Figure it Out: The Art of Living Through System Failures explores practices and phenomena in which systems and institutions fail specific communities and populations. Trapped within constraining situations, these people are starting to develop strategies of lying, cheating and stealing to counter their limitations and powerlessness vis-à-vis these systems.
From the position of the dispossessed and excluded, actions and practices that would be condemned in the mainstream,assume a different ethical and political connotation. In popular culture, these practices are frequently celebrated as a cunning and crafty reworking, often poetic or humorous. They have also expanded into the digital sphere as well, where they are getting recombined in interesting ways facing new kinds of algorithmic power structures. Figure it Out will explore the use of these practices as forms of resistance and tools for bypassing rules, as attempts to obtain access to key rights that remain foreclosed for certain groups. The aim is not to indiscriminately celebrate personal gain through illicit behavior, but to acknowledge the ingenuity that comes in finding a way out of an impossible situation. Possible examples come from a broad variety of practices – such as the avoidance of internet censorship by transformation of entire websites into image formats or the camouflage techniques of migrants adopting a ‘western’ look to fool surveillance algorithms.
Figure it Out involves partners from Croatia (Drugo More), France (Labomedia), Greece (VEKTOR), Malta (Unfinished Space) and Serbia (Kiosk) who will work with and engage different communities sharing their stories through art productions, exhibitions, a radio festival, bonfire events and web-zines.
I. VEKTOR INTERNATIONAL RADIO CONFERENCE, 13/15 NOV 2023, ATHENS
II. FIGURE IT SYMPOSIUM, 8/9 NOV 2024, RIJEKA
III. FIGURE IT OUT PODCASTS, WWW, 2023/2024
All archives are sources from our archive.org account.
International Radio Conference
Curated by Katerina Gkoutziouli, VEKTOR Athens
13-15 December 2023, 14.00 – 18.00 EET
Streaming via stegi.radio channel 2
Relay on p-node.org
From December 13 to December 15, the arts organisation VEKTOR Athens presents the International Radio Conference “Figure it Out: The Art of Living through System Failures”, curated by Katerina Gkoutziouli. For three consecutive days, from 14.00 to 18.00 EET, artists, curators, activists, academics, researchers and technologists discuss their counter strategies and practices in the technological realm. Through three key areas, namely: Figure it Out: Art & Tech, Figure it Out: Environment & Tech and Figure it Out: Community & Tech, the radio conference reflects a growing realization that the current tech landscape is rife with disparities and shortcomings that need to be addressed.
Participants:
!Mediengruppe Bitnik, Tatiana Bazzichelli, James Bridle, Heath Bunting, Yuchen Chen, Kris De Decker, Daphne Dragona, Mara Ferreri, Anna Watkins Fisher, Kyriaki Goni, Valeria Graziano, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Alex Lu, Jonas Lund, Niels Plotard, RYBN.org & La Labomedia
The Conference is coordinated by Katerina Gkoutziouli, Co-founder – Director, VEKTOR Athens, and Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou, Journalist.
with !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Artists (DE) – in conversation with Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou, Journalist, Conference co-host (GR).
