This article examines the origins not only of the media that underlie logistical operation, but the techniques that have shaped and structured them. To do so, I focus on the logistical technique of assembly. Not just of parts, but of places and people. Assembly, here, becomes an ur-mediative technique, one produced both before and beside the attendant media functions of storage and transmission. Long before its instantiation in the operations of contemporary software systems, I examine how this logistical technique emerged in the confines of sites like the ancient storehouse. As I do, I consider how the abstract forms of mediation developed there made warehouses accessible as a new kind of virtual assembly, precipitating the instrumental order critical to the operation of the global supply chain.
Category: Announcements
In the chapter “Telephone, Color Chart, Napkin: The “Logistical Legacies of the Bauhaus” in Laura Forlano, Molly Wright Steenson, and Mike Ananny’s Bauhaus Futures, out now with MIT Press: “Hockenberry engages with the logistical legacies of the Bauhaus and their implications for the future of remote production in artistic practice and industrial manufacturing…considering the Bauhaus […]
Supply & Command is a wrap. I wanted to make this post to thank all of the presenters and attendees for joining us to share their wonderful work, and for thinking with us on the relationship between logistics, labor, and media. It was an incredibly motivating and intellectually invigorating two days, full of insightful discussions […]
Happy to announce a conference on supply chains and logistics we are organizing this Spring at NYU. Full details here.
The editors of LIMN were kind enough to let me contribute a small historical overview to the recent Food Infrastructures issue. While I’m no expert in food studies (other than in the eating of it), I think it serves as a reasonable primer (particularly with regard to packaging, production, distribution, and data) for the articles […]
I’ve been impressed by the curatorial capabilities (or rather, the curatorial popularity) of tumblr. While I can’t hope to achieve the same level of precision as my favorite tumblr sites, I think I can do an adequate enough job with a slightly broader remit. I’ve created Logistical Fictions as a means of: Indexing the fictional […]
Hey everyone, just wanted to direct you over to Material World, where we just put out a bit of a refresh. This includes the Occasional Paper Series, the latest of which is on Properties & Social Imagination, edited by Adam Drazin, Haidy Geismar and Camilla Sundwall and designed by Camilla Sundwall and Miffy Yang. Here’s […]