Complicity

Occupy, Commons and other social experiments show: New collectivities are invented and tested. Gesa Ziemer enriches this debate through the insight that in the process, the reinterpretation of old forms of joint action can play an essential role. By looking at complicities in art, science and economy, ongoing collectivization is exposed. Complicity means the committing of an act together, so the definition of criminal law. But for a long time now the concept has also been targeted at legal collective actions - mainly in innovative environments. Individuals act jointly in an intensely affective way - albeit only temporarily, bindingly in common - but still individually, inventively - and at the same time in a goal-oriented manner.

Gesa Ziemer (Prof. Dr. phil.) is Professor of Cultural Theory and Vice President of Research at the HafenCity University in Hamburg. She is Director of the City Science Lab, a cooperation with the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, and Spokesperson of the post-graduate program »Performing Citizenship«.