Networkingart artivism, hacktivism and social networking
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    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.

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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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    Panel, ISEA Istanbul, Monday, 19 September, 2011 – 09:00 – 10:30
    Sabaci University, Sabaci Center, Room 3, Istanbul, Turkey

    The panel investigates some of the interconnections between art, activism and business. “Don’t hate the media, become the media”, was one of the slogans of Indymedia. We are applying this critical hands-on perspective to the business framework.

    The panel investigates some of the interconnections between art, activism and business. “Don’t hate the media, become the media”, was one of the slogans of Indymedia. We are applying this critical hands-on perspective to the business framework. Presenters examine how artists, rather than refusing the market, are producing critical interventions from within. As the distinction between production and consumption appears to have collapsed, every interaction in the info-sphere seems to have become a business opportunity. Therefore, the creative intersections between business and art become a crucial territory for re-invention and the rewriting of symbolic and cultural codes, generating political actions or social hacks that use a deep level of irony, but also unexpected consequences. The tactics demonstrate the permeability of systems — that these can be reworked — and more so, that radical innovation requires modification of the prevailing business logic.

    The backdrop of the Istanbul Biennale makes a useful reference point here as one of the markers along with art fairs in general for the commodity exchange of artistic production. We are not suggesting these are new issues — as 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 net economy and its markets.

    The panel explores some of these contradictions: that on the one hand, there are alternative or disruptive business models that derive from the art scene, often as critical or activist interventions, but on the other how these practices can be easily co-opted by proprietary business logic. This is perhaps exemplified by the business idea of ‘disruption-innovation’, where disruption is considered to be a creative act that shifts the way a particular logic operates and thus presents newfound opportunities. Does this mean that well-meaning critical strategies of artists and activists are self-defeating? How do we develop disruptive business models that do not simply become new models for business that ultimately follow capitalist logic?

    We maintain there is nothing wrong with doing business as such.

    Chair: Tatiana Bazzichelli, Geoff Cox
    Presenters: Christian Ulrik Andersen & Søren Bro Pold
    Contributors: Dmytri Kleiner, Elanor Colleoni, Maya Balcioglu

    The occasion is also thought as launch of the project DisruptivBiz, a platform of research on the topics of Disruptive Art and Business curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli and Geoff Cox.

    More information

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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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    July 7th, 2011tbazzEvents, Transmediale Resource

    International PhD workshop and conference, organised by Digital Aesthetics Research Centre/Centre for Digital Urban Living, Aarhus University, in partnership with the transmediale festival for art and digital culture, and Universität der Künste, Berlin.

    November 16-18, 2011
    Vilém Flusser Archive, Universität der Künste, Berlin.

    “transmediale 2012 postulates that incompatible beings drive the logic of contemporary cultural production. in/compatible beings are understood as aesthetic things and processes that do not necessarily connect on the  terms we are used to. The festival wants to raise the question of what happens when such incompatible beings are brought to the fore rather than hidden away in the dark underbelly of digital culture?”

    In the context of developing a platform for knowledge exchange, and research across the arts and sciences, transmediale and Aarhus University have established a partnership to foster new forms of collaborative peer-review and knowledge dissemination. The first project will be a PhD workshop and conference departing from the theme of the 25th transmediale festival upcoming in early 2012: in/compatible. This theme addresses unresolved tensions in-between different technologies, their cultures of production and use, as well as the tensions between different approaches to contemporary media culture.

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    Image: Vittore Baroni, "Real Corrispondence 6", 1981 (part of a series of homonym flyers). The diagram was later re-edited in the postcard "The Evolution of Art", published by Ragged Edge Press in 1990.

    The transmediale (Festival for Art and Digital Culture of Berlin, Germany) website has been updated, with information about the new festival structure, the new transmediale direction and team, dates of the festival, call for works and description of ongoing projects. The next festival will take place from January 31st until February 5th, and the theme for the 2012 edition is: In/Compatible.

    Since September 1st, 2011, I will be taking part of the transmediale team in Berlin running a new experimental project named Resource for Transmedial Culture, a networking and curating initiative that extends into ongoing, year-round activity with touchdowns at each festival. The resource works towards the creation of a project of distributed networks and a knowledge production laboratory of art and research within transmediale.

    As a combination of networking, research and curating, the resource is a new framework for festival related projects that happen throughout the year. Through the resource Transmediale aims at giving something back to local and translocal community as well to create a dynamic feedback to the festival content. Through a separate call later in the year, a number of projects will be selected to be co-hosted by the resource, with events during 2012 and a presence at the 2013 festival.

    The launch of the resource will take place in Febraury 2012 and will in itself be an important feature of the Transmediale 25th anniversary, looking into the future while acknowledging the importance of the festival as an accessible and dynamic forum for the translocal media art scene as well as for interdisciplinary cultural producers and researchers.

    More info will follow!

    http://www.transmediale.de/beyond/tm-resource

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    Press release: Researchers proudly present fake academic publishing!

    »A fake is a fake. Anyway« Les Liens Invisibles

    »We can only guess that fake publishing will mark the dawning of a new information era« The Financial Times

    NYHEDSAVISEN: PUBLIC-INTERFACES is a fake newspaper presenting cutting edge research in an accessible FREE tabloid format. The newspaper is a 100% genuine copy of the famous Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

    The increasing demand for publication of academic peer-reviewed journal articles must be met. Unfortunate examples demonstrate that this may lead to plagiarism. This is not a viable solution. Research must be original and academia is not lacking original content.
    But perhaps researchers need new visions of how to produce research? Perhaps the readers need new ways of consuming research? Why not imagine academic research as something that can be consumed on a daily basis, in the train or at the breakfast table?

    On April 1, at 13 am, NYHEDSAVISEN: PUBLIC-INTERFACES was handed out to the public at the metro station ‘DR Byen/Universitetet’ in Copenhagen as well as at the central railway station in Aarhus and the State Library. Also, issues will be tactically placed in selected free newspaper stands and at University lunchrooms worldwide.

    Emerging from the Digital Aesthetics Research Center and the Center for Digital Urban Living (Aarhus University), the aim of NYHEDSAVISEN: PUBLIC-INTERFACES is to encompass the changing concept of the ‘public’. This is the result of an ongoing research in the computer interface.

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