Discriminating Data with Wendy Chun and Hito Steyerl

In her book ‘Discriminating Data‘ (2021), Wendy Chun reveals how polarization is a goal — not an error — within big data and machine learning. These methods, she argues, encode segregation, eugenics, and identity politics through their default assumptions and conditions. Hito Steyerl and Wendy Chun will discuss how can people release themselves from the vice-like grip of discriminatory data and consider alternative algorithms, defaults, and interdisciplinary coalitions in order to desegregate networks.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is the Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media at Simon Fraser University, and leads the Digital Democracies Institute which was launched in 2019. She studied Systems Design Engineering and English Literature and is author of Control and Freedom (2006), Programmed Visions (2011), and Updating to Remain the Same (2016).

Hito Steyerl works as a filmmaker, philosopher, and cultural critic. Her work takes the form of essays, lectures, installations, video, and photography. She is professor for experimental film and video and the co-founder of the Research Center for Proxy Politics at the Berlin University of the Arts.

In English

Organized by: Stanford-Leuphana Winter Academy on Humanities and Media and the Centre for Digital Cultures of Leuphana University Lüneburg in cooperation with the ICI Berlin.

How to attend: Video-meeting with the possibility of audiovisual participation (please register, using this form). Public livestream on this page with the possibility to ask questions via chat (no registration required).