Domagoj Smoljo and Carmen Weisskopf from !Mediengruppe Bitnik are the guests of the seventh episode of the podcast series I did with artists who 1. are among my absolute cultural heroes and 2. have exhibited at Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art in Ljubljana.
!Mediengruppe Bitnik works on and with the Internet. You can encounter their practice on search engines, on the darknet but also far away from the comfortable space of art galleries and museums. They invite people to join one star review guided tours, make a sculpture in the Alpine landscape, conduct sousveillance walks, devise dérives…. They are even building a school of social autonomy on an island in the Adriatic Sea.
Some of their most iconic works involved proposing CCTV operators to play chess via surveillance cameras, mailing a parcel containing a camera to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, making music for smart home appliances, designing a bot that randomly bought items on the Darknet and shipped everything to a gallery space located next to a police station.
In this episode, Carmen and Doma talk about the need for social autonomy, the emergence of new grey zones, police confiscating bots, excellent customer service on darknet markets. And more.
Delivery for Mr. Assange, 2013
Random Darknet Shopper (seized items), 2014-2016
Alexiety, 2018
In collaboration with Selena Savić & Gordan Savičić, 1 ⭐ Review Tour ISSA, 2023–ongoing
ISSA. Island School of Social Autonomy, 2021–ongoing
I hope you enjoy the episode!
Previous podcast episodes: Tactics&Practice [podcast]: The Future Behind Us. Episode 1, Trevor Paglen, Episode 2, Nora Al-Badri, Episode 3, UBERMORGEN, Episode 4, Jill Magid, Episode 5, Paolo Pedercini, Episode 6: Evan Roth.
More Bitnik: One Star Review Tour. Interview with !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Selena Savić, Gordan Savičić and !Mediengruppe Bitnik’s talk at The Influencers festival.
Tactics&Practice [podcast]: The Future Behind Us was produced for PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay, the programme curated by Aksioma for the 25th edition of Pixxelpoint – International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices which will take place in Nova Gorica/Gorica on 7 to 17 November 2024.