A Symposium, accompanied with a temporary library,
workshops and performances.
Our current social order is surely reaching a critical period of its time. With the rise of ethno-national parties and fragmentation of European Union, authoritarianism feed on xenophobia generated by 'terrorism'. Dazzled by the hyperreality of overloading information and sensation from media channels, we find ourselves questioning the future of borderless and multi-cultural landscape of Europe.
Is cultural diversity deteriorating or is it a transition of new order? Or is such turbulent time catalysis of artistic and cultural resistance? What does activism mean in such context? Is it a event, a desire, or emotion? Our future is heading toward the unknown. Can we find the possible new vision, structure, model and tool through the act of art?
Supported by Interface Cultures Lab, artists, hackers, cultural producers, educators and students, Poetics of Politics (PoP) is an one day boot camp in artivism. The aim is to interweave the euro-political discourse with multiplex roles, formats and disciplines in terms of art, activism and technology. The program includes symposium, temporary library as research space, workshop and social gathering.
The symposium is composed of practitioners and theorists from a diverse background and insights in arts and politics, imagining clarity, narrative and strategy for the possible future. The library serves as a hub for ideologies while passionate manifestations evolved into workshop and performance.
Conference program
| 10:00 | Welcome note by Christa Sommerer and PoP Team |
|---|---|
| 10:30 |
Ubermorgen - Binary PrimitivismWe deal with a crisis of intelligence (idiocracy) and the schism between the anglophile world and other parts of the universe. There is no ... more We deal with a crisis of intelligence (idiocracy) and the schism between the anglophile world and other parts of the universe. There is no fragmentation of the EU. The final downfall of the British Empire is occuring and supranational structures like the EU and BRICS, where globalization is not so much about the expansion of the national, are evolving into an unknown future. Now where does Art and Actionism kick in? Artists need to educate themselves about the mechanisms of economics and world politics - especially beyond the constraints of the english language. There is a need to stop seeing problems as a binary game between the good people and the villain. less |
| 11:15 |
Robert Pfaller - NOT EVERY ACTION IS A FREE ACTION7 Theses on the possibilities and difficulties of political action in the arts today. 1. Do not mistake action and activism for freedom. Not every action ... more 7 Theses on the possibilities and difficulties of political action in the arts today. 1. Do not mistake action and activism for freedom. Not every action is a free action. Spontaneous philosophies of the artists. 2. Targeting easy enemies will bring you cheap symbolic capital in the art world. Target the forces that try to manipulate you into choosing easy enemies. Choose less easy enemies. 3. Consider "progressive neoliberalism" (Nancy Frazer) and right-wing populism as political twins. 4. Artistic intervention is always an intervention in the superstructure. The concept of ideology. 5. What arouses people, is not the facts, but their imagination about the facts (Epictetus). The necessity to tackle imaginations. Efficiency of the superstructure. 6. Successful political intervention in the arts has always happened through the form, not through the content. "Hurrah! The Butter Is All Gone!": John Heartfield. Necessity of poetics. 7. There is no use in revealing somebody as stupid who did not pretend to be smart. Problems of dealing with unusual enemies. Difficulties in detecting the enemy's superstructure. less |
| 12:00 | Reading Room and Workshop intro |
| 12:15 | -- lunch break -- |
| 13:30 | Workshops |
| 15:00 |
Maximilian Thoman - The Future of DemonstrationBy delivering a short insight into the framework and program of the media art festival The Future of Demonstration and exploring representative ... more By delivering a short insight into the framework and program of the media art festival The Future of Demonstration and exploring representative examples of some of the key- protagonists, Maximilian Thoman will elucidate the concept behind and illustrate the artistic and curatorial intentions. Today, the contradictory power of critique has run out of steam. Creativity services consumerist variety while automation and financialization restrain our prospects of the future. We have to gather and contrive new visions, models, structures and tools through the act of art. The Future of Demonstration is an art series that engages with the transformation towards postglobal ecologies and societies by exploring the notion of demonstration with its technological, political, pedagogical and aesthetic capacities. The art series suspends the separation between art and discourse, exhibition and conference, and instead initiates post- disciplinary practices. Art, performance, music, film, discourse and research are condensed to demonstrations that engage with current potentials of counter-fiction. less |
| 15:45 |
Monika Mokre - How to be a political activist?Rather recently, I have developed a new vanity: When lecturing, especially in a strictly academic environment, I like to be presented as ... more Rather recently, I have developed a new vanity: When lecturing, especially in a strictly academic environment, I like to be presented as a political scientist as well as a political activist. I like to be thought of as something different than just a theoretician, somebody who is taking action, working in solidarity in collectives. And, in fact, I am active in political contexts, together with many others. But are we therefore activists? Or, rather, untrained social workers finding rooms and odd jobs for refugees and migrants? Small scale legal advisors? In short: People compensating in small and unsatisfactory ways for massive state failure? Instead of people fighting against the political system creating all the problems we are dealing with? And when – or if – we are a political activists – is our practice solidary? Or, rather, paternalistic or even exploitative? Do we gain cultural capital and a good reputation at the costs of refugees and migrants? In this paper, I would like to discuss questions of solidary practice both from a theoretical and practical angle, with regard to the latter focusing on cultural and arts projects with refugees. less |
| 16:30 |
Stefanie Wuschitz - Feminist HackerspacesFeminist hackerspaces are a global phenomenon, but what does feminist hacking actually mean? Is it an artistic methodology? Does it help to transcend ... more Feminist hackerspaces are a global phenomenon, but what does feminist hacking actually mean? Is it an artistic methodology? Does it help to transcend gender norms, shape new subject positions, establish immaterial infrastructures? The collective organizing Mz* Baltazar‘s Lab has to reinvent itself again and again to meet the needs of queer, non-binary and artsy feminists. Open hardware continues to play an essential role in providing means of self-expression and agency. Additionally, research and activism in a wider socio-political context became a necessary routine to face the growing commercialisation in the maker-environment and attacks from nationalism and sexism. less |
| 17:15 | -- tea break -- |
| 17:30 | Workshop presentation and Panel Discussion |
Reading Room
Nowadays, information appears to be easily accessible. However, due to a comprehensive amount of sources and the growing privatization over it’s access, the quality and reliability of many of them is unclear, opening the door for propaganda and ideologies.
