Berlin, may 29-30:
CYBORG: Hacktivists, Freaks and Hybrid Uprisings
Second Event of the Disruption Network Lab In cooperation with Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Studio 1, Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin
Tickets: 5€ / day
Hackers, cyberfeminists, (trans)gender activists, artists and transhumanists expose power structures embedded in technology and everyday life.
With: Francesca Da Rimini /Doll Yoko (artist and cyberfeminist, AU), Virginia Barratt (artist, performer and cyberfeminist, AU), Jack Halberstam (theorist on gaga feminism and queer failure, USA), Franco "Bifo" Berardi (sociologist and philosopher, IT, video contribution), Massimo Canevacci (cultural anthropologist, IT/BR), Francesco Warbear Macarone Palmieri (socio-anthropologist, cultural producer, DJ, IT/DE), Janez Janša (artist and curator, SI), Helena Velena (trans/gender hacktivist, artist and technologist, IT), Agnese Trocchi (artist and hacktivist, IT), Christopher Coenen (researcher, DE), Andreas Kirchner (publisher and researcher, DE), Stefan Greiner (co-founder of Cyborg e.V., artist and researcher), Mariano Equizzi (filmmaker, IT/BG), Paolo Bigazzi Alderigi (sound designer, IT), Magdalena Freudenschuss (gender theory researcher, DE), Giacomo Verde (artist and activist, IT, video contribution).
Event built around the international book launch of The Cyborg: A Treatise on the Artificial Man, written by political Sci-Fi theorist Antonio Caronia (Genoa, 1944 – Milan, 2013), Meson Press / Hybrid Publishing Lab, Leuphana University of Lüneburg.
Event funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin. In cooperation with Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien. Supported by the Italian Culture Institute of Berlin. In collaboration with the Hybrid Publishing Lab, CDC/Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Meson Press, Vierte Welt Kollaborationen, and Aksioma - Institute of Contemporary Art Ljubljana.
Curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli and Daniela Silvestrin.
With the participation of the Free Chelsea Manning Initiative Berlin, marking the fifth anniversary of Chelsea Manning's confinement (May 27).
Friday May 29, 2015
17:00-17:40 - Introducing THe Cyborg
Franco "Bifo" Berardi (sociologist and philosopher, IT, video contribution) introduced by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Director of the Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE)
18:00–19:30 - Keynote
Massimo Canevacci (cultural anthropologist, IT/BR), moderated by Francesco Warbear Macarone Palmieri (socio-anthropologist, cultural producer, DJ, IT/DE)
20:00-21:30 - PANEL
Helena Velena (trans/gender hacktivist, artist and technologist, IT), Janez Janša (artist and curator, SI), Agnese Trocchi (artist and hacktivist, IT), moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli
22:30 - After Conference
After-Conference at Vierte Welt Kollaborationen, Zentrum Kreuzberg, Kottbusser Tor, 1. Floor.
Saturday May 30 2015
16:00–16:15 - video
Cyborg Party of Freakland. Short Video by Giacomo Verde (artist and activist, IT)
16:15-17:30 - keynote
Francesca Da Rimini /Doll Yoko (artist and cyberfeminist, AU), and Virginia Barratt (artist, performer and cyberfeminist, AU), moderated by Magdalena Freudenschuss (gender theory researcher, DE).
18:00-20:00 - Panel
Jack Halberstam (theorist on gaga feminism and queer failure, USA) and Christopher Coenen (researcher, DE), Stefan Greiner (co-founder of, Cyborg e.V., artist and researcher), moderated by Daniela Silvestrin
(Curator and Project Manager, Disruption Network Lab).
20:30-21:30 - Live Cinema + Q&A
Live Cinema by Mariano Equizzi (filmmaker, IT/BG) and Paolo Bigazzi Alderigi (sound designer, IT). Q&A after the screening.
