Following two years of social distancing and isolation Art Laboratory Berlin will devote 2022 exploring what social possibilities can be thawed and revived. The project series Hacking, Making, Thinking proposes that Doing it With Others (DIWO) can be a way of rebuilding and re-energizing damaged social relations. After a period when most of us have been reliant on corporate technologies, Open (source) knowledge will form a basis for making and thinking. Above all we are interested in an open culture based on reciprocity, cooperation and exchange on a global level. Combining Berlin based artists and venues with guest artists from Latin America and Southeast Asia this project proposes art making as a tool for social empowerment and knowledge acquisition, collaboration, and working together. In context of the group exhibition Hackers, Makers, Thinkers Art Laboratory Berlin in collaboration with the Weizenbaum Institute (UdK Berlin) and The Einstein Center Digital Future (TU Berlin) welcomes you to an interdisciplinary international conference.

The hybrid conference offers a complex layer of insights into the various practices with presentations by the exhibited artists and guest speakers from the artistic and curatorial practice, design, biology and anthropology. Diverse contributions critically elaborate on various artistic approaches towards (agri)culture, farming and social fermentation. A special emphasis will also have a viral discourse in connection with food and performance. The discussion will then evolve around the phenomenon of symbiosis, discussing cyanobacteria and bio-politics, including various approaches of hacking. Speakers additionally reflect critically on culture-political, post-colonial and sound-related phenomena related to khipu, human-computing, open AI as well as sound art and noise.

On the second conference day we will continue our conversations and discussions in the exhibition in front of the art works and later while walking together. First the curatorial team with Regine Rapp, Tuçe Erel, Tengal Drilon and Christian de Lutz welcomes the participants on-site at the exhibition Hackers, Makers, Thinkers at Art Laboratory Berlin and introduces the exhibited art works and curatorial concept. Later on we invite conference participants to take part in three simultaneous Walk & Talks with the conference speakers and the curatorial and conference team. These Walking Conversations are intended to deepen the discussions that started on the first conference day and to promote an exchange in motion in smaller groups. Based on Art Laboratory Berlin’s experiences of the positive impact and creative impulses of Walk & Talks, the three Walking Conversations will stimulate mind and body and offer an extended collective ‘metabolism of knowledge’ beyond a classical conference format.

Saturday, 28 May 2022 @ Art Laboratory Berlin, Prinzenallee 34, 13359 Berlin (on-site only)
10:30 – 13:30 CET
Curatorial Talks & Conference Panel Walks @ ALB & OKK

Panel Walk 1: Hacking Food Narratives

We will walk with RBSC (Rice Brewing Sisters Club), Pei-Ying Lin, Oron Catts and the conference team through Art Laboratory Berlin’s neighbourhood to continue our discussions about hacking (agri)culture, social fermentation and viruses. We will end our Walking Conversation in an Urban Community Garden nearby and explore some fermenting actions.