1st ArtLeaks Working Assembly 2012 

ArtLeaks invites you to a public working assembly around the issues that are at the core of the group's mission - exposing instances of abuse, corruption and exploitation in the art world. This is the official public launch of our platform, which began to operate in September 2011, and will be followed by a series of debates and workshops in the near future. These present a unique opportunity to engage more directly with conditions of cultural work that affect not only artists but creative workers in general: those from the traditionally creative fields as well as those generally involved in cultural production.

• art,
• campaign,
• precarity,
• art of campaigning

The Logos Fight back 

The culture jammers tried to subvert the big brand names. But the smart advertisers now use guerrilla tactics themselves, according to James Harkin

In a recent newspaper interview, Kalle Lasn was interrogated about Adbusters, the Canadian anti-advertising magazine that he founded.

• culture jamming

Open letter by Paolo Cirio to Roselyne Bachelot, French Minister of Culture 

Open letter by Paolo Cirio.
Press Release Oct 6, 2020.

Addressed to Roselyne Bachelot, French Minister of Culture.

In response to the censored art installation at the exhibition Panorama 22, programmed at Le Fresnoy - Studio national, under the threat and pressure of the French Minister of Interior Gerald Darmanin.

• art,
• activism,
• surveillance,
• censorship,
• biometrics

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

Tactical Media in Brazil - Submidialogia conference report 

The four-day conference on the campus of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) brought together many key persons from the tactical media movement of Brazil and some of their counterparts in the Brasilian government.
The movement is converging from roots in free radio, free software, hardware hacking, art and social movements. It is currently focussed around a large-scale project master-minded by Claudio Prado and supported by the Ministry of Culture: ?Pontos de Cultura? (Culture Spots) which is aiming to empower up to 600 cultural projects with free software-based multimedia production and publication facilities.

• tactical media,
• Brazil

Video Vortex Reader II launched and available for download 

On Saturday, the 12th of March 2011, a few minutes before six, the second Video Vortex reader was  presented to the audience of the sixth edition of the Video Vortex conference. Editors Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers Miles invited the contributors to the second volume, who were present en masse, to celebrate the launch of the book on stage.

• art,
• network cultures,
• video activism,
• participatory media

Manifesto of the association Real Democracy Now (English) 

We are ordinary people. We are like you: people, who get up every morning to study, work or find a job, people who have family and friends. People, who work hard every day to provide a better future for those around us.
Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic, and social outlook which we see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice.
This situation has become normal, a daily suffering, without hope. But if we join forces, we can change it. It's time to change things, time to build a better society together.

• activism,
• precarity,
• street protest,
• tactical camping

How to Turn Your Liability into an Asset: Media, Art and Politics in Post-communist Bulgaria 

The first interview was conducted during the opening of Hybrid Workspace in June 1997, the temporary media lab in the margins of the big art show Documenta X in Kassel (Germany).

• politics,
• art,
• Revolution

Engaging Ambivalence 

Interventions in Engineering Cultures

The most significant underwriter of engineering research in the United States is the Department of Defense, largely acting through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA exists to channel funds from the military to academic and corporate research labs in exchange for technological innovations that serve the needs of its clients - the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. As DARPA public relations officers are fond of pointing out, innovations funded by DARPA grants may also find expression in civilian applications, particularly in the communications and aerospace industries.

• contestational robotics

ArtLeaks 

It is time to break the silence!

ArtLeaks is collective platform initiated by an international group of artists, curators, art historians and intellectuals in response to the abuse of their professional integrity and the open infraction of their labor rights. In the art world, such abuses usually disappear, but some events bring them into sharp focus and therefore deserve public scrutiny.  Only by drawing attention to concrete abuses can we underscore the precarious condition of cultural workers and the necessity for sustained protest against the appropriation of politically engaged art, culture and theory by institutions embedded in a tight mesh of capital and power.

