Tactics & Practice #6:
Transnationalisms

Conference, exhibition curated by James Bridle
April 24 – May 25, 2018
Exhibition opening: WED, 25 April 2018 at 8:30 pm
Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova +MSUM
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

We live in a time of stark and often violent paradoxes: the increasing liberalization of social values in some parts of the world compared to increasing fundamentalism in others; the wealth of scientific discovery and technological advances in contrast to climate denialism, “post-factual” and conspiracy-driven politics; freedom of movement for goods and finance while individual movement is ever more constricted and subject to law; a drive towards agency, legibility and transparency of process while automation, computerization and digitization, render more of the world opaque and remote. At every level, mass movement of peoples and the rise of planetary-scale computation is changing the way we think and understand questions of geography, politics, and national identity.

These ever-increasing contradictions are seen most acutely at the border. Not merely the border between physical zones and between nation states, with their differing legal jurisdictions and requirements for entry and residency, but also the border between the physical and digital, when we apparently – but perhaps misleadingly and certainly temporarily – cross over into a different zone of possibility and expression.

This contradiction is also clear in the balkanisation of newly independent and fragmenting states, and in the rising current of nationalism across Europe, which seems to run in parallel to, and might even be accelerated by, digital connectivity. Some of the most outwardly regressive powers themselves employ what Kremlin theorist Vladislav Surkov has called “non-linear strategy”: a strategy of obfuscation and deliberate contradiction clearly indebted to the convolutions and confusions of the digital terrain – and of art. As ever more varied expressions of individual identity are encouraged, revealed, made possible and validated by online engagement, so at the same time a desperate rearguard action is being fought to codify and restrain those identities – online and off. These new emergent identities are, inevitably and by necessity, transient and contingent, slippery and subject to change and redefinition.The artists featured in Transnationalisms address the effect of these pressures on our bodies, our environment, and our political practices. They register shifts in geography as disturbances in the blood and the electromagnetic spectrum. They draw new maps and propose new hybrid forms of expression and identity. In the exhibition and in associated lectures from artists, researchers and theorists, Transnationalisms acknowledges and even celebrates the contradictions of the present moment, while insisting on the transformative possibilities of digital tools and networks on historical forms of nationalism, citizenship, and human rights. While the nation state is not about to disappear, it is already pierced and entangled with other, radically different forms. Alternative models and protocols of citizenship, identity, and nationhood are being prototyped and distributed online and through new technologies. Transnationalisms examines the ways in which these new forms are brought into the physical world and used to disrupt and enfold existing systems. It does not assume the passing of old regimes, but proclaims the inevitability of new ones, and strives to make them legible, comprehensible, and accessible.

Detailed program and biographies of the participants

THE TALKS

24 – 25 April 2018, 5 – 8:30 PM
Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture, Ljubljana

James Bridle
The Real Name Game

New technologies are allowing new forms of identity and community to flourish and be recognized, from virtual citizenships to digital nations, and gender identities to non-human actors. At the same time, systems of power and governance attempt to corral and suppress identity within geographical borders and database schema. James Bridle explores the uses and abuses of identity in his own practice, and the work of others.

Mojca Pajnik
Reclaiming Humanity: The utopias of world citizenship

The transnational reality of living in contemporary global societies poses several challenges for contemporary societies. The prioritization of western nation-state membership and economic imperatives has produced second-class citizenships, while the inhumanity of managing migration by reintroducing border regimes and prioritizing fake security has robbed millions of individuals of their humanity, and fed populist rage against migrants. World citizenship, based on more than the nation state, might assume an interplay of institutional policy with non-institutional practices of various subjectivities, constituting the public. Reclaiming humanity against “the globalization of indifference” requires a utopian invention of “worldliness of people” that stands for a political project of equality, rather than the moral project of the defence of traditions.

Marco Ferrari
Italian Limes: Mapping the Shifting Border across Alpine Glaciers

The border between Italy and its adjacent countries traverses snowfields and perennial ice sheets at high altitudes, mostly following the path of the Alpine watershed. Due to the global warming–induced shrinkage of the glaciers, a substantial shift of the watershed line has been detected in several places. Between 2014 and 2016, the project team of Studio Folder installed a network of custom-made, open-source sensors on a small section of the Austrian–Italian border on the Similaun glacier, to transmit in real time the position of the line. Marco Ferrari will talk about the genesis of the project and the fieldwork done in the Alps; he will also present the ongoing research on the history of Italian border surveys, along with a glimpse over other projects of Studio Folder that aim to develop a similar methodology of inquiry within the field of cartographic representation.

Eleanor Saitta
Performing States

We have built our concept of the nation on the ideas of institutions, of fixed points on maps, in time, and in law.  We’re also somewhat aware that this is fiction? Here, we’ll explore how we might re-understand what we call a “nation”.

Denis Maksimov
steɪt əv nəʊlænd [State of Noland]: on potent futures post- sovereignty, nationalism & imperialism

The nation state is a modern fiction: a result of the conceptual intercourse between a sovereign introduced by Thomas Hobbes in “Leviathan” and the imperialist and nationalist ideologies of the nineteenth century. Despite all the criticism of it, it is approached as a fundamental component of the political order, an everlasting tabula rasa for (re)structuring power. We suggest an alternative ideology for political self-organisation: steɪt əv nəʊlænd [State of Noland]: a ‘state of mind’ of not aligning with any geopolitical entity and a ‘state-after-state’ as a constellation of practices that functionally replace nation-state monopoly.

Peng Collective
Hacking politics with subversion, civil disobedience and law

Peng’s art functions as a burning barricade in the media biosphere. What are the challenges to this position when working across national boundaries? Something apparently edgy in Germany might be illegal in Poland or the UK. In Europe, freedom of art is of greatest importance; in the US, freedom of speech. In the midst of questions of left-wing censorship and right-wing subversion, Peng share their tactics for disrupting both sides of the debate.

