Streaming
Thursday, 2 July 2020 at 5 pm (CET)
aksioma.org/streaming

What impacts will the potential mass implementation of Artificial General Intelligence have on society? Régine Debatty talks with award-winning film director Tonje Hessen Schei about iHuman, a documentary that explores super-smart machines, social control, lack of transparency in decision-making and possible regulations.

Special guests: Pika Šarf, Marko Grobelnik, Boris Cergol

Streaming
Monday, 29 June 2020 at 5 pm (CET)
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Value is classically said to stem from human labor, and money to represent this value. Although those theories have been made obsolete by, among other things, the subjectivization of value which opened the door to the narratives of financialization, the idea that value should be objectively linked to the steps of its production endures in our economic imaginaries. Whether ‘labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things’ or whether its value was indexed to the profit derived from it—the consequences of which we can see now more clearly than ever when it comes to the wages of ‘essential workers’—the production of value with regards to labor still stands as one of the most pressing issues of the digital evolution.

It is interesting to bear in mind that, in the Western European region, work doesn’t seem to have been socially valued until relatively late—around the 18th century—but has then been largely glorified by the nascent modern education system of the 19th century. An activity traditionally devalued, or even at times condemned, since antiquity, work was then opposed to the spiritual meaning of life (and actually, to military activites too). Human beings were to find self-fulfillment with otium (meditation, reflection, poetry and politics…)—or war­—, and not with its negation, negotium (trade, business…).

After centuries of direct workers exploitation, the late 20th century saw otium and negotium merge in a new knowledge economy that extracted value from intellectual and cultural work. What some view as a path towards a sort of ‘dotCommunism’ unfortunately mostly led to a ‘data is the new oil’ state of mind. The situation and the history that produced it are of course more complex and it’s an attempt at mapping them through the lense of the massification of interest in cryptography that Martín Nadal and Cesar Escudero Andaluz propose with Economy, Knowledge and Surveillance in the Age of the Cryptocene.

Not only did data extraction turn each and every internet user into an unwitting worker by turning otium into negotium, but it is also heavily damaging everyone’s attention capacity to the point of seriously reducing our critical thinking ability. This is the question addressed by Ishtar Gate, a blockchain-based micro-economy-in-the-arts platform devised by the writer and visual theorist Penny Rafferty together with Nascent, designed to reward the reading of critical content and its comment with tokens exchangeable in real life. One step further in this return to valuing otium, Sašo Sedlaček turns some data extraction technologies—such as real-time pose estimation—against themselves, and allows the users of its Oblomo platform to mine cryptocurrencies while standing still, and to exchange the product of those physically inactive moments for the workforce of other people willing to, for instance, mow your lawn or wash your car. And what if, in this age of ever-expanding automation, we could evaluate the machinic workforce and transmit it through a currency? Embedding the classical labor value theory in a rational digital cryptocurrency, the Haket designed by Telekommunisten is intended as a criticism of the Bitcoin architecture and as way to rethink it as a stable currency thus usable as a currency.

Streaming
Monday, 22 June 2020 at 5 pm (CET)
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Like many technologies, the radical potential of blockchains and cryptocurrencies to revolutionise the way we work, trade, cooperate and exchange has narrowed as major banks, corporations, and other powerful interests claim this potential for themselves. What has happened to those alternative futures lost along the way? What about the paths not taken in the development of this technology? Or was it fated to be this way? Was this technology cursed from the beginning? This panel seeks to explore the ghosts and spectres of alternative possibilities, of the radical imagination, that haunt today’s landscape of blockchain experiments. In an era when blockchains are being used for the purpose of increasing corporate power, of consolidating inequality, or for new forms of surveillance and exploitation, are other blockchain futures possible?

The panellists will seek to recover the political economies of the hacker-engineers, whose stories start with an affiliation to “decentralisation” that emerged out of experiences in pre-Bitcoin cypherpunk, hacker and peer-to-peer network cultures as well as consider money’s long history of “epic failures”, in which schemers, dreamers and tricksters have tried, and failed, to steal monetary fire from the economic Gods. Together they will question the task for a truly revolutionary money that would not only bring about a redistribution of wealth, but also a reimagination of value. Among the propositions, we’ll hear about exploring how blockchain tech could be used not for “fixing” property-based value systems, but for refusing such systems entirely. Instead of financialising creative practice and further commodifying aesthetic artefacts, can “crypto” resist property as such? How might an unownable digital artefact function on the blockchain?

Special guests: Martin Mihajlov, Miha Artnak, Marina Markežič

Streaming
Monday, 15 June 2020 at 5 pm (CET)
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Tax havens are a popular topic for bar rants about The Others, those dirty scumbags who came to possess vast sums of money through means, networks, tools and methods an everyday earthling does not have access to. It is generally assumed the funds are a result of some money laundering/public corruption/criminal operation (as they often are), or of a “perfectly legal and legitimate” tax avoidance scheme. By law, only tax evasion is illegal, while the rest are legal methods of “cashing in” individual benefits, i.e., tax deductions for dependables. The public seemingly responds to revelations by authorities, journalists, and others about the millions in national currencies that have sunk into exotic offshore locations with the resigned realisation that everything will remain the same. This is true, but it also obfuscates the real consequences of tax havens: the millions of euros that never reach a country’s budget and are often a result of transnational crime. After the Panama Papers shook the global markets in 2016, some states fought back by installing registers of beneficial owners. Yet, they can hardly do anything about the flourishing offshore financial industry. To do so would go against the grain of the national economies of giants like the USA, where some states are “onshore” havens. Meanwhile the global public is complicit in this normalisation because, honestly, it is complicated to think about taxes and tax havens, right? Let this panel of investigative artists talking to an investigative journalist make it easier for you. RYBN.ORG will take you on an intimate ride aboard The Great Offshore, guiding you gently through offshore finance in infamous locations, like Malta, to help you identify with The Others. Then the Demystification Committee will show you how you can even become one of Them by receiving guidance from their Offshore Investigation Vehicle to set up your own global corporate structure. 

