The iJackers Guide to Social Protest in Public Space

The talk is inspired by diverse levels of agency in the arts. It covers past and present uses of communication technologies in the arts and how these intersect with social activism.

Early examples of Flash and Smart Mobbing and the Twitter tirades of Ai Weiwei offer a basis of understanding of content and method of the process of social protest using virtual space. The examples are also used to establish “a guide”, or a repertoire of common practice.

More sophisticated levels of agency are approached through the latest examples of holographic (art) protests and Augmented Reality works that use the newest technologies in subversive ways in areas where either physical presence is impossible or where public assembly is repressed and the situation calls for more creative approaches to communicating and or demanding social change.

The talk presentation takes a similar approach to Abbey Hoffmann’s 1960’s “Steal this Book” and being controversial in nature, the talks acts as a guid which makes the virtual domains of protest real and how to bring new possibilities of using socially disruptive performative acts.

Coupled with the use of any and all means of technologies linked with physical or virtual presence, the talk concludes with the coming to the understanding that a need for change is key to innovation and social renewal, and to conceive possible scenarios for (art) works that use art as agency to advocate change.