THE EXHIBITION

Raphael Fabre, Jeremy Hutchison, They Are Here, Julian Oliver, Daniela Ortiz, Jonas Staal, Studio Folder
April 24 – May 24 2018, 10:00 – 18:00
Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova +MSUM

Raphael Fabre, Jeremy Hutchison, They Are Here, Julian Oliver, Daniela Ortiz, Jonas Staal, Studio Folder
April 25 – May 25, 2018, 12 pm – 6 pm
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

EXHIBITED WORKS

Raphael Fabre
CNI, 2017

On April 7th, 2017, Raphael Fabre submitted a request for a French ID card. All of his papers were deemed to be legal and authentic and so the demand was accepted and a new national ID card was issued. In fact, the photo submitted to accompany this request was created on a computer, from a 3D model, using several different pieces of software and special effects techniques developed for movies and video games. Just as our relationship with governments and other forms of authority is increasingly based on digital information, so the image on the ID is entirely virtual. The artist’s self-portrait suggests the way in which citizens can construct their own identities, even in an age of powerful and often dehumanising technologies.

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Jeremy Hutchison
Movables, 2017

The starting point for this work was a found photograph, taken by police at a border point somewhere in the Balkans. It showed the inside of a Mercedes, the headrests torn open to reveal a person hiding inside each seat. This photograph testifies to a reality where human bodies attempt to disguise themselves as inanimate objects, simply to acquire the same freedom of movement as consumer goods. ‘Movables’ translates this absurdity into a series of photo collages, combining elements of high-end fashion and car adverts, enacting an anthropomorphic fusion between the male form and the consumer product. The results are disquieting yet familiar, since they appropriate a visual language that saturates our everyday urban surroundings, highlighting the connections between transnational freedoms and limitations, and international trade.

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They Are Here
We Help Each Other Grow, 2017

Thiru Seelan dances on an East London rooftop, looking out towards the skyline of the Canary Wharf financial district. His movements are inspired by the dance form Bharatanatyam, traditionally only performed by women and taught to Thiru in secret by his younger sister. Thiru is a Tamil refugee and when he arrived in the UK in 2010, following six months of detention in Sri Lanka during which he was tortured for his political affiliations, Canary Wharf was his first home. His movement is recorded by a heat sensitive camera more conventionally used as surveillance technology and deployed to monitor borders and crossing points, where bodies are recorded and captured through their thermal signature. The song ‘We’ve helped each other grow’, composed and performed by London based Mx World, was chosen with Thiru to soundtrack the performance. Mx is a prefix that does not indicate gender. In the UK, it can be used on many official documents – including passports. The repeated refrain, ‘We’ve helped each other grow’ suggests a communal vision for self and social development.

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Julian Oliver
Border Bumping, 2012-2014

Border Bumping is a project to map the ways in which national boundaries shift and overlap in the electromagnetic spectrum. Using a freely available, custom-built smartphone application, Border Bumping agents collect cell tower and location data as they traverse national borders in trains, cars, buses, boats or on foot. Close to the border, cellular devices hop from network to network across neighbouring countries, often before or after we ourselves have arrived. These moments, when the device operates in one territory whilst the body continues in another, can be seen to produce a new and contradictory terrain for action: a tele-cartography, produced by movement and new technologies.

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Daniela Ortiz
Jus Sanguinis, 2016

Jus sanguinis, meaning ‘the right of the blood’, is one of the main ways in which people acquire citizenship: from the blood of their parents. Daniela Ortiz is an artist of Peruvian descent living in Spain, where only babies with Spanish blood are recognized as subjects with the right to the nationality at the moment of the birth. As a result, her child would not have access to Spanish nationality. In this performance, undertaken when Ortiz was four months pregnant, she receives a blood transfusion from a Spanish citizen, directly challenging the racist and nationalist regime of citizenship which would classify her Spanish-born child as an immigrant.

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Jonas Staal
New Unions – Map, First draft, 2016

Jonas Staal’s New Unions is an artistic campaign supporting progressive, emancipatory, and autonomist movements all over Europe, and proposing the creation of a “transdemocratic union” which is not limited by the boundaries of nation states. The New Unions map illustrates the recent, massive rise in social movements and new political parties which are creating new models of political assembly and decision making while challenging traditional national and institutional structures. From the civil initiative in Iceland to collectively rewrite the constitution after the economic crash, to regional independence movements and pan-European solidarity groups, these emerging political experiments propose new forms of transdemocratic practices.  This map is the first in a series which is continuously updated to reflect the evolving geography of transdemocracy.

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Studio Folder
Italian Limes, 2016

Italian Limes is a research project and an interactive installation that explores the most remote Alpine regions, where national borders drift with glaciers. Installed at 3,300m above sea level on the watershed separating Italy and Austria, a network of GPS sensors monitored the shifting position of the border between the two countries due to climate change. By focusing on the fragile balance of the Alpine ecosystem, Italian Limes shows how natural frontiers are subject to the complexity of ecological and territorial processes—and that they depend on the technologies and historical norms that are used to represent them. The full dataset can be explored at www.italianlimes.net.

