Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 20:00 – late
c-base (Rungestraße 20, 10179 Berlin, S/U Jannowitzbrücke)

The event reSource 004: Networked Disruption (part of the series of event by the reSource transmedial culture berlin) reflects on how the current techno-economic paradigm of Web 2.0 has challenged notions of art and hacktivism. Named after the just-published book by Tatiana Bazzichelli Networked Disruption: Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and the Business of Social Networking (DARC Press, 2013), the event discusses new strategies of political and social criticism, by reflecting on mutual interferences between art, hacktivism and business disruption.

Hackers, activists, artists, practitioners and theoreticians are invited to reflect with us on the current development of artistic and hacker practices in the context of social networking. How can hackers and artists be critical in the business context of social media? Is the business of social media co-opting DIY culture? Is criticism only possible through opposition? These are some of the questions we will share with the public during the panel.

By proposing the concept of disruptive business as an art practice, reSource 004: Networked Disruption becomes an opportunity to imagine new possible routes of social and political action. The event presents a constellation of social networking projects that challenge the notion of power and hegemony, from the earlier development of network culture to today.

We will reflect on the meaning of disruption today by connecting practices of networked art and hacking in California and Europe, 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.

Networked Disruption is presented by Tatiana Bazzichelli (it/de), in conversation with Michael Dieter (au/nl), Alexander Müller/Hedonist International (de), and the public of c-base. Moderated by Kristoffer Gansing (se/de).

After the book presentation and discussion, the dj/vj/xj Podinski (XLterrestrials + CiTiZEN KiNO) will mix a culture jammer’s “smorgasbord” of counterculture beats and hijacked eyecandy from the 90s and up to various post-9/11 situations. Expect un-soothing audio-visual chaos!

More info here.
Download the book here. Buy a copy  (Amazon.com .de .uk .it)

Networked Disruption – Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and the Business of Social Networking by Tatiana Bazzichelli now available (DARC Press, Aarhus University, 2013).

The current techno-economic paradigm of Web 2.0 has challenged notions of art and hacktivism within digital culture. The book “Networked Disruption” takes up this challenge and discusses a new perspective on political and social criticism. It simultaneously asks what are the conditions for hacker and artistic practices under Web 2.0 and how can social networking be seen to build on and incorporate artistic practices from the earlier decades of digital and network culture.

Through its theoretical discussion of contemporary art and hacktivism, the book maps out a new contradictory space for art and criticism: Networked disruption.
More information here.

Download free PDF / Buy a copy  (Amazon.com .de .uk .it)

Licensed under the Peer Production License

@ “Aesthetics Re-loaded“, International conference
December 11-13, 2012, Aarhus University, Denmark

The aim of the conference is to advance and exchange basic research on aesthetics within the field of new technology. The conference explores the concept of aesthetics by investigating the challenges new computational technologies pose for current aesthetic theory. Confirmed keynote speakers include Bernard Stiegler, Olga Goriunova, and Mark B.N. Hansen.

Scholars of aesthetic theory seldom engage the specific potential for aesthetic experience offered by digital computer technology, despite its omnipresence. By the same token, IT researchers often interpret “aesthetics” as merely a question of how the user interface manifests itself – in other words, as a question of an encounter or interaction of a “user” with an interface without any more detailed evaluation of the aesthetic qualities of that meeting or interaction. The conference attempts to bring a deeper, theoretically grounded consideration of the aesthetic dimension to bear on the digital phenomena and technologies that surround us today.

As part of the conference programme, I am moderating a panel entitled: “The Aesthetics of Disruptive Business”

Participants: Christian Ulrik Andersen/Geoff Cox/Søren Pold, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Stevphen Shukaitis, Marina Vishmidt.

With a backdrop of the crisis of financial capitalism, austerity cuts in the cultural sphere, the panel will focus on aesthetic strategies in relation to a broken economy. In a perverse way, we ask whether this presents new opportunities for cultural producers to achieve more autonomy over their production process and ask what alternative business models emerge? We are concerned broadly with business as (artistic) material for reinvention, and the challenge for critical aesthetics in terms of key business paradigms like innovation and regeneration.

• Tatiana Bazzichelli (Transmediale / Leuphana University of Lüneburg), moderator
• Christian Ulrik Andersen/Søren Pold/Geoff Cox (Aarhus University), “Disruptive Innovation in Digital Art/Activism and Business”
• Stevphen Shukaitis (University of Essex / Autonomedia), “All Your Aesthetic Management Is Belong to Us: Mimetic Self-Organization in the Circuits of Immaterial Production”
• Marina Vishmidt (Queen Mary, University of London), “Mimesis of the Hardened and Alienated: Money, Value and Activism in Recent Art and Around It”

More info about the Panel: here
More info about the Conference: here
Conference Programme: here

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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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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