Special guests: Maruša Babnik, Žiga Perovič, Sebastijan Peterka, Matej Zwitter

Streaming
Monday, 8 June 2020 at 5 pm (CET)
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From empty luxury condos in London to slum clearance in Istanbul, from mortgage debt crisis in Spain to unaffordable rents in Slovenia, we are witnessing different local expressions of the global housing condition. These local crises stem from the real estate-financial complex that has transformed housing into an investment opportunity for an increasingly unequal concentration of global surplus capital. The commodification of housing thus offers lucrative financial opportunities for upper classes, while at the same time contributes to the increasing residential alienation, housing insecurity and expropriation of the commons. States have contributed to these developments by not only deregulating housing markets and privatising public rental stock, but also by employing different entrepreneurial strategies that support private investment strategies while limiting the development of non-profit alternatives. Housing is thus no longer a source of individual or social stability and security, but of constant tension, conflict and exploitation. How can communities, in current conditions of financial plunder and state removal, come together to construct other scenarios? How can we develop new mechanisms of communal control that will once again embed housing markets in local social relations, that will treat housing as a communal resource and human right? Can we imagine another system that will not be based on housing as an investment, but will see it as a home?

Special guests: Maša Hawlina, Uroš Mikanovič, Maruša Nardoni

Streaming
Monday, 1 June 2020 at 5 pm (CET)
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Neoliberal policies have re-organised the basic care provisions previously considered cornerstones of democratic life – healthcare, housing, access to knowledge, right to asylum, freedom of mobility, social benefits, etc. – turning them into tools for surveilling, excluding and punishing the most vulnerable, reframing the family unit as the sole bearer of responsibility for dependents. In the light of these processes, a growing wave of initiatives has been questioning the political and economic framework of care and experimenting with its collective reorganisation. On this panel, Tomislav Medak will present the research project Pirate Care that is gathering diverse self-organised care practices currently opposing the criminalisation of solidarity and prefiguring models for commoning care infrastructures. Cassie Thornton, of the Feminist Economics Department (the FED), will discuss The Hologram, a three-person health monitoring and diagnostic system practised from couches all over the world, on the phone and by many names, to produce a three-dimensional image of each participant’s physical, psychic and social health, based on one of the free, experimental care models developed by health workers at Social Solidarity Clinics in Greece during the height of the financial and refugee crisis. Maddalena Fragnito will present the experience of Soprasotto, a parent-managed kindergarten based in Milan since 2013. She will discuss the concept of “commoning care” by comparing its specificities to the market-oriented “techno-solutionist” hope on digital technologies in order to help society address the reorganisation of care needs.

Special guests: Majda Hrženjak, Lea Aymard, Maja Ivačič

Streaming
Monday, 25 May 2020 at 5 pm (CET)
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In his conversation with Domen Savič (Citizen D), Denis ‘Jaromil’ Roio emphasised that technology is only a means – we have to talk about problems and solutions. In building applications, we need to ask whether we build them in order for us to better understand individuals and society or in order for the applications to better understand us. In addition to decentralised tracking applications, we also focused on mutual credit system, which, according to the testimonies (at least) from Italy, where Jaromil joined the conversation from, might be more effective technological solutions than the systems for tracking infected individuals.

Special guests: Anja Blaj, Andraž Tori, Maja Založnik

Streaming
Monday, 18 May 2020 at 5 pm (CET)
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The current crisis, with governments begging tech companies for help, has highlighted the immense appeal of the ideology of technological solutionism. But what is its politics? And how does it relate to the other dominant ideology of the day, neoliberalism? This talk will explore the political effects of technological solutionism, survey its place in today’s global capitalism as well as suggest what a post-solutionist politics might look like.

Special guests: Sandra Bašić Hrvatin, Valerija Korošec, Nejc Slukan

Streaming
Monday, 11 May 2020 at 5 pm (CET)
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During spring 2019, a fancy new word made the rounds in France: collapsology. What would this entail, a year later? The collapse of certain aspects of global finance, logistics and just-in-time production was announced way earlier. Still, only weeks into the corona crisis, it is too early to say which aspects of the global financial system will be thrown into the dustbin of history. Pivotal nation-states are now exploring digital currencies as one tool for post-pandemic stimulus (or austerity). How do earlier proposals for Universal Basic Income relate to the sudden appearance of helicopter money in some countries? Are the Keynesian money proposals to prop up the Western economies an indication of the end of the neoliberal hegemony? Is the quasi ban on cash during the corona crisis an indication of the arrival of the cashless society?

Special guests: Iztok Hočevar, Tjaša Pureber, Vuk Ćosić and Rok Kranjc