interactive workshop
Saturday, 25 Sep 2021 at 11 a.m. CEST
Ljubljana speaker: Anja Podreka
application and more info: info@cona.si
Dérive app website

Anja Podreka To create a space for the river – at 2 p.m. CEST, live for Cona Studio, Ljubljana
Other speakers: John Wild:Situationist practice in the digital city, Cecilia Quiles: The visual language of protest and resistance, Michael Kwet: Core tenets of digital colonialism

more info: flyer

festival Sound Walk City · prelude
in organization of platform walk · listen · create and zavoda Cona

In May and June 1968, over half a century ago, France was struck by continued civil unrest . The French, with the Situationists as major players, revolted against the control of society from above by powers not in control of the people. This included the French state, but was much more so borne of the ever-growing control major capitalist players had on society as a whole, driven by ideas mostly sourced form the USA, where the Situationists recognised that public space was turning into a Spectacle, telling its inhabitants where to eat, where to look, what to do, and what to buy.

To subvert the Spectacle’s influence on the inhabitant of public space, the Situationists identified psychogeography as a concept and the dérive as a tool, with the objective of putting some control of the navigation of public space, back in the hands of the individual.

Psychogeography, in a way, can be described as ‘the way a place makes you feel’. The dérive, a drift through public space, is a way to uncover these impressions on the individual, you, to engender the realisation of how public space can influence you, and how you can take control of these experiences.
Typically, a dérive consists of a series of small tasks which nudge you into thinking, observing, or taking action in a particular way.

This full day workshop will consist of three main elements:

• A series of talks will see experts discuss concepts related to the history of Situationists and the present day applicability and context. Speakers include:

◦ Anja Podreka, the Slovenian spatial artist interested and inspired by nature and its connection with the human. Anja will present problematics of the rivers and the usage of waters. The river gives, forms, shapes and designs life. This fact created our habitats; towns, cities, villages etc. Water is a living body, an intelligence, a mater which brings and takes away goods therefore, it is a body which travels through space and time. Coexisting with water is a gift. Over time, responsibilities and roles have changed; manipulation and transformation of rivers beds and its characters, exploitation of its resources, is leading us into a destruction of our own habitat.

◦ John Wild, the London based artist who works across performance, sound, text, code, electronics and machine learning to carry out speculative research into the utopian and dystopian futures imminent within digital technology.

◦ Cecilia Quiles of graffitimundo, the organisation dedicated to increasing awareness of the rich heritage and dynamic culture of Argentine urban art.

◦ Michael Kwet, visiting Fellow at Yale’s Information Society Project, and host of the podcast Tech Empire, who’s areas of research include education technology, the global digital economy, tech startups, safe and smart city initiatives, big data, and Free and Open Source Software.

• A hands-on exploration of your own urban environment, using the mobile app Dérive app, the award-winning app that helps to get you lost.
For the best experience, you should go out exploring in a small group, of 2 to 4 people, including yourself.

• A hands-on creative exercise where you, together with all other participants, and based on the lectures, as well as your own experience, will create a new deck of ‘task cards’, to be included in Dérive app, and available to the rest of the world, which then can be used for everyone and anyone to ‘get lost’ in their own urban environment.

Credits
Development of the workshop and Dérive app: Babak Fakhamzadeh
Moderator: Babak Fakhamzadeh
Speakers: John Wild, Cecilia Quiles, Michael Kwet and Anja Podreka
Organization: Irena Pivka, Katarina Radaljac and Babak Fakhamzadeh
Lecture and editing: Melita Silič
Cover photo: Babak Fakhamzadeh
Production:  walk · listen · create
in collaboration: Cona, Institute for Contemporary Arts Processing
part of the festival Sound Walk City · prelude

Sound Walk City · prelude was initiated by the walk · listen · create platform, in collaboration with the Cona Institute. The Ljubljana edition is produced by the Cona Institute, Steklenik Gallery.