The Art of Hacking Exhibition

At The Netherlands Media Art Institut. With works by: Heath Bunting, Harmen de Hoop, moddr_, Cornelia Sollfrank, The Yes Men, ÜBERMORGEN.COM and Nancy Mauro-Flude/Mez Breeze/Sara Platon.
September 10th – 12th of November 2011

‘The art of Hacking’ focuses on the artistic side of hacking. The artists in this exhibition highlight the imperfections of our surroundings and daily lives. The projects subvert, improve on or circumnavigate ‘official’ systems and practices and offer alternatives. Superficially, hacking is often associated with spreading online viruses and other digital attacks. Officially these criminal activities are not really known as hacking, but as ‘cracking’. The real practice of hacking is done based on far more positive and artistic motives. It’s a state of mind and there are elaborate ethical codes within the hacker community.

In short creative hacking combines artists’ technical skills with the optimism to solve problems and the urge to overcome artistic limitations. The basis for these works lies in a technical, online methodology that spreads into the physical world through the tangibility of the artworks.

About the works:
The British artist Heath Bunting gives insight into the networks at play that constitute an identity, like banks, health care and education. By using these different networks Bunting creates new synthetic identities. In his ‘Identity Bureau’ one can purchase official and legal UK identities.
This project has been made possible in collaboration with SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain. http://irational.org/

The American creative activism duo, a pair of notorious troublemakers The Yes Men (Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) targets leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else in order to publicly humiliate them, a practice that they call ‘identity correction’. Next to displaying a few projects by The Yes Men, NIMk collaborates on a ‘Yes Lab’ together with the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, the Dutch Theatre Festival, SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain, and Partizan Publik. http://theyesmen.org/

The office installation “DOUBLETHINK Knowledge Bureau” reflects and demonstrates both the Austrian art collective UBERMORGEN.COM’s artistic actionism as well as the necessary tools and rules for any clandestine media hacking operation today. http://www.ubermorgen.com

The Rotterdam based lab moddr_ has hacked digital ‘footprints’ with projects like ‘Web 2.0 Suicide Machine’ and continues to do so more recently with the ‘Bin Lover’ project; a new piece by moddr_ residence artist Philipp W. Teister. ‘Bin Lover’ gives trashed files a new lease of life. The piece cleverly uses the apparent security of desktops, and will be shown alongside a number of related projects. http://moddr.net

The German artist Cornelia Sollfrank presents three works in which art hacking strategies are being used to deconstruct myths about genius, originality and authorship. http://www.artwarez.org

And by using the work by the Dutch artist Harmen de Hoop, you yourself can get started as an activist by copying and spreading pamphlets containing the text ABOLI$H CAPITALI$M NOW! in the public domain. http://www.harmendehoop.com

Error_in_Time(v.t_3)_ sister0, Ko66 and Netwurker_Mez give us insight into geek space from the perspective of a female hacker. This isn’t a work about identity – its about identity theft.
Nancy Mauro-Flude: Artistic and Conceptual Director, in collaboration, like any good homebrewed craft, with Australian artist Mez Breeze explores environments that involve online socializations or encounters. http://unhub.com/netwurker Swedish/Dutch Sara Platon founder of www.genderchangeracademy.com deals with computers the hard way, demystify its senses, follows the busroute to the CPU and touches its innerparts. Nancy Mauro-Flude exiled co-founder of Moddr_& a Genderchanger Academy convert, is based in Tasmania and continues her performance-based collaborations & interrogations of the possibilities and constrictions of media technologies. http://sister0.tv

With:
• An artist talk by Heath Bunting, Harmen de Hoop, and moddr_ on Sunday the 11th of September at 15.00 hrs.
• A panel discussion on the subject of hacking moderated by Jaromil and Cecile Landman with Rop Gonggrijp, Karin Spaink, Patrice Riemens and Heath Bunting taking place in October.
• moddr_ presents several workshops within the framework of ‘The Art of Hacking’.