Participant Info ::: 0xSalon001b ::: Memetics & Mimesis ::: 22/3/2021 + 24/3/2021

# Participant Info ::: 0xSalon001b ::: Memetics & Mimesis ::: 22/3/2021 + 24/3/2021 **Table of Contents** [TOC] **For more general info, visit the [0x Salon main page](https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/).**  ## Overview ### Background On **Monday 22nd** and **Wednesday 24th March**, we will be revisiting the very first salon topic *[0x001: Better Living Through Abstraction?]* for a peer discussion on Memetics & Mimesis. Some themes from the previous salon will filter into our conversation, but the majority of it will engage with content that participants share during the event. ### Salon Format Discussions are meant to be participatory. Our goal with these online salons is to focus on peer discourse with light moderation. Sometimes we like to ground our discussion on particular texts. We also use web chat groups to bounce around ideas ahead of the Salon and keep the discussion going afterwards. [See below](#Event-Specific-Materials) for this session's suggested texts and info about joining the conversation. Occasionally we invite participants to prepare mini-presentations on their current work or area of expertise. ### Important: Discourse Privacy, Chatham House Rule and Recordings 0x Salon aims to foster a relaxed environment where participants feel comfortable speaking freely, and privacy is an important part of maintaining that environment. We follow the [Chatham House Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House_Rule): > When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. For Chatham House to function effectively, the hosts should know who will participate in the conversation in advance.[*](#There-are-of-course-circumstances-where-remaining-anonpseudoanon-is-important-and-can-be-accommodated-Please-email-us-janitor0xsalonxyz-to-discuss) **We ask you to respect this policy when participating in the conversation and please do not bring additional guests into the salon without prior approval.** **Please do not make audio or video recordings of this event.** 0x Salon will make a private recording for archival purposes and we take our responsibilities seriously in ensuring that these recordings do not leak. Writings based on the conversation will published in the 0x Salon web journal, but the video/audio recordings themselves will never be shared publicly. ###### *There are of course circumstances where remaining anon/pseudoanon is important and can be accommodated. Please email us (janitor@0xsalon.xyz) to discuss. --- ### Better Living Through Abstraction? Salon colleagues collectively wrote a provocation in advance of the first 0x Salon in February 2020. Perhaps not our best work, but we had to start somewhere :) >We live in times of liquid modernity. As the pace of life quickens, humans struggle to effectively contextualise the growing deluge of inbound information. Frameworks employing abstraction promise essential insights by challenging pre-existing notions regarding the relationship between representation and underlying form. > In contrast, entropic bias and curiosity compel us to continue abstractio ad absurdum into ontologies resembling dense, striated jungles or barren deserts. Without closing the loop, such meta-analytic procedures are open to criticism from pragmatists for their ultimate inconsequentiality to the everyday. What affordances can we grasp, returning the abstract back into concrete? Since this topic is so broad, our discussion can end up going in many possible directions. We've chosen subtopics as potential focal points, but we don't need to strictly adhere to them. We're more interested in pursuing a lively discussion, no matter where it takes us. ## This Salon's Theme: Memetics & Mimesis ###### *#PostInternet #Virality #AttentionEconomy #Irony #InternetAddiction #OnlineExtremism* For 0x Salon's first venture beyond [our own memetic practice](https://www.instagram.com/0x.salon/) and into a meta-discussion of internet memes, we aim to bring together meme admins and practitioners, researchers and theorists, and casual viewers alike. Our discussion will move beyond the Dawkinsian notion of memetics often invoked in academic discourse and instead center banal internet memes, which circulate between our screens and spread forcefully into the world outside. ## Event-Specific Materials Collectively the 0x Salon hivemind has shared and aggregated dozens of articles on this salon's theme and made them all available via Arena. We want to highlight a short selection of the ones that are most relevant. These texts are **not** essential reading, but they give us some common ground to kick off our conversation. > **Notes Toward the Memes of Production** > Matt Goerzen > https://www.are.na/block/10995310 > > **Post Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production** > Edited by Alfie Bown and Dan Bristow > https://www.are.na/block/10995364 > > **Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right:** Online Actions and Offline Consequences in Europe and the US > Edited by Maik Fielitz and Nick Thurston https://www.are.na/block/10995285 The full collection is available via Arena. **Public Arena Board:** https://www.are.na/0x-salon/2103-memetics-mimesis Message us to collaborate or suggest additional texts. **Telegram group chat** - for participants only: *Link to follow* --- *Special thanks to [Meme Studies Resarch Network](https://www.cdcs.ed.ac.uk/research-clusters/digital-social-science/meme-studies-research-network) and their effort towards collaboratively establishing a meme studies canon, and offering researchers an index of resources that centre memes as their main object of interest.