Exhibition

19 September - 5 October 2024
Basement Vaults, Malta Society of Arts,  Palazzo de la Salle, Republic St, Valletta, Malta

Figure It Out; The Art of Living Through System Failures is collaborative project that has been granted support under the Creative Europe program, sub-program Culture, of the European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Collaborators are Drugo More (HR) (Project Lead), Kiosk (RS), La Labomedia Association (FR), Vektor (EL) and Unfinished Art Space (MT). The project explores a range of practices that enable disenfranchised groups to overcome barriers established by administrative, institutional, and algorithmic regimes.

Gendered, racialized, bordered and exploited, marginalised, underserved, discriminated and vulnerable communities are often forced to develop tools and strategies that are considered unacceptable to the institutions of the system; thus developing practices and phenomena of coping, tinkering, making-do and circumventing exclusions. Sometimes these tools and strategies are forged out of necessity, of survival, sometimes to exercise rights or to secure access to basic services available only to ‘deserving’ citizens. Such tools and strategies are always aimed at a certain system (state, welfare institutions, corporations, workplace, credit, housing, utilities etc.) that has its own rules and conditions of access that these communities or individuals cannot meet, producing and reproducing systemic exclusion.

Finding ‘holes in the system’ and developing strategies to take advantage of system weaknesses, people use their ingenuity to avoid detrimental effects on their lives and lives of their communities.

Moreover, such practices have now expanded into the digital sphere, where they are facing new kinds of power structures and also getting recombined in interesting ways. As dataveillance, algorithmic governance and digital profiling seep into mechanisms of exclusion and dispossession, from border controls to public transport, education, health and housing, new workarounds, tinkering and hacking emerges. As they do with the growing impacts of climate change, forcing underserved communities across the globe to be resourceful and devise their own forms of adaptation.

Works

  • Installation & live encounter

    2023 - 2024

    The work Women’s Affairs is a result of a series of encounters and conversations with women across Serbia, within which we shared stories about survival techniques and navigating the gaps of a state benefit system which constantly fails to assist and support life. We talked about lifelong work without a single day of official employment, about the diverse grey zones of labour, about real and fictional earnings, invisible union struggles of women, mutual solidarity, the dysfunctional administrative web of social benefits, fake and real divorces, perseverance, small life gestures of resistance and big struggles we undertake. The stories and experiences we recorded testify to the incredible imagination and heroic endeavours of women in a hostile environment and various skills we acquire through life and coping. Hospitality, honesty, wonderful homemade specialties, vital energy and strength were all major ingredients of our informal gatherings full of playfulness and joy. The created material of stories. sounds and photographs we now share both through an art installation and new live encounters. 


    Kiosk (Ana Adamović, Branislava Stefanović, Jelena Mijić and Milica Pekić) in collaboration with Tara Rukeci Milivojević, Sanja Stamenković, Maja Vučković, Dragana Kojičić, Milica Ivanović, Dženeta Agović,  Zuzana Karlečik.

    With special thanks to: Nada, Muradija, Jovanka, Agnesa, Duda, Sandra, Sanja, Ajsela, Una, Marina, Ceca, Atifa, Maja, Ruška, Juca, Bahta, Vesna, Hajruša, Zorica, Verica, Ana, Maja, Dušanka, Fatima, Srđana, Sandra, Bisera and Snežana.

    Thank you to Vladislav Mijić for the brilliant translation from Serbian, to Paul Leonard Murray for proofreading and multiple support, and to our long-term colleagues and friends, art collective škart for their support and collaboration.

  • Lecture performance

    2023 - 2024

    With Ghost Work, !Mediengruppe Bitnik look at the ingenious practices which people with little or no power devise when systems fail them.

    Ghost Work collects mechanisms and resources devised to build resilience in remote work systems and on freelance work platforms. The research focuses on the ingenuity of workers in the global gig factory and particularly on tactics the workers on platforms such as Upwork based in the Eastern Europe and the Global South contrive to fake their location or presence to circumvent scant pay, surveillance and control that is frequently not expected from the gig workers in the Western Europe and the Global North.

  • Five plotter printer prints, 1 UV Lamp

    2017 - ongoing

    Algoffshore is a toolbox to optimise legal environments leveraging the arsenal of the wealthiest and multinationals for tax avoidance: anonymisation and tax evasion through trusts and shell companies, art or cryptomoney as laundering machines, flags of convenience for social and ecological bypasses.

    Composed of  five algorithmic flowcharts of tricks and tactics, Algoffshore may appear as a pure contradiction of the collective research of the Figure it Out project, because tax optimisation circuitry is the system itself. Nevertheless, within their intricacies, the Algoffshore series reveal - to those who look carefully - information on several fronts against financial techno-capitalism,  such as situated technical infrastructures, legal personalities of ecological commons, and a radical transformation of the notion of property.

    For this exhibition, a second series of maps describing counter-systems has been hidden into the Algoffshore diagrams themselves. Hiding maps within maps is a move that takes its inspiration from the Underground Railroad, a secret network, whose maps would reveal information only to those who have been warned about its content, but where critical information remains invisible to the non-initiated.

  • Flags on synthetic canvas

    2024

    Survival tools: each different, each personal, each useful.

    Through years of field work, Škart have been collecting the experiences of interlocutors and friends in diverse environments - centres for the elderly, orphanages, asylum centres, protest environments, as well as in communities and public spaces.