• art,
• campaign,
• precarity,
• art of campaigning

Social Media and the UK Riots: "Twitter Mobs", "Blackberry Mobs" and the Structural Violence of Neoliberalism 

"One formula [...] can be that of the mob: gullible, fickle, herdlike, low in taste and habit. [...] If [...] our purpsoe is manipulation - the persuasion of a large number of people to act, feel, think, known in certain ways - the convenient formula will be that of the masses". - Raymond Williams

• social justice,
• participatory media,
• street protest

The Revenge of Print 

In the wireless era, is the paper medium simply passé for the work of activists? Are zamizdat, fanzines and political magazines just good for historians? After the mid-nineties zine crisis due to a sudden rise of the cost of paper and the advent of the Internet, the actual role of magazines seems to be re-defined and still strategical for the circulation of ideas.

Digital Tailspin: Ten Rules for the Internet After Snowden 

Privacy, copyright, classified documents and state secrets, but also spontaneous network phenomena like flash mobs and hashtag revolutions, reveal one thing – we lost control over the digital world. We experience a digital tailspin, or as Michael Seemann calls it in this essay: a loss of control or Kontrollverlust. Data we never knew existed is finding paths that were not intended and reveals information that we would never have thought of on our own.

• network cultures,
• infopolitics,
• info-activism,
• surveillance

May Day: Art Workers' Pride Visual Archive 

April 28, 2014:
This Thursday is May Day, international workers' day.

Across the globe workers will celebrate May Day in various ways, organizing street demonstrations and protest marches in their communities, demanding justice and freedom for all oppressed people.

With this occasion, ArtLeaks will inaugurate a visual archive dedicated to art workers' pride, which will continue to gather material throughout the year.

• art,
• EuroMayDay,
• art of campaigning,
• labour

Not Home 

"Happiness is where I am not"

Darko Fritz's Search for Home

• art,
• migration,
• borders

Syrian Hands Raised: User Generated Creativity Between Citizenship and Dissent 

As much as images of violence, civil war, and sectarian strife become prominent in the media narrative of the Syrian uprising, little gems of innovative cultural production, artistic resistance, and creative disobedience continue to sprout across the virtual alleys of the Internet. These creative gems are also the germs of a viral peer-production process at work at a grassroots level in the new Syrian public sphere. Such acts of creativity - mash-ups, cartoons, slogans, jokes, songs, and web series - are probably too small and inconsistent in impact compared to the horrific magnificence that shelling, bombing, sniping, and killing scenes that provide daily fodder to global television viewers. It is also challenging to discover them; in fact, as remarked by Tunisian blogger Sami ben Gharbia at the Arab Bloggers meeting in Tunis (3-6 October 2011), Facebook is not the most suitable platform for activists to store, archive, tag, search for content, and give it a context.

• net.activism,
• info-activism,
• middle east

N5M3 South Asia Forum Presentation 

Working with new media in the part of South Asia that I come from is something like crossing a tightrope on a bicycle. The bicycle which could have helped me along were I on my way on flat ground makes the crossing that much more precarious. Consider the bicycle to be the single computer and the internet connection which I use along with at least seventeen other people, friends, colleagues, neighbours and complete strangers.

Transcending Post-Communism? 

?In Central and (South-) Eastern Europe the cultural landscape has entered the Post-Soros Era, while still awaiting the arrival of the widely expected EU patronage for the arts and the civil sector ?? (from the original description of the ?Enduring Post Communism? panel)

Dark Markets 

Dark Markets is a two day strategic conference that looked into the state of the art of media politics, information technologies, and theories of democracy. A variety of international speakers inquired into strategies of oppositional movements and discussed the role of new media.

• politics,
• infopolitics,
• democracy

 California Department of Corrections

The California Department of Corrections (CDC) has established an organizational structure which provides for efficient and effective management of all facets of advertising to include care, treatment, discipline, training, and employment.

• public space,
• culture jamming,
• billboard improvement