Biographies of the artists and the curator: HERE

Tactics & Practice #6:
Transnationalisms

Bodies, Borders, and Technology

Conference and exhibition
24 April–25 May 2018

Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture, Ljubljana
Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova +MSUM
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

Curated by
James Bridle

Part of the Tactics & Practice series and the EU project State Machines

We live in a time of stark and often violent paradoxes: the increasing liberalization of social values in some parts of the world compared to increasing fundamentalism in others; the wealth of scientific discovery and technological advances in contrast to climate denialism, “post-factual” and conspiracy-driven politics; freedom of movement for goods and finance while individual movement is ever more constricted and subject to law; a drive towards agency, legibility and transparency of process while automation, computerization and digitization, render more of the world opaque and remote. At every level, mass movement of peoples and the rise of planetary-scale computation is changing the way we think and understand questions of geography, politics, and national identity.

These ever-increasing contradictions are seen most acutely at the border. Not merely the border between physical zones and between nation states, with their differing legal jurisdictions and requirements for entry and residency, but also the border between the physical and digital, when we apparently – but perhaps misleadingly and certainly temporarily – cross over into a different zone of possibility and expression.

This contradiction is also clear in the balkanisation of newly independent and fragmenting states, and in the rising current of nationalism across Europe, which seems to run in parallel to, and might even be accelerated by, digital connectivity. Some of the most outwardly regressive powers themselves employ what Kremlin theorist Vladislav Surkov has called “non-linear strategy”: a strategy of obfuscation and deliberate contradiction clearly indebted to the convolutions and confusions of the digital terrain – and of art. As ever more varied expressions of individual identity are encouraged, revealed, made possible and validated by online engagement, so at the same time a desperate rearguard action is being fought to codify and restrain those identities – online and off. These new emergent identities are, inevitably and by necessity, transient and contingent, slippery and subject to change and redefinition.The artists featured in Transnationalisms address the effect of these pressures on our bodies, our environment, and our political practices. They register shifts in geography as disturbances in the blood and the electromagnetic spectrum. They draw new maps and propose new hybrid forms of expression and identity. In the exhibition and in associated lectures from artists, researchers and theorists, Transnationalisms acknowledges and even celebrates the contradictions of the present moment, while insisting on the transformative possibilities of digital tools and networks on historical forms of nationalism, citizenship, and human rights. While the nation state is not about to disappear, it is already pierced and entangled with other, radically different forms. Alternative models and protocols of citizenship, identity, and nationhood are being prototyped and distributed online and through new technologies. Transnationalisms examines the ways in which these new forms are brought into the physical world and used to disrupt and enfold existing systems. It does not assume the passing of old regimes, but proclaims the inevitability of new ones, and strives to make them legible, comprehensible, and accessible.

Detailed program and biographies of the participants

Jeroen van Loon
Cellout.me

Exhibition
21 March–20 April 2018

 Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

What kinds of questions are raised by the selling of one individual’s full genome? What is the value of a single human DNA profile? At the end of 2015, Dutch artist Jeroen van Loon offered his entire DNA data – 380 GB of personal DNA data – for sale, online, for a year, on a dedicated website. Anybody could place a bid through www.cellout.me.

After careful consideration, the artist decided not to stipulate a contract with the eventual buyer, and not to fix a production cost: the data were put on auction at 0 euros as a starting price, and were sold on 27 September 2016 to the Belgian Verbeke Foundation, at a final price of 1100 euros. The buyer becomes the owner of the entire piece, an installation composed of the server cabinet where the data are stored, some framed pictures documenting the process of extracting and encoding the artist’s DNA and four original letters written by different specialists upon the artist’s request. The letters provide different perspectives on the value of the artist’s DNA. Christie’s Amsterdam tries to estimate the artistic value of the artist’s DNA, contextualizing it in the history of conceptual and performance art; ErasmusMC discusses the moral value of one complete human genome, concluding: “You could think of DNA as a digital version of a person. If you guard his genome and keep it, you can save him from obscurity, and maybe, one day, bring him back to life again. How much is mankind worth to me? How much is it worth to you? DNA is mysterious and ordinary, unknown and familiar at the same time. But above all, the value of the genome is personal.” KPMG (a company focused on big data) considers the speculative value of the artist’s DNA at this moment (nothing, unless it reveals some significant deviation). Finally, Fox-It (a cybersecurity company) insists on the need to protect these data, because DNA is the new gold and “access to the goldmine” should be controlled.More than a take on contemporary digital culture and genetics, Cellout.me can be seen as a work of speculative science fiction that is able to raise uncomfortable questions on the privacy, economics and bioethics of the future. Van Loon took pains to get the most complete and faithful digital transcription of his genome – the most faithful self-portrait even. What’s recorded are rough data without meaning – but, if interpreted and turned meaningful, these information can give the buyer unprecedented power not only over the artist’s persona, but over his lineage, given that the DNA code is shared in part with his parents, siblings and heirs. Whatever happens in the future, he’s no longer the owner of the most faithful translation of himself into data. The sale of this artwork pulls future digital culture into the present, asking new questions concerning authorship, intellectual property, copyright, privacy, big data and ethics: What are the consequences of owning someone else’s DNA data? How does this influence the spatial privacy of the biological owner and his family members?

ARTIST TALK

In this talk, Jeroen van Loon gives a brief general introduction to his work and then focuses on the Cellout.me project which revolves around the idea of selling the artist’s DNA data to the highest bidder through an online auction. Van Loon explains why this idea is relevant to today’s data-driven society, and what kind of fundamental questions it poses to privacy, data authorship, big data and authenticity.

THE AUTHOR

Jeroen van Loon lives and works in Utrecht, Netherlands. He received a Bachelors in Digital Media Design and a European Media Master of Arts from HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. His fascination revolves around revealing, documenting and visualizing digital culture. Earlier work focused on its personal and societal impact, while recent work focuses on the Internet itself: its architecture, physicality and connectivity – speculating on how these will change in the future. Van Loon gave two TEDx talks, won the European Youth Award and was awarded the K. F. Hein Art Grant. Recent work is included in the collection of the Verbeke Foundation, Belgium. Recent exhibitions include the Centraal Museum Utrecht, Dutch Design Week, z33 in Hasselt, Cyberfest 9, V2_ in Rotterdam, Tech Art Expo and transmediale18 in Berlin. 

