Search Routines: Stories of Databases
Call: Workshop with WaiWai & Heath Bunting (irational.org)
Along the exhibition and symposium Search Routines at Kunstraum D21, Leipzig/Germany come two workshops with irationalists WaiWai and Heath Bunting. Both workshops are about hacking – not so much in a technological sense, but as a social matter.
Bunting: Status Project
Within this workshop we’ll construct an identity or an anonymous corporation using and further developing Heath Buntings Status database and other material. http://status.irational.org/ The workshop is open– with the participants’ input – to also practically talk about how to build and use databases and/or how to visualize data from databases. This is in no way a technical workshop, although it may involve some kinds of technology. It is about ideas, sharing of knowledge and questioning the invisible of the database. »42 years old from birht / 63 kilos in weight / a Bank of England creditor / able to accept terms and conditions / able to access the internet / able to bath myself« (Excerpt from Artist's self portrait by Heath Bunting) – 10 participants
WaiWai: Outside the Default
This workshop will move the opposite way and will do further research into questions of disappearing from the radar of databases. Given that more and more details of us individuals get collected in several databases (surveillance, corporate) it would be interesting to learn and try how to escape them. This might lead finally into the woods, but maybe an escape is also possible within the city or even while being online. The main focus of the workshop would be understanding how dependency was developed by a fabricated system to its users, and how we can free ourselves from the database through extracting resources outside of the default routing. e.g. sourcing fire, water, food, network outside of the system. – 10 participants
Call for participation: We are looking for up to ten participants per workshop in Leipzig on October 23–25 in Leipzig. The workshop is followed by a symposium on October 26th 2014. See additional announcement.
There is no workshop fee. We try to provide a travel grant of 50,00 Euro for up to seven participants, depending on distance to Leipzig. On request we can try to place free private accommodation. Please indicate, if you need that. Workshop language is English.
Application Deadline: September 27 or earlier. First come, first serve. To apply, please send three to five sentences to anmeldung@d21-leipzig.de why you would like to be involved. We’ll inform you latest September 30.
Bios
Heath Bunting works with technological, cultural, and social systems. He has explored both the dirty and progressive dimensions of the Internet, hacked urban spaces through physical activities like Sculpture Climbing or borderXcrossing.
In recent years he has been dedicated to an extensive researched aimed at constructing fully valid identities from scratch based on a deep knowledge of how such an identity is officially constructed. Heath Bunting's Status Project surveys these class systems of human being management and produces maps of influence and personal portraits for both comprehension and mobility. The Status Project is also producing new natural person identities. http://www.irational.org/heath/
WaiWai is a formally trained artist, self-taught programmer and a witch in training. Her latest project includes constructing a studio in the forest where she inhabits and experiments with various practice, such as computing, herbal medicine and alchemy. She also has ran various alternative computing workshops in Europe. She also hosts and invents regular rituals and ceremonies combining primitive and modern technology. http://www.irational.org/waiwai/
Curated by Lena Brüggemann, Hannah Sieben, Francis Hunger
Funded by Kulturamt der Stadt Leipzig, der Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen and Stiftung Kulturwerk der VG Bild-Kunst.
A cooperation of Kunstraum D21 und SubLab e.V., Leipzig
http://www.d21-leipzig.de/ und http://www.sublab.org/
