On Tuesday 14 July Thiago Hersan concludes his residency at Impakt with an event revolving around two central threads in his work: communications & communities.

From analogue to digital, from custom made to mass produced: our communication interfaces have never been entirely neutral or free of biases toward particular uses. They always reflect the agendas and ideologies of the groups who control and design them.

How can we maintain agency over our communication now that most of it happens over digital tools and our reliance on these technologies increases?

Thiago Hersan (BR-US) uses technological, social and conceptual tools to strengthen and legitimise new forms of occupation and appropriation of virtual spaces of communication.

He is currently working on a radio that creates and transmits its own songs of protest based on traditional Brazilian music and texts from social networking sites. These songs will follow the structure of traditional songs, but their lyrics are inspired by words and phrases that were used during the 2013 manifestations in Brazil. These manifestations started in São Paulo in response to public transportation fare increases, but soon spread to many other cities in the country as issues of public transit transformed into broader issues of how public money was being spent on mega events like the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

You can read more about Thiago Hersan’s residency here.

Joining Thiago on stage this night are Canadian researcher/artist/teacher Marc Tuters, who works with forms of spatial practice engaged with technology, and Dutch writer and theorist Eric Kluitenberg, who will introduce the Tactical Media Files platform, which he co-founded.

By means of a personal contribution by Eric Kluitenberg and Marc Tuters, who will respond to Thiago Hersan’s work in regards to their own practice, we’ll end in an open conversation to delve deeper into the main issues raised in Thiago’s work, such as questions of governance, experiment, technology and the value of play in techno-activism.