Autonomy (im)possible!

Date: 28.05 – 31.05.2014
Location: afo architekturforum oberösterreich

Uncovering new truths and making them public as a disruption and criticism of the dominant system has consequences.

Threat scenarios of the digital surveillance state inevitably have palpable effects on our lives and actions. Access to information, infrastructure and technology, which is especially important for activists in repressive regimes up to the present, has become a widely discussed issue since Snowden’s disclosures at the latest, because now a broad mass of people in democratically governed states see their “privacy” endangered. Independence, confidence and freedom are massively put to the test.

Artists, hacktivists, cultural producers, journalists, software developers and idealists, in short creative actors with a desire for change increasingly find themselves in uncertain territory. Which methods and alternative tools can be used to generate new views of everyday life, work, money, politics and the environment, and to instigate a new cultural practice, to impel civil society processes, without them being nipped in the bud?

How do creative actors contribute to the process of change and which new forms of cooperation do they enter into?
 

Track 1: Technologies of Autonomy

(Infrastructure, Information)

The time of ridiculing those who were not taken seriously as “paranoid geeks” seems to have passed at the moment, as the surveillance scandals have reached the mainstream. There is a newly awakened discussion of decentralizing infrastructure and alternative possibilities outside the realm of the large monopolists that determine access to information and tools and cooperate with secret services. Do these new insights actually result in a chance for alternatives, and who really needs them? Why is digital self-defense left up to the users?

Track 2: Exposing the Invisible

(Art, Politics, Action)

Which dangers are hacktivists and artivists exposed to, if they venture into the territories of power, war and corruption? Which methods and tools do artivists use to produce new views and connections? Who are these useful for? Which forms of cooperation are used for these investigations?

Track 3:

(Public Space, City)

Which alternative tools, methods, interventions and data do creative actors use to generate new ways of seeing urban space as a living space? Do new forms of critique influence official decision-makers?

Track 4: Disrupting Business

(Open Source as principal, Open Everything)

Collaborative developing as a principle for change seems to have spilled over into all areas and is rooted in the successful Open Source Software movement. To what extent are disruptions, in the sense of making everything open and accessible to all, an innovative motor for new business models at the same time, which are picked up by business as a new variation, but which still function according to the old rules of competition?
Tatiana Bazzichelli, author of the book "Disrupting Business" is collaborating with us.

Track 5: Swarm and perform

(Nightline, Sonification)

This track is devoted to audible data processing and field recordings that expand our horizon. It is equally open to less serious proposals based on Free/Open Source software or DIY open hardware.