Networkingart

Ph.d-forsvar (Public Defence): Tatiana Bazzichelli
5. December 2011, 14:00 to 17:00
Det lille Auditorium, Incuba Science Park, Åbogade 15, Aarhus University
[Ph.d - Tatiana Bazzichelli]

Networked Disruption
Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and the Business of Social Networking

In connection with the submission of her PhD dissertation “Networked Disruption. Rethinking oppositions in art, hacktivism and the business of social networking” to the Faculty of Arts at Aarhus University for the award of a PhD degree in Information and Media Studies, Tatiana Bazzichelli will publicly defend her research in an open forum, 14-17 on Monday December 5, 2011, in Det lille Auditorium, Incuba Science Park, Åbogade 15, Aarhus University, Denmark.

The objective of this research is to rethink the meaning of oppositional practices in art, hacktivism and the business of social networking. By identifying the emerging contradictions within the current economical and political framework of Web 2.0, hacker and artistic practices are analysed through business instead of in opposition to it. Shedding light on the mutual interferences between networking participation and disruptive business innovation, this research explores the current transformation in political and technological criticism. After the emergence of Web 2.0, the critical framework of art and hacktivism has shifted from developing strategies of opposition to embarking on the art of disruption. Disruption becomes a two-way strategy in networking contexts, a practice to generate criticism, and a methodology to create business innovation.

Connecting together disruptive practices of networked art and hacking in California and in Europe, the author proposes a constellation of social networking projects that challenge the notion of power and hegemony, such as mail art, Neoism, The Church of the SubGenius, Luther Blissett, Anonymous, Anna Adamolo, Les Liens Invisibles, the Telekommunisten collective, The San Francisco Suicide Club, The Cacophony Society, the early Burning Man Festival, the NoiseBridge hackerspace, and many others.

Examining committee:
Senior Lecturer Olga Goriunova, Dept. of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University, United Kingdom;
Professor Franco Berardi, Accademia di Belle Arti, Carrara, Italy;
Associate Professor Geoff Cox, Dept. of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University (chairman).

After the PhD degree there will be a reception in room 229, Nygaard Building, Finlandsgade 21, 8200 Aarhus N.

reSource for transmedial culture
Statement of interest & call for collaborations [download as pdf]

from: Vittore Baroni, "Real Corrispondence 6", 1981

The reSource is an initiative of transmediale – festival for art and digital culture, Berlin in collaboration with CTM/DISK GbR and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, on the search for further partners during 2012.

## reSource – A new initiative of the transmediale festival

The reSource for transmedial culture is a new framework for transmediale festival related projects that happen throughout the year in the city of Berlin. It is an initiative that extends into ongoing activities with decisive touchdowns at each festival. Within the aegis of facilitating collaboration and the sharing of resources and knowledge between the transmediale festival in Berlin and the local and translocal scene engaged with art and digital culture, the objective of the reSource for transmedial culture is to act as a link between the cultural production of art festivals and collaborative networks in the field of art and technology, hacktivism and politics.

This statement of interest is directed mainly to local and international artists, cultural producers, hackers, activists, and gender-situated communities active in the city of Berlin and in the broader field of net culture regionally and internationally, to co-develop experiences which invite exploration, experimentation and reflection. By generating a set of questions and issues which are addressed to local and translocal communities within (and beyond) digital cultural production, the main idea is to develop mutual exchanges of methodologies and knowledge, as well as project-space experiences, investigating new ways of forming a cultural public and producing a meta reflection on strategies of collaborative actions.

The launch of the reSource will take place at transmediale 2012 through different project disseminations such as workshops, talks and performances. It will in itself be an important feature of the 25th anniversary of the transmediale, looking into the future while acknowledging the importance of the festival as an accessible and dynamic forum for the translocal art scene as well as for interdisciplinary cultural producers and researchers.

The reSource launch at transmediale is anticipated by a beta-reSource event on November 16-18, 2011 at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) organised in partnership with the Digital Aesthetics Research Center (DARC) of Aarhus University and the Vilém Flusser Archive. After transmediale 2012, the reSource will extend its activity in collaboration with two main partners: CTM/DISK, proposing a series of open events held in the spring 2012, and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, organising a public event in August 2012, which will show the results of the first phase of collaboration and sharing within the context of the reSource for transmedial culture.

