After the emergence of Web 2.0, analysing the topology and the effects of artistic and hacktivist practices both offline and online implies a reflection on power structures, networking methodologies as well as on the tension between increasing connectivity and virtualisation of social relationships. The progressive involvement of users in the production process generates new possibilities of peer interaction, but also of hierarchical control and intimate atomisation. It becomes necessary to rethink the meaning of critical strategies in contexts of networking, not only exposing the possible scenarios of networked dystopias, but also proposing a new path for political actions based on the recognition of distributed subjectivities.

Part 1: Trapped and Tracked

A presentation of artistic projects between public exposure and social atomisation after Web 2.0.

With: Aymeric Mansoux (fr/nl) – Naked on Pluto; Johannes P Osterhoff (de) – One-Year Google Performance

Johannes P Osterhoff (Berlin) – One-Year Google Performance

From 1 January until 31 December 2011, Johannes P Osterhoff published all his search queries with the search engine Google in a One-year Performance piece called “Google”. A modified dictionary plug-in tracked most of his queries and the public list of his search results immediately was indexed by Google crawlers and made publicly available for search by everybody. Johannes P Osterhoff spammed Google for one year, gave up his privacy and tried to sell his Google queries for 99 cents each. All this ended up in the collaboration "Google – One Week Piece", that will be released by the artist for transmediale.