Crypto Design

Workshop and series of lectures
6–7 March 2018

The Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana

Curated by
Institute of Network Cultures (NL)

In the framework of State Machines

Crypto Design is a workshop and series of lectures to explore the Deep Web and find new ways to visualize the nooks and crannies of the hidden parts of the internet. Curated by the Institute of Network Cultures (NL).

THE TALKS

6 March 2018 at 10 AM – 1 PM
The Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana, classroom 118

Patricia de Vries
Masks and Camouflage as Artistic Cryptographic Strategies

Over the past years, a growing number of artists have formulated a critique over the ubiquity of identity recognition technologies. Specifically, the use of these technologies by state security programs, tech-giants and multinational corporations has met with opposition and controversy. A popular artistic form of resistance to recognition technology is sought in cryptographic masks. Zach Blas, Leo Selvaggio, Sterling Crispin and Adam Harvey are among a group of internationally acclaimed artists who have developed subversive anti-facial recognition crypto-masks that disrupt identification technologies. In this lecture, Patricia de Vries explores the ontological underpinnings of these popular and widely exhibited crypto-mask projects.

Patricia de Vries works as a PhD researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam and a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. She reads and writes about algorithmic anxiety in the arts. More

Anthony van der Meer
A Guided Tour Through the Clear, Deep and Dark Web

What’s the clearnet? What is the difference between the deep web and the dark web? And how do we find something that wasn’t supposed to be found? In this interactive talk all these questions will be answered. We meet on the clearnet where you learn how to easily find what you’re looking for and what you weren’t supposed to find. Then we will gradually find our way into more hidden parts of the web where we will discover the size and possibilities of the deep web and get to know around this huge online world. Our last stop? The dark web! Is it really such a bad place as the name implies? Or does it have a good reason for existence? You will be provided with tips and tricks to find out yourself. The tour will provide a practical “itinerary” but will also zoom in on the importance of having places to hide.

Anthony van der Meer is a director, researcher and concept developer. He graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam in 2015 with his movie Find my Phone. More

Tim Brouwer
Cryptographic Collectibles: the Materiality of Cryptography

Whether it’s electronic money, tokenized assets or identities on the blockchain – digital wealth is gradually becoming a prominent part of our reality. As a result, the importance of cryptographic technologies is increasing. However, do we really understand those technologies? How do cryptographic technologies provide, secure and display wealth? The current, rather technical, depiction of contemporary cryptography omits those who aren’t literate in code writing. Therefore, its significance and scope aren’t entirely visible and cryptography remains in its crypt. Tim Brouwer believes that cryptography can be reimagined through the medium of product design. During his presentation, he will demonstrate the manner in which cryptographic technologies (from ‘Cryptographic Collectibles’ to futuristic bio-cryptography) manifest itself in our material reality.

Tim Brouwer is writing his thesis at the Institute of Network Cultures for the bachelor Product Design, University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam. He uses product design as a medium to investigate and materialize abstract themes such as recognition systems and cryptographic technologies. More

THE WORKSHOP

Loes Bogers
Crypto Design Workshop
6–7 March 2018 at 3–8 PM
The Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, classroom 311

The aim of the Crypto Design Workshop is to “go diving” into the Deep Web, to decrypt its content, and explore how these hidden infrastructures could be empowering, hospitable, and inspiring. During this 2-day workshop, participants set out to find new tangible and visual metaphors that contribute to an understanding of the Deep Web beyond the iceberg and navigation metaphors. The workshop will kick-off with the talks Masks and Camouflage as Artistic Cryptographic Strategies about crypto-inspired art by researcher Patricia de Vries, A Guided Tour Through the Clear, Deep and Dark Web by film director Anthony van der Meer, and Cryptographic Collectibles: the Materiality of Cryptography by designer Tim Brouwer. Loes Bogers, design researcher at the MakersLab at the University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam, will lead the rest of the workshop.

Crypto Design Workshop is an extension of the Crypto Design Challenge that was first held in the Netherland in 2015 and resulted in an exhibition at the Museum of the Image in Breda and the Z33 House of Contemporary Art in Hasselt. In 2016 the edition entitled Deep Web culminated in a symposium and an exhibition at the Club Paradiso in Amsterdam. Posters of all nominees of that edition will be on display in the venues of the Department for Visual Communication of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design until mid-May 2018.

Loes Bogers is a researcher and educator exploring in participatory practices at the intersections of art, technology and design research. She is coordinator and educator at the minor Makers Lab: Making as Design Research at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences where she also works as a researcher in the Visual Methodologies Research Group and the Citizen Data Lab.

KairUs (Linda Kronman & Andreas Zingerle)
Forensic Fantasies

Exhibition
14 February–16 March 2018

Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

What happens to our data when we send a computer, an hard disk or any kind of other storage device to the garbage? Not everybody knows that the only way to prevent access to an – even damaged and inaccessible for us – digital storage device is to physically destroy it, using a specific procedure. And that around the giant digital waste dumpsters located in third world countries flourishes an economy based not only on the recycling of hardwares and precious metals, but also on data recovery and reuse.

Forensic Fantasies (2016) is a series of three artworks developed by KairUs (Linda Kronman and Andreas Zingerle) after an artist in residence program in Ghana, and dealing with data breaches of private information. In the artworks, KairUs use data that was recovered from hard-drives dumped in Agbogbloshie, Ghana and collected after a process of field research. Reports suggest that at this e-waste dump, criminals extract data from hard-drives to demand payments from their pre-owners or to resell the information.