This statement of interest is thought as a call for collaborations to involve a number of additional projects and partners towards the creation of a distributed platform during 2012 and further, envisioning the festival form as a peer-production context of knowledge and research.

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in/compatible Research – Workshop/Conference
November 16–18, 2011
Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), Vilém Flusser Archive, Aula 110, 1st floor
Grunewaldstr. 2-5, 10823 Berlin – (U7 Kleistpark)

http://darc.imv.au.dk/incompatible/?page_id=18

International PhD workshop and conference, organised by the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre/Centre for Digital Urban Living (Aarhus University), in collaboration with the reSource for transmedial culture (transmediale festival, Berlin) and Vilém Flusser Archive, Universität der Künste, Berlin.

In the context of developing a platform for knowledge exchange, and research across the arts and sciences, transmediale festival (Berlin) and Digital Aesthetics Research Centre/Centre for Digital Urban Living (Aarhus University) have established a partnership to foster new forms of collaborative peer-review and knowledge dissemination. Departing from the theme of the upcoming transmediale festival in 2012: in/compatible, a PhD workshop and conference is taking place on November 16–18, at the Vilém Flusser Archive, Universität der Künste, Berlin.

This event addresses the theme of the transmediale festival in a number of ways: in/compatible interfaces, in/compatible methods, and in/compatible markets, focusing on the unresolved tensions in-between different technologies, their cultures of production and use, as well as the tensions between different approaches to contemporary media culture. The PhD workshop and the conference will lead to a collaborative peer-reviewed publication presented as part of the programme of the festival in 2012.

The actual workshop is restricted to the PhD students selected from an open call this summer. However, the conference programme and the plenary session will be open to the public.

Keynotes: Tiziana Terranova (it), Siegfried Zielinski (de).
Conference Participants: Christian Ulrik Andersen (dk), Tatiana Bazzichelli (it/de), Claudia  Becker (de), Morten Breinbjerg (dk), Geoff Cox (uk/dk), Kristoffer Gansing (se/de), Andrew Murphie (au), Jussi Parikka (fi), Søren Pold  (dk), Cornelia Sollfrank (de).
Artistic Interventions: Alberto de Campo (de), Dmytri Kleiner (ca/de) & the Telekommunisten Network.
PhD Workshop Participants: Cesar Baio (br/de), Zach Blas (usa), Jacob Gaboury (usa), Baruch  Gottlieb (ca/de), Ioana Jucan (ro/usa), Tero Karppi (fi), Thomas Bjoernsten Kristensen (dk), Magnus Lawrie (uk), Aymeric Mansoux (fr/nl), Rosa Menkman (nl), Gabriel Menotti Gonring (br/uk), Anne Popiel (usa/de), Morten Riis (dk), Lasse Scherffig (de), Matthias Tarasiewicz (at), Marie Thompson (uk), Nina Wenhart (at), Carolin Wiedemann (de).

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Time: November 5, 2011, 12:00-16:30

Where: Theater Kikker Grote Zaal/Main Hall, Utrecht, NL.

curated by Stephen Kovats (Transmediale 2008-2011, McLuhan in Europe 2011)

Focusing on the ‘Right to Know’ the Summit invites discussion on how digital media engulfing our daily lives are now accessible in not only new but perhaps previously unimagined ways. Such accessibility also creates new forms of openness and malleability blurring the lines between the hack, the hoax and the objective. The public focus of the Net as being a broad ranging arena of information exchange moderated by proxies such as ICANN and dominated by enterprises incl. Google, Facebook and Amazon is once again shifting. Two decades into our life within the World Wide Web, a much wider and more diverse group of users has emerged using the Net as a central arena of critical socio-political activity.

