reSource for transmedial culture: Programme at transmediale 2k+12 (résumé by Tatiana Bazzichelli)

The reSource of transmediale culture (www.transmediale.de/resource) is a new initiative of transmediale festival that happens throughout the year in the city of Berlin, developing ongoing activities with decisive touchdowns at each festival. It is curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli, and works in collaboration with CTM/DISK, Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien and the Post-Media Lab of the Leuphana University Lüneburg, the three main institutional partners of the project.

The launch of reSource took place at transmediale 2012 (January 31-February 5, 2012) with a constellation of workshops, talks and performances distributed into five different sub-themes: reSource methods, reSource activism, reSource networks, reSource markets and reSource sex (read more here).

Realisation of the Programme
Coherently with the concept and methodology of developing reflection and exchange all year round, the programme of the reSource of transmedial culture started already in November 2011 co-organising an initiative at the Berlin University of the Arts. It was followed by the intense programme during transmediale festival, and later, it will go on producing some distributed initiatives which will lead to transmediale 2013.

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When: February 16th 2012 18:30 – 20:30
Location: Studios One and Two, Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin.

Data 51.0 brings together an international selection of media artists and theorists, to explore the links between activism, art, and business. Where open source, hactivism and media art generally are still presented as ideologically opposed to the logics of information capitalism, the reality is that many hackerspaces receive corporate funding, open source platforms and user-generated content form the basis for many commercially orientated applications and much of the dominant media art of today is to varying degrees reliant on the financial trajectories of technological R&D. Rather than denying this relationship or refusing to engage with the corporation, we want to ask how artists and activists might use their position in the market and their creative tools to critique, disrupt, or even potentially reshape economic spaces from within. Speakers: Editor of Neural Alessandro Ludovico, and artist Paolo Cirio, creators of Google Will Eat Itself, and Face to Facebook, and artist/theorist Tatiana Bazzichelli, author of Networking: The Net as Artwork.

This event is funded by the Centre for Telecommunications Research (CTVR) and Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin.

More info

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.

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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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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