A workshop with Paola Torres Núñez del Prado, Alex McLean, Dave Griffiths, Julian Rohrhuber.
When speaking of “formalisms”, we mostly think of formulas written in a symbolic text. When speaking of “the necessary formalities”, however, we know that we may not only write, but also act formally.
Formalisation has been practiced in many different media, and many cultural contexts, in the form of specific patterns. They seem to always come into play at particular occasions, where they fulfil some sort of “function of formality”. In ritual, bureaucracy, politeness, in transmission and translation, in prediction and calculation, in recording ownership, obligations and debt.
Considering technologies like the Andean Khipu and accounting politics in Cornish mines let us get involved in the particularity of form and learn how to think in its matter. This exchange may help understand new facets of what it means to “be formal” and question premises of textual formalisation, reappropriating it for nonhegemonic purposes.
Workshop of the Epistemic Media Research Group, Institute for Music and Media Düsseldorf, 31 January 2026, 11-17:30, a place for a lunch in the vicinity will be found and decided together.
Registration (free of charge):
Julian.Rohrhuber at rsh-duesseldorf.de
Links:
https://klang-und-realitaet.rsh-duesseldorf.de/
Dave Griffiths (thentrythis)