Challenging Infrastructures. Alternative Networking & the Role of Art

During the last 15 years – when technology has become more natural and habitual, thus causing people to lose control over it – an emerging scene of network practitioners from different fields has been actively involved in building alternative networks of communication and file sharing. Among the practitioners of this DIY networking scene, a growing number of artists have been playing a crucial role as facilitator, mediator, and commoner of knowledge and experience. The artists have been offering tools of understanding based on their will to expose and make accessible opaque systems in an effort to empower people. Daphne Dragona (PhD), curator and writer currently working for transmediale festival, and Dimitris Charitos, Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Media Studies, School of Economics and Political Sciences, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, present and discuss certain exemplary initiatives studying how they evolved in time.