Tatiana Bazzichelli – Networking Art
The Book
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Don’t Hate the Business, Become the Business!
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.
Networked Disruption (PhD Abstract)
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.
Summer School @ Transart Institute, Berlin
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.
in/compatible.research – Call for Participation
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.
Resource for Transmedial Culture /Transmediale Festival, Berlin
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!
When Stealing Becomes Art: Interview with Paolo Cirio
By Tatiana Bazzichelli, published in Digimag 63, April 2011
In the essay The author as a producer (1934), Walter Benjamin describes the author’s role through the figure of the engineer. Instead of reproducing the production apparatuses, the author/engineer is able to intervene within them, transforming the cultural production function itself and opening it up to the collective intervention.
The engineer figure described by Walter Benjamin reminds the “tactical” art by Paolo Cirio, who contributes to transform the meaning of the artistic practice from within, by unveiling the unsolved knots in the art field. Through his artworks, Paolo Cirio (http://www.paolocirio.net) intervenes tactically locating some plugs of a puzzle which can be finished only by directly involving its referents, being them either corporations, media apparatuses, or the so-called network “users”.
His artworks, some of which were created together with Alessandro Ludovico and Ubermorgen.com (GWEI, Google Will Eat Itself e Amazon Noir), some others were created individually (such as Drowning NYC, The Big Plot e Open Society Structures), redefine the author’s and art’s role, which becomes a premise to think over social and political dynamics. By manipulating the media and the news media, as he himself claims, his work “often pushes the boundaries of the representation, going beyond the use of a single media and focusing on the information environment created by the data flow.” His artworks deal with the language, the narrations, the creation of conspiracy plots, but also with the meaning of power, democracy, privacy and control. Not always without provoking contraddictions and controversies. But it is just through this dynamic of the imperfect and the unknown – once they are started, artworks are opened to possible developments and interpretations – that it is possible to experiment how the information and media flows build their meaning.
This interview, starting from the description of the meaning of tactics and strategies applied to the artistic practice, and wondering about some concepts such as “the media robbery”, ends thinking over some sensible knots revealed by the last projects: Face to Facebook, created with Alessandro Ludovico and launched at the last Transmediale 2011, and P2P Gift Credit Card protagonist of an action in London on March 25th, in which the “revolutionary” credit cards have been distributed in strategic places.
Both projects, exhibited at a solo show, REALITYFLOWHACKED, which opened in Ljubljana on April 26th at the Aksioma Project Space, become an incentive through which analyzing the intersections between art and market, the contradictions and paradoxes of neoliberal capitalism, the artist’s role itself and, at the same time, the one of the user.
In the social media era, the relational dynamics and the information data flow become more and more part of the production processes, not often validating the utopian perspective assumed by Walter Benjamin in 1934. That is why it becomes central to reflect on such processes, imagining possible alternatives, provoking critical contradictions and producing new visions and experiences.
Read the interview with Paolo Cirio here.
NYHEDSAVISEN: Public-Interfaces / A fake newspaper
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.
Arts and Politics of Participation @ AHAcktitude 2011
Seminar on the Arts and Politics of Participation, April 2, 15.00h @ AHAcktitude 2011, Italy, Academy of Fine Art of Carrara, organised by Tatiana Bazzichelli, Loretta Borrelli, Simona Lodi & Vera Martini.
The next AHAcktitude 2011, the national meeting of the AHA mailing list, is taking place in the city of Carrara, on April 1-3 hosted by the Fine Art Academy of Carrara.
The program is very rich and participated. Conferences, debates, workshops and performances will involve students, artists, activists and professors.
On Saturday from 15.00-18.00, Loretta Borrelli, Simona Lodi, Vera Martini and I are organizing a collaborative seminar on the topic: Arts and Politics of Participation. All the members of the AHA: Activism-Hacking-Artivism network and new participants are welcome. During this seminar, we are investigation the meaning of participation in the context of capitalistic strategies in the field of networking practices and exchange.
Below is the text of my intervention, a critique of the concept of participation and artivism in the time of social media (language: Italian).
Racconto di un’esperienza: verso una critica dell’artivismo?
di Tatiana Bazzichelli
Il concetto di partecipazione è centrale per sciogliere alcuni nodi che riguardano l’evoluzione e le trasformazioni del concetto di “fare rete” nell’era dei social media. Le mie riflessioni sono la conseguenza di un percorso che sto portando avanti a livello universitario durante la scrittura del mio dottorato in Danimarca e sono anche la conseguenza di un percorso di diretto coinvolgimento nell’ambito della scena attivista (o meglio artivista) in Italia sin dalla metà degli anni 90. Quindi, il mio contributo va pensato come soggettivo, e di base si tratta di un racconto di un’esperienza, che citando Chiara Zamboni, “è allo stesso tempo dono ai presenti e desiderio di essere aiutati nel decifrarla” (Zamboni, 2009: 34).