things from the other side, could some form of techno-animism be a viable proposition against the neoliberal discourse of user empowerment? And what is at stake in the sexualisation and gendering of hardware and software, with master and slave drives, male-female connectors that serve as conduits for viral contagions?

We don’t propose to give answers to any of those questions, but instead explore them through making, coding, stitching and soldering responses that open them up and provoke new thoughts. Or just look kinda cool – it is only an afternoon workshop after all!

They’ll be a few tools and some materials provided – bring along your own as well, or just bring yourselves! All welcome. Common House is wheelchair accessible, but the toilet isn’t (yet).

Autonomous Tech Fetish (ATF) is an open space for gathering, sharing and making. We explore how digital technology is fetishised and how we can respond – to defetishise it or refetishise into new forms, new configurations that serve our needs and desires. In this way, we can question why technology has been made a certain way? Who has it been made for, and who has been excluded? How does or can it restructure our bodies, minds, desires?