[spectre] Networked Disruption: The Exhibition - Opening March 11, Ljubljana

[Tatiana Bazzichelli]

Networked Disruption: Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and Business
Group exhibition and side programme

Curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli
Produced by Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana - in
collaboration with several partners: www.aksioma.org/networked.disruption

Exhibition @ Škuc Gallery, Stari trg 21, Ljubljana, Slovenia / March 11
– April 3, 2015. Opening March 11, 8pm
With: Anna Adamolo, Anonymous, Billboard Liberation Front, Burning Man
Festival, Cacophony Society, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša,
Julian Oliver, Laura Poitras, Les Liens Invisibles, Luther Blissett,
Mail Art, Neoism, Peng! Collective, Suicide Club, Telekommunisten,
Trevor Paglen.

Seminar @ Kino Šiška, Trg prekomorskih brigad 3, Ljubljana, Slovenia
/March 11 – 12, 2015: http://www.aksioma.org/press/networked.disruption.zip
With: Annie Machon (UK), Bani Brusadin (ES), Baruch Gottlieb (CA/DE),
Dmytri Kleiner (CA/DE), Florian Cramer (DE/NL), Ida Hiršenfelder (SI),
Janez Janša (SI), John Law (US), Loretta Borrelli (IT), Luther Blissett
(IT), Tatiana Bazzichelli (IT/DE), Vittore Baroni (IT), Vuk Ćosić (SI).

In the business world, disruption means to introduce into the market an
innovation that the market does not expect. This innovation comes from
within the market itself. Transferred into the field of art and
activism, disruption means to generate practices and interventions that
are unexpected, and play within the systems under scrutiny.
Art, hacktivism and business are often intertwined, generating a
feedback loop of revolutions and co-optations that is functional to the
development of capitalism. Capitalism needs our revolutions because they
generate new lifestyles, products and practices that create new markets
and consumer desires. Similarly, systems of power need our resistance
and opposition because they serve to increase security and forms of
control. We need to find new strategies that go beyond the mere act of
opposition and that are harder to appropriate.

Networked Disruption is an exhibition and a series of events produced by
Aksioma and Drugo more in collaboration with several partners and
curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli. The exhibition, hosted by Škuc Gallery
in Ljubljana and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, is
centred on the concept of "Networked Disruption", as an opportunity to
show new possible routes of social and political action in the line of
disruption. It is based on Bazzichelli's book "Networked Disruption:
Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and the Business of Social
Networking/(DARC Press, The Digital Aesthetics Research Centre of Aarhus
University, 2013).

The exhibition shows a diverse constellation of networking projects that
aims to actualise – and to question – the notion of "networking": Anna
Adamolo, Anonymous, Billboard Liberation Front, Burning Man Festival,
Cacophony Society, Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša, Julian
Oliver, Laura Poitras, Les Liens Invisibles, Luther Blissett, Mail Art,
Neoism, Peng! Collective, Suicide Club, Telekommunisten, and Trevor Paglen.

In this exhibition we adopt the concept of disruption from business and
we propose works that emerge from within political, economical,
technological and art systems. They play with their power logic
generating virality, anonymity, semantic confusion, multiple truths, and
disruption. Diverse points of view are combined, among the groups and
within the groups themselves. By keeping such connections open without
reaching a curatorial synthesis, we invite visitors to create their own
path in the line of disruption.

The artworks and collective projects are conceptually and visually
interlinked in the exhibition spaces, which constitutes a network of
networks. By applying the strategy of "working from within”, some
sections of the show are conceptualised in collaboration with people
deeply involved in the networks under scrutiny: Vittore Baroni (Mail
Art), Florian Cramer (Neoism), Gabriella Coleman (Anonymous), John Law
(Suicide Club and Cacophony Society), Andrea Natella (The Luther
Blissett Project) and members of the Anna Adamolo network. This choice
reflects the perspective that a new methodology of curating a research
should open a metaphorical (and physical) space to encourage and provoke
feedback loops among theory and practice, and among subjects and objects
of analysis.

In the exhibition and seminar, we involve actors who directly engage
with hacktivism, art, civil liberties and social networking exposing
contradictions of capitalistic logics and power systems. Such
interventions hijack the logic of business itself, appropriating and
détourning it by operating disruption. The challenge is to collectively
rethink oppositional hacktivist and artistic strategies within the
framework of (social) networking, information economy and increasingly
invasive corporations and government agencies.

Project's webpage:
http://www.aksioma.org/networked.disruption

Seminar full programme and participants:
www.aksioma.org/networked.disruption/pdf/seminar_eng.pdf

Tatiana Bazzichelli is a curator and researcher, author of the books
Networked Disruption (2013), Networking (2008), and co-editor of the
book Disrupting Business (2013). She is director of the Disruption
Network Lab, an experimental curatorial project on art, hacktivism, and
disruption, based in Berlin. She was programme curator at the
transmediale festival from 2011 to 2014, initiating the year-round
reSource transmedial culture project, and was a Post-Doctoral researcher
at the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University of Lüneburg.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

CREDITS

Curated by: Tatiana Bazzichelli
Head of production: Janez Janša

Artistic directors: Janez Janša (Aksioma), Vladimir Vidmar (Škuc Gallery)
Producers: Marcela Okretič, Joško Pajer
Executive producer: Sonja Grdina
Assistant: Boris Beja
Technicians: Atila Boštjančič, Valter Udovičić
Public relations: Hana Ostan Ožbolt
Documentation: Miha Fras, Adriana Aleksić, Jernej Čuček Gerbec

Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana; Drugo
more, Rijeka, 2015
Coproduction: Abandon Normal Devices, Škuc Gallery, Kino Šiška, Museum
of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka
Partners: Moderna galerija Ljubljana, d-i-n-a / The Influencers, Link
Art Center

Networked Disruption is realized in the framework of Masters & Servers,
a joint project by Aksioma (SI), Drugo more (HR), AND (UK), Link Art
Center (IT) and d-i-n-a / The Influencers (ES).
www.mastersandservers.org <http://www.mastersandservers.org>

Supported by: the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of
Ljubljana, Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Slovenia.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of
the information contained therein.

Contact: www.aksioma.org/contacts

-- 
Tatiana Bazzichelli // programme curator
http://networkingart.eu // http://disruptiv.biz
Twitter: @t_bazz
PGP: A87C 3637 03ED 1D1C E6FE E828 1F55 2B2F F5A5 C9A0