Algorithmic solidarity: can colonialism be encoded into algorithms?

When?
23rd of February (Friday)

The space will be functioning from 14:00 to 20:00. You can come at any point. Please reserve at least 1,5 hours to go through the speculative public space environment of the leaked code. Please register to take part.

Where?
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Georgenstraße 47, 0 floor, Medientheater

What?
The session will look into the recent leaked source code of biggest IT corporation which is very close to russian government. The source codes of the “Yandex” company were copied in July 2022 and published in the Internet on January 25, 2023. The size of the leakage is 44,71 gigabytes. An artistic duo eeefff proposes to read the code collectively, diving into:

• encoded ownership on territories,
• exceptional cases,
• patterns of digital colonialism,
• how-to-spell constructedness,
• “pure web,”
• encoded violence,
• fairy tales about oil,

• Conditions: {  
        Tag: "war"
        Check {
            # update according to the situation
            Expression: "0"
        }
  }

• /* If Russia (country) from Russia's point of view (001) contains Crimea and from Ukraine's point of view (UA) doesn't contain Crimea, we build 2 variants of Russia. It means, that countryToRecognitionSubjects contains Russia [001, UA]. */

No necessary programming or any other skills are needed.

eeefff will guide the session, prepare a tool to search inside of the code, exercises for rehearsal and collective playing out of the programming code lines.

How to participate?
Please send email to the school of algorithmic solidarity and we will send you info&instructions.

What is ‘the school of Algorithmic Solidarity’?
‘The school of Algorithmic Solidarity’ focuses on the infrastructures of colonialism and the infrastructures of solidarity opposed to them. Specifically looking into infrastructural time, algorithmic abstractions and bodies. By form, it can be a collective experience / radical pedagogy practice / walk to the specific location / LARP protocol / digital togetherness / open-ended situation / affective temporary training zone.

Who is behind?
eeefff (Minsk/Berlin) are artistic cooperation / made-up institution / cybernetic political brigade / poetic computations / hacking unit / queer time. It is neither one of these, nor all together. Active from 2013, eeefff make software-based projects, publications, networks, and platforms that critically explore digital labour, value extraction, and community formation. Methods include: public actions, online interventions, performative seminars, software and hardware hacking, framing environments and choreographing social situations. Co-organisers of several events, spaces and agencies, among them: Work Hard! Play Hard!, Flying cooperation, School of Algorithmic Solidarity. More info can be found here.

This project is a cooperation between berlinergazette.de, Critical Data Lab and eeefff.