CYBORG: Hacktivists, Freaks and Hybrid Uprisings
This two days event presents keynote speeches, panels and live cinema connected with the understanding of cyborg identities, while exposing power structures embedded in technology and our everyday life. The event is built around the international book launch of The Cyborg: A Treatise on the Artificial Man, written by political Sci-Fi theorist Antonio Caronia (Genoa, 1944 – Milan, 2013), published by Meson Press / Hybrid Publishing Lab, Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Starting from the book of Caronia and going beyond it, the analysis will culminate discussing the most recent frontiers of biotechnology and transhumanism.
The Cyborg was written by Antonio Caronia between 1985 and 2008 and published in several Italian editions during this timeframe (with the title: Il Cyborg. Saggio sull’uomo artificiale, last Italian edition is by ShaKe Edizioni, Milan).
Antonio Caronia was a political activist during the 1977 revolution in Italy, turning after that to the study of mass culture and communication theory, especially about the relationship between science, technology, identity, and cultural imagination. After his recent death he left behind a massive body of books and essays, which have not been presented to an international public yet, while being instead very popular in Italy. The Cyborg is certainly crucial to the understanding of the development of digital culture from the 1980s until today, not only in Italy, but internationally. The main concept of the book, which is also at the core of this event, is a reflection on the development of an emerging imaginary, epitomising the passage from modernity to post-Fordist society. Adopting Science Fiction and the critical reflection on technology and the body, as a methodology of cultural criticism, the challenge is to generate new activist, artist and hacker interventions. What does Cyborg mean today? Which new configurations are possible to provoke critical awareness and agency through sexuality, body and technology? Do we still need to speak about "a body" or should we go beyond physical boundaries to reflect critically on power structures in a time of economic crisis and increasing technological surveillance?
Friday, May 29, 2015 • 17:00-17:40
Introducing The Cyborg
Franco “Bifo” Berardi (sociologist and philosopher, IT, video contribution, 30 min) introduced by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Director of the Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE)
In this video interview with the Disruption Network Lab, Franco Berardi “Bifo” presents the work of Antonio Caronia through their shared political engagement and personal friendship. By reflecting on this common path, Franco Berardi describes the Italian background of the last thirty years of political movements, from the 1977 radical revolution, to the Italian political cyberpunk movement, to the emergence of Virtual Reality and collective networks in the 1990s, until the protests by the Italian student movement of the past decade, and the recent uprisings against the global financial crisis.
Friday, May 29, 2015 • 18:00-19:30
Keynote: Ubiquitous Identities
Massimo Canevacci (cultural anthropologist, IT/BR), moderated by Francesco “Warbear” Macarone Palmieri (socio-anthropologist, cultural producer, DJ, IT/DE)
A restless incongruous montage of syncretic concepts and polyphonic interventions.
This presentation focuses on the issue of identity construction as a way to reflect critically on the transformations of politics, society and media culture. In dealing critically with aliens, cyborgs and artificial organisms, Antonio Caronia meant to interpret our society as a collage of incongruities, without necessarily solving them, but leaving them open for reflections on possible political and tactical practices derived from encounters with the “alien”. In this keynote, this perspective is linked to the anthropological research of Massimo Canevacci, as an attempt to dismantle culture’s hierarchies and holistic truths. Cultural orders are substituted with unusual juxtapositions, decomposition of reality, fragments and unexpected combinations. Massimo Canevacci and Francesco “warbear” Macarone Palmieri will engage in a reflection between technology, pleasure and sexuality, and political engagement in society, not merely by rendering the unfamiliar comprehensible, as part of what the ethnographic tradition wanted, but in making the familiar strange.
Friday, May 29, 2015 • 20:00-21:30
Panel: Deconstructing Conflicts
Helena Velena (trans/gender hacktivist, artist and technologist, IT), Janez Janša (artist and curator, SI), Agnese Trocchi (artist and hacktivist, IT), moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli.
This panel reflects on the art of dismantling power structures by creating unexpected interventions, often based on the deconstruction of language and technology, and by using disguise, playfulness and provocation as tactics. What is ambiguous can express hidden conflicts in politics and society, making identity the main vehicle of new imaginations, bringing contradictions into the evidence of everyday life. This perspective, which was core of Antonio Caronia’s analysis on “cyborgs”, “aliens” and “dispossessed” (inspired by the 1974 utopian science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia) will be discussed by Helena Velena, Janez Janša and Agnese Trocchi trough their artistic & hacktivist practice, based respectively on the relations between the conscious use of technology and sexuality, the questions of identity and political in art, and the DIY creation of platforms for activists and hackers since the time of the BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems) in the Italian hacker and cyberpunk movement.
