How to deconstruct and transform digital infrastructures through practices of hacking, queering, countering, and resisting
We are excited to invite you to this summer’s Lecture Series on “Unstitching Datafication”. Inspired by the seam ripper figure and historical forms of technological resistance, we invited eight guest speakers from the arts, activism and academia to explore how digital technologies can be un- and re-stitched by working on their seams.
→ Website of the Lecture Series
About the lecture series
“Unstitching Datafication” means deconstructing and transforming digital technologies by working on their ‘seams’. This means examining the social and economic relations and how they have been and can be reconfigured by technology. We invited eight speakers from arts, activism, and academia to explore the limits of digital technology and discuss what it means to intentionally create seams, ruptures, and breakdowns within digital technologies and infrastructures. Even partial unstitching generates holes in the digital fabric that expose the inner workings of opaque digital systems. These holes create openings and opportunities to intervene in structures and algorithmic logic, allowing us to envision utopian futures and alternative digitalities.
The lecture series uses the figure of the seam ripper, or unstitcher, as a textile metaphor to permeate the digital realm, drawing inspiration from previous research: Mark Weiser’s notion of ubiquitous computing famously rests on the ideal of seamless data transfer, devices inform net-work connections, and the World Wide Web remains the most expansive digital fabric. The connection between weaving and computing runs deep. Ellen Harlizius-Klück called automatic weaving a “binary art”, which paved the way for one of the first machines to be operated by punched cards: the Jacquard loom in the early 19th century.
Using the figure of the unstitcher, we understand glitches and noise, the unintended yet often revealing features of digital systems, as options for productive resistance, disconnection, and subversion. Media theory, human geography, gender studies, and critical theory understand these moments as “glitch epistemologies” (Leszczynski & Elwood), “glitch politics” (Alvarez Léon), “queer counter conduct” (Lingel) or even “anti-fascist approach to artificial intelligence” (McQuillan). The often unassuming actions of resistance or obfuscation that lead to the unstitching and, ultimately, to the unravelling of digital processes expose the inherent fragility of digital systems and create spaces for creative interventions and counteraction.
Yet, instead of emphasizing the ‘textility’ of our digital world, the eight lectures focus on how to disrupt the digital world and the seams and frictions of datafication, where knowledge emerges, and resistance takes shape. Building on ‘unstitching datafication’, the series examines the flaws and breakdowns in the supposedly seamless connectivity of today’s technologies.
Lectures & Speakers
We invited eight guest speakers from the arts, activism and academia. They come from the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, USA, Germany and Great Britain. In their lectures, they will focus on practices that can challenge, disrupt, and reconfigure existing norms and structures within digital environments where the sensing and sense-making of people, media, and sensors become intertwined. Thus, our speakers will move beyond the destructive aspect inherent to unstitching seams and networks and instead ask how digital technologies can be unstitched through hacking, queering, countering, and resisting datafication and ‘data colonialism’ – be it through technical manipulations, artistic interventions, or activist action.
#1 Luddite Futures
Wed, 16.04.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Gavin Mueller (University of Amsterdam) ➞
#2 Queer Tactics of Opacity: Resisting Public Visibility and Identification on Sexual Social Media Platforms
Wed, 07.05.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Jenny Sundén (Södertörn University Stockholm) ➞
#3 De/Tangling Resolution
Wed, 14.05.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Rosa Menkman (HEAD Genève) ➞
#4 Against ‘Method’ or How to Assume a ‘Differend’
Wed, 21.05.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
David Gauthier (Utrecht University) ➞
#5 Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back
Wed, 28.05.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Ulises A. Mejias (SUNY Oswego) ➞
#6 Glitchy Vignettes From Agricultural Repair Shops
Wed, 18.06.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Alina Gombert (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a. M.) ➞
#7 Affects Beyond Our Technological Desires
Wed, 02.07.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss (HKW Berlin) ➞
#8 Decomputing as Resistance
Wed, 16.07.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Dan McQuillan (Goldsmiths, University of London) ➞
Event Details
- Dates: April 16 – July 16, 2025
- Location: University of Siegen, Herrengarten 3, Room: AH-A 217/18
- Streaming: via Webex
- Time: Wednesdays, 2:15 AM – 3:45 PM CET
How to Register
All events take place in hybrid form (on-site and via Webex). No registration is required if you would like to attend on-site. To attend the lecture online via Webex, please register here →
For more information about the program and detailed schedule, visit the lecture series’ website.
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#CRC2025 #Unstitching #glitch #DataColonialism #luddism
Thank you, and we hope to see you there!
Literature
Alvarez Léon, L. F. (2022). “From glitch epistemologies to glitch politics.” Dialogues in Human Geography 12(3), 384-388, DOI: 10.1177/20438206221102951.
Harlizius-Klück, E. (2017). “Weaving as Binary Art and the Algebra of Patterns.” TEXTILE 15(2), 176–197, DOI: 10.1080/14759756.2017.1298239.
Leszczynski, A., & Elwood, S. (2022). “Glitch epistemologies for computational cities.” Dialogues in Human Geography 12(3), 361-378, DOI: 10.1177/20438206221075714.
Lingel, J. (2020). “Dazzle camouflage as queer counter conduct.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 24(5), 1107-1124, DOI: 10.1177/1367549420902805.
McQuillan, D. (2022). Resisting AI: An Anti- Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
