DISNOVATION.ORG – SOLO EXHIBITION
MAY 12–28, 2017
IN / MAPPING_DIGITAL SHIFTS
CURATED BY ANA ASCENCIO
LE COMMUN, 28 RUE DES BAINS, GENEVA
Today’s vocabulary of innovation is the ultimate rhetorical tool. It inundates dominant discourse, spreading from the field of politics to the sectors of work, education and art. At the heart of this prevailing techno-positivist context, collective DISNOVATION.ORG [aka. disobedient innovation] offers a dissection of the ideology of technological innovation through a series of critical hacks.
This exhibition presents alternative narratives to the "propaganda of innovation" by exploring: a parallel history of technologies from the perspective of their failures (The Museum of Failures), the ghosts of military engineering and science fiction in everyday technologies (War Zone, Floating Prophecies), the standardization of Western technological imaginaries (Shanzhai Archeology), and an anthology on piracy of necessity (The Pirate Book).
The second part looks at the friction spaces generated between hyperconnected web users and the global network - including hacks such as: a system to predict and subvert emerging artistic trends (Predictive Art Bot), an exposure of live peer-to-peer video exchanges (The Pirate Cinema), or a printed directory containing millions of restricted addresses commonly used to filter Internet access worldwide (Blacklists).
Exhibition webpage: http://disnovation.org/2017_mapping
In the frame of Mapping_Digital Shifts – Geneva: http://2017.mappingfestival.com
EXHIBITED PROJECTS:
SHANZHAI ARCHEOLOGY
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CONCEPTION: DISNOVATION.ORG, CLÉMENT RENAUD & YUAN QU
INSTALLATION, COLLECTION, RESEARCH, EDITIONS | 2015-2018
Shanzhai Archeology is a collection of original phones from the technological interbreeding Made in China. This project casts a critical look at the production of technology through an artistic interpretation of a recent historical fact, still poorly known: the shanzhai.
Often presented as mere counterfeits of low quality, these objects nevertheless draw many unusual technological trajectories that make them the revealers of technological possibilities literally out of European standards. As odd looking hybrids, these puzzling artefacts question a hyper-normalised western technological imaginary.
THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES
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CONCEPTION: DISNOVATION.ORG
VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS (WORKSHOP @ HEAD GENEVA, MAY 3–5, 2017)
PROTOTYPE - ONGOING | 2016-2017...
« This acknowledgement of powerlessness before the upsurge of unexpected, catastrophic events forces us to reverse the usual trend which exposes us to accidents and inaugurate a new kind of museology and museography: one which consists in exposing or exhibiting the accident, all accidents, from the most commonplace to the most tragic, from natural catastrophes to industrial and scientific disasters, including also the kind that is too often neglected, the happy accident, the stroke of luck, the coup de foudre or even the coup de grâce! » — Paul Virilio
In a context where science, technology and innovation are at the core of contemporary belief systems, it seems essential to consider establishing an alternative technology museum, no longer through a series of heroic exploits often instrumentalised, but through a panorama of the numerous failures highlighting the purposes, the narratives and the heterogeneous imaginary of a society.
We wish to establish a collection of aborted projects, flops, errors, malfunctions, business failures, ethical rejection or disasters, reflecting the outlines of our society, from a historical, symbolic, poetic and cultural point of view.
BLACKLISTS
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CONCEPTION: DISNOVATION.ORG
EDITION, INSTALLATION | 2016
http://peripheriques.free.fr/blog/files/Blacklists_book_01.pdf
The Blacklists project is a directory of the prohibitions of the Internet deployed in the form of an encyclopedia in 13 volumes of 666 pages each. It is an extensive collection of restricted websites used for the automatic filtering of traffic considered illicit or licentious.
Just like the intent of «forbidden libraries» for books, the Blacklists project points out the sidelining of online content that could be dangerous for the very survival of the system. With around 2 millions websites extracted from commercial content-control softwares, this collection reveals a cultural, social and ideological model of our society through what should not be seen.
WAR ZONE
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CONCEPTION: DISNOVATION.ORG
PROGRAMMING: IVAN MURIT
KML TRAJECTORIES, VIDEO | 2013–2014
http://vimeo.com/98755425
War Zone explores the military background of mainstream technology. In this video work based on historical facts, the artist reconstitutes three missile trajectories with a subjective camera angle using Google Earth. This work articulates around haunting high technologies by introducing cues of their military origins. Here we focus on the missiles, the ancestor of the space program and satellite launches, whose shots and cartographies we use on an daily basis.
So we follow the trajectory of a V2 rocket, developed by the Nazis and launched from the Netherlands to London in 1945. Then a Scud rocket launched from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, and finally an air-to-ground missile launched from Israel to Gaza in 2014. Riding our missile in the style of Dr Strangelove, we find ourselves wondering about the evolution of those instruments of death. From the poor precision of a V2 to the surgical strikes of Israel, the country with the largest number of start-ups, particularly in cyber-defence, and where the military is the prime crucible of innovation. This work is based on data gathered on newspaper archives, interviews, blogs and historical facts.
FLOATING PROPHECIES
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CONCEPTION: DISNOVATION.ORG
VOICE: BLACK SIFICHI
VIDEO COLLAGE | 2015
http://vimeo.com/140162035
The figure of the drone serves as the starting point for this film, enabling it to explore the intersections that exist between fictional depictions arising from science fiction literature and the actual advent of flying machines with camera vision in contemporary world, folklore and mythology.
