CRISES OF
VECTORIAL
ECOSYSTEM
What we do
"Crises of Vectorial Ecosystem" is a 2021-2022 University of California working group that seeks to address questions of labor, capital, environmental, and media crises at the intersections of digital networks, supply chain capitalism, and state-corporate extractivism. We emerge in the time of pandemic capitalism with the hope to engage with varying scholarly and activist models of inquiry to better understand and reimagine the ongoing crises as they intersect with our (im)material relationships with vectorial ecosystems.
The collective is highly interdisciplinary, with members from fields including cinema and media studies, science and technology studies, anthropology, geography, communication, culture studies, global studies, and area studies. Some common keywords of interest include: "capitalism," "extraction," "supply chain," "vector," "risk," "vulnerability," "infrastructure," "zone," "proxy," "resources," "energy," "repair," "care," "operation," "media," "community," "alternatives," "mediation," "geopolitics," and "power."
We host a variety of regular events such as reading groups and talks, and are working toward facilitating writing groups, symposiums, conference panels, and journal special issues.
The collective is highly interdisciplinary, with members from fields including cinema and media studies, science and technology studies, anthropology, geography, communication, culture studies, global studies, and area studies. Some common keywords of interest include: "capitalism," "extraction," "supply chain," "vector," "risk," "vulnerability," "infrastructure," "zone," "proxy," "resources," "energy," "repair," "care," "operation," "media," "community," "alternatives," "mediation," "geopolitics," and "power."
We host a variety of regular events such as reading groups and talks, and are working toward facilitating writing groups, symposiums, conference panels, and journal special issues.
Team
ZIZI
LI
LI
Co-organizer
Zizi is a PhD candidate in Film, Television, and Digital Media at UCLA. She works on the relationships between media and extraction broadly construed, with a particular attention to the layered extraction of natural/human resources and racialized/gendered labor required by the operation of digital economy. Her dissertation project “Influencer Ecosystem: Labor and Infrastructure of and beyond Digital Platforms, 2010-Present” uses fashion influencers as a site to elucidate the connections between digital/media industry and supply chain networks.
SURYANSU
GUHA
GUHA
Co-organizer
Suryansu is a PhD student at the Department of Film Television and Digital Media in UCLA. He has taught in Delhi University as an adjunct faculty for a few years. His research focuses primarily on the intersections of Silicon Valley and Global Film Industries. His doctoral work is specifically about the intermediary agencies/organizations and workers that operate in the interstices of regional, global and local over-the-top streaming platforms and the various film and video industries in California and South Asia.
Our growing list of participants include:
Zachary Frial (UCLA), Sam Gaffney (UCSD), Gabriel Grill (UM Ann Arbor), Pujita Guha (UCSB), Suryansu Guha (UCLA), Jacob Hagelberg (UCD), Tianhui Huang (USC), Emmelle Israel (UCLA), Yandong Li (UW Seattle), Zizi Li (UCLA), Wentao Ma (UCSD), Nashra Mahmood (UCLA), Charlotte Orzel (UCSB), Alessandra Rosen (UCLA), Paula Santa Rosa (UCSD), Kun Xian Shen (UCLA), Nikki Turner (UCSD), Verónica Uribe del Águila (UCSD), Meg Wiessner (NYU), and Tinghao Zhou (UCSB).
Please contact Zizi (zzl1995@ucla.edu) or Suryansu (suryan18@g.ucla.edu) if you want to join our working group.
Upcoming Events
MAY
Speaker: Professor Lily Irani (UCSD)
Affirming Good Sense: Logistical Scholarship as Praxis
A Workshop with Prof. Lily Irani
05/03/2022, 5-7pm PDT
Hybrid: In-person at UCLA / Zoom
05/03/2022, 5-7pm PDT
Hybrid: In-person at UCLA / Zoom
Event detail forthcoming...
This event is co-hosted by the Crises of Vectorial Ecosystem working group and the colloquium of Department of Film, Television and Digital Media at UCLA. We would like to extend our thanks to Professor Kriss Ravetto and Professor Bryan Wuest for making this possible.
This event is co-hosted by the Crises of Vectorial Ecosystem working group and the colloquium of Department of Film, Television and Digital Media at UCLA. We would like to extend our thanks to Professor Kriss Ravetto and Professor Bryan Wuest for making this possible.
MAY
Dinner and Gathering
05/03/2022, after 7pm PDT
a celebratory dinner and informal networking gathering for working group participants and guests.
This event is hosted by the Crises of Vectorial Ecosystem working group and co-sponsored by the Department of Film, Television and Digital Media at UCLA. We would like to extend our thanks to Professor Kriss Ravetto for making this possible.
This event is hosted by the Crises of Vectorial Ecosystem working group and co-sponsored by the Department of Film, Television and Digital Media at UCLA. We would like to extend our thanks to Professor Kriss Ravetto for making this possible.
Past Events
MAR
Professor Nucho shared with us how her first book Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon: Infrastructures, Public Services, and Power (2016) bridges to her new project on “post-grid imaginaries,” and the emergence of home backup battery systems and microgrids in the context of the transition to renewable energy in California.
