Get-together Fighting Back With Technology

A talk with artists, curators, hackers and activists

No one today can imagine a life without digital technologies and internet. But while most of us are simple users, artists, activists and hackers question our digital habits. We’ve invited a few of them to share their insights with us at a Multiplica 2021 round table.

During this discussion we will discover how digital technologies are used to support today’s most urgent activist causes and how contributions to Wikipedia could help make the world wide web an egalitarian space.

We will also talk about the Tor network, often misrepresented as part of the so-called Dark Net, and how it is more dedicated to the privacy and freedom of its users than the internet that we all know and use every day. This talk, hosted by Yves Conrardy, is definitely going to shatter some preconceived ideas!

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The participants

Joanie Lemercier (FR, artist, activist)

French artist and activist Joanie Lemercier uses his work to play with our visual perception: his projections of light disrupt space and affect our senses. Introduced to creating art on a computer at a very young age by his mother, he soon developed a taste for physical structures: geometry, patterns and minimalist forms. His work, which incorporates both physics and philosophy, plays with these concrete structures.

His first experiments with video projectors came to life in 2006. In 2008, he co-founded the visual label AntiVJ with Yannick Jacquet, Romain Tardy and Olivier Ratsi, creating installations for numerous festivals and designs architectural projections around the world. In 2013, Joanie Lemercier founded his own creative studio, currently based in Brussels.

After years spent exploring the infinite possibilities offered by new technologies, he now uses his artistic experience to take part in the environmental debate and to suggest new modes of action, as in La Forêt de Hambach et le Sublime Technologique, on display during Multiplica.

Juliette Bibasse (FR, head of Studio Joanie Lemercier, curator)

Juliette’s professional background in artistic direction has led her to acquire a taste for simple and stripped down aesthetics. Since 2009 she’s used her skills on the digital cultural scene, creating opportunities for, and connections between, artists, festivals and various players in the creative world.

As an independent producer for artists, she takes part in a wide range of projects: international digital arts festivals, installations, commissions for private events, etc. She has represented many international artists and assisted them in the dissemination of their existing work, projects or new installations. She currently manages the Joanie Lemercier Studio.

Based in Belgium since 2013, she is active within the digital arts scene of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. Since 2016, she has been working as an associate curator for various festivals and cultural institutions. Since 2019 she has been the international guest curator of the STRP festival in Eindhoven (NL). The same year, she co-founded SALOON Brussels, an international network for women in the arts. In 2020, she developed a new artistic light path for the city of Leuven (BE).

Sam Grüneisen (LU, digital native, hacker)

Sam is a member of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC)’s local branch, the Chaos Computer Club Lëtzebuerg (C3L). This association of hackers provides information about technical and societal issues, such as surveillance, privacy, freedom of information, hacktivism, data security, among other topics. C3L is the owner of the ChaosStuff Hackerspace, a place where members and like-minded hackers can gather and work on projects.

Sam is also a member of Frënn vun der Ënn, a non-profit organisation defending civil rights on the internet that provides high-bandwidth Tor nodes all over the world to protect online privacy, anonymity, freedom of speech and fight censorship.

Rosa Paardenkooper (they/them — NL, translator, curator, amateur coder)

Rosa Paardenkooper is the Regional Ambassador for Europe for Art+Feminism (2020−21). They are the co-founder of School in Common, a self-organised school for learning, studying and being in common. They are currently working on the transdisciplinary study programme Mourning School with curator Lucie Gottlieb. In their practice they explore collaborative translation, digital accessibility, disability justice, mental health, critical pedagogy, and radical publishing.