By juxtaposing quotes from works from the previous century (1880–2000) with a selection of popular, recent videos that have been posted on video sharing websites, this film explores the grey zone between self-fulfilling prophecy and composite narratives.
PREDICTIVE ART BOT V3
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CONCEPTION: DISNOVATION.ORG
PROGRAMMING: JÉRÔME SAINT-CLAIR
PROTOTYPE | 2015–2017
http://twitter.com/predartbot
Predictive Art Bot is an algorithm that uses current discourse as a basis to create concepts for artistic projects and, at times, prophesize absurd future trajectories for art.
Algorithms are now widely used in different fields to make predictions using data analysis, statistical analysis, and pattern recognition for applications including the purchasing behavior of particular groups, global market developments and even potential crimes. In contrast, the Predictive Art Bot is a specialist in making art forecasts, published daily on Twitter, which are meant to expand the limited human imagination with new, non-human perspectives.
As a parody of transhumanist prophecies, the Predictive Art Bot liberates artists from the constraints of creativity and develops ideas not yet implemented or conceived by humans. — Inke Arns
THE PIRATE CINEMA
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CONCEPTION: DISNOVATION.ORG
PROGRAMMING: BRENDAN HOWELL & JEAN-MARIE BOYER
INSTALLATION | 2012–2014
http://thepiratecinema.com
In the context of omnipresent telecommu-nications surveillance, The Pirate Cinema makes visible the hidden activity and geo-graphy of peer-to-peer file sharing. The project is presented as a monitoring room, which shows P2P transfers happening in real time on networks using the BitTorrent protocol.
The installation produces an arbitrary cut-up of the files currently being exchanged. This immediate and fragmentary rendering of digital activity, with information concerning its source and destination, thus depicts the topology of digital media consumption and uncontrolled content dissemination in a connected world.
THE PIRATE BOOK
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CONCEPTION & EDITING: DISNOVATION.ORG
PUBLISHER: AKSIOMA, LJUBLJANA | 2015
CONTRIBUTORS: JOTA IZQUIERDO, CHRISTOPHER KIRKLEY, MARIE LECHNER, PEDRO MIZUKAMI, ERNESTO OROZA, CLÉMENT RENAUD, ISHITA TIWARY, ERNESTO VAN DER SAR & MICHAËL ZUMSTEIN
VIDEOS: JOTA IZQUIERDO
http://thepiratebook.net
This work offers a broad view on media piracy as well as a variety of comparative perspectives on recent issues and historical facts regarding piracy. It contains a compilation of texts relating grassroot situations where strategies have been developed to share, distribute and experience cultural content outside of the confines of local economies, politics or laws. These stories recount the experiences of individuals from India, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Mali, China and UK.
The book is structured in four parts and begins with a collection of stories on piracy dating back to the invention of the printing press and expanding to broader issues: historical and modern antipiracy technologies, geographically specific issues, as well as the rules of the Warez scene, its charters, structure and visual culture.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
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DISNOVATION.ORG SOLO EXHIBITION - CURATED BY ANA ASCENCIO (MAY 11 – 28)
_ Exhibition webpage: http://disnovation.org/2017_mapping
_ In the frame of MAPPING DIGITAL SHIFTS - Geneva: http://2017.mappingfestival.com
_ Opening on thursday, May 11: 6pm–01am
_ Tue, Wed, Sat & Sun: 11am–6pm
_ Thu & Fri : 11am–8pm
_ From May 24 to 28 (Mapping LIVE): 11am–8pm
_ Guided tours: every saturday from 2pm to 4pm ([log in to unmask])
FEATURED IN THE EXHIBITION
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_ Disnovation.org: Maria Roszkowska: *1982 (PL), lives and works in Paris; Nicolas Maigret: *1980 (FR), lives and works in Paris
_ Clément Renaud: *1983 (FR), lives and works in Lyon
_ Brendan Howell: *1976 (USA), lives and works in Berlin
_ Black Sifishi: (USA), lives and works in Paris
_ Jota Izquierdo: *1972 (MX), lives and works in Mexico
_ Jérôme Saint-Clair: *1972 (FR), lives and works in Paris
_ Jean-Marie Boyer (/rybn): *1973 (FR), lives and works in Paris
MAPPING DIGITAL SHIFTS - CONFERENCE PROGRAM’S HIGHLIGHTS
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_ Conference: May 12th 2017, Technocriticism and speculative engineering
—> with: Gordan Savičić, Maria Roszkowska, Félicien Goguey, Nicolas Maigret, Clément Renaud
_ Special event: May 20th 2017, Nuit Des Bains Special Evening
_ Special event: May 20th 2017, Nuit Des Musées Special Party
_ Paradigm Shift-Forum: May 23-25 2017 (Curated by Carmen Salas)
—> with: Nicolas Nova, Régine Debatty, Alexander Scholz, Sabine Himmelsbach, Nora O Murchú, Monica Bello, Martin Howse, Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman), Joana Moll, Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves, Edwina Portocarrero, Beatrice Pembroke, Engin Ayaz, Vasilis Charalampidis, Bert Holvast, Olof Van Winden et Lucía García Rodríguez, Leigh Alexander, Chris Baraniuk, Ghislaine Boddington, Carmen Salas and LaTurbo Avedon.
_ http://2017.mappingfestival.com
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