Data Union Fork - Tools for Data Strike by Larisa Blazic (UK) // ART & IMAGINATION - Untitled 2020

Today’s Internet is becoming increasingly centralized, slowing innovation and challenging its potential to revolutionize society and the economy in a pluralistic continent. DECODE is a project in which practical alternatives will be developed for managing online identity, personal and other data and collective governance in a citizen-friendly and privacy-aware fashion. Larisa’s work ‘Data Union Fork: Tools for Data Strike’, realized in Collaboration with the DECODE project asks what it means to Strike in the digital domain and how citizens can mobilize and organize for collective action. The Fork encourages audience reflection on critical issues arising from persistent personal data harvesting, digital surveillance and profiling.It also engages the participants to think how collective action could help regain control and redefine the value of data collected whilst promoting solidarity and mutual aid.

During the workshop, participants are invited to explore collective bargaining in the Labor union tradition through ‘word & image example mapping’, a subverted software design methodology, and investigate what is a breach, how to communicate alert, mobilize and organize citizens locally and across Neighborhoods.

Larisa Blazic is a London-based artist focusing on critical examination of digital technology, its impact on power relations, dominant narratives surrounding it and the consequences of lack of ethical consideration and / or framework in the world of digital innovation. Over the past 20 years, Larisa has been combining hybrid interests ranging from the creative use of the Internet to intersections of video art and architecture and has initiated, collaborated and participated internationally in projects ranging from net.art to FLOSS art and design. Larisa’s work is part of a Collaboration between S + T + ARTS (Science, Technology & the Arts), an European Commission initiative launched under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and Untitled.STARTS’s purpose is to support Collaborations between artists, Scientists, engineers and researchers to develop more creative, inclusive, and sustainable technologies.