Crowd in Italy during a strike, 2008, from the book Sono Anna Adamolo (ed. 2009)

This conference-colloquium at the Humanistic Faculty, Aarhus University, will relate to the widespread use of the concepts event and/or affect in contemporary research of media, art, philosophy, politics and culture. It is the aim to qualify, explore and investigate the scope of the terms event and affect in different analytical fields. We assume that the renewed focus on event and affect is partly due to the impact of new (electronic and digital) media and the new forms of immediacy created by real-time control and transmission.
The conference will therefore investigate two key issues: 1) How can we describe event and affect on philosophical, artistic, political and cultural levels? 2) Has a new paradigm of the signal – related to the bypassing of representation in real-time transmissions – superseded the sign? What characterizes the signal?

By combining these questions the conference wants to initiate a broader discussion on a paradigmatic transformation from sign to signal in relation to the concepts of event and affect and their use and scope in art, politics and culture.

[The text above is an extract of the Conference's call. The arrangement team consists of: Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen, Britta Timm Knudsen, Dorthe Refslund Christensen, Carsten Stage, Camilla Møhring Reestorff, Mathias Bonde Korsgaard and Jonas Fritsch].

Download the program.

Keynotes:
Nigel Thrift, Brian Massumi and Erin Manning.
Speakers:
Niels Albertsen, Mads Anders Baggesgaard, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Christian Borch, Christoph Brunner, Merete Carlson, Dorthe Refslund Christensen, Leila Dawney, Carsten Friberg, Jonas Fritsch, Jan Ifversen, Britta Timm Knudsen, Mathias Bonde Korsgaard, Christoffer Kølvrå, Annette Svaneklink Jakobsen, Thomas Jellis, Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen, Thomas Markussen, Casper Høeg Radil, Carsten Stage, Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen, Anne Marit Waade.
Participants:
Lise Nygaard Christensen, Lise Dilling, Jette Geil, Lars Bo Løfgreen, Kirsten Marie Pedersen, Rebecca Parbo.

My paper is about networked events as political and social practices of criticism in grassroots communities. Title is: The Network Events. Networked art as a challenge for sociopolitical transformation. I will address some artistic and activist projects as an example of fertile zones of rewriting and experimentation of cultural and political codes. In particular, I will describe the Italian case of Anna Adamolo (2008-2009).

The Network Events
Networked art as a challenge for social transformation

by Tatiana Bazzichelli
In the artistic context of the past twenty years, networking art was referring to the ability of creating a map of connections in progress, and nets of relations among individuals. Since the 80s, platforms of networking have been an important tool for sharing knowledge and experience. Inspired by the early artistic practices and events of the Fluxus movement, the art of networking was based on the figure of the artist as networker: a creator of sharing platforms and of contexts for connecting and exchanging. It was not based on objects, nor solely on digital or analogical instruments, but on the relationships and processes in progress between individuals. Individuals who could in turn create other contexts of sharing.

The concept of Do-It-Yourself (self-production) was the starting point for the development of networked art, such as mail art, but also of punk culture and hacker ethic. The same Do It Yourself hands-on practice was used to describe subsequent phenomena of networking and hacktivism; from Neoism to Plagiarism, up until the 1990s, when the network dynamics were affirmed on a broader level through the use of computers and the Internet. The ‘hacktivist attitude’ referred to an acknowledgement of the net as a political space, with the possibility of decentralized, autonomous and grassroots participation. In these contexts of interaction and artistic experimentation, artists and activists worked in a critical space-in-between, a fluid territory in which to play with the structure of representation, hacking the codes of self-representation, and recombining them into something unpredictable.

In these free, active, experimental spaces, which anthropologist Victor Turner (1920-1983) dubbed liminal states, new cultural elements and new combined rules can be introduced. It is in these instances that technology is used with artistic, cultural and political goals, the joint action of different subjectivities which show how it is possible to create a first step in redefining powers and hierarchies, in terms of dismantling and opening social, cultural and artistic categories. In my talk I will present some artistic and activist projects in which the practice of creating “network events” might be seen as a challenge for cultural, political and social transformation. In particular, I will address the Italian case of Anna Adamolo.

