S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E1: Memes as Sympoietic Agents [w/Sophie Publig]
Is there a way to define memes without implicitly memifying everything? We move through the definitional morass of memetics and meme studies towards researcher Sophie Publig’s critical posthumanist account of memes as sympoietic agents. From in-group jokes and troll hoaxes on early image-boards to Tiktok and the GameStop short squeeze, memes’ accelerated lifespans end up leading us to the esoteric mashups and angelcore aesthetics of NetSpi and the peer-review saga of translating “the girls who get it” for academia.
RELATED LINKS
Sophie Publig
https://publig-enemy.neocities.org
Sophie Publig, Bestiarum Memeticum
https://2024.xcoax.org/pdf/publig.pdf
Sophie Publig, The Sympoietic Life of Internet Memes https://phaidra.bibliothek.uni-ak.ac.at/detail/o:72153?SID=29445&actPage=1&type=listview&sortfield=uw.general.title,SCORE&sortreverse=0
Critical Meme Reader III: Breaking the Meme (The Institute of Network Cultures, 2024)
https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/critical-meme-reader-iii-breaking-the-meme
Neja Berger, (un)real data – real effects
https://aksioma.org/podcast/unreal-data
COLOPHON
Host: Neja Berger
Guest: Sophie Publig
Recording: Neja Berger
Music and audio mix: Gašper Torkar
Editing: Neja Berger, Janez Fakin Janša
Are You a Software Update? podcast series
Curated by: Neja Berger
Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša
Produced by: Marcela Okretič
Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2025
Part of:
tactics&practice#16: Are You a Software Update?
Curated by Nora O’ Murchú, Socrates Stamatatos, Janez Fakin Janša, Neja Berger
Supported by:
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica