Nervous Systems: Quantified Life and the Social Question

The catalogue of a 2016 exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, which asks how sensors and data infrastructures bind state, industry and body into systems that register every tremor of power.

The 388-page English-language volume sets contemporary art beside essays, research and historical documents. It examines how big data and digital infrastructure shape governance and social behaviour, and where "the social question" of power and participation surfaces. Contributors include Grégoire Chamayou, Avery F. Gordon, Orit Halpern, Ben Hayes, Tung-Hui Hu, Lawrence Liang, Noortje Marres, Matteo Pasquinelli, Nishant Shah and Mushon Zer-Aviv. Joris and Terry Kritis designed the small, softcover book.

Anselm Franke edited it for HKW with Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski, who are from the Tactical Technology Collective. Spector Books published it in Leipzig in April 2016. Pasquinelli, who writes here, later published The Eye of the Master.