Utopian Union Berlin Summit 2016

The Utopian Union will be hosting the BERLIN SUMMIT at ACUD from June 10th-12th. As part of the workshop program The Utopian Union will give the public access to attend select workshops, talks, screenings and excursions. We will have inputs by Paul Feigelfeld, Boaz Levin, Kiron University, Alexander Koch (KOW), Peng Collective and many more.
 
The Berlin Summit brings together a wide range of people and disciplines; from art, design, science, theory, economics and activism to other fields. The focus of the summit will be to challenge anti-democratic structures in Techno-Europe, as materialized in mass surveillance architectures, opaque power structures and the maintenance of Fortress Europe at all costs. How can we as citizens of what we hope to be a democracy react towards this?
 
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FRIDAY 10.6 / 12H - 16H30
 
12:00 - Paul Feigelfeld - Scytale, Skype, Skynet
The workshop examines the defining role of cryptology, control, and centralisation in its technological development. From the earliest known coded communications to the massive intelligence campaigns today, what has to be analysed are the infrastructures, power mechanisms, epistemological and formal foundations of our present reality. What becomes clear is contrary to what many believe: Communication and media have never been more material and less transparent than today. From rare earth minerals and its new technocolonised geopolitics, to the climatic effects and territorial paradoxes of data centers or the metaphor of cloud computing and the advent of true ubiquity and technorganisms, both theory and art have to develop new approaches that the talk wants to give first impacts for.
 
13:30 - CryptoParty
CryptoParty is a grassroots global endeavour that aims to provide the general public with the knowledge and means of digital self-protection. This includes the encryption of communication, the prevention of tracking and general safety for computers and smartphones. CryptoParties are open for everyone, especially those without prior knowledge.
Privacy is the space where ideas develop and to which you can retreat whenever you want. It’s not just physical, it’s also digital. Since corporations and governments do not respect it, we take matters into our own hands.
Bring your laptop/smartphone.
If you want to install Linux, it's wise to do a backup first.
 
SATURDAY 11.6 / 11H - 19H
 
11H-12H Katharina Dermühl: From Refugees to Students -
On overcoming the obstacles refugees face in access to higher education. Kiron aims provide access to higher education with a classroom 2.0 solution and partner universities. Kiron is not a university, but an education provider and bridge builder between existing education and job market systems: Dermühl explains how the organisation was built involving students, volunteers and employees.
 
12H-13H Alexander Koch: New Patrons
Since 1992 New Patrons have developed a previously nonexistent approach to artistic production by creating a framework that provides citizens with the means and with the opportunity to commission artworks in response to their issues, conflicts, or visions. The triangular relationship between citizens, mediators and artists shapes a mode of collaboration in which all parties involved share responsibility, turning the usual hierarchies of cultural production upside down.
 
13H-14H Peng Collective: Call a Spy
“If you look at the economics of corporations, their state of mind is: ‘let’s look at every possible gray area of laws and use them.’ And NGOs just don’t do that.” During this talk, Peng Collective will present some of their more recent projects, such as Intelexit: Call a Spy. Intelexit is the ‘world’s first exit programme for the intelligence community’. As part of this campaign, billboards in front of secret service hq’s in the USA, Germany and UK encouraged their employees to resign, leaflets advertising encrypted channels of communication and advice for potential dropouts were released by a drone over a German NSA location.
 
14H-15H Hito Steyerl & Inke Arns in Conversation
A conversation between curator Inke Arns and artist Hito Steyerl about surveillance, whistleblowing, electronic civil disobedience and how these relate to art. Inke Arns will introduce some of the pieces in her most recent show, "Whistleblowers & Vigilantes - Figures of Digital Resistance", currently on view at HMKV in Dortmund, and discuss these works and themes with Hito Steyerl. The conversation is followed by a Q&A + discussion with the audience.
 
(Break)
 
16H-17H Nick Houde: The Utopia between The Islands
Hiding in the particular are many images of Utopia - playing out so vividly in our imaginations, they rarely become a reality. Arguably this has less to do with the actual realizibility of these images, and more the product of an unwillingness to look past the tyrannical foreclosure of what has been or "the given." Whereas so many desert islands fail to give traction or vision, tied up in their impossible particularities, our own navigations toward finding them could, in fact, be what we were looking to guide us all along This talk will focus on navigating these archipelogic forms.
 
17H-18H Patricia Reed - Complexity, Commensurability, Anticipation
How can an emancipatory political form, fit for our age of planetary complexity, be conceived? “Complexity” has often become a stand-in term to shut down debate and denote communicative ambiguity. Such a position stultifies possibility and often fosters a resignation to immediacy and presentness, leaving us ill-equipped to face the sets of pluri-disciplinary, abstract and interwoven demands urgently pressing upon us. With a non-absolutist ambition to leverage our complex condition otherwise, this talk will focus on the interplay between reality and ideality as a humble, conceptual necessity to even begin to approach to the scope of the propositions at hand.
 
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UTOPIAN UNION BERLIN SUMMIT 2016
Friday, 10.06 - Saturday, 11.06, ACUD studio
Doors: 12H
Admission: FREE
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