# Working out situated universality *Institute for Music and Media, Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf.* Universality once was a promise of peace: in an emancipatory process of enlightenment, a single medium of thinking and communicating would allow us to break down the barriers of injustice. A logic, one could call it, that shows no more and no less "what is true in every world", independent of culture and opinion. It might protect science from fraud, technology from failure, communication from disagreement. The truth is complicated, however: universal principles too easily become instruments of control and have only increased the power of those already powerful. The universal is held responsible for the imperial. Yet on the other hand, the struggle for a pluralism of universal principles has turned into a fight for local identities that feed off the debris of the destruction of cognitive justice and peace. In short: neither global universality nor the local identity seem to be able to fulfil the promise. Instead, universality needs to be found in each situation, it needs work. And it needs luck. Every logic is the result of a situation: an epistemic medium adequate for the circumstances in so far as it allows us to travel between categories and let our identities drift. In two days, we will bring together different threads from music, philosophy, programming, and mathematics in order to explore them together. ## Day 1: Epistemic non-violence and the logics of situated universality **Tue 28 Jan 2025, 13:00-18:00** (part of seminar: Form and Formalism) Dhuv Raina, Alex McLean, Tzuchien Tho, Julian Rohrhuber An exploration of decolonisation, citizenship and logical infrastructure. ## Day 2: Algorithmophagía. Eat the others or swallow yourself. **Wed 29 Jan 2025, 12:30-18:00** (part of seminar: Algorithmic Acoustics) Alex McLean, Flor de Fuego, Julian Rohrhuber An exploration of (un)cultural work beyond cultural appropriation, new forms of the old or old forms of the new. Introduction: Julian and Alex: Flor: Getting Lost in the Paradigm of the Univers(e)al 12:30 - 13:30 Introduction 13:30 - 14:30 Flor 14:30 - 15:30 Break 15:30 - open end