Due to the ash- and eruption related cancellation of the three-day seminar Interweaving Technologies – the Aesthetics of Digital Urban Living, The DARC, Digital Aesthetics Research Center, and The Center for Digital Urban Living, Aarhus University, organise the mini-seminar Aesthetic eruptions of the digital. The seminar is arranged by Lone Koefoed Hansen and Lars Bo Løfgreen.

It will be a 3-4 hour seminar with some talks by presenters from the Aarhus area. Additionally, there will be two workshops:  Psychogeographics Aarhus by Martin Howse (UK/DE) and Wi-Fi cracking workshop by Gordan Savicic (AU/NL).

I will be part of the panel The Politics of Networks with Geoff Cox, Søren Pold and Christian Ulrik Andersen, giving a talk entitled “Aesthetics of Common Participation and Networking Enterprises”.
Read the rest of program here. Read the workshop descriptions below (extract from the Conference’s website).

Workshop 1: Psychogeophysics Aarhus

by Martin Howse (http://www.1010.co.uk/org/)

“Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” [Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography. Guy-Ernest Debord]

Psychogeophysics Aarhus proposes discussion and intervention (walking) in the spectral city of Aarhus, and within the novel interdisciplinary frame of psychogeophysics, colliding and revitalising psychogeographics with earth science measurements and study; a practical investigation of urban geophysical archaeology and spectral ecologies.

Psychogeophysics Aarhus is situated within the context of a mobile research laboratory devoted to the use of free software and open hardware within the field of psychogeophysics. Workshops and working groups have been conducted within this frame in Newcastle (The Courier’s Tragedy) and in Berlin (Topology of a Future City as part of Transmediale10).

Workshop 2: Wi-fi Cracking Workshop

by Gordan Savicic (http://www.yugo.at/processing/)

The workshop will showcase the ease of cracking WEP/WPA wireless network encryptions as a way for understanding the risks of Wi-Fi networks and will provide participants with handy computer skills for the precarious offline times. Further, we’ll look at network packet capture and analysis. The workshop is open to anyone with a healthy dose of curiosity and paranoia. No prior technical experience is required. Bring your own laptop (either PC or Intel-Mac, G3/G4 Macintosh computers are not supported!)

Parla come navighi. Antologia della webletteratura italiana (Anthology of Italian Webliterature) is published. I wrote the preface, with the title: ‘Per una letteratura della partecipazione’ (’Towards a Participatory Literature’).

The Anthology is a collections of writings, poetry, essays, and reflections on the new forms of experimental  literature in the era of social media. Published by Il Foglio Letterario, is edited by Mario Gerosa, with editing assistance by Roberta Peveri.
The title might be literally translated into ’speak the way you surf’, even it makes not so much sense in English. The idea comes from ‘parla come mangi’ (speak the way you eat), the Italian common way to say ‘be simple’, ‘don’t try to be rhetoric’, or better, ‘don’t overdo when you speak’. Basically, the Anthology wants to present the microcosm of the Italian web- and network-literature, and the consequent experimental effort in creating new languages and new forms of writing by the social media users. The focus is therefore not just to use social media as a inexpressive communication tool, but to transform them into a platform of creation.

As we read in the introduction by Mario Gerosa, the digital revolution has changed the way we express our identity. Today we can get an idea of people based on how they communicate on the Internet. Once said ’speak the way you eat’, now, to understand the other, you look at the way you write on the Web. With the advent of Web 2.0 new languages are blooming and new forms of expression came to life, both designed by professionals as amateurs, all of them sharing the same enthusiasm for the new instruments of communication. Twitter in hendecasyllables and Facebook status are the starting point for existential implications; chats in Second Life tell you about complex virtual relationships; feuilleton weblogs, experimental novels to read on the screen are some of the new expressions that form the galaxy of the Italian webilterature. A new trend, yet to be discovered and analyzed, which reconciles opposites, and next to the Neo-avantguardes which Internet advocates, show the dear, old, good poetry, re-enacted in the virtual domains. This Anthology offers a first taste of this new literature, a first result of the Web 2.0 communication phenomenon, an invitation to get to know a rich and unexplored territory from virtual worlds to social networks.

