Peter Marcuse

Peter Marcuse is Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning
School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Columbia University, New York.
www.marcuse.org/peter/peter.htm

• urban intervention,
• public space,
• occupy

Gordan Savicic

Artist | Critical Engineer

• art,
• critical engineering

Daniel van derVelden

Daniel van der Velden is a graphic designer and writer. He graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy, and studied in Maastricht at the Jan van Eyck Academie under Michael Rock, Armand Mevis, Paul Elliman, Karel Martens and Jan van Toorn.

• design,
• wikileaks

Calin Dan

Artist Born 1955, Arad, Romania Based in Amsterdam and Bucharest MA in Art History & Theory. Initial career as art journalist, free lance curator and cultural manager (with the Soros Foundation, Romania). From 1990 involved in various cross media projects independently and within the art duo subREAL. Developer of multi-media projects with V2 Lab for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam. Creative Director for rich media platforms - Lost Boys Interactive, Amsterdam. Contributions to mainstream and alternative publications on internet related topics. Consultant for the Dutch Fund for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. Various teaching positions. Lately pursues an independent research on the interplay between citizens and their habitat - the Emotional Architecture.

• art

Derrick de Kerckhove

Derrick de Kerckhove is the former director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology.  He received his PhD. in French Language and Literature  from the University of Toronto and a Doctorat du 3e cycle in Sociology of Art from the University of Tours. From 1972 to 1980 he was an associate of the Centre for Culture and Technology and worked with Marshall McLuhan for over ten years as translator, assistant and co-author.

• art,
• media,
• network cultures,
• theory,
• media theory

Paul Virilio

Paul Virilio (b. 1932 in Paris) is a world-renowned philosopher, urbanist, and cultural theorist. His work focuses on urban spaces and the development of technology in relation to power and speed. He is known for his coining of the term 'dromology' to explain his theory of speed and technology. Paul Virilio is of mixed ancestry, being the son of an Italian father (who identified as a Communist) and a Breton mother. As a small child in France during the Second World War, Paul Virilio was profoundly impacted by the blitzkrieg and total war; however, these early experiences shaped his understanding of the movement and speed which structures modern society. In order to escape the heavy fighting in the city, he fled with his family to the port of Nantes in 1939.

• accident,
• speed

Julian Oliver

Artist | Critical Engineer

• art,
• tactical gizmology,
• critical engineering

Darko Fritz

Darko Fritz Fritz is artist and independent curator and researcher. He was born in 1966, in Croatia, and currently he lives and works in Amsterdam, Zagreb and Korcula. He studied architecture at the University of Zagreb [1986 - 1989] and media art at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam [1990 - 1992].

• tactical media,
• migration,
• media criticism

Jordan Crandall

Jordan Crandall is an artist, theorist, and performer based in Los Angeles.  His video installations, presented in numerous exhibitions worldwide, combine formats and genres deriving from cinematic and military culture, exploring new regimes of power and their effects on subjectivity, sociality, embodiment, and desire. Crandall writes and lectures regularly at various institutions across the US and Europe.  He is the 2011 winner of the Vilém Flusser Theory Award for outstanding theory and research-based digital arts practice, given by the Transmediale in Berlin in collaboration with the Vilém Flusser Archive of the University of Arts, Berlin.  He is currently (2012) an Honorary Resident at Eyebeam art and technology center in New York, where he is continuing the development of a new body of work that blends performance art, political theater, philosophical speculation, and intimate reverie.  The work, entitled UNMANNED, explores new ontologies of distributed systems  -- a performative event-philosophy in the form of a book and a theatrical production.  He is also the founding editor of the new journal VERSION.

• art,
• theory,
• surveillance

Micz Flor

Micz Flor is a flexecutive cultural producer and media developer with a special interest in video and streaming media.

• culture,
• radio,
• community media,
• grassroot journalism,
• streaming media

Saskia Sassen

Saskia Sassen's research and writing focuses on globalization (including social, economic and political dimensions), immigration, global cities (including cities and terrorism), the new networked technologies, and changes within the liberal state that result from current transnational conditions. In her research she has focused on the unexpected and the counterintuitive as a way to cut through established 'truths.'

• urban intervention,
• globalisation,
• finance

Occupy Sandy and the Occupy Movement 

Friends,

At Zuccotti Park, there was always a bit of social service involved in the occupation:-- homeless people sheltered, the hungry fed -- but it was ancillary to Occupy's main objectives, which dealt with societal, structural problems. But the reaction to hurricane Sandy, and the formation of Occupy Sandy, brought out a different aspect of the Occupy movement, not directed at Wall Street or big systemic issues, but directly providing help to those in need.What kind of role is that for Occupy? How does it fit in with Occupy Wall Street's basic thrust?

• environment,
• urban intervention,
• occupy

The Critical Engineering Manifesto 

The Critical Engineering Working Group - Berlin, October 2011  

• art,
• critical engineering

Debates & Credits 

Media Art in the Public Domain

Debates & Credits was a Russian / Dutch art and media project which has invited four artists and artist collectives from Russia and four from The Netherlands to develop interventionist (media-) art works for the public space.

The project happened in three stages:
Amsterdam, September 11 - 22
Yekaterinburg, September 26 - 29
Moscow, October 7 - 13

• art,
• urban intervention,
• public space,
• public domain,
• hybrid space

Unknown Quantity - Foreword 

"Contemporary civilization differs in one particularly distinctive feature from those which preceded it: speed. The change has come about within a generation," noted the historian Marc Bloch, writing in the nineteen-thirties. This situation brings in its wake a second feature: the accident. The progressive spread of catastrophic events do not just affect current reality, but produce anxiety and anguish for coming generations.

• accident

Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm! 

The twin phenomena of immediacy and of instantaneity are presently oneof the most pressing problems confronting political and militarystrategists alike. Real time now prevails above both real space and thegeosphere. The primacy of real time, of immediacy, over and above spaceand surface is a ~fait accompli~ and has inaugural value (ushers a newepoch). Something nicely conjured up in a (French) advertisementpraising cellular phones with the words: "Planet Earth has never beenthis small". This is a very dramatic moment in our relation with theworld and for our vision of the world.

• speed

"The Desire to be Wired" 

1. Desire.

I come from a social and cultural context which has its languagetaboos, and among them a strong one refers to the libido. Desire is,therefore, something rather personal, and connecting it to the publicsphere might personalize the approach in a naive sense I learned toavoid. But since the same topic has been voiced last year in thecalling papers of the Enschede Photo Biennial, we might be dealing herewith a common place, therefore with a language defensive reflex, andthis is something useful to talk about.