reports
Farfara Top of the World
Farfara2031, referring to an island that appeared sporadically on maps of the 16th century, is a project and research process, using the procedure of bidding with this fictional island for the title of European Capital of Culture (ECoC). Designed as an artistic experimental platform Farfara2031 aims to push the boundaries in thinking, practising and experiencing what an ECoC may be if virtuality is considered as a new form of cultural ‘physicality’. Farfara2031 takes the model of ECoC as a working template for investigating innovative structures and improved relations of creative and systemic thinking to develop models of collaboration, common curation and hybrid / blended models of training, capacity building, informal education and artistic production with participants and audiences at the heart of the work done.The project aims to contribute to a European vision beyond the usual or known parameters, terminologies and factual argumentations, or rhetoric of competitions of “The City in the Age of Touristic Reproduction” (Boris Groys). It attempts to explore new modes of digital and analogue learning and sharing, and takes Farfara – this mythical Maltese island – as a potential host, model or test-bed of a new way of approaching the intense activity surrounding the conferring, programming and managing of an ECo
Ocean Weekend
The first weekend of the Maltese leg of the Art Explora festival, on March 23 and 24, will launch the “Ocean Weekends“. In Malta, these two days of programming will be organized in collaboration with the Malta Biennale and curators Sofia Baldi Pighi, Emma Mattei and Andrew Borg Wirth, in partnership with the French Embassy in Valletta. The Ocean Weekend in Valletta will invite the public to a series of round tables, film screenings and inspiring talks, bringing together key speakers from
the worlds of art and science around the issue of the oceans’ climate emergency.
This groundbreaking venture embodies an ingenious blend of art, culture, and technology, fostering creative innovation and paving the way for a transformative approach to tackling complex challenges in food sustainability.
At the heart of this project lies the fusion of digital advancements and traditional agricultural wisdom. By leveraging cutting-edge technologies within the context of age-old farming techniques, this collaboration redefines the boundaries of agricultural production. It ingeniously integrates modern digital tools like AI, IoT, and data analytics with time-tested indigenous practices, thereby enhancing efficiency, productivity, and sustainability in food cultivation.
What sets this initiative apart is its groundbreaking artistic approach. Through a transdisciplinary lens, artists, scientists, educators, and farmers converge to reimagine food production. This convergence not only fosters innovative problem-solving but also sparks creative solutions that transcend conventional thinking. Art serves as a catalyst for unconventional ideas, offering fresh perspectives and out-of-the-box thinking to address the intricate challenges faced by the agriculture sector.
Moreover, the project champions cultural innovation by celebrating the rich heritage of both Switzerland and India. By intertwining cultural narratives and artistic expressions, it cultivates a dynamic tapestry of ideas and practices. Cultural exchange programs, artistic residencies, and collaborative exhibitions serve as platforms for cross-cultural dialogue, fostering mutual understanding and appreciation while fostering innovative solutions to age-old agricultural problems.
Addressing complex problems demands unconventional thinking and ‘out of the box’ creative directions. This project serves as a beacon, advocating for a paradigm shift in how we approach the intersection of technology, tradition, art, and agriculture. It emphasizes the need for holistic solutions that consider socio-cultural contexts alongside technological advancements, steering away from siloed approaches towards integrated, transdisciplinary strategies.
In essence, the Swiss-Indian transdisciplinary project is not just about revolutionizing food production; it’s a testament to the power of creativity, collaboration, and cultural exchange. It demonstrates that when art, culture, and technology converge, they have the potential to create innovative solutions that transcend boundaries, reimagine possibilities, and offer sustainable pathways towards a more resilient and nourished future for all.
(Un)real Data – Real Effects
(Un)real Data – Real Effects is a programme by !Mediengruppe Bitnik that is based on their research project Latent Spaces: Performing Ambiguous Data
at the Zürich University of the Arts and curated in cooperation with
Aksioma. The conference is developed in collaboration with Felix Stalder
and with the generous curatorial advice of the Latent Spaces research
group.
Media (Art) and Politics
Open webinar on media (arts), and politics. The webinar consisted of
talks by Gregory Sholette, Rachel O’Dwyer, and !Mediengruppe Bitnik, and
spanned subjects that discussed the relation of art and whistleblowing,
the social obligation of the artists now, the blockchain based so
called opportunities for artists, and how artistic practice can expand
from the digital into the physical space.