Pre-circulated Materials:
Pre-circulated Materials:
- Introduction chapter to Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon
- The Narrow Streets of Bourj Hammoud Trailer and Map Drawings
- "Pandemics in the Post-Grid Imaginary," The Immanent Frame
Speaker: Professor Joanne Randa Nucho (Pomona College)
Post Grid Imaginaries:
03/14/2022, 11:30am PT
Generators, Microgrids and Energy Transition from Beirut to California
NOV
The so-called 'logistics revolution' was not a revolution at all. Paying attention to accounts of social rebellion, unrest, and refusal in port, on board ships, and along the supply chain, Professor Charmaine Chua argues that what has come to be known as supply chain capitalism must be understood as a reactive and counter-revolutionary force.
Pre-circulated Materials:
1. "The Ever Given and the Monstrosity of Maritime Capitalism" (Charmaine Chua, Boston Review, May 2021)
2. "Do You Remember Counterrevolution?" (Paolo Virno)
Pre-circulated Materials:
1. "The Ever Given and the Monstrosity of Maritime Capitalism" (Charmaine Chua, Boston Review, May 2021)
2. "Do You Remember Counterrevolution?" (Paolo Virno)
Speaker: Professor Charmaine Chua (UCSB)
The Logistics Counter-revolution:
11/22/2021, 2pm PT
Fast Circulation, Slow Violence and Decolonial Struggle along the Transpacific Supply Chain
OCT
Core Material: Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism (2020, Duke UP) -- Introduction and Chapter 4
Optional Reading: Jake Alimahomed‐Wilson and Spencer Potiker, “The logistics of occupation: Israel's colonial suppression of Palestine's goods movement infrastructure,” Journal of Labor and Society (2017).
Optional Reading: Jake Alimahomed‐Wilson and Spencer Potiker, “The logistics of occupation: Israel's colonial suppression of Palestine's goods movement infrastructure,” Journal of Labor and Society (2017).
Speaker: N/A
October Reading Group
10/30/2021, 11am PT
OCT
Speaker: Jacob Hagelberg (UCD)
10/14/2021, 11:15 am PT
Paper Workshop #1
In this event, we workshopped working group participant Jacob Hagelberg's working chapter "So Creepy It Must Be True": Projecting China's Social Credit System into Black Mirror.
Key respondents include Sam Gaffney, Pujita Guha, and Suryansu Guha.
Key respondents include Sam Gaffney, Pujita Guha, and Suryansu Guha.
SEPT
Speaker: Professor Nicole Starosielski (NYU)
09/20/2021, 11am PT
Climate Crisis and the End of the Internet
In this event, Professor Nicole Starosielski presented her work-in-progress, which features several provocative, speculative polemics on how the ongoing climate change will alter the Internet ecologically, logistically, and geopolitically.
Pre-circulated Materials:
1. Introduction to the newly published collection Assembly Codes: The Logistics of Media (2021, Duke UP) co-edited by Matthew Hockenberry, Nicole Starosielski, and Susan Zieger.
Pre-circulated Materials:
1. Introduction to the newly published collection Assembly Codes: The Logistics of Media (2021, Duke UP) co-edited by Matthew Hockenberry, Nicole Starosielski, and Susan Zieger.
AUG
Materials:
1. Rafico Ruiz's Slow Disturbance: Infrastructural Mediation on the Settler Colonial Resource Frontier (2021, Duke UP) -- Introduction & one chapter of your choice
Other Materials of Interest:
1. Rahul Mukherjee's Radiant Infrastructures (2020)
2. Anna Tsing's Friction (2005)
3. Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox's Roads (2015)
4. The edited collection The Promise of Infrastructure (2018)
1. Rafico Ruiz's Slow Disturbance: Infrastructural Mediation on the Settler Colonial Resource Frontier (2021, Duke UP) -- Introduction & one chapter of your choice
Other Materials of Interest:
1. Rahul Mukherjee's Radiant Infrastructures (2020)
2. Anna Tsing's Friction (2005)
3. Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox's Roads (2015)
4. The edited collection The Promise of Infrastructure (2018)
Speaker: N/A
August Reading Group
08/27/2021, 9am PT
JUL
Each participants pre-circulated some relevant materials to our own research interests in advance. We had a productive discussion and got to know each other's research better. Some materials discussed include: Keller Easterling's "Zone: The Spatial Softwares of Extrastatecraft," Mukul Kumar's "Disassembling Coal: Finance Capital, Environmental Law, and the Right to Information in South India," Minh-Ha T. Pham's "A World Without Sweatshops: Abolition Not Reform," and Juan Llamas-Rodriguez's "A Global Cinematic Experience: Cinépolis, Film Exhibition, and Luxury Branding."
Speaker: N/A
Welcome Event
07/29/2021, 9am PT
This project is supported in part by the University of California Office of the President MRPI funding M21PR3286. All related events are co-sponsored by the UC Humanities Research Institute.
Contact us:
zzl1995@ucla.edu (Zizi Li)
suryan18@g.ucla.edu (Suryansu Guha)
suryan18@g.ucla.edu (Suryansu Guha)
