[spectre] on Hackmeeting and Hacklabs -> 2006.06.12 CHI IL .US

[jonCates]

INFRASTRUCTURE SERIES:

"Hackmeeting and Hacklabs: technopolitics and reality hacking in  
south-european autonomous networks"

Presenter: Xabier Barandiaran - Series Talk #2
Monday June 12, 7-9pm
Polvo - 1458 W. 18th St. 1R | Chicago IL | www.polvo.org
Co-Sponsored by AREA Chicago Art/Education/Activism and criticalartware
www.areachicago.com | www.criticalartware.net

Details Below:
Title and Abstract of the talk
Short Bio of Xabier Barandiaran
About the INFRASTRUCTURE SERIES
------------------------------
Title and Abstract of the talk:
"Hackmeeting and Hacklabs: technopolitics and reality hacking in  
south-european autonomous networks"

For the last 6 years a number of autonomous collectives called  
HackLabs (hacker or hacktivist laboratories) have been created at  
different squat social centers and other self-managed spaces around  
europe. The network of hacklabs has now more than 40 nodes (most of  
them located in Spain and Italy) dedicated to build-up community  
based free-software and open access spaces for skill sharing and  
collective intelligence, technopolitic experimentation and direct  
action on several digital struggles (cybercontrol, digital rights,  
intelectual property, etc.). HackLabs were born as a result of  
Hackmeetings: underground self-organized hacktivist meetings where  
grassroot activist and geek culture meet to discuss, exchange and  
coordinate different knowledge, resources and initiatives around  
technologies and politics. The talk will focus on a set of  
trajectories within the hacklabs and hackmeeting networks: the  
experience of Metabolik (one of the first hacklabs in europe), the  
distributed and self-managed organization of spanish and european  
hackmeetings and the recent direct action campaing against  
intellectual property (CompartirEsBueno.Net). Emphasys will be made  
on philosophical background, discussion on technopolitical tactics  
and opportunities for coordination.

Some references:
http://hacklabs.org
http://metabolik.hacklabs.org
http://sindominio.net/hackmeeting

---------
Short Bio

Xabier Barandiaran is a PhD student and researcher on Cybernetics,  
Neurophilosophy and Artificial Life at the University of the Basque  
Country (Europe), member of the autonomous server SinDominio.Net, the  
hacktivist laboratory Metabolik BioHacklab (located at the social  
squat center Undondo Gaztetxea), the spanish and european  
HackLabs.Org network and the recent copyleft activist campaing  
"CompartirEsBueno.Net" (SharingIsGood: a spanish network of  
hacktivists and media-activists against intelectual property regimes  
and the media-culture industry). He has also been involved on other  
grassroots movement such as alternative education, social  
desobedience, anti-war movements and squatting. Xabier has also co- 
organized and activelly participated on a number of HackMeetings  
(self-managed technopolitical meetings that take place in squatted  
social centers in europe), Copyleft Conferences and other parallel  
events, workshops and seminars. His work has been devoted to  
development and promotion of free-software tools for social  
movements, direct action and coordination of autonomous  
technopolitical networks as research on free technologies & culture,  
community based digital self-management and hacktivism.

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About the INFRASTRUCTURE SERIES:

AREA's ongoing and irregular "Infrastructure" series, which will  
continue with meetings, screenings, shows, dinners, writings,  
readings over the next year. "Infrastructure" seeks to find concrete  
methods (developing spaces, producing magazines, journals, websites,  
events, attachment to funds, etc.) that can encourage the production  
and distribution of resistant forms of meaning.

As we engage in the project of broadly imagining alternative forms of  
social organization that would be more free, more fun, more  
pleasurable, more effective, more radical, and more ethical - the  
central questions come down to the "Infrastructure" As we try to  
build support networks, cooperatives, mutual aid relationships and  
institutions to imagine an existance beyond the rent gap, beyond the  
non-profit (NGO) industrial-complex and beyond the academy - we must  
imagine another Infrastructure!

---------
ABOUT criticalartware:

criticalartware is an [application/platform/concern] compiled at the  
turn of the twenty first century to address hyperthreaded hystories  
of new media, [software-as-art/art-as-software] and [connections/ 
ruptures/dislocations] between early moments of {conceptual|code}- 
based art forms such as artware and Video Art. By drawing [parallels/ 
paths] between the [concepts/discourses] of these early moments,  
criticalartware hopes to critically question and [re]connect the  
current context to its rightful unruley past: a multitude of  
[personal/subjective] hyperthreaded [her/hi/hy]stories.

http://criticalartware.net

http://criticalartware.net/evnt/2006.06.12