with Kyriaki Goni, Artist (GR) – in conversation with Katerina Gkoutziouli, Co-founder – Director, VEKTOR Athens, Conference co-host (GR)
Niels Plotard, Artist (Malta)
with Anna Watkins Fisher, Writer, Associate Professor of American Culture, University of Michigan (U.S.A.) – Lecture
with Jonas Lund, Artist (SE) – in conversation with Katerina Gkoutziouli, Co-founder – Director, VEKTOR Athens, Conference co-host (GR)
with Heath Bunting, Artist (UK) – in conversation with Katerina Gkoutziouli, Co-founder – Director, VEKTOR Athens, Conference co-host (GR)
with Natasha Frilingou, Chemical Engineer, researcher, Energy Policy Unit, National Technical University of Athens (GR) – in conversation with Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou, Journalist, Conference co-host (GR)
with Daphne Dragona, Curator, writer (GR/DE) – Lecture
with Kris De Decker, Founder, Low-tech Magazine (ES/NL) – in conversation with Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou, Journalist, Conference co-host (GR)
with Mara Ferreri, Assistant Professor of Geography, Polytechnic University of Turin (IT) and Valeria Graziano, Visiting Lecturer, Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, Justus Liebig University Giessen (IT/DE)
with Lisette and Reni, RYBN.ORG & La Labomedia
with Tatiana Bazzichelli, Artistic Director, Founder, Disruption Network Lab (DE) – in conversation with Katerina Gkoutziouli, Co-founder – Director, VEKTOR Athens, Conference co-host (GR)
with Yuchen Chen and Alex Lu, Sociotechnical Scholars (U.S.A./CN) – in conversation with Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou, Journalist, Conference co-host (GR)
with Dr Marinos Koutsomichalis, Artist, Assistant Professor, Director, Media Arts and Design Research Lab, Cyprus University of Technology (CY/GR) – in conversation with Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou, Journalist, Conference co-host (GR)
with Amy, Whispering Voice, oooo.be & Claire, RYBN.ORG & La Labomedia
November 8 & 9, 2024
Filodrammatica, Rijeka, Croatia
The nineteenth edition of the "Mine, Yours, Ours" festival took place at Filodrammatica (Korzo 28/1, Rijeka, Croatia) from November 7 to 9, 2024, under the title FIGURE IT OUT.
Through a group exhibition (from November 7 to 28) and a two-day symposium (November 8 and 9), the program concluded a two years international project 'Figure it Out: The Art of Living Through System Failures.'
Coordinated by Drugo More in partnership with Labomedia (France), VEKTOR (Greece), Unfinished Art Space (Malta), and Kiosk (Serbia), the 'Figure it Out' project explored practices and phenomena in which systems and institutions fail specific communities and populations, wondering how people navigate and challenge institutionalized neglect and hostility.
The two-day symposium covered ethical research methodologies, vernacular practices that transgress rules and laws, and the role of storytelling in counteracting institutional limitations, to provide a space of encounter to explore creative and critical approaches to living through intersectional system failures.
More info about the program: https://drugo-more.hr/en/mine-yours-ours-2024/
THEORY AND POLITICS OF ILLEGALISM
In this introductory presentation titled 'Politics and Theories of Illegalisms', held in the framework of the 19th edition of "Mine, Yours, Ours" festival, Valeria Graziano explores the political significance of popular illegalism, tracing its roots and cultural variations across different contexts. Drawing on examples like the strategies in India’s jugaad culture, the anarchist tradition in Europe, and the Black Panthers’ theorization of class, she discusses how these practices emerged as responses to neoliberal and neocolonial pressures and have evolved as forms of political strategy.
Valeria Graziano is a cultural theorist and organizer based in Rijeka, Croatia, whose work is rooted in collective practice and shaped by Italian operaismo, institutional analysis, and materialist feminisms. Her research centers on strategies of work refusal, the commoning of social reproduction, and the politics of pleasure. She is one of the convenors of the Pirate Care Syllabus (https://pirate.care) and a coordinator of the working group “Analysis, Theory & Politics of Care” (COST Action CA21102). Valeria’s work has been published in a range of journals and books, including MIT Press; Theory & Event; ephemera. Cultural Studies; and Capitalism Nature Socialism. Her book Pirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity, co-authored with Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, is forthcoming from Pluto Press in 2025.
INTERCOMMUNALISM, THE INTERNAL COLONIZATION OF EUROPE & THE CRIMINAL CONSTRUCT
In 1970, the Black Panther Party developed the theory of intercommunalism, an early analysis of globalization which was an outgrowth of the organization’s understanding of colonization. Delio Vasquez’ talk 'Intercommunalism, the Internal Colonization of Europe, and the Criminal Construct' makes use of this theory as a starting point to analyze the internal colonization of Europe.
The argument is that it is only by identifying the historical relationship between Europe’s colonization of its own populations and its colonization of external populations that can we grasp well the power of modern criminalization for the suppression of poor people’s everyday efforts to sustain themselves.