More specifically, Not a Blackmail examines the possibility to blackmail a prior owner of a hard-drive. In order to do it, it’s crucial to be able to contact the person to express one’s demands. From one hard-drive KairUS found out who it had belonged to, further through social media platforms, they found his current employer and other contact details; yet, rather than blackmailing the person, they grew curious if they could get in contact with him/her. Therefore the artwork consists of one ready to be posted package, containing the recovered data and a letter to the pre-owner.

Identity Theft focuses on the phenomena of romance scamming. Scammers conduct identity theft by copying bulks of images of attractive people to create fraudulent profiles on social media platforms or dating channels. The scammers pose to be in love with their victim and after gaining their trust they lure them to give gifts and money, always hiding behind their false identity. One of the hard-drives contained several images of attractive ladies, probably copied to this hard-drive to create and sustain fraudulent profiles. In the artwork, 18 of the fraudulent online profiles using the same images found on the hard-drive are combined with “Nollywood” – mainly Nigerian and Ghanaian low-budget films – found footage clips that thematize the topic of romance scams. Finally, Found Footage Stalkers takes a closer look at images found on one of the hard-drives. Scanning through the private photos enables very personal insights into the life and habits of the pre-owners of this hard-drive. You can follow them to parties with friends, trips to amusement parks and Christmas celebrations with the family. By presenting the photos in an album, KairUS updates the traditional practice of found footage, based on gathering material from thrift shops, yard sales and flea markets for remixing and creating new artworks.

ARTIST TALK

Agbogbloshie is a district in the teeming metropolis of Accra in West-African Ghana. The world’s largest electronic-waste dump is located here. 22 hard-drives brought back to Austria from this dump were the starting point for the ‘Behind the Smart World’ Research Lab, a one year research program at servus.at in Linz, Austria. Alongside the material and exploitative dark sides of the dirty business with electronic waste, the ‘Behind the Smart World’ project brings together artistic positions dealing with the value of digital information and our constant production of data. During the artist talk at Aksioma Project Space KairUs will present the journey of the hard-drives, the creation of the ‘Forensic Fantasies’ trilogy and give insights to their current research project carried out at Woosong University in South Korea.

THE AUTHOR

KairUs is a collective of two artists Linda Kronman (Finland) and Andreas Zingerle (Austria) whose work focuses on human computer and computer mediated human-human interaction. Since 2010 they have investigated the issue of Internet fraud and online scams, often shifting focus and approaching the theme from a number of perspectives like data security, ethics of vigilante communities, narratives of scam e-mails, scam & technologies. They have adopt methodologies, used by anthropologists and sociologist, therefore their artworks are often informed by archival research, content analysis, participation observations and field research. They publish academic research papers related to their projects and contextualize their research topics to wider discourses like data privacy, activism and hacking culture, and disruptive art practices. Currently they both hold an Assistant Professor position at Woosong University (South Korea) and focus their research on vulnerabilities of Internet of Things and Smart Cities. 

New World Order

Exhibition
11 January–9 February 2018
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

Curated by
Ruth Catlow & Marc Garrett (Furtherfield)

In the framework of State Machines

A mysterious and controversial technology is among us. The blockchain underpins digital currencies and makes possible dramatic new conceptions of global governance and economy that could permanently enrich or demote the role of humans – depending on who you talk to.

Featuring experimental artworks by artists Jaya Klara Brekke, Elias Haase, Pete Gomes, Rob Myers, O’Khaos, Paul Seidler, Paul Kolling, Max Hampshire, Lina Theodorou, Corina Angheloiu, Max Dovey, James Stewart and xfx (a.k.a. Ami Clarke), New World Order is a group exhibition curated by Furtherfield and presented at Aksioma Project Space as part of the European project State Machines. It imagines a world in which responsibility for many aspects of life (reproduction, decision-making, organisation, nurture, stewardship) have been mechanised and automated, deferred to the blockchain, transferred, once and for all, from natural and social systems into a secure, networked, digital ledger of transactions and computer-executed contracts.

Artworks featured in New World Order include a self-owning, self-exploiting forest with ideas of expansion (Terra0 by P. Seidler, P. Kolling and M. Hampshire); a self-replicating android flower in the form of a metal sculpture that, in return for Bitcoins, commissions an artist to create a new artwork (Plantoid by O’Khaos); an illustrated sci-fi novella dealing with the implications of a new wave of fully financialised planetary-scale automation (Bad Shibe by R. Myers and L. Theodorou); and a film collecting different takes on blockchain technologies by leading thinkers, computer scientists, entrepreneurs, artists and activists (The Blockchain – Change Everything Forever by P. Gomes), among other things.

Simply put, the blockchain is a network communication protocol based on a distributed database that stores records on different connected computers simultaneously. These are collected in blocks and cryptographically secured. Functionally, a blockchain serves as an open, distributed ledger that can permanently record and verify transactions between two parties.

First conceptualized in 2008 and implemented as a core component of the digital currency Bitcoin, blockchains are now being applied to many different fields, including finance, insurance, communications and healthcare. For promoters its promise lies in the removal of third party mediators, from internet providers to banks. It’s no surprise therefore that, like the Web in the Nineties, the blockchain elicits a passionate debate and new utopian visions for the future of communication technologies.The exhibition is part of a large-scale programme of publications, workshops and talks that brings together leading international artists and writers from across the globe. Launched at Furtherfield Gallery in London’s Finsbury Park in May 2017, it is now touring to Aksioma Project Space in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and in February 2018, to the Filodrammatica gallery in Rijeka, Croatia.

