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Band 8

Preface

This publication (book and hybrid-DVD) is the documentation of the INST research project with the acronym „KCTOS“ (Knowledge, Creativity and Transformations of Societies). The publication contains printed texts (book), virtual texts (TRANS 17), an exhibition, a film (Hybrid-DVD).

Although the results of the project (developed: 2006 until 2010) could be of fundamental importance for the current social developments (everyday life, value of money, budget plus, power structures etc.), insofar as they put into the centre the importance of languages, literatures, arts, knowledge production, participations, as well as the special role of science and research, this preface wants to emphasize the distinct nature of the knowledge process in the context of the KCTOS-Project. One of the results of the research of the KCTOS-Project is that the speculations were and are a problem for pensions, currencies etc., but that the real current social problem is the refusal of knowledge reception (refusal of reality), which is pursued systematically and with enormous extravagance and which forms the nucleus of the crisis worldwide. This entails the recording and interpretation of statistics and the anti-modern documentation of narratives in court (called: hearing of evidence) to the repetition of the destruction of work and values as in „Faust II“ or „Astoria“ to finally the negation of measures for a solid brutto national product in the face of the necessity for the development of knowledge societies in the sense of a globalization as a humane process to overcome a world of inequalities and injustices.

The organization of the INST-conferences is based on the traditional insight (used for millennia) that knowledge can be won best out of a conflict of opinions. Therefore the INST attempts to organize its conferences as polylogue. The first such conference took place from the 18th to the 20th September 1994 in the now Peace University in Schlaining. The plurality of voices – combined with differing experiences, methods, insights, forms of communication – were and are the basis for a particularly high quality of knowledge production.

The firsts INST-world conference, which took place from the 15th to the 19th September 1999 in the UNESCO-headquarters in Paris had the title “International cultural sciences”. The conference, too, departed from the fact that because of the flood of information, which began with book printing and the time of the Enlightenment, an individual can in no way have universal knowledge (today in general not even in a scientific specialty). Because of that we came to the conclusion that a new form of cooperation had to be found in order to increase the quality of knowledge by synergies. Next to the polylogue the key terms are: transdisciplinarity, transnationality, online-work. Specifically we attended to the unequal conditions in the world (especially as far the accessibility of knowledge and the distribution of insights is concerned).

The KCTOS-conference was the VII. INST-world-conference, which next to other events (presentations, symposia, conferences, exhibitions, festivals, projects from 1994 to 2010 in approximately 100 countries) served to bring about knowledge gain. In this context the KCTOS-conference had a few special features. It was more than other meetings part of a research project and itself part of research. It started with presentations of the project worldwide, as well as recruiting researchers, artists in a network, which has grown since 1994 and which introduced into the cultural sciences the work with the internet since the middle 1990s – which was the basis for using virtuality as an essential basis of work. And with the presentation of KCTOS via the INST-world television on 10.6.2010 from 19:00 MEZ there is again a new dimension – the world lecture.

In total about 10.000 knowledge producers (mostly scientists and researchers) from 120 countries took part in the project (of which 7.000 took part in 100 working groups and plenary sessions in Vienna in the context of the KCTOS-conference). This means that KCTOS is one of the greatest cultural science projects in the world, although there was nearly no financial support. And that in a time when more and more money is spent for administration, training for grant applications, refereeing etc. and knowledge producers are led into poverty in the sign of authoritarianism – and the state budget into deficit.

The current crisis is therefore the expression of the endeavor of the old powers to conserve the existing conditions – and their privileges – especially in the realm of education, of access to knowledge. To achieve this they accept the crises of society and burden the poor with the cost. –concepts like Perestroika and Change therefore remain topical.

KCTOS is an example for the way in which new insights can be won even under these circumstances by using modern technologies, how worldwide platforms of polylogue can be created and science can attain what it has been fighting for, for millennia: to achieve knowledge for a humanizing of social processes freely.

INST Board
June 2010

Bookstore Price: app. 69,80 Euro + mailing costs
34.90 Euro (only for Contributors)

ISBN: 978-3-9501947-8-4

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