Delio Vásquez is an educator and scholar of political theory, philosophy, Black studies, and social history. He is a professor at New York University where he studies the criminalization of the poor and their forms of resistance. He was born and raised in the Bronx, NY.
HOW TO DO THINGS WITH ATTENTION
How do we attend to subaltern techniques of ethical refusal such as jugaad (a word meaning ‘illegal work-around’ in Hindi/Punjabi), hacking and piracy without value extraction in and for participatory action research? What criteria can we use to help us decide what to make public and what to withhold when working with illegalized populations? Solidary research develops anti-colonial strategies and collective practices of attention, making the politics of perception more than a question of revolutionary party discipline. Knowing when, why, and who talks to the cops is important in moments of urban protest, and becomes irrelevant in societies of generalized facial recognition software.
This talk will present commoning modes of attention that can hone the intuition of the changing technological and political conditions of the hacker’s radical know-how of counter-surveillance and counter-insurgency (what Gloria Anzuldúa called the subaltern’s facultad or intuitive capacity for surviving the colonial contact zone). Therefore, we argue for attentional practices that can negotiate the lived complexities of everyday extraction, dispossession, social domination, resistance, hacking and refusal.
Amit Rai teaches and researches in the fields of subaltern DIY media ecologies, everyday hacking of social reproduction in subaltern communities, racial capitalist attention ecologies and their disruptions, the financialization of artistic and cultural value and its sabotage, race as a form of real abstraction. He is a lecturer in London and in the Netherlands. He was born in Bhopal, India and grew up in Boston, NYC, CA, DC, the UK, and Bombay.
The symposium was organized within the framework of the ‘Figure it Out: The Art of Living Through System Failures’ project.
The project ‘Figure it Out: The Art of Living Through System Failures’ is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
The project is co-funded by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.
Organized by: Drugo more, Rijeka | http://drugo-more.hr/
Drugo more is a beneficiary of the financial support of the Kultura nova Foundation. Drugo more is a beneficiary of the institutional support of the National Foundation for Civil Society Development for the stabilization and/or development of the association.
A collection of interviews on the strategies of individuals and groups in the face of the authority of the state and multinationals, based on bricolages, bypasses and diversions. Or the art of exploiting the flaws in systems.
Interview with several active members of Clip, a structure and network that uses a triangulation of associations to enable venues to buy themselves out, in autonomy, a scheme that favours usage ownership over private ownership. Interview with Sidonie H, Eric A. and M. B. Recorded in La Générale, during the festival Futur Parfait 4, May 14th, 2023.
Interview (in french) with the members of the Antidote real estate fund, on the structure of the endowment fund and its motivations. Videoconference recording on jitsi, La Garenne Colombes, 3 July 2024.
Interview (in german) with Bernhard Hummel, architect of the Mietshaüser Syndikat - in partnership with La Générale and with Marie Yan. Recorded at the Right to the City Forum, Berlin, June 7th, 2024.
Recording of a public lecture ( in English) by a member of the collective Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen, who initiated the Berlin referendum won on the 26th September 2021. Recorded in Paris, at MiG, la Générale - April 2nd, 2024.
Interview with Spideralex (in french), on Calafou: the cooperative structure, the gamble (won!) of buying a brownfield site, its emanation from the Cooperativa Catalan Integral, its principles and objectives of technological sovereignty and its organisation and operation. Recorded during the OAVL 2024, Orléans, July 2024.
Interview with Sophie Gosselin and David gé Bartoli (in french), on the Loire Parliament, and the legal identity of the river Loire. Recorded on jitsi, as part of the RYBN residency in La Générale, Paris, June 3rd, 2024.
Interview with Patrick Node (in french) from ∏-Node, on the structure of citizen multiplexes in Marseille and Mulhouse (MBC), and self-managed DAB+ radio broadcasting infrastructures. Recorded during the RYBN residency in La Générale, Paris, June 2024.
Interview with Manu (in french), about the Kittens in France and the FuturÉtic service. Recorded during the OAVL, Orléans, July 2024.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