Last Friday, on April 9, 2010, I presented the topics of this Anthology at the the Department of Language, Literature & Culture, Italian culture (http://italiensk.au.dk) of Aarhus University,  together with the ones of my book Networking. La rete come arte | The Net as Artwork, published in Italian in December 2006 by Costa & Nolan (Milan) and in English by DARC, the Digital Aesthetics Research Center of Aarhus, 2009 – with the Preface by Derrick de Kerckhove. Starting from the idea of networking (which we found in the concept of participatory literacy, as well) I investigated the development of net art, hacker art and digital culture in Italy. The seminar presented some Italian artistic and activist projects and ended with the analysis of the new forms of experimentation in social media.

If you are interested, this is the link to buy the Italian Anthology of Webliterature.

"JODI: Something Wrong is Nothing Wrong", Ad by Motherboard TV (DELL)

Keywords:  counterculture, social networking, Web 2.0, business & advertisement.

The above image, published in VICE magazine Vol 7 Nr 2 (2010), is an advertisement for the social networking platform Motherboard TV, sponsored by DELL. But people into digital culture would immediately recognize something else.
The advertisement shows a reconstruction of the homepage http://wwwwww.jodi.org, a work by the Dutch artists JODI.org, a very well known symbol of the early net.art. JODI were part of a recent show at Eyebeam gallery in New York (December 2009) and got interviewed by the team of Motherboard TV (see here).
But this advertisement, branded by DELL, might also be the symbol of something more. What were once the values and philosophy of the hacker ethic are since some years the domain of many of the business companies which represent the development of “Web 2.0” and contributed to create the notion of social media. I have analyzed this matter on an article which is going to be published on the next issue of the Arnolfini journal, ‘Concept Store’ (Bristol, UK) .

The ideas of sharing, openness, decentralization, free access to computers and the hand-on imperative of the hackers’ imaginary, today are strictly connected with the use of commercial platforms. We are facing a progressive commercialization of contexts of software development and sharing, which want to appear open and progressive (very emblematic is the motto “Don’t be evil” by Google), but which are indeed transforming the meaning of communities and networking, and the battle for information rights, placing it into the boundaries of marketplace.This process is changing the meaning of collaboration and art itself.

In the last half of the twentieth century Avant-garde art practices from Fluxus to mail art have promised the creation of collaborative art and the production of new models of sharing knowledge. Today, social networking platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter and Second Life have established themselves among Internet users, representing a successful model of connecting people, an a successful business strategy. But these networking platforms have their roots in a series of experimental activities in the field of art and technology started in the last half of the twentieth century which  transformed the conception of art as object into art as a network of relationships, possibilities of collectively intervening in the creation of an artistic product.

For example, the figure of the artist as a creator of sharing platforms and of contexts for exchanging is part of a background of artistic and technological experimentation from Fluxus and mail art to hacktivism and net.art; collective identities and multiple singularity projects have direct references on the Luther Blissett Project and the Neoist network-web conspiracy (as I wrote on my previous book Networking, 2006). Today, techniques of networking developed in grassroots communities have inspired the structure of Web 2.0 platforms and have been used as a model to expand the markets of business enterprises. The principal success of a Web 2.0 company or a networking enterprise comes from the ability of enabling communities, providing shared communication tools and folksonomies.

Is it today still possible to speak about “counterculture”, when social networking has become the motto of the Web 2.0 business? Digital economy and artistic subversive practices look fully interconnected. It should not surprise that Motherboard TV choose the work of JODI to represent its corporate image, writing on it: “JODI: Something Wrong is Nothing Wrong. Viruses, 404s, spam, and other exquisite works of art”. The marketing is demonstrating to have learned the lesson very well: “language is a virus from outer space”, wrote William S. Burroughs.

