Diffractions Collective: The Drone and Urban Space

The drone integrates the functions of a means designed for the destruction and eradication of urban communities and aerial slaughter, with the functions of a reconnaissance and refined tool that has managed to revive interest in contaminated and excluded zones. Additionally, it demonstrates its potential as a means for building dwellings and has proven its capabilities in surveying land and properties, as it is used to gather data and images suitable for market purposes. The seminar will address this diverse nature of the drone, clarifying and raising questions about our ability to assess its impacts on urban centers and inquiring how this technology transforms our approach to architecture. How does the drone, through its destructive, constructive, and monitoring capabilities, transform urban space?


Guests of the debate:
Louis Armand is a writer, visual artist, and theorist. He currently leads the Centre for Critical & Cultural Theory at Charles University. He is the author of the books Videology (2015), The Organ-Grinder's Monkey (2013), Event States: Discourse, Time, Mediality (2007), Literate Technologies: Language, Cognition, Technicity (2006), Incendiary Devices: Discourses of the Other (2006), Solicitations: Essays on Criticism and Culture (2005), and Technē: James Joyce, Hypertext and Technology (2003), as well as several edited volumes. Armand is a member of the editorial board of Rhizomes: Studies in Cultural Knowledge and founding editor of the online journal HJS (Hypermedia Joyce Studies) and the journal VLAK.
Vít Bohal studied critical and cultural theory at Charles University. He is a member of the Prague-based group Diffractions Collective, which focuses on topics such as accelerationism, posthumanism, geophilosophy, and critical theory. His texts have appeared in journals such as VLAK, VICE, A2, Word Addict, and Tvar; together with Dustin Breitling and Václav Janoščík, he edited the book Reinventing Horizons (Prague 2016), and in collaboration with Dustin Breitling, published the work Allegorithms (Prague 2017).
Dustin Breitling earned a master's degree in geopolitics from Charles University in Prague. He is a member of Diffractions Collective. He curated Thanatropic Regressions (2014), an installation focused on the significance of accelerationism approached through the theoretical spectrum of geophilosophy, and also organized the project Frontiers of Solitude (2016). He is co-editor of the books Reinventing Horizons (Prague 2016, with Vít Bohal and Václav Janoščík) and Allegorithms (Prague 2017, with Vít Bohal).
Casey Carr is a security theorist currently working at Amazon and a member of Diffractions Collective. Carr studied International Conflict and Security at the University of Kent in Brussels. He also studied at New York University in Prague, where he focused primarily on the social and psychological aspects of disaster, conflict, and crisis. His research includes both individual and collective processes of radicalization, with his current work focusing on Islamic political activism and radicalization in Belgium. He writes about hybrid wars, terrorism, the complexity applied to warfare, and science fiction.
Diffraction Collective was established as a platform for critical discussions about art and algorithms in 2013. It has evolved into a collective collaboration at the intersection of accelerationist philosophy, technology, politics, semiotic economy, and conflict.
The discussion will include a four-channel video by Tomáš Mládka.
The debate, which will take place in English, is part of the program of the exhibition Forensic Architecture: The Architecture of Conflict.

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