Workshop

UROBOROS (*2018, international team of artists)

Michal Kučerák

WORKSHOP, 120 min., 12 places (Book a place by emailing jana.bernartova@artweekliberec.cz)
Slévárna Linserka, Resslova 271/6, Liberec
11 September at 11:00
Admission free of charge.

Lákání softwarové magie [Attracting Software Magic]

Bitcoin, NFT, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, smart contracts – the new technological trend disrupts the stale framework and the way things work. It confronts us with new questions and forces us to reformulate solutions to old problems. The blockchain is not a miraculous drug to treat all the world’s ills; first of all, it is a specific type of distributed database solution, and secondly a narrative system, which can open our minds up to the future. Will it be purely technological? What role will be played by man and his imagination? How will we manage our digital identities? How will we control collaboration between people and machines. And how are artists and designers already responding to this situation now? How can we as users speculate about this technology? In the workshop we will be focusing not on the technological, but on the narrative aspects of the blockchain. We will be pondering the consequences of technological determinism, and through design fiction will be attempting to critically consider possible scenarios for a remote, technologically saturated future.

UROBOROS, a festival and all-year-round platform focused on critically and socially engaged designer and art work aims to explore how art and design can contribute to positive social change. The group’s name is inspired by the symbol of Ouroboros – the mythical snake that eats its own tail, thereby growing out of itself in an endless cycle of re-creation. The image of Ouroboros embodies global social, political and environmental frustration. The workshop will be led by the group’s founding member Michal Kučerák, a curator and lecturer who works for the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art and TBA21–Academy; a PhD student at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology. Kučerák is also the man behind the #DATAMAZE project, an augmented exhibition concept, which was launched in 2018 with the aim of improving digital and data literacy through contemporary art projects in a gallery environment. In his work he focuses on mediating art and critical artistic and design practice as a medium for educational projects.