ARTWORKS

Plantoid by O’Khaos is an autonomous blockchain based artwork that reproduces itself, harnessing the forces of aesthetic beauty and automated governance. When the metal sculpture of a flowering plant receives a certain number of bitcoins, it commissions an artist to create a new artwork. All those who contributed to funding the Plantoid can set the rules surrounding the genetic traits (the DNA) and the soul (the governance) of the new “child” Plantoid. Exhibition visitors will be able to buy bitcoins to tip the sculpture and determine how the Plantoid will evolve.

Terra0 is an artwork and prototype for a self-owning, self-exploiting forest by Paul Seidler, Paul Kolling and Max Hampshire. Initiated by humans, over time the forest creates capital by selling licenses for the logging of its trees and utilization of its assets through automated processes, smart contracts and blockchain technology. It sells its raw materials, accumulates capital, buys itself and eventually expands into new territories.

Satoshi means clear thinking, quick witted and wise. It is also the name of the anonymous founder(s) of bitcoin and the blockchain. The Satoshi Oath by Jaya Klara Brekke and Elias Haase is a method for developers to think clearly about what kind of relations get chained together in the coding of new blockchain applications, and their possible effects on people and the environment. Using three main properties of blockchain technology – immutability, neutrality and decentralisation – the Satoshi Oath presents a set of blocks from which to build an ethics for new blockchain projects: Power, Change, Delegation, Disclosure, Dissensus and Exodus.

Bad Shibe is a sci-fi novella written by Rob Myers and illustrated by Lina Theodorou that invites us to imagine what kind of society emerges when a system designed to verify the transfer of digital assets is combined with a world where reputation is based on “followers” and “likes.” The story deals with the implications of a new wave of fully financialised planetary-scale automation and the struggle to discern right from wrong when human and machine agency merges. It also invites us to think of humans and societies as much as the effects of technology.

The website x-fx.org shows the video: untitled, data collection from domestic ether mining rig by Ami Clarke – a video as data capture, showing glimpses of the material parts of an ether mining rig, which conveys the energy used and sweat equity of a DIY cryptocurrency prospector with finely tuned financial calculations, of a not so free, money mining system. The data is a component of a larger puzzle across different events and sites initiated at A Throw Of The Dice, an exhibition and workshop series at Banner Repeater in 2016 that considered some of the contradictory claims made for blockchain technology.  Recorded audio from the workshops: Thinking through the block at Banner Repeater is held on the website, from participants: Tom Clark, Paul Purgas, Alessandro Ludovico, Karen Di Franco, Ruth Catlow, Ben Vickers, Tom Pearson, Malavika Rajnarayan, Prayas Abhinav and Satya Gummuluri of surfatial, and Ami Clarke.

The Blockchain – Change Everything Forever, a Furtherfield film directed by Pete Gomes, was created to diversify the people involved in thinking about blockchain technologies by bringing together leading thinkers, computer scientists, entrepreneurs, artists and activists to answer some of the key questions: What can a blockchain do? Who builds this new reality? How will we rule ourselves? How will the future be different because of the blockchain?

Handfastr – making commitments wherever you are by Corina Angheloiu, Max Dovey and James Stewart is a five minute marriage contract, generated by a program using blockchain to reconfigure social pledges. Handfastr whittles marriage down to a financial agreement between two different parties, adapting the practical and functional aspects into a platform that enables impromptu financial commitments between people in public space via temporary agreement using smart phones.

Boštjan Čadež
PD4

Exhibition
19 December 2017–5 January 2018
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

“In evaluating systems the artist is a perspectivist considering goals, boundaries, structure, input, output, and related activity inside and outside the system. Where the object almost always has a fixed shape and boundaries, the consistency of a system may be altered in time and space, its behavior determined both by external conditions and its mechanisms of control.”

— Jack Burnham: Systems Esthetics [1]

The exhibition space in PD4 is empty. There are only a pair of VR goggles [2] and a couple of transmitters. The artwork is not present in three-dimensional space. Its object is a virtual body that extends into the algorithmic infinity of alternate reality.

PD4 explores the idea of presence and self-awareness measured by effects such as a sense of space, time, the body and emotional states. It also deals with the idea of (un)real spaces. The visitor becomes a player in a reality game in which one is constantly losing one’s sense of one’s own body and, therefore, feeling the gravity of one’s own corporeality even more. By creating monochromatic autogenerative levitational architectural elements, the artist conceives a programmed space that the player produces with his or her gaze. He is interested in improvisational aesthetics and the metamorphoses of a live computed sculpture in which the morphing space becomes the spectator’s psychological portrait. Active players are struggling with a sense of balance and orientation in the unpredictable, constantly growing space. Passive spectators are overwhelmed by the expanding constructions, feeling immersed in a doubly interior space: firstly in the space within virtual architecture, and secondly in the space within their own perceptual apparatuses. What the spectator is viewing is not a digital image, but rather a very corporeal image. The architecture of space is not something external, but rather an intrinsic string of characteristics that grow at various levels of syntax and manifest themselves as a set of random formations. These discreet sequences are translated in space as continuous events. The entire environment in PD4 is a sensitive alternate body composed of data-points that deconstruct or saturate.