* You can download the most recent version of their reading list here (December 2020): > **Meme Studies Reading List** > https://memestudiesrn.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/meme-studies-reading-list-1.pdf --- ## General ### 0x Salon TL;DR - Salon year-in-review article: https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/42bti71i/ **What is the 0x Salon?** We don't know! But we've been thinking of it recently as an informal, tentacular and post-disciplinary assemblage of entangled concepts and methodologies. The 0x Salon is an experiment in collective discourse and knowledge sharing. The salon began life in [February 2020](https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/bo7ijl6c/) as an occasional event series creating unstructured space for discussion of unusual topics, based at the wonderful [Trust] workspace in Berlin. Despite this past year's challenges, we have convened 9 gatherings in 2020, both physical & virtual. The salon is a no telos zone—everything is plastic and open to question. In part, this experiment is in response to our dissatisfaction with conventional knowledge creation & dissemination paradigms. Colleagues involved in the salon have experience of both traditional and vanguard intellectual environments - editing scholarly journals, organising conferences and workshop programs, and working with art institutions / festivals etc. We wish to mix the old with the new to find fruitful paths forward. We pick new salon topics occasionally and develop them into a mixture of moderated peer discussion and talks with Q&A. Following a series of salons on a topic, we begin to collaboratively [write up articles](https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/it4vigwo/) and [vignettes](https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/0x003-algorithmic-realism-salon-reports) based on the conversations had. Within an overarching topic, a series of salons might convene to explore particular "branches" under the umbrella. An active community of researchers, practitioners, theorists and other knowledge professionals has taken shape around the salon and we are keen to foster and encourage related activities such as salon colleagues' [memetics](https://www.are.na/0x-salon/magic-gallery) and [poetics](https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/kx66y3td) outputs. We don't want the salons to put undue workload pressure on participants or hosts. We want the salons to work for you, not the other way around! For example a salon co-host could use the salon as an opportunity to harness the intellectual capital in the room and work through research problems with a transdisciplinary audience. Participants often meet others interested in similar lines of inquiry and we're keen to see new collaborations and cooperations emerge. **Trust** https://trust.support/about >*0x Salon is supported by Trust as a community organisation. We are closely aligned and there is a great deal of overlap in interests and colleagues.* Trust supports a network of artists, designers, technologists, ecologists and thinkers cross-contaminating the discursive and the practical. Trust invites different forms of participation and shares the created knowledge widely, through membership, public events, a residency programme, live-streamed discussions, working groups, and research reports. ### Documentation + Output ##### *Written Outputs* We have been writing up reports and/or short posts to convey and develop salon conversations for previous topics, and plan to do so for these 0x004 salons too. This is a collaborative process which we open to the salon community, with most of the editorial work and research being done by Wassim and Daniel. - 0x002 *Epistemic Trespassing* Salon Report https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/it4vigwo - 0x003 *Algorithmic Realism* vignettes https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/0x003-algorithmic-realism-salon-reports - 0x005 *The Indifference Engine* poetic critiques https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/kx66y3td - 0x Salon Card Gallery https://www.are.na/0x-salon/magic-gallery  [0x001: Better Living Through Abstraction?]:https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/bo7ijl6c/ [Trust]:https://trust.support/ [telegram]:https://t.me/joinchat/JzQYUhvTd8dI3QvQ85aY4A [twitter]:https://twitter.com/0x_salon [substack]:https://0xsalon.substack.com/ [instagram]:https://www.instagram.com/0x.salon/