CODE NL-D: Symposium I

Event

Discussion

CODE NL-D: Symposium I

Reclaiming Digital Agency

26 June 2021

14:00 — 17:30

Location: Online programme

€3

Connected Digital Europe (CODE) NL-D is a collaboration between IMPAKT Center for Media Culture in Utrecht, the Netherlands and School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe in Berlin, Germany. CODE NL-D seeks to bring together artists, concerned citizens, politicians, and policy makers to engage in dialogue and critical discussion in the realm of digital agency. Our desired goal is to influence public policy and define ways in which we can improve laws and legislation that will protect us as digital citizens and consumers.

The first symposium centers around the questions ‘What kind of change do we want?’ and ‘How can we contribute to this change?’ We will tackle each topic separately through two panel discussions as we confront issues relating to current and new technologies and their societal impact. With a focus on the legislative landscape in Germany and the Netherlands, we want to understand the potential of cross-disciplinary collaborations and artistic intervention to catalyze system change.

Do you like to think with us about how to reclaim digital agency?

Read more about CODE NL-D here.

GET YOUR TICKET HERE

PROGRAMME CODE NL-D SYMPOSIUM 1, SATURDAY 26 JUNE 2021

14.00 – 14.05h Opening and introduction

14.05 – 15.00h PANEL 1: “What changes do we want?”

In this panel we will put forth several questions in order to dissect and discuss the current state of our digital agency. How do our invited speakers see the power imbalance between technology companies and us as users and consumers? Which technological developments should we be most concerned about? And what kinds of solutions are possible? What changes in legislation need to be made? How can politicians, NGO’s, activists and artists collaborate?

Participants: Evelyn Austin (Bits of Freedom), Leonieke Verhoog (Public Spaces) Queeny Rajkowski (Digital Affairs Committee Dutch Parliament and member of parliament for the liberal VVD party).

15.00 – 15.15h BREAK

15.15 – 16.00h SHORT KEYNOTE

Jillian York is an author and the director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation

16.00 – 16.15h BREAK

16.15 – 17.15h PANEL 2: “How can artists inspire these changes?”

In order to create the changes that are needed to improve our digital agency we need to raise awareness on the issues we are most concerned about. How can we inform the general public and inspire them to learn about and seek alternative platforms and technologies? How can we contribute to the surrounding discussion of these issues in the media? How can artistic intervention lead to dialog with politicians and policy makers in support of legislation that brings the interests of citizens and users to the fore?

Participants: Marek Tuszynski (Creative Director and co-founder of Tactical Tech), Sarah Grant (Founder of the interactive media studio Cosmic.Berlin) and others.

Evelyn Austin Leonieke Verhoog Jillian C. York Sarah Grant Marek Tuszynski

Evelyn Austin

― Speaker

Bits of Freedom is the Dutch civil rights organization that stands up for your rights and freedoms in the digital age. We believe that the internet can and should contribute to an open and free society. Two things are essential for this: freedom of communication and privacy. These rights can strengthen many of our civil and political liberties. Think, for example, of the right to equal treatment, the freedom of assembly, and the right to social and legal security. This is what Bits of Freedom is fighting for. We influence policy and inform people. When that is not enough, we hold governments and the business community to account. By campaigning or by going to court. We are active in the Netherlands and Europe and work closely together. Evelyn Austin is the director of Bits of Freedom, the civil rights organization that champions your right to privacy and freedom of communication in the digital domain. She is also a member of the Digital Culture advisory committee of the Creative Industries Fund NL and a member of the Reset Network Investment Council. Together with Lilian Stolk, Evelyn founded The Hmm, a platform for internet culture.

Leonieke Verhoog

― Speaker

Leonieke has worked for VPRO as digital storyteller & concept developer; curator for the VPRO Medialab; maker of the Futurotheek AR installation; advisor Digital Culture at the Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, founder of FigureRunning and program maker at Virtueel Platform. Working as a program manager at PublicSpaces, she coordinates a coalition of over 30 public organizations in public media, cultural heritage, festivals, museums and education, together advocating a new internet that strengthens the public domain. Raising awareness of public values in the design and fabric of the internet by means of campaigning, publishing, public affairs and event organising; supporting the public organisations to transition to an op software stack and forging new (inter)national alliances to change the web together.

Jillian C. York

― Speaker

Jillian C. York is a writer and activist whose work examines the impact of technology on our societal and cultural values. Based in Berlin, she is the Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a fellow at the Center for Internet & Human Rights at the European University Viadrina, and a visiting professor at the College of Europe Natolin. She is the author if Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism.

Sarah Grant

― Speaker

Sarah Grant is the Visiting Professor of New Media at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, member of the Weise7 studio in Berlin, and founder of the interactive media studio Cosmic.Berlin. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Fine Art from UC Davis and a Masters in Media Arts from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. Her teaching and arts practice engages with the electromagnetic spectrum and computer networks as artistic material, social habitat, and political landscape. Since 2015, she has organized the Radical Networks conference in New York and Berlin, a community event and arts festival for critical investigations and creative experiments in telecommunications. Radical Networks: Founded in 2015, Radical Networks is an annual conference that promotes artistic, grassroots activist, and experimental work in telecommunications, including the internet and world wide web. As a summit for investigators and instigators from all disciplines, the event facilitates the open exchange of ideas and collaborations, centering marginalized and underrepresented communities. Our mission is to have the public critically engage with the communications tools and networks we use and participate in every day, while gaining access to the knowledge needed to create tools and alternative infrastructures for community, experimentation, and dissent.

Marek Tuszynski

― Speaker

Marek Tuszynski, Creative Director and co-founder of Tactical Tech, produces creative and social interventions that span various media, from film and radio to television, books, exhibitions and, of course, the web. For the past 25 years, he has been working at the nexus of technology and politics, information and activism and the consequences of living in a quantified society. Marek’s most recent documentary series for Tactical Tech, Exposing the Invisible explores the digital tools and tactics that now enable evidence based activism to thrive on an unprecedented scale. Marek is also co-founder of the creative agency Tactical Studios, co-curator of the exhibition Nervous Systems: Quantified Life and the Social Question and The Glass Room and co-author of the book Visualizing Information for Advocacy and the latest Efficiency And Madness (Using Data and Technology to Solve Social, Environmental and Political Problems). He is currently working on a new radio show, a continuation of recently concluded Love & Chaos that was produced for Berlin’s Reboot FM (2012-2016) and a new film How Long Is Now.

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