Friday, May 29, 2015 • 22:30
After-Conference
After-Conference at Vierte Welt Kollaborationen, Zentrum Kreuzberg, Kottbusser Tor, 1. Floor.
Saturday, May 30, 2015 • 16:00-16:15
Video: Cyborg Party of Freakland
Short Video by Giacomo Verde (artist and activist, IT)
The Cyborg is an existential subject that has decided to get organised into a political party to ensure cyborgs’ rights and give dignity to their worldview. This is one of the first video-propaganda that trace the existential philosophy and politics of this neo-human subject. A mashup of images and quotes selected from the prophetic book The Cyborg written by a man named Antonio Caronia long before cyborgs got aware of themselves.
Saturday, May 30, 2015 • 16:15-17:30
Keynote: Hexing the Alien
Francesca Da Rimini /Doll Yoko (artist and cyberfeminist, AU), and Virginia Barratt (artist, performer and cyberfeminist, AU), moderated by Magdalena Freudenschuss (gender theory researcher, DE).
From VNS Matrix, Gashgirl, Doll Yoko, to aliens, cyborgs, provisional subjects and “monster mash”, Francesca Da Rimini and Virginia Barratt reflect on what "cybernetic organisms" mean today, when we experience hybrid conditions of being, our blood and flesh intertwined with big data, intrusive technospaces, and increasing domains of surveillance. As Donna Haraway stated years ago in her Cyborg Manifesto, the cyborg was described as a subject of political reflection and agency on the development of culture and society, where technology, and its strict relation with the body, assumed a crucial role. This perspective was an input for imagining new situated subjectivities mediated by technology, inspiring many theorists, feminists, artists, hackers and critical thinkers. But what does it mean to speak about the cyborg as situated subjectivity today? If as Antonio Caronia wrote, we are all aliens and precarious, becoming the simulacra of the contemporary, can our body still be a metaphor of the possible? Which new practices and interventions can be imagined as agency towards power structures?
Saturday, May 30, 2015 • 18:00-20:00
Panel: From Cy-borg to Bio-borg - transhumanist visions reviewed
Jack Halberstam (theorist on gaga feminism and queer failure, USA) and Christopher Coenen (researcher, DE), Stefan Greiner (co-founder of Cyborg e.V., artist and researcher) moderated by Daniela Silvestrin (Curator and Project Manager, Disruption Network Lab)
According to Ray Kurzweil, 2045 is supposed to be the year in which humanity will finally have overcome its physical limitations. Kurzweil is the leading figure of the transhumanist movement which wants to bring humanity even beyond the known concept of the Cyborg as a hybrid organism between human and machine. The new biotechnologies, nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence Studies, rejuvenating and other technologies are bringing us closer and closer to where Cyborgs wanted to get to (but were still struggling with human limitations) - enhanced bodily and sensory capabilities, perfect beauty, and mostly, to be freed from death as the ultimate burden of humanity. What does human enhancement mean for the bio-economy? What ethical and biopolitical questions do we have to deal with when we want to create or rather become immortal super-humans with perfect genes and features, and what does this say about us? In this panel the background as well as the visions and preoccupations connected to the possibilities given through the new biotechnologies — i.e. to become a immortal cyborg — will be discussed.
Saturday, May 30, 2015 • 20:30-21:30
Live Cinema + Q&A
by Mariano Equizzi (filmmaker, IT/BG), Paolo Bigazzi Alderigi (sound designer, IT). Q&A after the screening.
A journey on the roots of Italian Cyberpunk, crossing video, tech, politics, arts, music, electronic tones, provocations and all the possible disruptions related to the start of this adventure in Sicily, a "complicated" Island for its politics and society. Deeply rooted into conspiracy readings such as the counter culture masterpiece book "The
Illuminatus! Trilogy" (Shea and Wilson, 1975) the event gives an in depth look, purely geek, into the visions of the video works by Mariano Equizzi, with sounds by Paolo Bigazzi Alderigi. A live cinema about Cyber-visions between past and future.
