Exhibition tour as part of the European collaboration project State Machines
Furtherfield Gallery, London
20 May – 25 June 2017
Aksioma, Ljubljana
11 January – 9 February 2018
Gallery Filodrammatica, Drugo More, Rijeka
15 February – 9 March 2018
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Featuring Jaya Klara Brekke, Pete Gomes, HandFastr, Rhea Myers, Primavera De Filippi of O’Khaos, Terra0, Lina Theodorou and xfx (aka Ami Clarke).
A mysterious and controversial technology is among us. The Blockchain underpins digital currencies and makes possible dramatic new conceptions of global governance and economy, that could permanently enrich or demote the role of humans – depending on who you talk to.
A self-owning forest with ideas of expansion, a self-replicating android flower, a tale of lost innocence, a DIY money making rig, a Hippocratic Oath for software developers, a five minute marriage contract; this exhibition presented by Furtherfield shows us life with blockchain technologies – through artworks by Jaya Klara Brekke, Pete Gomes, Rhea Myers, Primavera De Filippi of O’Khaos, Terra0, Lina Theodorou and xfx (aka Ami Clarke).
Imagine a world in which responsibility for many aspects of life (reproduction, decision-making, organisation, nurture, stewardship) are mechanised and automated. Transferred, once and for all, from natural and social systems into a secure, networked, digital ledger of transactions and computer-executed contracts.
The artworks in this exhibition envision future world-making by machines, markets and natural processes, free from interference by states and other human institutions.
The exhibition is part of a large scale programme of publications, workshops and talks that brings together leading international artists and writers from across the globe. Launching at Furtherfield Gallery in London’s Finsbury Park 19 May – 25 June 2017, the exhibition will then tour to Aksioma (Ljubljana, Slovenia) in October 2017, as part of State Machines: Art, Work, and Identity in an Age of Planetary-Scale Computation, a collaboration between Furtherfield, Aksioma, Drugo more (HR), Institute of Network Cultures (NL) and NeMe (CY).
‘Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain’ produced in collaboration with the experimental publishing group Torque and Liverpool University Press will be launched on 23 June 2017. Contributors include Helen Kaplinsky, Rhea Myers, Hito Steyerl, Ben Vickers and Cecilia Wee. Chris Speed and the team from the Design Informatics Department at Edinburgh University will be embedding a new proto-blockchain experiment throughout print and digital versions, enabling readers to ‘like’ different parts of the book, sub-linked to a financial trading algorithm.
Manpowertop – free workshop by Network Diagnostics
Saturday 10 June, 2-5pm, Furtherfield Commons
Join Network Diagnostics (Dave Young and Niall Docherty) to discover how the promotional media of Silicon Valley companies envision the role of technology in society. In partnership with Antiuniversity
Booking is essential for this FREE event
GeoCoin – Bodystorming Blockchain in the City
Friday 23 June 10am – 5pm, Furtherfield Commons
A day of design-based research using the GeoCoin platform to explore novel ways of reconsidering and reinventing currency through location-specific value transactions. How can money be reprogrammed to interact with or react to everyday practices of value exchange in and around the city? Explore these and more questions with the Design Informatics team from the University of Edinburgh.
Booking is essential for this FREE event
This workshop is part of the ESRC funded research project After Money lead by Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.
Book launch – Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain
Friday 23 June, 6-8pm, Furtherfield Gallery
‘Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain’ produced in collaboration with the experimental publishing group Torque and Liverpool University Press
Wedding Event Day – Blockchain special
Saturday 24 June 11am – 5pm, Furtherfield Gallery
Ever wanted to join your partner in bitcoin matrimony? Or wanted to join another partnership for a short time only? You’ve come to the right place. For this day only, you can record your short-term bitcoin union via Handfastr on the blockchain in an immutable and ever growing ledger of bitcoin marriages at Furtherfield Gallery. A project developed by the Design Informatics team at Edinburgh University in collaboration with James Stewart, Max Dovey & Corina Angheloiu.