The Return of Spring and other Rites of Transition
On Sunday, February 11, the public will have the last opportunity to browse the art exhibitions Mystery 111 The Clay Army of Elefsina by Juan Esteban Sandoval, Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below curated by Panos Giannikopoulos, Mystery 87 I the sea voyage, I the occupation of the land by Stefania Struza and Mystery 8 With a look at Japan by Antonis Theodoridis are currently being presented in Elefsina, in the context of the 2023 Elefsis European Capital of Culture. The four exhibitions will be open from 13.00 to 20.00, while, during the day, the creators of the works – internationally renowned artists from Greece and abroad – present their work and talk to the public, once again highlighting the small town of West Attica as a point of meeting, reflection and open dialogue.
Ghost workers
“Snađi se, druže!” – “figure it out, comrade” – is a common phrase
used in former Yugoslavia. It originated during the WWII indicating that
partisans in action had to come up with solutions under extremely
unfavourable conditions. The question, when given instructions for an
impossible mission, would often be “but how do I do that?”, and the
answer would often be “figure it out, comrade”. Later during the
socialist period, this expression would be used for practices that
people were devising when encountering bureaucratic or material
constraints in everyday life. All periods and societies have such
practices of common lying, cheating and stealing and common phrases to
name them.FIO is a collective exploration of stories of ingenuity that people
with little or no power devise when systems fail them. The evening at
panke.gallery is focused on the inginuity of workers in the global gig
factory. Particularly on tactics the workers on platforms such as
Microwork, Amazon Turk or Upwork based in the Eastern Europe and the
Global South contrive to fake their location or presence to cirumvent
scant pay, surveillance and control that is frequently not expected from
the gig workers in the Western Europe and the Global North.The upcoming event features a talk by Aleksandra Lakić, introducing
her and Saša Savanović’s research on the socio-economic situation and
labor conditions in platform economy in South Eastern Europe. The talk
will also assess the impact of algorithmic management and surveillance
as factors contributing to declining quality of work on digital labour
platforms. A second presentation will be held by the researcher Max
Haiven, who has recently collaborated with rank-and-file Amazon workers
to write and publish short, speculative fiction stories about ‘the world
after Amazon.’The bonfire is an invitation to participate in a collective reading
of stories of such practices we have gathered and to contribute your own
first-hand or second-hand stories and thoughts. We intend the reading
to be convivial, spilling over into a shared meal.Event produced by Drugo More in collaboration with !Mediengruppe Bitnik.
Figure It Out – The Art of Living Through System Failure
Figure It Out The Art of Living Through System Failure is collaborative project that has been granted support under the Creative Europe program, sub-program Culture, of the European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Collaborators are Drugo More (HR) (Project Lead), Kiosk (RS), La Labomedia Association (FR), Vektor (EL) and Unfinished Art Space (MT). The project explores a range of practices that enable disenfranchised groups to overcome barriers established by administrative, institutional, and algorithmic regimes.
The project’s Closing Symposium will be held at the Malta Society of Arts, Valletta, Malta between 18 – 20 September 2024, alongside an exhibition.
We are happy to announce the call for presentations for the upcoming symposium titled “Figure it Out: The Art of Living Through System Failures”. This multidisciplinary gathering welcomes proposals from the fields of humanities, social sciences and artistic practice. Alongside academic papers and panel discussions, we welcome non-traditional and experimental formats.
Programme curated by: Margerita Pulè and Adnan Hadziselimovic
Gendered, racialized, bordered and exploited, marginalised, underserved, discriminated and vulnerable communities are often forced to develop tools and strategies that are considered unacceptable to the institutions of the system; thus developing practices and phenomena of coping, tinkering, making-do and circumventing exclusions. Sometimes these tools and strategies are forged out of necessity, of survival, sometimes to exercise rights or to secure access to basic services available only to ‘deserving’ citizens. Such tools and strategies are always aimed at a certain system (state, welfare institutions, corporations, workplace, credit, housing, utilities etc.) that has its own rules and conditions of access that these communities or individuals cannot meet, producing and reproducing systemic exclusion.
Finding ‘holes in the system’ and developing strategies to take advantage of system weaknesses, people use their ingenuity to avoid detrimental effects on their lives and lives of their communities.