Participants
Franco "Bifo" Berardi (sociologist and philosopher, IT, video contribution)
Franco 'Bifo' Berardi is a writer, philosopher, media-theorist and activist. He founded the magazine A/traverso (1975–1981) and was a co-founder of Radio Alice, the first free pirate radio station in Italy. He was involved in the Italian radical left movement at the end of the Seventies, taking part in many actions within the autonomous creative group Metropolitan Indians. Later in Paris, he worked with the French philosopher Felix Guattari in the field of schizoanalysis. In 2002 he contributed to the foundation of the Telestreet network movement in Italy. He was Professor of Social History of Communication at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Milan. His recent books include Ethereal Shadows (New York, 2007), Felix Guattari (New York, 2008), Precarious Rhapsody (New York, 2009), The Soul at Work (Los Angeles, 2010) and After The Future (Edinburgh, 2011).
Massimo Canevacci (cultural anthropologist, IT/BR)
Massimo Canevacci is professor of cultural anthropology and digital culture. He is currently based on the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and he has been living in this city since 2008. He is well known for his works about contemporary metropolis, 'native' cultures as well as the tensions between 'self-and hetero-representation'. Before moving to Brazil, Canevacci was a Professor of Cultural Anthropology and the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the 'La Sapienza' University of Rome. He also directed the Italian magazine 'Avatar' from 2001 to 2006. He is also known for his contribution to the study of digital cultures and his dialogic relationship with 'native' populations such as the Bororo and the Xavante of Central Brazil.
Francesca Da Rimini (artist and cyberfeminist, AU)
Francesca da Rimini, her accomplices, and familiars create rhizomatic spaces of radical poetics. From the VNS Matrix: A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, to avatars in the nous~sphaira (GashGirl, Doll Yoko, liquid_nation, Hexecutable, Fury), these collective works are spells to hack gender, hex capital and make wealth history. She has co-authored Disorder and the Disinformation Society: The Social Dynamics of Information, Networks and Software (Routledge 2015).
gashgirl.sysx.org
Virginia Barratt (researcher, performer and cyberfeminist, AU)
Virginia (ex-VNS Matrix, slime-sister) is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Sydney. Her research topic is panic, engaging tensions between ontological meltdown/psychic deterritorialisation and ontological security. Panic is remediated from its pathological narrative and reimagined as a space of urgency/agency. Experimental poetics, abjection and performance are her modalities. Her work of performative text, SLICE, is forthcoming from Stein and Wilde. She is afraid of flying, lives with/in nature in a mycelial feedback loop and has an unnatural love of cephalopods.
Jack Halberstam (theorist on gaga feminism and queer failure, USA)
Jack Halberstam is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Halberstam is the author of five books including: The Queer Art of Failure (Duke UP, 2011) and Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (Beacon Press, 2012). Halberstam is currently working on several projects including a book titled THE WILD.
Helena Velena (trans/gender hacktivist, and technologist, IT)
Helena Velena was born in Bologna in a male body; in 1979, still under a male name but already “transgender” without knowing it, Helena was one of the initiators of the Italian and Bolognese punk scene. During the radical left movement of 1977, she was part of the pirate radio station Radio Alice. At the end of the 1980s she was the founder of the advocacy company for “sex minorities” Cybercore, which later became a BBS (Bulletin Board System), and among the firsts to write about Cybersex practice and theory. In 1993 she finally turned into Helena and adopted a feminine identity, thereby formulating the definition of “transgender” contrarily to and beyond the theories that only classified it as a pathological condition. From this moment on, Helena started to deal with communication technologies and their role in the field of sexuality.
