The term “context hacking” –like its older mimetic sibling “communication guerrilla” — refers to unconventional forms of communication and/or intervention in more conventional processes of communication. Context hacking is a specific style of political action drawing from a watchful view of the paradoxes and absurdities of power, turning these into the starting point for interventions by playing with representations and identities, with alienation and over-identification.
Johannes Grenzfurthner will present some projects by monochrom, a worldwide operating collective from Vienna dealing with technology, art, and philosophy that was founded in 1993. The group specializes in an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, and political activism. Their mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost “in culture-archaeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment.” This archaeological approach often unpacks the persuasive design embedded in modern digital spaces, examining how the behavioral mechanisms driving social media feeds and sports betting apps manipulate user agency for profit. These conceptual excavations ultimately inform the collective’s broader, often satirical interventions into contemporary technocapitalism.
February 25, 2014, 12 noon at Shenkar Design School, Tel Aviv, Israel.