Disruption Network Lab
Disruption Network Lab is an ongoing platform of events and research focused on art, hacktivism and disruption. The Laboratory takes shape through a series of conference events at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin.
The goal of the Disruption Network Lab is to present and generate new possible routes of social and political action within the framework of hacktivism, digital culture and information technology, focusing on the disruptive potential of artistic practices. The Disruption Network Lab is a conceptual and practical zone where artists, hackers, activists, networkers, whistle-blowers and critical thinkers enter into a dialogue. The programme is developed through artistic presentations, theoretical debates and keynote events. This series of events establishes local and translocal partnerships with other spaces and institutions.
Focus of the first series of events are media practices at the border of hacking, art and activism covering a wide spectrum of contemporary political, cultural and economical issues, where the use of technology is central, but it becomes also a mean to redefine criticism: from the use of drones in political conflicts, to the emergence of social media practices shaping our everyday life causing critical consequence on our privacy; from the critical reflection on identity and sexuality in post-digital contexts, to the upcoming frontiers of bio-hacking; from the practice of whistleblowing as a way of exposing misconducts in political systems, to the tactic of disruption of corporations’ logic, to reveals bugs of economical and business processes from within.
The artistic programme intertwines collective projects and networks focused on the practices of hacktivism and disruption. A large body of artistic examples and practices is presented and analysed during the Lab’s activity.
Currently we are working on establishing the platform both locally and internationally, by proposing new series of conference events in Berlin and abroad, where the Disruption Network Lab’s conference format will be recreated. The first event of the international series is scheduled in London (April 2016).
The people
Tatiana Bazzichelli
ARTISTIC Director & Curator
tbazz@disruptionlab.org
PGP: 0x1f552b2ff5a5c9a0
Tatiana Bazzichelli is the artistic director and founder of the Disruption Network Lab. Former programme & conference curator at transmediale festival in Berlin from 2011 to 2014, she initiated and developed the year-round ‘reSource transmedial culture berlin’ project. In 2012-2014 she was Post-Doctoral researcher at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, as part of the Centre for Digital Cultures, and the Institute for Culture and Aesthetic Digital Media, Faculty of Cultural Studies.
In 2011, she received a PhD degree in Information and Media Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Aarhus University in Denmark. In 2009 she was a visiting scholar at the H-STAR, the Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute of Stanford University in California. She wrote the books: Networked Disruption: Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and the Business of Social Networking (DARC Press, Aarhus University, 2013); Networking: The Net as Artwork (Costa & Nolan, Milan, 2006 /DARC Press, Aarhus University, 2008), and co-edited with Geoff Cox Disrupting Business: Art and Activism in Times of Financial Crisis (Autonomedia, New York, 2013). Active in the Italian hacker community since the ’90s, her networking project AHA:Activism-Hacking Artivism won the honorary mention for digital communities at Ars Electronica in 2007. She has organised several exhibitions and events, such as SAMIZDATA (2015-2016), Networked Disruption (2015), HACK.Fem.EAST (2008), and Hack.it.art (2005) in Berlin, Rome, and other European cities. She is born in Rome and since 2003 she lives in Berlin.
Daniela Silvestrin
Curator & Manager
Daniela Silvestrin is an independent researcher, curator and cultural manager with a background in law, history of art and curatorial studies. In her research she explores hybrid artistic practices at the intersection of art, law and science that explore new ways of relating to vibrant materialities. Driven by the emergence of critical political and ethical concerns in an era where techno-science increasingly impacts all life and blurs known distinctions between the human and non-human, life and matter, her work critically reflects on the implications of new technologies, analyzsed and discussed through the lens of artistic reflection and knowledge production.
After working for four editions of the transmediale festival as project manager, she is now working with both the new initiative and collective STATE Experience Science in Berlin as art & science curator and with the Disruption Network Lab as curator and manager since both their inceptions in 2014. Together with the artists Mario de Vega and Víctor Mazón Gardoqui, she is co-editor of the recently published book “LIMEN. Ecologies of Transmission” (Berlin / Mexico City, 2016).
Her research has been awarded with the Working and Research Grant for Visual Art 2015 by the Berlin Senate Chancellery for Cultural Affairs, Germany.
Kim Voss
Project MANAGER & COMMUNICATION
Kim Voss is in the process of graduating in Arts Management and Cultural Work at Fachhochschule Potsdam. She worked as assistant press and communication manager for the theater Sophiensaele in Berlin and as assistant project manager for the conference programme of transmediale festival 2015. In October 2013 she set up an exhibition about Upcycling fashion in the famous defunct amusement park “Spreepark Berlin”. Since 2015 she is a project manager of the Disruption Network Lab. As cultural producer and mediator she is taking part in social and aesthetic processes working at the intersection of artistic practice, public interest and the market.