2014 - AMRO Conference Streams
Wednesday, May 28 2014
19:00 - 19:40
Transparency and obfuscation, Valie Djordjevic
The notions of openness and transparency are playing a vital role in the current discourse in and about the internet. But what does open and transparent really mean when every move you do is being observed, online by NSA programmes, in the city by CCTV, in the shops by loyalty cards, at home by connected digital household appliances? On the other hand transparancy means disclosing government secrets and opening up the opaque face of technology - as in open source and open software, Wiki- and Snowden-leaks. How can we reconcile these two notions - and do we need to? A walk through net politics, history, culture and art in 2014.
Lecture
Cultural Intelligence and Control: Tactics-Strategy-Operations,
Cultural Intelligence is concerned with mapping the intertwined dynamic of virtual and real, of symbolic and material experienced space, of conceptualized representation and lived spaces of representation. From the printing press, photography and phonograph to cinematography and digital media- new culture technologies of information storage and replication have strongly altered how we conceive and structure reality. Information Dominance extends into the psycho-cybernetic coordinates of individual reality. Long range trajectories of stealth imagineering technologies go beyond tactical interventions. Strategies of change involve transversal practices between theory and activism, digital media and street culture.
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?
Construction Zone
Friday, May 30 2014
15:15 - 17:15
Exposing the Invisible
In contemporary globalized societies power can no longer be attributed to single actors or instances, but becomes manifest in relationships and discourses building the basis for power networks (Foucault 1978, 126). Due to the complexity of those networks resulting from the mutual influence of global flows of people, capital, technologies and ideas it is becoming increasingly difficult to uncover the effects of power relations on the social, political and economic sphere.
As a site of symbolic production and the exchange of meanings, art can on the one hand be viewed as a central site of political struggle (Zembylas 200, 55). On the other hand artistic strategies can be applied as tools to expose hidden processes, connections and networks of power and to foster processes of social change.
To be able to expose the invisible, hacktivists and artivists may have to transcend the boundaries between legal and illegal putting themselves under severe risk.
Marek Tuszynski, Markus Hafner, Lonneke Van Der Velden, Lizvlx, Doma Smoljo. Moderated by Margarita Köhl
14:00 - 14:40
Open Source Citizenship, Currency and Identity Management for Global Democracy, Georg Zoche
The United Transnational Republics is the first known “3GO”: a Global Governmental Grassroots Organisation working towards the democratisation of the globalised world we find ourselves in:
Democracy as we know it since the last two centuries only takes place within nation-states. At the same time globalisation happens globally, outside of national definitions, legislation or agreements.
Obviously, there is no democratic representation of the individual on a transnational, global level. This leads to inherently undemocratic processes within globalisation. Currently, outside of the nation-states only consumer and national interests are being represented. Unfortunately, both our national as well as our consumer interests are in conflict with our global interest: the preservation of our environment, world peace, establishment of transnational legislation etc...
In order to realise democracy on a global level, the current political system needs to be expanded by one more federal level of representation: Citizen of a city, of a country, of a Transnational Republic.
15:00 - 17:00
Open Stage
Disrupting Business
19:00-19:40
Disrupting Business: Towards a Critique of Art & Activism,
20:30 - 22:30
Openness and Liberty as Business Disruption