Moreover, such practices have now expanded into the digital sphere, where they are facing new kinds of power structures and also getting recombined in interesting ways. As dataveillance, algorithmic governance and digital profiling seep into mechanisms of exclusion and dispossession, from border controls to public transport, education, health and housing, new workarounds, tinkering and hacking emerges. As they do with the growing impacts of climate change, forcing underserved communities across the globe to be resourceful and devise their own forms of adaptation.
We are particularly seeking contributions that critically examine the ethical dimensions of practices deemed illicit and illegal in mainstream contexts, considering their political implications and necessity in the face of exclusion. We encourage analyses of practices of ingenuity, of figuring it out, that people devise facing systemic exclusions perpetuated by state, corporate, or social institutions. Topics might include, but are not limited to;
System Failures and Social Exclusion: Exploration of strategies used by disenfranchised groups to navigate and subvert constraints imposed by administrative and algorithmic regimes;
Innovative Practices of Resistance: Discussions on frugal innovation and counter-innovation as responses to the rise of neo-fascisms and the rise of emergencies connected to ecological collapse;
Ambivalent Figures of Resilient Subjectivation: Critical analysis of many figures that figure it out practitioners are typically stigmatised as: “welfare queens”, scroungers, cheaters, free riders, scamleteers, tricksters… ;
Ethics of Research with Marginalized Constituencies: Critical and reflexive methodologies for research practices into illegal and unlawful, particularly the concept of ‘ethnographic refusal’;
Cultural and Historical Perspectives of ‘Figuring It Out’: Historical and cross-cultural comparisons of ‘figuring it out’ practices, stories and characterizations, as presented in artistic praxis, as well as folk and popular cultures.
Submission Guidelines:
Please submit a short bio and abstract using the form here.
Time-line
Call opens: January 15 2024
Submission deadline: 28 February 2024
Response date: by 30 April 2024
Symposium program announcement: by 30 July 2024
Registration deadline: 31 August 2024
Exhibition opening: 18 September 2024
Symposium dates: 19 & 20 September 2024
37C3
feierliche_eroffnung
scholz greift durch die afd wird verboten – deepfakes auch
hacking the climate
energy consumption of datacenters
self cannibalizing ai
herausforderungen der aktuellen karaokeforschung
on digitalisation sustainability climate justice
image making fatigue
glaeserne gefluechtete
who killed the internet
what i learned from loab ai as a creative adversary
opencoil
infrastructure of a migratory bird
music on mars
animal city
you’ve just been fucked by psyops
vra
buffered_daemons
feierlicher abschluss
ELECTRONIC MEDIA & VISUAL ARTS
Game-changing technologies are at the heart of the EVA-Berlin 2023 conference. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain and XReality applications are the innovative drivers in the ecosystems of the cultural sector, in creative industries and in artistic production. Haptic components of a work can be made tangible and pictorial representations can be put into appropriate words. A landscape painting gains an acoustic horizon of experience as a soundscape, or it is embedded in a game setting as an animated weather backdrop.
The educational mission in cultural institutions benefits from these possibilities. There are fundamentally new ways to interact with the audience and to address a broader public. Multimodal access and personalized communication services support the inclusive demands of today’s visitors and open up for a barrier-free perception also by disadvantaged or impaired audiences. At the same time, innovative technological tools have become firmly established in the fields of documentation, conservation and reconstruction. Machine learning tools ranging from linguistic analysis of historical records to OCR on handwritten texts are already providing valuable metadata for documentation. Digital twins are successfully utilized in the conservation and restoration of artworks to analyze damage, to suggest restoration methods, or even to plausibly reconstruct the colors and textures of destroyed artifacts.
However, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Generatability’ also entails serious risks. The new coexistence of man, machine and objects predictably dissolves familiar ties to the factual, to the material testimony of the artefacts and to the physical presence at the scene of the real. This raises questions of credibility and verification. Who are we actually talking to when entering into dialogue with an algorithmic counterpart?
The 27th EVA-Berlin Conference invites you to present current positions and practical application examples on these topics. Innovative contributions are welcome for the conference and for application-oriented workshops. Novel procedures, technologies and products can be presented at an exhibition at the same time.
As part of the international EVA Conference Network, the Berlin event is a platform for international exchange and European cooperation.