This project is part of the ESRC funded research project After Money lead by Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.
Book Here
Furtherfield Gallery
McKenzie Pavilion
Finsbury Park, London, N4 2NQ
Visiting Information
Furtherfield Gallery is supported by Haringey Council and Arts Council England
This project has been funded with the support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Part of the NEW WORLD ORDER exhibition at Furtherfield Gallery
BOOKING ESSENTIAL – Limited places available for this FREE workshop
A day of design-based research using the GeoCoin platform to explore novel ways of reconsidering and reinventing currency through location-specific value transactions. How can money be reprogrammed to interact with or react to everyday practices of value exchange in and around the city? Explore these and more questions with the Design Informatics team from the University of Edinburgh.
This workshop is part of the ESRC funded research project After Money lead by Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.
Saturday 24 June, 11-1pm and 2-4pm, Furtherfield Gallery
Ever wanted to join your partner in bitcoin matrimony? Or wanted to join another partnership for a short time only? You’ve come to the right place. For this day only, you can record your short-term bitcoin union via Handfastr on the blockchain in an immutable and ever growing ledger of bitcoin marriages at the Furtherfield Gallery.
This project is part of the ESRC funded research project After Money lead by Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.
Part of the NEW WORLD ORDER exhibition at Furtherfield Gallery
BOOKING ESSENTIAL – Limited places available for this FREE workshop
In partnership with Antiuniversity Now 2017
As demonstrated by the works in the NEW WORLD ORDER exhibition at Furtherfield Gallery, blockchain technologies and cultures display a remarkable capacity to embody the interests of diametrically opposed political ideologies. Manpowertop looks more widely at the subject of Silicon Valley companies and how their promotional media envisions “the future” of their technology’s role in society.
The recent publication of Mark Zuckerberg’s open letter, titled Building Global Community, has drawn debates about the accelerationist politics of Silicon Valley into the public sphere once again. The seductive message of the manifesto itself is unsurprising, and is typical of the glossy promotional media released by other tech companies: We are told that new technologies can facilitate greater social inclusion, foster democratic grassroots political movements, and allow us to be more productive in our labour and leisure. While such media are often renderings of some notional “future” existence, what might they reveal about the ways we delimit our understanding of the present? Additionally, what would have to happen between “now” and “then” for these visions to be fully realised?
Manpowertop is a workshop that takes these questions as a starting point, challenging participants to diagnose the power relations in these branded visions of the future. Participants will adopt “troubleshooting” as a critical framework for enquiry, and produce diagrammatic readings of these speculative technologies, the networks they interlink with, and their associated politics of usership. In doing so, we will collectively identify what is left out of these visions, and explore how these omissions might offer an insight into the power relations that exist between users and technological platforms in the present.
Network Diagnostics is the collaborative research practice of Niall Docherty and Dave Young, focused on using technical models of “troubleshooting” as a mode of critically engaging with digital culture.
Niall Docherty is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Critical Theory at Nottingham University. His project attempts to combine the empirical foundations of software studies and Foucauldian governmentality to analyse Facebook within the neoliberal context of its inception and current use. He has completed two degrees at Goldsmiths – a BA in Politics in 2014, and an MA in Cultural Studies the following year. Niall was born and currently lives in Sheffield, ‘the greenest city in Europe’ according to some sources.
Dave Young is also a PhD candidate at the Centre for Critical Theory at Nottingham University, and is currently researching bureaucratic media and systems of command and control in the US military since the Second World War. His practice takes the form of workshops, talks, texts, and website development, and he has presented work for organisations such as the Disruption Network Lab, Transmediale, Servus, and Furtherfield. An archive of past/ongoing work can be found at dvyng.com.
BOOKING ESSENTIAL – Limited places available for this FREE workshop
BOOK HERE
Furtherfield Commons
Finsbury Park, London, N4 2NQ
Visiting Information
Furtherfield Gallery is supported by Haringey Council and Arts Council England
Furtherfield content is published