The space of the alternate reality of PD4 is programmed with Unreal Engine 4, a suite of integrated tools for professional developers of games, simulations and visualisations. [3] Simulations of commercial virtual spaces, which, among others, use these tools, are inclined to producing approximations of reality, whereas Čadež is interested in exploring the boundaries of algorithmic worlds. He is interested in physical and mental effects escaping the users’ control. The aesthetics of PD4 does not aim at effects that would be “better than reality”. In PD4, the player does not identify with anything. PD4 is a simulacrum, it is a walk through alternate nature, the incoherent world with a new geography testing the limits of its own perception. The player is dealing with one’s own corporeality, depth, height, searching for a point of orientation, which challenges all established or learned perceptual processes. The game has no scenario, no narrative; it has generative scenes that keep changing all the time, expanding and flipping over ad infinitum in a temporal and spatial sense. The game has no goal that could be controlled, anticipated or completed because it leads to the expansion of consciousness achieved through the medium of corporeal and mental processes. It is not an escapist resort to entertainment industry and synthetic please. If PD4 has a goal, it is to show that the greatest illusion is the idea of objective reality, the idea that there exists a world that is stable, fixed, and can be perceived as is. For we cannot prove deductively that the “real world” exists without the need for our argument to take into account our presupposition “that the real world exists”. Given the consistency of human perceptions and our seeming inability to affect the findings about these perceptions, it is reasonable to believe that a reality exists as an effect of our perception. The most we can say is that a real world exists only because we do not have sufficient evidence to prove that is does not exist.

The updated HD VR technologies with minimal lagging are announcing a new revolution in the post-information age. At last, VR consoles take into account the carbon-based body which was condemned to a passive sedentary experience for several decades. With VR technology, the player has no surrogate body or avatar that is not subject to bodily functions. Virtual environment is an apparatus for perceiving relations, which takes into account the tension between freedom and necessity. It appears as a causal network of infinite dimensions, which cannot be fully computed or foreseen, for the human body does not have a uniform or exclusively geometric sense of space that could be determined by measuring distances. Space is not uniform but rather condensed or dispersed like time and PD4 challenges our sense of both.PD4 generates alternate reality, it is a programmed sculpture that enables the players to experience the environment that translates the architecture into a situation. PD4 produces a perceptual spectrum that is not better than real; yet, it is real in all its corporeal and mental perceptibility.

NOTES

[1] Jack Burnham: Systems Esthetics, v: Artforum, New York, 1968, p. 32. See also: Jack Burnham: Systems Esthetics, in: Richard Kostelanetz, ed.: Esthetics Contemporary, Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1978, pp. 160–171.
[2] VR goggles are special glasses enabling perception of virtual reality.[3] Unreal Engine 4 tools are free for all not-for-profit users. Unreal environment is projected in VR goggles, connected to Lighthouse (HTC Vive) laser transmitters, which enable the tracking of visitors in the entire space.

THE AUTHOR

Boštjan Čadež (1979) studied industrial design at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana. As an intermedia artist, he’s lately been focusing mostly on the fields of computer, real-time-generated and generative graphics and robotics, presented in the form of performances and installations. He’s received several prestigious awards and prizes for his innovations in design and programming. His previous artistic endeavours include graffiti, street art and VJ-ing. In 2013, he received the Golden Bird Award in the category of intermedia art.

CREDITS

Production:
Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2017

Supported by:
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana

SHARE Lab
Exploitation Forensics

Exhibition
29 November–15 December 2017

Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

Part of the programme State Machines

Exploitation Forensics is a collection of maps and documents created as a result of investigations conducted in the last few years by the SHARE Lab. The maps will help visitors explore the invisible layers of contemporary technological black boxes and their fractal supply chains, exposing various forms of hidden labour and the exploitation of material resources and data.

There are many reasons why we should be interested in the black boxes hidden within Facebook algorithmic factory, the first map in the exhibition. They mediate and record our every interaction, our deepest personal communications, our behaviour and our activities. Within these invisible walls, in every moment algorithms decide which information will appear in our infosphere, what kind of content will become part of our reality and what will be censored or deleted. Moreover, these black boxes have defined new forms of labour and exploitation and have generated an enormous amount of wealth and power for the owners of the invisible immaterial factories, creating a large economic gap between those who own and control the means of production and the users who often live below the poverty line. Somewhere hidden deep under the layers of Facebook’s algorithmic machines are new forms of potential human rights violations, new forms of exploitation and mechanisms of manipulation that influence billions of people each day.

Each of our networked devices and the vast Internet infrastructure that constitute those systems, hide many interesting stories behind the invisible layers of fractal production chains, exploitation of resources and energy consumption. Invisible labour hidden within invisible restricted locations – from the deep mine holes over  the office boxes of outsourced companies to the invisible working spaces of digital labour around the globe – is the focus of interest of Anatomy of an AI system, the second map in the exhibition. This map will guide visitors through the birth, life and death of one networked device, based on a centralized artificial intelligence system, Amazon Alexa, exposing its extended anatomy and various forms of exploitation.

The Cloud is supported by large amounts of hard, and usually low paid, human labour, hidden in the underground. Sometimes, the human labour is there just to replace algorithmic processes; sometimes it is there to serve as feedback to algorithms; and sometimes it is managed by the algorithms themselves. In the world where the “neutrality” of algorithms is more reliable than human decisions, human labour is carefully hidden behind interfaces and far away from the shiny main headquarters. Human labour is in this sense considered dirty and should be invisible, in contrast to the minimalistic design interfaces and the cold and reliable algorithms that have become the face of the networked society. However, the cognitive workforce in charge of the intangible modes of production of technology, such as research, conceptualization and design, is completely separated from the physical reality associated with the material production of their ideas. The working spaces of the 21st century technological cognitive factories, e.g. Facebook and Google offices in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, stage ideal work and leisure paradigms disconnected from the different realities that they trigger: inhuman labour conditions, radioactive landscapes, poverty, sickness and death.

ARTIST TALK

In this talk, Vladan Joler dives into the landscapes shaped by the algorithmic factories of the surveillance economy, and the associated exploitation of material and immaterial labour and natural resources. He explores maps of the Facebook Empire and investigates the deep anatomy of machine learning systems and the hidden human labour behind them.

