27.03.2018 | Conférence DISNOVATION.ORG | Technocritique & hactktivisme

On the occasion of Transnumeriques#6, Transcultures inaugurates the series, Thinking Digital Cultures, in partnership with UCL Culture and Point Culture. Creators, curators, organizers, philosophers and thinkers are invited to share their critical points of views, approaches, and public discussions integrating art-mutations, technologies, media, and society.

Progress, innovation, disruption and endless growth are cornerstones of our contemporary economies, social systems, even personal faiths and belief. The very pervasiveness and prevalence of these values requires that we uncover, cre- ate and circulate counter-narratives and alternative accounts. How does the act of excavating the failures, aberrations and paradoxes of techno-science become a fruitful tactic to inform a better under- standing of our technological society ? What could be the performative powers of a popularization of divergent models and technocritical stances ? How could this contribute to complexify our views and inform our choices as a society in an era of rampant techno-solutionism facing paramount challenges like those of the Anthropocene ?

Working group based in Paris, initiated by Nicolas Maigret (Fr) and Maria Roszkowska (Pl/Fr). At the crossroads between contemporary art, research and hacking, the collective develops situations of disturbance, speculation, and debate, challenging the ideology of innovation and stimulating the emergence of alternative narratives. They recently edited The Pirate Book, an anthology on media piracy.

Nicolas Maigret (Fr) exposes the internal workings of media, through an exploration of their dysfunctions, limitations or failure thresholds, which he develops into immersive, ambiguous and critical artworks. He initiated DISNOVATION.ORG, a working group, which aims to disrupt, pervert, and complexify the accounts on technological innovation. He teaches at Parsons Paris and cofounded the Art of Failure collective in 2006. His work has been presented in numerous exhibitions and festivals.

Maria Roszkowska (Pl/Fr) is a Polish graphic designer based in Paris. She has been associate researcher at EnsadLab Paris. Between 2010 and 2014, she joined Intégral Ruedi Baur, a cultural graphic design studio in France. In 2013, she designed and coordinated, Don’t Brand My Public Space !, for Lars Müller Publishers. This was a 3 year research on the issue of cities applying branding strategies.