. The workshop was organized by the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at the University of Amsterdam. The eclectic program included keynotes, panels, film screenings, and various workshop activities.Eke’s contribution (first picture) centered on designing radical creative interventions to resist algorithmic technologies and their environmental impacts. He discussed several recent creative projects, such as the Half Earth Socialism Game and Solar Protocol, as examples of refusal and alternative technological principles. Additionally, the design of protests, like the ‘Disrupt now protest‘ against the Tesla factory in Germany, illustrated how these interventions can be enacted. These projects collectively demonstrate a range of design interventions that creatively ‘resist AI’ (MacQuillan).
Following his presentation, Eke participated in a panel titled ‘The Point Is to Change It,’ where he engaged in lively debates and discussions on protest, subversion, and refusal. Creative forms of resistance in relation to emerging technologies were especially taken up in the keynote of Layal Ftouni about affirming life in Palestine – researching sperm smuggle as creative act of resistance – or Nicolas Thoburn’s keynote on communist objects and anti-books (second picture). Also the session by Linfei Xu on the decentralized playful interventions of the work of Chinese art activist Nut Brother. Other inspiring examples included the Students4Gaza (third picture) initiative and the (then still to be launched) academiccomplicity.nl website, as well as PV Schmidt’s research on Shadow Libraries as a way to withstand censorship and take-down through planetary scale-computation, were concrete cases that can inspire further design practices.
All pictures are taken by Eke Rebergen during the ASCA Workshop
This promotion research focuses on various contemporary ecological, social, and ethical issues that are involved when using algorithmic technologies. Designers should take these issues into account while working on future developments. This research enables designers to critically deploy algorithmic technologies in various domains the upcoming years.
‘Disrupting our contemporary society can be a serious design goal.’
Eke Rebergen is a researcher within the Cultural and Creative Industries research group and a tutor at the Communication & Multimedia Design programme at Avans University of Applied Sciences in Den Bosch.
The research group Cultural and Creative Industries investigates the role of artists and designers as creative innovators and drivers of social and economic change. Affiliated researchers analyse the cultural and creative industries from a critical point of view and examine the conditions under which timely forms of aesthetic expression and social connectedness can actually take place within the precarious reality of this field. What economic models are required by artists and designers to create a meaningful practice within the aesthetic, social, and economic intentions of the cultural and creative industries? What skills sets are required for those artists and designers who don’t just want to follow movements, but actually shape novel social and economic models of the future?
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