After Scarcity by Bahar Noorizadeh + Project Cybersyn discussion  w/ Paola Verhaert & Marc Tuters

  • Screening + Discussion
  • Cinema
  • Friday 22.05 — 16:00 - 17:15

In collaboration with IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture], Utrecht, the Netherlands (impakt.nl)

Warning: Flashing lights 

After Scarcity is a sci-fi video-essay that tracks Soviet cyberneticians (1950s – 1980s) in their attempt to build a fully-automated planned economy. If history at its best is a blueprint for science fiction, revisiting contingent histories of economic technology might enable access to the future. Vindicating this other internet, the work presents the economic application of socialist cybernetic experiments as extraordinary to the financial arrangements and imaginations of our time. It addresses urgent issues such as broadband idealism, regulated networks of data, high-speed capitalism, and the urgency of time. Blurring the line between sci-fi and history, the work serves as both a reality check and a glimmer of hope, allowing us to consider a future that does not necessarily have to rely on speculation or an overemphasis on financialisation. 

This film introduces a conversation between Paola Verhaert and Marc Tuters, who will discuss the (ir)relevance of one of the largest cybernetic-socialist projects in history: Project Cybersyn. They will examine the project from the philosophical perspective of Yuk Hui’s “technodiversity”

Paola  Verhaert 

Paola Verhaert is an independent researcher, advisor, and writer with ten years of experience working at the intersection of technology and social justice.   

As an expert in digital rights and digital equity, she studies the social and political impact of digital technologies. In addition to her work as a researcher, she supports and advises organisations on the responsible use of technology and data. Her first book, titled ‘Technology is politics: The fight for digital justice’, was published in November 2025. This book is a philosophical and practical introduction to the concept of digital justice.

Marc Tuters

Marc Tuters is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and co-director of the Open Intelligence Lab (OILab). His research focuses on the social and political dimensions of digital media, with particular attention to platforms, AI-generated media, propaganda, and online political cultures. Combining media theory with digital methods, he studies how communication infrastructures shape political coordination, public knowledge, and systems of governance. His recent work explores emerging forms of platform-native influence and alternative imaginaries of technological organisation.