THE AUTHORS

Prof. Vladan Joler is Share Foundation founder and professor at the University of Novi Sad. He is the leader of the SHARE Lab, a research and data investigation lab for exploring various technical aspects of the intersection between technology and society. The Share Foundation is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to protecting the rights of Internet citizens and promoting positive values of openness, decentralization, free access and exchange of knowledge, information and technology.

SHARE Lab is a small, independent research and data investigation group exploring various technical aspects of the intersection between technology and society. They use a variety of research and forensics methods to map the landscapes of surveillance capitalism, exploring black boxes and contemporary forms of power and the exploitation of labour, material resources and quantified nature.

Nika Ham
Squat

Online project
September – December 2017

Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

Part of U30+ production programme for supporting young artists

Squatting has a long tradition in contemporary art. Artists have often used occupation as a strategy, misusing things and placing objects and performing actions in places where they don’t belong. This kind of approach has to do with the need to explore the unexpected, build a different point of view and imagine new uses for old tools. Since the seventies and up to these days, several artists have also felt the urgency to free art from institutional spaces, and showed their work in unconventional settings like shops, libraries, schools, restaurants and of course the streets. The work of Nika Ham follows this tradition but turns it upside down. In her case, the setting is, in a way, a conventional one (a museum), but her actions are unauthorized and unpredictable. She works as a guardian at Moderna galerija, Ljubljana’s Museum of Modern Art, and when no one is watching, she performs, using the space as if it were her own studio. Her actions are simple, repetitive and humorous, all centred around the idea of using the body to interact with public space: “the Museum of Modern Art is as familiar to me as my room since I spend the same amount of time in both,” says the artist, highlighting one of the most interesting aspects of the project: the merging of private and public spheres. “When there is nobody in the space, I appropriate it, so I can perform visual compositions, delineate the architecture, introduce a new logic of movement and seeing merely with my own body.” This kind of performance, which relies on the artist’s body to build a relationship with the space and with the viewer, is reminiscent of many works of the sixties and seventies. In particular, Bruce Nauman’s early videotapes come to mind, the ones in which the American artist measures the space of the studio with his steps, bounces repeatedly against a wall or spins around one foot in different directions. All these actions were captured in real time on a fixed camera. In Nika Ham’s work the camera is also fixed because the artist takes advantage of the museum’s surveillance system. The footage is then edited and converted into short videos or animated gifs, in order to be published on the Internet on different social media platforms: Giphy, Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr.
The artist here acts as a parasite: she exploits the location and its infrastructure to build a whole new narration. A story made of inappropriate behaviours: she lies down on the floor, runs around the room on a chair with wheels, jumps up and down, wears masks and hides inside cardboard boxes. The actions are short and repetitive and make the artist similar to a pixelated character in a vintage videogame. The dissemination of Nika Ham’s tiny subversive actions trough the web is the logical culmination of the project: something that was enacted in total solitude, far from human eyes, is then poured inside the place of visibility par excellence, closing the (short) circuit. From the public to the private and back.

– Valentina Tanni

Dorotea Škrabo
Please Do Not Take Photographs
EXHIBITION

Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

22 March – 14 April 2017

Today’s tools of image production have turned everyone into a producer, distributor and consumer of images. In the current condition of information overload, images are among the most transferred content: via instant messaging, social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter, micro blogging tools like Tumblr, and services like Instagram and Snapchat. As art critic David Joselit noted, “The scale at which images proliferate and the speed with which they travel have never been greater.”[1]

The impact of this condition on professional visual production and visual art has yet to be recognized, but it has been discussed by many scholars and artists. As early as 2002, artist Seth Price discussed online “dispersion” as a powerful alternative to official art circulation systems.[2] Later on, artist and teacher Hito Steyerl wrote about the potential of “poor images”, the low quality version of an offline artifact that circulates for free on the internet, where it is shared, compressed, remixed, and often deprived of its links to the original author; [3] and artist Brad Troemel talked about “athletic aesthetics” to describe the fast and quantitative approach to art production that artists adopt to maintain an online presence, where they are confronted with compressed attention spans and with modes of fruition that are totally different from those of a dedicated art space. [4]

We can’t forget this when considering the work of younger generations of artists, who happen to be “users” of digital devices and participants in the social networking economy, even before being “artists”. Trained in art and design, “digital native” artist Dorotea Škrabo has grown up in this kind of environment. Before existing as an artist, she existed as a computer and smartphone user. To her, online image production is a performative gesture in a way that artworks can’t be understood as autonomous artifacts, but as traces of the artist; and “viewers” are not consumers of a finished artifact, but are an active part of an ongoing process. In her new installation Please Do Not Take Photographs designed for Aksioma Project Space, Škrabo draws upon these premises. The show consists of two main pieces. In Let Them Eat Cake, images are printed on cakes. These edible treats represent a “snap” published on “Snapchat ”, a phone app that allows a user to develop an intense dialogue with others through images. All posts are deleted from the user’s Snapchat story after 12 hours. The temporary nature of the pictures therefore encourages frivolity and emphasizes a more natural flow of interaction. The visitors of the exhibition are invited to take a piece of cake, offering a metaphorical, yet playful and engaging comment on the ephemeral nature of online images.

The second piece, Musée du Lowres, is a replica of the part of the Louvre where the Mona Lisa is exhibited. The central piece is a screen in a baroque framing displaying the artist impersonating Leonardo’s masterpiece. Mobile devices, loaded with several images, texts and emoji, are applied on the surface encouraging visitors to slightly mutate the artwork by swiping through their contents. Beside the centerpiece, a series of video snaps are displayed on mobile phones along with oversized golden-framed prints of their captions, ironically subverting the traditional relationship between visual artwork and contextual information.