In “Page of Swords” we will juxtapose the propaganda of the tech industry with small yet meaningful proposals for change. We will start with epic promises of abundance by the death defying innovators of tomorrow during a short performance, a mapping of the Silicon Valley narrative through quotes. Then you will be taken on a serendipitous, filter bubble popping journey inspired by surrealist games and magical rituals. Refreshed by the unexpected you will enter the unseen world of revisions in online news media during the Catalan referendum, revealed using the ever elegant Diffengine. With independence on your mind, (un)learning the rules of collectivity will help imagine alternative ways to cope with the contemporary dissolution of the concept of community.
Marloes de Valk will perform “We Are Going to Take Over the World”, in which she lets Silicon Valley evangelists speak through her about death, machine consciousness and the future of capitalism. It is a tale of abundance, disembodiment and magical transformations – asteroid mining turns into a fun trip to Mars, controlling the masses through nudging and surveillance into the loving embrace of a caring community.
Emily Buzzo will present her research on serendipity, inspired by surrealist games and literature, which offer a way to circumvent our current uniform and conformative approach to (re)search through online spaces. She believes we should make room for serendipity within existing research processes by re-introducing instinctual and playful tactics. The main methods she worked with were dowsing, runes and the reading of natural signs.
Franc Gonzalez will present Referendum Medialogs, a project mapping a journey of the events before, during and after the Catalan referendum, showing a series of conflicts leading to both the blocking of information as well as creative distributing practices, in a context characterized by nonstop overloads of inaccurate information. The project digs into the issue of revisionism, using open source revision control software.
Giulia de Giovanelli will talk about "(Un)Learning the Rules of Collectivity", an inquiry into different models for learning the rules of being together. The concept of unlearning is used to adopt a different perspective – unlearning superimposed rules as an invitation to dialogically embrace the complexity of being together and imagining alternative ways to cope with the contemporary dissolution of the concept of community.