Tag Archives: participation

open data process + design workshop

What’s the taste of corruption?

DC_Kosovo

The next Data Cuisine Workshop will focus on ‘Corruption’ and take place in Pristina, Kosovo. If you have questions about it, please contact us. You want to participate? Simply register at here. Let’s find out together how corruption tastes!

Corruption remains one of the most significant problems Kosovo faces today. UNPD Kosovo fights strongly to make corruption a problem of the past. We are happy to be invited by them to tell stories of corruption through data dishes that we will create during this two-day workshop on February 25-26, 2017.

action process + art process + design workshop

Out of Soil continues in India

The Out of Soil project started as a playful action in Berlin in April 2015. The project and its different parts have taken their cues from the ambiguous meaning of the words ‘out of soil’ as in ‘made out of soil’ or ‘running out of soil’.

soil-says-sticker_cropped
We are happy to announce that the project Out of Soil will be happening in New Delhi, India end of this month. New to the project are Soil Speaks stickers which give wearers a chance to give soil a voice. We have been invited by Dr Vandana Shiva and Navdanya
to perform the Out of Soil action at the Bhoomi: Maati Ma – The Festival of Soil on October 1.

As a new extension to the Out of Soil project, we will run a 3-day Soil Games workshop with high-school students in New Delhi. Soil is much more than just a matter of economic and existential value, but the way we perceive and use it is deeply rooted in our cultures. The workshop brings up the culturally different concepts and personal stories connected to soil and transforms them into games.

Together with the students we will develop and play games that relate to the themes of soil and land use. We will introduce various game mechanics and talk about typical local games. Moreover, participants will learn about soil and land issues in the world, about the composition of soil as well as plants and life underground. Also traditional and cultural meanings of soil will be looked at: what role does soil play in myths and religious beliefs? We will discuss the economic and social meanings of land, land use, ownership and agriculture and their ramifications on the life of each of us. Based on these introductions, games will be developed and tested in small groups, and eventually presented at the Festival of Soil.

Out of Soil in India is supported by IFA, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.

 

process + art

Out of Soil: How much land is in your food?

OutofSoil_cropped_web

Out of Soil is a performative project by Myriel Milicevic and Susanne Jaschko, and brings to attention the correlation of land use, farmers’ rights and the question ‘How much land is in your food?’.

Our soil is under pressure. Growing consumption and demand for resources take a toll on the soil — urbanisation, intensive farming, erosion and land grabbing are only some of the manifold consequences. Soil as matter is as much affected as the lives of people who have farmed for generations. Out of Soil examines these different aspects in a playful action.
Out of Soil: made from soil / not having soil.

Out of Soil Stamps
Each visitor gets Soils Stamps, which are printed at the Soil Press Station with self-made soil paint. The Soil Stamps resemble food stamps, thus reminding us that food can only be produced in exchange for other resources. When a visitor consumes food or beverages, we stamp the Soil Stamps accordingly.

Out of Soil Map
The Out of Soil Map illustrates the issue of large-scale land acquisitions: the buying of large pieces of land in developing countries, by domestic and transnational companies and governments. These transactions have long-lasting consequences for the local and regional agriculture and ecosystems, for farmers and the provision of the local population. We will stamp the Out of Soil Map, depending on what the visitors consume.

Soil Profile
Upon entrance the visitors are questioned regarding their relation to soil. Thereupon each visitor gets a sticker that displays his or her personal Soil Profile. The stickers are to be worn on the clothing. They might serve as a starting point for conversations among the visitors.

The project was developed for the International Week of Justice 2015 at Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. The project takes place at Haus 2 on April 21 – 23 from 17:30 to the end of the talks. Program flyer

About Myriel: Myriel Milicevic explores the hidden connections between people and their natural, social, and technical environments. These explorations are mostly of a participatory and playful nature and stimulate thinking about possible alternative systems. neighbourhoodsatellites.com

About Susanne: Susanne Jaschko is the founder of the prozessagenten label and works as curator of contemporary art. With prozessagenten she explores participation and collaboration as cultural techniques which support change and the generation of knowledge. sujaschko.de/en

book process + art

Autopsy of an Island Currency published and available online

MoneyLab-digiflyer

Autopsy of an Island Currency was launched last weekend at Camp Pixelache in Helsinki. The book documents and reflects on the Suomenlinna Money Lab project — an artistic research project that tried to create an experimental local currency for the small island of Suomenlinna near Helsinki.

