Quaero Forum at the Jan van Eyck Academie

Forum on Quaero
A public think tank on the politics of the search engine
Saturday 29 - Sunday 30 September 2007

Book tickets now [email protected]

Florian Cramer, Jodi Dean, Frederic Martel, Ingmar Weber, Isabelle Stengers, Bureau d’Etudes, Metahaven, Tsila Hassine, Open Search, Michael Zimmer, Richard Rogers, Florian Schneider, Maurits de Bruijn, Sabine Niederer, Andre Nusselder

Quaero: isn’t that the search engine that former French president Jacques Chirac declared to be the European challenge to Google? A public alternative to Silicon Valley-born commercial search engines, funded by the French state, in service of the public good, in the true tradition of the grand projet? An information machine capable of reclaiming European language and intellectual heritage in the age of globalization?
No. Quaero is the name of a consortium of technology firms and research labs working together on multimedia and web search projects. It is a state-sponsored effort to stimulate private French technological competitiveness.
But still, the issues that the idea of Quaero has raised - since its public launch by the former French president - constitute a formidable challenge. Internet search engines are political projects proper if only because they give and take power; they represent science, technology, (trans)national politics, private enterprise, culture, territoriality and language in ever different combinations.

On 29 and 30 September 2007, the Jan van Eyck Academie, in collaboration with the Maison Descartes, Institut Francais des Pays-Bas, organizes the Forum on Quaero, taking the concept of the search engine as a pubic project as a starting point.
Search engines’ indexation methods inevitably lead to moments of inclusion and exclusion (sometimes by hands-on censorship). Search engines closely monitor their users’ behaviour and offer additional services, retrieving and storing increasing amounts of private information from them. The majority of web search is carried out through only a few, very large corporate search engines which communicate ideas about their role in the world via their brand identities. These may lead to distorted impressions of what the commercial search engine as a institution really entails. This conference aims to bridge the gap between politics, policies and practices in the field of web search. Some questions:
• What are the politics of the structure and image of search engines and their technologies?
• To what extent have search engines like Google, which started from the ideal of access to information, become the modus operandi of political bias? Can we envisage scenarios for the search engine as a public domain institution?
• What kind of hierarchy (if any) should be implemented when deciding what should go into a search engine’s database, and what is left out?
• Can contemporary web practices tackle the conventional static models used to archive and present (institutional) concepts of cultural heritage and democracy?
• Collaborative and participatory methods are increasingly placing the Demos as the force that structures information. Can we work towards a ‘politics of code & categorization’ that allows plural interpretations of data to coexist and enrich each other?
• How can concepts of digital and networked European cultural heritage reflect the political and social issues related to Europe’s changing borders?
The Forum encourages and facilitates audience participation; it is meant as a public think tank, a live sketchbook around new questions for the search engine.

Programme

Saturday 29 September
Moderator: Florian Cramer

11:00 > 11:10 Welcome by Florian Cramer
11:10 > 11:15 Intro
11:15 > 11:45 Michael Zimmer
12:15 > 12:45 Florian Schneider

12:50 > 13:50 Lunch

13:50 > 14:35 Metahaven
14:40 > 15:00 Tsila Hassine
15:05 > 15:35 Ingmar Weber

15:35 > 16:00 Break

16:30 > 17:10 Respondents: Isabelle Stengers, Maurits de Bruijn, Sabine Niederer, Andre Nusselder
17:10 > 18:30 Forum Part One
Round Table with all speakers, respondents and audience, moderated by Florian Cramer

18.30 > Drinks and dinner

Sunday 30 September
Moderator: Florian Schneider

10:00 > 10:10 Welcome by Florian Schneider
10:10 > 10:15 Intro
10:15 > 10:45 Bureau d’Etudes
10:50 > 11:20 Frederic Martel
11:25 > 11:55 Richard Rogers

12:00 > 13:00 Lunch

13:00 > 13:30 Florian Cramer
13:35 > 14:05 Open Search
14:10 > 14:40 Jodi Dean

14:45 > 15:15 Break

15:15 > 15:55 Respondents: Isabelle Stengers, Maurits de Bruijn, Sabine Niederer, Andre Nusselder
15:55 > 17:30 Forum Part Two
Round Table with all speakers, respondents and audience, moderated by Florian Schneider

17:30 Drinks - End

Admission
EUR 25 for 2 days, including lunch, dinner, drinks and publication.
Registration
By e-mail to Anne Vangronsveld: [email protected]
Payments
SNS Bank, account no.: 858 2324 05
Stichting Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht
IBAN: NL64 SNSB 0858 2324 05
BIC: SNSB NL 2A
Please put FORUMONQUAERO on your payment.
To be sure of a seat, we kindly ask you to submit your payment before 27 September 2007.

Additional programme information, press information
e-mail Metahaven Design Research: [email protected]
phone: +31 (0)6 24276797 / +31 (0)6 48316543