Francesco Warbear Macarone Palmieri (socio-anthropologist, cultural producer, DJ, IT/DE)
Born in Rome in 1970, Francesco Warbear Macarone Palmieri currently lives and works between Berlin and Rome as a social anthropologist, performance artist, curator and DJ. His work is based on Cultural Studies with a focus on New Media, Netporn Studies and Epistemology of Emotions. Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering of “La Sapienza” University of Rome, his most recent book is Tanz Berlin: Oltre il muro del clubbing (Manifesto Libri, 2015). He works as curator, performer and DJ on an international level. He is co-producer and Resident DJ of the Berlin-based bi-monthly queer event Gegen at Kit Kat Club.
Stefan Greiner (co-founder of Cyborg e.V.)
Stefan Greiner is a Berlin based cyborg hacktivist. Trained as an electrical engineer he studied human factors at TU Berlin and deepened his knowledge in human-computer interaction. He is co-founder of Cyborgs e.V. and gets excited, hacking his body in order to augment his sensory apparatus. Besides that, he co-founded the spin-off newsenselab at Humboldt University where he currently works on health related big data analysis.
Janez Janša (artist and curator, SI)
Janez Janša is a conceptual artist, performer and producer living in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of numerous videos, performances, installations, and new media works which have been presented in several exhibitions, festivals and lectures around the world. He is co-founder and director of Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana and artistic director of the Aksioma Project Space. He is the director of the film My Name Is Janez Janša. aksioma.org
Agnese Trocchi (artist and hacktivist, IT)
The massive access to information and communication provoked a radical change in human consciousness. The multiples possibilities of relationship and communication offered by analogical and digital technologies are the object of Agnese Trocchi’s work. Aesthetic researcher, writer, net-artist, videomaker, project manager on social network, she has been active since 1995 in the field of Internet Computer Technologies. She conspires with similar creatures to unfold the curtains of reality.
Christopher Coenen (researcher, DE)
Christopher Coenen is a senior researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology’ s Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (KIT-ITAS). He formerly worked at the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Parliament (TAB), which is run by KIT-ITAS. He is coordinator of the EU-funded large-scale stakeholder and public dialogue project SYNENERGENE on synthetic biology, the Editor in Chief of the journal NanoEthics, and the ‘ 'KIT Expert’ for the topic ‘ 'human enhancement’.
Magdalena Freudenschuss (gender theory researcher, DE)
Magdalena Freudenschuss is Research Associate at Common Media Lab, at the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Grounded in feminist theory and learning from post-colonial theory her research project develops the concept of vulnerabilities with regard to digitalised societies. The concept of vulnerabilities is linked to her previous research project on precarity/recarization. In this transdisciplinary strand of research insecurity and vulnerability are considered core moments of social change and its critical analysis.
Mariano Equizzi (filmmaker, IT/BG)
Mariano Equizzi studied at the Experimental Cinema Centre in Rome in the 1990s and become assistant director of filmmaker Michele Soavi. His film Ginevra Report won the Premio Italia awarded by the World Science Fiction Association (WSFA). Together with Luca Liggio and Paolo Bigazzi he has directed and produced several independent Italian Science Fiction cult features and short films such as Rache, Genetic Sea, Syrena, Ginevra Report, Nova Videoclip, and Agentz. He created the first narrative film to be entirely stitched together using augmented reality: Komplex 28. He is currently based in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Paolo Bigazzi Alderigi (sound designer, IT)
Owner/music publisher at "Iter-research". Label manager at "ONDE Electronic contents". General manager at "Delights Entertainment S.R.L." (event organizer/artist managment). He is sound design lecturer at "SAE Institute" (Milan-Italy). Sound designer and music composer at "Komplex live Cinema Group". Part of electronic music duo project "Tone Float". Co-owner at "LEBfilm" cyberpunk video production, short, live-cinema, documentary.
Giacomo Verde (artist and activist, IT, video contribution)
Since the 1980s Giacomo Verde has produced works through the creative use of 'low' technology. He is the inventor of "tele-narration", a technique also used for creating live-video-backdrops for concerts and poetry recitals. He was one of the first Italians to create interactive art works and net-art. He has worked with various different artistic
teams. Reflecting on and playfully experimenting with the latest techno-anthropo-logical developments underway and building bridges between different art genres is a constant of his work.
