2015

Speaker/Performer: Helena Velena

Title: Deconstructing Conflicts

Photo: Maria Silvano

From #DNL2 CYBORG, Berlin, May 29–30, 2015

Performance from the panel Deconstructing Conflicts with Helena Velena (trans/gender hacktivist, artist and technologist, IT), Janez Janša (artist and curator, SI), Agnese Trocchi (artist and hacktivist, IT), moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli.

This panel reflects on the art of dismantling power structures by creating unexpected interventions, often based on the deconstruction of language and technology, and by using disguise, playfulness and provocation as tactics. What is ambiguous can express hidden conflicts in politics and society, making identity the main vehicle of new imaginations, bringing contradictions into the evidence of everyday life. This perspective, which was core of Antonio Caronia’s analysis on “cyborgs”, “aliens” and “dispossessed” (inspired by the 1974 utopian science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia) will be discussed by Helena Velena, Janez Janša and Agnese Trocchi trough their artistic & hacktivist practice, based respectively on the relations between the conscious use of technology and sexuality, the questions of identity and political in art, and the DIY creation of platforms for activists and hackers since the time of the BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems) in the Italian hacker and cyberpunk movement.