The currently unfolding ‘Arab Spring’, as well as the victory of the Pirate Party in Berlin’s State elections, fuels forces that have the ability to create new forms of information visibility and data malleability. These major popular movements have radically influenced all sides and players in the rapidly evolving and seemingly completely unpredictable shifts in social and political orders. The recent case of the ‘unmasked’ fraudulent (or simply naive prankster) U.S-based blogger who purported to be a Syrian Lesbian rights activist moving to the fore of that country’s current revolt underscores the precarious level of blind trust mass media and digital society at large nonetheless still places on the power of ‘sincerity’ in net-based communication. Hacktivism itself, once the poetic domain of seemingly invisible forces, is becoming mainstream. Is there a danger that the rough, highly unstable edges of digital media and network practice, including political hacktivism, open source protocol design (i.e. Thimbl, DIY tools and apps) and evolving movements such as Sharism, will be ‘corporatised’? Where do these forces converge, and where does the opportunity lie to entrench the idealism of the Net’s ability to be the essential guarantor of expressive freedom and mobility? By supporting and embracing the rough edges of the media, keeping these in flux and critical, we have the historical opportunity to firmly guarantee, as an entire society, the Net’s primary strengths and characteristics: that of a truly open, unregulated and free tool of communication.

Featuring: Alejo Duque, Christopher Adams, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Sami Ben Gharbia, Alejandra Perez Nunez, Rui Guerra and Sunil Abraham. Introduced and moderated by Stephen Kovats, respondent Chris van der Heijden.

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On August 31, 2011, I handed-in my PhD dissertation (Department of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University), which will be discussed at the beginning of December (date to be announced). The following is a short abstract of the contents.

PhD Dissertation Abstract:

Networked Disruption
Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and the Business of Social Networking
by Tatiana Bazzichelli

Objective:
The objective of this research is to rethink the meaning of critical and oppositional practices in art, hacktivism and the business of social networking. The aim is to analyse hacker and artistic practices through business instead of in opposition to it. By identifying the emerging contradictions within the current economical and political framework of Web 2.0, my aim is to reflect on the status of activist and hacker practices as well as those of artists in the new generation of social media (or so called Web 2.0 technologies), analysing the interferences between networking participation and disruptive business innovation.

Hypothesis:
My hypothesis is that mutual interferences between art, hacktivism and the business of social networking have changed the meaning and contexts of political and technological criticism. Hackers and artists have been active agents in business innovation, while at the same time also undermining business. After the emergence of Web 2.0, the critical framework of art and hacktivism has shifted from developing strategies of opposition to embarking on the art of disruption. Artists and hackers use disruptive techniques of networking within the framework of social media, opening up a critical perspective towards business to generate unpredictable feedback and unexpected reactions; business enterprises apply disruption as a form of innovation to create new markets and network values, which are often just as unpredictable. Disruption becomes a two-way strategy in networking contexts, a practice to generate criticism, and a methodology to create business innovation.

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Summer Workshops on Art & Disruptive Business
Transart Institute, Master of Fine Arts program in new media (MFA Creative Practice)
July 31- August 4, Transart Institute, Tanzfabrik, Berlin / Presentation open to the public: August 2, 17.30-19.30. Teachers: Geoff Cox & Tatiana Bazzichelli

DESCRIPTION

As the distinction between production and consumption appears to have collapsed, every interaction in the info-sphere seems to have become a business opportunity. The creative intersections between business and art become a crucial territory for political actions, social innovation, but also unexpected consequences and a deep level of irony and modification of prevailing business logic. There are many examples of artists making interventions into the art market and alternatives to commodity exchange — but we aim to discuss some of the recent strategies that have emerged from a deep understanding of the network economy.

Examples derive from software development and net cultures, such as peer production, free culture initiatives, gift economies, extreme sharing networks or open source business models. More specifically, we would cite the significance of radical sharing communities on the net to disrupt the business ecosystem, and offer alternatives, even if this comes in compromised form in the case of the social web. And yet, clearly value is produced from the social web too; it becomes more a question of what kind of business model is preferred and how returns, or rather benefits, are distributed.
We maintain there is nothing wrong with doing business as such.

GOALS
To introduce concepts and examples that relate to an understanding of contemporary arts practice; to develop strategies to support a critical framework for research and future development of creative production; to reflect upon some of the economic conditions that frame creative practice.

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