Tactics&Practice #14: Scale + Workshop 1/4

The 14th edition of Tactics&Practice, Aksioma’s discursive programme, produced in partnership with: Kino Šiška Center for Urban Culture, UL ALUO, Lokalpatriot and as a part of konSekvence programme, is focusing on contemporary investigative art, society and new technologies, brings together artists, theorists and researchers in an ongoing exploration of the concept of scale, from nano to global and beyond.

What do nano materials and aerial technologies, sound waves and global-scale computation, optical engineering and energy networks, microchips and global warming, the H₂O molecule and AI training datasets, your domestic routines and global policies have in common? They either exist or operate beyond the visible spectrum, beyond our ability to see them and develop a conversational membrane with them. In order to cope with these phenomena, we need to develop the ability to think larger or smaller than the human scale.

With: Anna Engelhardt, Anthony Downey, Bani Brusadin, Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Laura Tripaldi, Liam Young, Mark Cinkevich, Mojca Kumerdej, Nadim Choufi, Nestor Siré, Nicole L’Huillier, Solveig Qu Suess, Steffen Köhn, Špela Petrič, Yu Hsin Su

This edition will spread from March to June, starting with a kickoff conference at Kino Šiška and followed by four programme nodes made of exhibitions, artist talks and workshops all happening in Ljubljana. UL ALUO particularly recommends all four workshops in the programme*, as they will take place at the UL ALUO (Video, Animation and New Media Department, Tobačna 5) and are primarily aimed at art and design students.

The complete programme of the Tactics&Practice #14: Scale: https://www.aksioma.org/scale/

 

Shifting Scales
Visions, Politics and Infrastructural Violence in a More-Than-Human Planet
OPENING CONFERENCE

6 March 2023, 3:30 PM–9:35 PM
Kino Šiška, Ljubljana + online streaming

Free admission. Registration required for IRL participation in Ljubljana: https://pretix.eu/aksioma/scale/

The conference will be held in English and streamed on YouTube and Facebook Live.

 

*WORKSHOP 1/4

Anna Engelhardt, Mark Cinkevich
Investigation as a Medium: Open-Source Intelligence for Artists

8 March 2022, 2–5 PM
The Academy of Fine Arts and Design, UL, Video, Animation and New Media, Tobačna 5, Ljubljana

Free of charge. Registration required: https://pretix.eu/aksioma/scale/

What to bring: a laptop installed with Google Earth Pro
Duration: 2.5 hours including a 30-minute break

Language: English
Max. number of participants: 25

Part of Tactics&Practice #14: Scale

Since contemporary methods of control and violence are concealed, embedded in vast infrastructural and logistical networks, they can only be confronted with new practices and tools. Elaborating on the making of their essay film Onset, Anna Engelhardt and Mark Cinkevich will break down open-source intelligence (OSINT) tools and ways those techniques could inform an artistic practice. They will also discuss the convergence of fact and fiction, where they will explain how to search for classified information and turn it into something more than just discrete numbers of transmitted megawatts.

In their practice, Cinkevich and Engelhardt fuse OSINT tools with demonology to scrutinise Russian military strategy. They determine the sequence of events in a manner similar to the reconstruction of a transnational crime scene and thereby inform the parafiction narrative in their work. While primary reliance on open-source data allows them to look at such highly measured and controlled segments as energy and military infrastructures, demonology opens paths for engagements across cases and disciplines, key for an artistic practice.

After the conceptual overview, the audience will be invited to apply the new investigative method in practice. Attendants will be provided with the GPS coordinates of Russian military infrastructures and will conduct their own investigation in a guided manner.

Anna Engelhardt is the alias of a media artist, researcher and writer. Her practice examines post-Soviet cyberspace through a decolonial lens, with an overarching aim of dismantling Russian imperialism. These investigations take on multiple forms of media, including video, software and hardware interfaces. Engelhardt also pursues lecturing and publishing to situate digital conflicts within a broader colonial matrix. Her works and activities have been featured at the transmediale festival, Venice Architecture Biennial, Ars Electronica and the Kyiv Biennial, as well as in Digital War and The Funambulist.

Mark Cinkevich (1994, Lahoysk) is a Belarus-born interdisciplinary researcher and artist based in Warsaw. Having received his master’s degree in Cultural Studies from the University of Helsinki, he now pursues a PhD at the Department of Anthropology, University of Warsaw. In his practice, he is interested in critical, speculative and experimental aspects of art that operate at the intersection of fact and fiction. His work focuses on the post-Soviet infrastructural and social landscape, through which he explores in particular the concepts of nuclear colonialism, infrastructural colonialism, extractivism and monstrosity.

Related event:

Anna Engelhardt, Mark Cinkevich: Onset, exhibition
Aksioma | Project Space, 7-24 March 2023
Opening: Wed, 7 March 2023 at 7 PM
More: https://aksioma.org/onset

 

 

---

Produced and organised by: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
For the series: Tactics&Practice
In partnership with: Kino Šiška Center for Urban Culture, UL ALUO, Lokalpatriot
Part of konSekvence programme by konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art.
The project konS:: Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art was chosen on the public call for the selection of the operations “Network of Investigative Art and Culture Centres”. The investment is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union.