Platforms: Around, In Between, and Through/ Edited by Aarti Sunder

Published with the support of Natasha, Singapore Biennale 2022.

Platforms: Around, Inbetween and Through is a collection of texts that will understand abstraction as a defining framework of platforms and platformization. What kind of aesthetic do different nodes of this expansive framework employ, how do we encounter them, and what kind of long-lasting or immediate repercussions do they have? If management (algorithmic, logistical, categorization) and autonomy are one of its key concerns, where do they intersect with labor, desire, law and control? The reason for this book arises from my own research into Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform, and the desire to then open up that focus into the peripheries that constitute platforms and platformization. The book approaches the idea of the platform and platformization (as that which arises from, around, and within the platform) from an expanded and broad context of online–offline relationships that bring bodies (human, non-human and almost human), digital conduits, physical infrastructures, and the marketplace together – a lens with which to view hidden ruptures, spectral shifts, colonial hangovers, and speculative continuities that arise from immediate and lingering economic formations. The aim here is not to offer additional definitions of platforms. It is instead to offer methods of thinking around them, newer ways of perceiving and investigating interactions that stem from them. It seeks to foreground forced and elective interaction across time to investigate nodes where online and offline worlds interact, especially when the repercussions of these global entities have direct and abstract impact on different locals, humans and non-humans (bots, humans characterized as non-human by design or error, and animals). Contributors include Ze Antonio Magalhaes, Noopur Raval, Gary Zhexi Zhang, Mark Graham, John Philip Sage and Aarti Sunder.

English