The Reading Room is an experimental utopia-place, where a public temporary space for sharing viewpoints and interpretations is created. It’s a curatorship of books, zines and independent publishing all serving as content and inspiration for performative utterances, manifestos and non-hierarchical generation of knowledge.
From discourse to dialogue, from digital to analogue, from reading to copying and self editing; the actions which permeate this dynamic library are all an effort to bring authorship, interaction, performativity out of the screens and into the physical materiality of daily life. Here the notion of time is other: past, present and future coexist in a place; at the same time repository of memory, data, actions and projects to the future. The Reading Room’s aim is to provide space to promote, connect and improve the dialogue between individuals and society, mediated through printed texts, an interactive survey, and a copy machine as instruments of memory and of democratisation of knowledge.
Workshops
Sam Bunn
Plans in the Sand
A Utopic Exploration of Today using the backroom tools of the shamans to talk about Tomorrow.
Utopia means to critique the present and to propose something other for the future. As artists we can do this with images, and also with words.
During this workshop we will prepare a sketch and a text for the sand, to describe some aspect of today that we wish were different, specifically regarding methodologies of mass communication.
At the end we will perform the two together, breathing life into them with hands and fingers, a series of open un-open sketches.
Julia Nüßlein &
Gabriela Gordillo
julia.nuesslein@gmail.com
gabriela@medialabmx.org
2057: Speculative Climate Fiction
Climate change has reached our backyards, and while scientists present us the facts, writers and artists are increasingly contributing to the debate by translating graphs and numbers into fictional stories, speculating about how our world might change.
In this workshop, we will invite the participants to collaboratively imagine their own climate fiction by using the methodology of conditional design. The group's dynamic will lead the way to unfold shared scenarios.
more
Climate change has reached our backyards, and while scientists present us the facts, writers and artists are increasingly contributing to the debate by translating graphs and numbers into fictional stories, speculating about how our world might change.
In this workshop, we will invite the participants to collaboratively imagine their own climate fiction by using the methodology of conditional design. The group's dynamic will lead the way to unfold shared scenarios.
Julia Nüßlein (1989) is an artist, researcher and organiser, working on the intersection of art, technology and society. While currently finishing her MA Interface Culture in Linz (AT), she is also a producer for Amsterdam-based media art festivals Sonic Acts and FIBER Festival.
During her BA degree in New Media and Digital Culture at Utrecht University, she started to research the role that art could play in societal change. Her thesis was about the thought-provoking and critical potential of user interface design in interactive art installations.
Recently, as part of her master thesis research, she zooms in on the speculative power of artistic expression. More specifically, she concentrates on fictional and cautionary tales about climate change in art installations.
GGM (MX) - Gabriela has a background in Visual Communication, and is currently a MA student at Interface Cultures. Her work follows an interdisciplinary approach, using visual, audible and temporal elements to explore possible meanings, later transformed into artistic outputs. Her work follows the topic of time, perception, social structures and human behavior, through a practice based research that involves participation, technology, and a durational actions.
This ideas have found a common ground in Conditional Design, as a practice where collaboration, play, and patterns of emergence are embodied, through visual and algorithmic principles in analogue formats. She started this exploration in 2014, through workshops and participatory installations, as sets of discussion where the principles could be shared with in others, in order to be explored.
less
Mario Romera
tocharomera@gmail.com
Politics of Mobile
The wireless devices grow in its usage as fast as digital natives born, the communication is being delocalized by terms of the moving nodes of the network, and the information relays every day more in the content uploaded by users. This process is not left unattended by the socio-politic movements which find in this technologies a perfect ally in self-organizing, uncensored communication and coordination in real time along the physical space.
In this workshop we will visit some of the most critical experiences and the technical methods behind those that can be potentially useful to hack and create distributed and autonomous networks.
more
The wireless devices grow in its usage as fast as digital natives born, the communication is being delocalized by terms of the moving nodes of the network, and the information relays every day more in the content uploaded by users. This process is not left unattended by the socio-politic movements which find in this technologies a perfect ally in self-organizing, uncensored communication and coordination in real time along the physical space.
In this workshop we will visit some of the most critical experiences and the technical methods behind those that can be potentially useful to hack and create distributed and autonomous networks.
Please bring your own Standard Personal Smartphone to the workshop;
or bring your old smartphones that you dont use anymore!
Material useful to read before the workshop!
You can find more information on my Website.
Born in Spain but related to Venezuela Mario Romera consider himself an interdisciplinary artist focused on the research of new ways to develop art experiences with special mention to achieve participation and interaction between spectator and artwork. Formed in Fine Arts, he rather prefers to use cotidianity materials and user or individual everyday situations trying to mix life with art as much as possible.
The emphasis of his projects is the improvement of life through art with a conscious critique of the normality linking living concepts with the social values of community as economics and politics. Exploring new ways of constitute reality made by the collective in each context where he has the opportunity to work with.
Currently studying Interface Cultures Master program he is in the research of new ways to interfere in art and life customizing the already existing interfaces and constructing new ones.
less
Staff and Support
Core Team:
|
Administrative and Production Support:
|
Design:
|
Consultation:
|
Reading Room Collaboration:
|