The act of responding with a radical opposition does not look like an effective practice anymore. Artists should probably answer becoming cultural viruses themselves, generating cultural Trojan Horses – or better, social hacks – adopting the strategy of disruptive business as a model of artistic creation. The understanding of how network business works might show the way. Creative intersections between business and art become an important territory for the re-invention and rewriting of symbolic and expressive codes. A possible field of intervention  to create artistic, cultural and political experiences, using the unexpected, and a deep level of irony and social criticism.

Image by antisocial notworking http://project.arnolfini.org.uk

My post was sent on September 25 to Nettime mailing-list, following the thread Has Facebook superseded Nettime? started by Florian Cramer.

It was published on the Nettime digest the day after. My answer pointed out many of the topics I am researching right now, in particular some relevant connections between hacker culture, networking art and Web 2.0.

Original Txt from Florian Cramer: <nettime> Has Facebook superseded Nettime?
From: Florian Cramer <fc-nettime {AT} pleintekst.nl>
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:58:08 +0200

“For about two years, I’ve noted that a sizable part of the media artistic, -activist and -scholarly community that makes up Nettime has moved to Facebook, in the sense of being more active and networked there than here. At the same time, there seems to no public discussion of this fact, making Facebook an elephant in the room. I’m speculating that Facebook is seen as a friendlier environment – but nobody dares to mention it because, among others, it’s a corporate site built on blatant user data mining [see http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=863] with scary surveillance and privacy implications. What is the solution? Is something like Facebook needed, but as a decentralized, non-data-minable, user-owned system?”

My answer is following below.

Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:38:15 -0700
From: Tatiana Bazzichelli <t.bazzichelli {AT} mclink.it>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Has Facebook superseded Nettime?

Hi,

referring to the post sent by Florian Cramer some days ago, I think that the question why a lot of nettimers have moved to Facebook is an interesting and important one, which demands deeper investigation and reflection. Anyway, I don’t think it is appropriate to stage Facebook and Nettime on the same level, since the conversations you can have here have a completely different perspective and depth than the superficial chatting on Facebook.
The question is perhaps why people feel so comfortable on Facebook, and are using that platform more than the ‘traditional’ mailing-lists, even if in that way they are giving away their private information to a corporation, and they are helping this corporation to create its revenue.
A simple answer could be that today people are looking for a more ‘personal’ relationship when they network with other people: somehow using a mailing-list creates an intellectual barrier, and you don’t see the persons behind the texts. That was once a very important privacy issue, instead it seems that today people want not only to access your mind, but your personal life (just with one click you can see what that person is doing, her/his photos, which are his/her friends and so on). So each person becomes a node of private information, which I believe is more interesting to some people – and more ego-fulfilling.
As a lot of companies of the Web 2.0 era, i.e. Google or Facebook, presents themself as a good giants – do you remember the slogan: Don’t be Evil!, made at the beginning by Google? The services are simple to use, are presented as open, and have great technical infrastructures behind them which allows fast uploads of videos, pictures, etc.

But how can we reflect tactically on that?

I have been reflecting on the issue of social networking vs. activism and open knowledge since last year – my research is still going on – and I believe that the strategy is once again to be conscious of what you are using, and which the ‘bugs’ of the system are, that you can turn into your own advantage.
I don’t think the solution is just to refuse something because it’s proprietary. Considering that Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, etc, are attracting a lot of users – and not only the ones with a critical background – I think it is a good strategy to try to use them to access many more people than a mailing-list allowed you to do in the past. The question is perhaps: what to communicate on these platforms?
I am researching disruptive practices in the social networks, which try to give a critical response to the relationship between activism and the digital economy. I think it is still possible to speak about social hacks and cultural Trojan Horses, even if you are using proprietary platforms, and create the unpredictable where it is not supposed to be.