You can download the free PDF of the book here.

The general aim of the Money Lab was to engage with the specifics of a local setting by working with local people and creating a project that would generate interesting research and be beneficial to local dynamics. It was an ambitious attempt to explore and affect a unique place and its social dynamics through participatory art and design practice. The project was initiated by Susanne Jaschko / prozessagenten and produced by Pixelache, a cultural organisation in Helsinki, who together invited artist Christian Nold to develop a project for Helsinki.

The book describes the project’s process in detail trough a combination of first-person narration and ‘artefacts’, a wide selection of documented materials in the form of emails, notes, sketches, announcements and reflections. The publication also analyses the project’s challenges, such as the internal social dynamics and power structures of the island, which the Suomenlinna Money Lab project rendered visible. In addition, commissioned essays by authors Jaromil, Chris Lee, Pekko Koskinen, Antti Jauhiainen and Suzana Milevska contextualise the project and discuss subjects such as the challenges of participatory art, the value and hybrid nature of participatory projects, and the potentials of alternative money systems. The book is aimed at practitioners who work at the intersection of art, research and social action. It should be particularly useful for people working on alternative money models or on participatory projects that request a high degree of people’s commitment.

report symposium

Challenges and Limits of Collaboration

This year’s MutaMorphosis Conference in Prague was entitled Tribute to Uncertainty and offered a wide programme of sessions, but browsing the program one could not ignore the attention that the organisers had paid to what is going on in the field of art + science and in particular Bio Art. I had been invited to speak about Challenges of Participation in a session that was similarly called The Limits and Challenges of Collaboration and that was curated by Manuela Naveau from Ars Electronica. Together with me on the panel were Galia Offri and her partner Mushon Zer-Aviv as well as Mirko Tobias Schaefer, Assistant Professor for New Media & Digital Culture Utrecht University. Mirko is also the author of Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production at Amsterdam University Press.

In Prague, Mirko gave an analysis of participatory culture limiting user agency, focussing on social media. In his talk he revealed the discrepancy between social media’s official narrative of being participatory systems and their true nature of limiting participation and massively channelling user activities. He spoke about social media’s ephemeral design elements: Like, View, Endorse, Favourite, ReTweet, RePin, and how they lower the threshold to become an ‘active’ user. On-line activity is minimised to clicking a button, but gets maximum attention. Social media also initiate the economics of rewards. Mirko went on discussing elements of corporate control limiting user activities such as moderation, automated, distributed (through ‘flag’ and ‘report’) and human content review. The final part of his presentation centred on the expansion of the public sphere through social media and the problem of corporations shaping policies for this new public space.

From Wikipedia Illustrated:Hikikomori, literally “pulling away, being confined”, i.e., “acute social withdrawal”) is a Japanese term to refer to the phenomenon of reclusive people who have chosen to withdraw from social life, often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement because of various personal and social factors in their lives.

Galia and Mushon presented their project Wikipedia Illustrated. This project entails the illustration of 26 Wikipedia articles, a blog to share the process, a book and a number of workshops. Through these activities the authors hope to draft a new path for a visual free culture. And indeed, Wikipedia looks like it can benefit from such artistic activism. Wikipedia pages don’t allow much visual information and while the textual information usually goes through various versions and updates, graphics don’t permit this kind of collaborative process. So it’s individual authors who insert images which are accepted by the community or dismissed. But the ‘simple’ act of creating and adding images that communicate the content or theme of a Wikipedia article in an illustrative and metaphorical way opens up a discussion of how much visual poetry Wikipedia can take before it looses its reputation as a factual medium and if contributors can change its rules. This project shows quite plainly and painfully how little room Wikipedia and similar collaborative platforms offer for reformation.