Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 72

(online) presence and cultural capital are of course the easiest to discover
and reach. Focusing mainly on these carries the risk of obscuring other
potential participants who might not have a digital presence or be identified
as professional artists. Ultimately, this issue of unintentional preferentialism
can also limit the potential of digital projects, such as Autopoiesis, to offer
a platform for diverse voices and eclectic expressions. As such, one of the
important tasks for Autopoiesis was to find ways to overcome the material and
local limitations and reach out to individuals and groups who lack access
to Internet technologies and online spaces. This task necessitated looking
beyond the project’s own networks and associations and recognizing the
bias (even unintentional) inherent in the act of overlying on certain digital
platforms and privileging those already connected. Finding collaborators
on the ground who are able to directly access groups and communities, who
would otherwise be hard to reach digitally, was key to achieving a greater
level of diverse contributions and to the fulfillment (partially at least) of
Autopoiesis’ objectives. �
What the above reflections indicate is that any digital space or project,
regardless of how global and networked it is, remains subject to similar local
considerations and material constraints as is the case with physical spaces
and projects. The virtual is by no means disembodied and digital media are
“material objects in their own right”, as Witcomb (����) puts it. In other
words, digitally enabled cultural processes and Web �.� platforms cannot be
understood without considering the spatial settings and material realities of
their contexts.
In their article on the relationship between digitization, materiality,
and cultural artefacts, Peteri and her colleagues (����) argue that the
popularization of the Internet and computer technologies in general
has managed to reveal “how ‘virtual’ practices don’t exist apart from the
everyday material practices”. In the case of Autopoiesis, this relates to how
�.
For instance, Autopoiesis connected with the Gulf Labor organization in the hope of soliciting
submissions of artworks that address issues of migrant workers. As mentioned earlier, the organization
is a coalition of activist artists and has been successful in attracting international attention to the
human rights issues concerning the construction of the Saadiyat Island. It has the advantage of
direct contact on the ground with workers themselves and, as such, is able to document creatively
their everyday experiences. One of the primary aims of Gulf Labor (����) is indeed to make “visible”
that which has been removed from public view and from local policies. This is mainly the case of
construction workers who have been instrumental to the building of the UAE and yet remained
excluded from its citizenry. As such, connecting with Gulf Labor and its activist work opens up a
further channel of outreach for Autopoiesis, facilitating forms of cultural participation and expression
that are not reliant solely on online and digital platforms but also on physical and face-to-face
communication with laborers and other relevant groups.
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