Some people in Italy have tried to move in that direction with the project of Anna Adamolo. As a reference I could give you a paper I wrote for the Oekonux Conference last March, where I connect experiences of Luther Blissett, the Neoist Web Conspiracy and other pranks made by multiple identities with some interventions in the Web 2.0 (i.e. the Anna Adamolo one).
You can read it here (in particular, have a look at the last pharagraph, ‘From Networking to Hacktivism: The Experience of Anna Adamolo’):
http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg05812.html

We also organized an event in Italy within the AHA project, where we discussed, among other topics, the social and artistic critique of Web 2.0.
I wrote a report on it, which I also sent to Nettime some time ago:

A Reflection on the Activist Strategies in the Web 2.0 Era
http://www.mail-archive.com/nettime-l@kein.org/msg01305.html

The topics of the intersection between critical thinking and social networking are also often discussed on the IDC mailling-list (the Institute for Distributed Creativity)

http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/

Trebor Scholz (IDC mailing-list) is organizing a very good conference in November at the New School University, NYC: The Internet as Playground and Factory: http://digitallabor.org/
Topics will be the intersections between ‘labor’ and the new forms of digital sociality, considering that all of us who are writing content in the social networks, are actually indirectly working for the corporations who own them. I am looking forward to going there, because I am sure many of these question marks will be touched upon.

At the same time, projects like Telekommunisten (http://www.telekommunisten.net/) are trying to use social networks as a tool for critically spreading their venture communist services, and people like Saul Albert and Michael Weinkove, of ‘The People Speak’ (http://theps.net) are trying to create physical social networks as an alternative form of business. This could be another way of seeing the matter.

Time ago I was speaking about the relationship between social networking and ‘traditional’ networking, like mail art, with the mail artist Vittore Baroni. An interview came out of it, which might be useful to reflect on the meaning of networking over the last 30 years:
From Mail Art to Web 2.0: http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1423

> What is the solution? Is something like Facebook needed, but as a
> decentralized, non-data-minable, user-owned system?

I don’t know what the solution is…but I think there is still space for critical reflection.

Best,

Tatiana

From August 20 until December 20, 2009, I am hosted as Visiting Scholar at the Human Sciences & Technologies Advanced Research Institute at Stanford University, California H-STAR, working within the Stanford Humanities Lab.

Thanks to a partnership agreement between the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation (DASTI) and H-STAR at Stanford University, it has been possible to apply for a research grant at Stanford University, being involved in programs that connect Stanford resources in human sciences with research and innovation about information technology. This semester (fall 2oo9) six PhD Scholars, including myself, are hosted by HSTAR (see here for more details). Aim of my research at Stanford is to investigate how networking practices are able to change the model of production of Internet contents and artistic creations, connecting the development of hacker ethics and current digital artistic practices with the creation of Web 2.0 social networking platforms. Fred Turner, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University, is my research co-supervisor.

The Stanford Humanities Lab is a loosely structured, self-supporting research collaboratory built around the work of its faculty leaders. It serves as a platform for transdiciplinary/post-disciplinary study dedicated to exploring innovative scenarios for the future of knowledge production and reproduction in the arts and humanities. Their research focus is about what it is to be human, about experience in a connected world, about the boundaries of culture and nature — transcend old divisions between the arts, sciences, and humanities; between the academy, industry, and the public sphere. The people behind the Lab are: Jeffrey T. Schnapp (Founder and Director), Henry Lowood, Michael Shanks and John Willinsky (Directors); Henrik Bennetsen (Associate Director), Matteo Bittanti (Associate Member); Core Collaborators are: Dena DeBry, Brandon Jones, Gordon Knox, Susan J. Rojo and Galen Davis (read more here).

Among the current projects at the SHL are: Speed Limits and the developing of Sirikata, a BSD licensed open source platform for games and virtual worlds. On September 12 and 13, a Mixed Reality Performance: An Evening on Sirikata took place. A performance at the MiTo International festival of Music in Milan, Italy, presented by the Stanford Humanities Lab [SHL] and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics [CCRMA], Stanford University).

Stay tuned!