    Endless stories (everyone's own experience is the most important) are shortened to micro (im)practical situations and presented in the form of a comic strip, enlarged and printed as flags. Story-flags, dancing with the mischievous and messy wind, remind us that every little invisible tool-of-rebellion and riot-step is important.

    Or, as Slobodan S. (a teacher at the Children's Home from Bela Crkva) says: “if you care and dare - you can change reality; if not - you can just look to the sky.”

    Interlocutors and friends are Tijana S, Želimir Ž, Jadranka M, Radmila Ž, Dušan T, Pava M, Slobodan S, Nikola I, Iskra G, Ivan Č, Lejla H, Miroslav T, Reza A, Rada G, E.R, E.M, Dž.M, N.N, N.S, K.P, Đ.B, F.V, V.N, ...

  • Developed in collaboration with Diletta Tonatto

    Bulle Cybernétique is a commercial exchange object, a scent formula potentially capable of circumventing state confinement measures and media censorship while containing encrypted information. The scent formula has been developed by analysing world cybercrime maps and major cyber attacks involving countries and large companies due to web threats, sabotage, espionage, and computer break-ins. Each type of attack, as well as the states or companies involved, is associated with specific olfactory notes based on precise associative criteria, which the algorithm code will be instructed with. The development of a code that can facilitate the creation and decoding has been conceived in collaboration with Diletta Tonatto, a fine nose and sociologist of olfaction, and founder of Tonatto Profumi, one of the most prestigious Italian perfume houses. Therefore, the fragrance, like an enigma code, is decrypted either through the fine experience of professional noses or by using a technique called headspace analysis in combination with gas chromatography to determine the chemical components of the perfume formula.

    Bulle Cybernétique is a luxury product that embodies the perturbing aspects of technology, unveiling underground and invisible facts through a mysterious, seductive, aerial, and ephemeral essence.

    The idea of producing a scent essence responds to several intentions; revealing the cybernetic essence upon which global geopolitical balances are based; conceiving new ways of overcoming governmental restrictions and censorship despite the volatility to which olfactory data are subject; reflecting on the environmental and financial impact of data extraction; and rethinking the relationship between chemical and digital codes.

    Project conceived by Elena Giulia Abbiatici.
    Developed in collaboration with Diletta Tonatto.
    Perfume realised by Tonatto Profumi.
    Technical Su    pport by Cybersecurity Expert Eridia Bozzetti

  • Public intervention - wood, wheels, coffee flask.

    Valletta, Malta. 2019

    Can spatial grief be addressed? Spatial grief refers to grief towards a physical space or building. On January 13th 2019, the artist wheeled a chair he designed through Valletta to the old market (is-Suq) to have his own brewed coffee on the ledge of this contested space. Is-Suq tal-Belt was part of a government regeneration project, intended to bring economic activity to a partly-neglected area. The project proved to be controversial within the Maltese community, stimulating tension between public and private agencies of space.

     The site-specific chair creates a focal-point for spatial grief; it is an endeavour to express and cope with spatial loss.

    The idea of taking a chair outside also draws parallels to the now almost non-existent local cultural ritual of neighbours bringing out chairs from their own house onto the pavement to socialise.

  • Online action - Installation

    2020 - 2021

    Azahara Cerezo has moved her own artist's website to a small server with Internet access via WiFi and SIM card, which can also be connected to a solar panel that contributes to its autonomy. Using a small mirror and a camera, the server takes selfies and displays them on the website's main page (www.azaharacerezo.com), so that those who visit it can see some of the elements that physically sustain the web, that is to say, that physically support her work. By producing this portable yet tangible server, the project reflects upon the usual dynamics of data access and storage. Additionally, it becomes a kind of boîte-en-valise of cognitive work, opening up relationships between body and technology and exploring how they intersect with domestic spaces and creative labour.
    This project has been developed with the support of mur.at (Graz, Austria) and hangar.org (Barcelona).

  • Taking its lead from current local and international realities, and adopting a satirical approach, this work highlights the lengthy and often frustrating process of registering for citizenship and the disparity of wealth when obtaining citizenship through other means.

    How to get a passport is a multi-faceted video sculpture exploring the complexities of obtaining citizenship in a foreign country. Viewers are seated in a makeshift waiting room while an instructional video plays on a continuous loop. Carefully placed elements within the video and physical installation subtly draw the viewer into the experience, making them an unwitting participant in the guided process.

Bios

Kiosk

Founded in 2002 in Belgrade by artist Ana Adamović and art historian Milica Pekić, Kiosk is an art collective developing practice based on collaboration, participation, aesthetic experience, collective authorship and research. Team members vary depending on the project and programme; Women’s Affairs brought Ana and Milica together with theatre director, professor, sound and multi-media artist Branislava Stefanović and painter and multi-media artist Jelena Mijić. During the process the team grew with multiple collaborators, participants, friends and colleagues. www.kioskngo.net

!Mediengruppe Bitnik

!Mediengruppe Bitnik (read - the not Mediengruppe Bitnik) are contemporary artists working on, and with, the Internet. Their practice expands from the digital to physical spaces, often intentionally applying loss of control to challenge established structures and mechanisms. Their works formulate fundamental questions concerning contemporary issues.

In the past they have been known to subvert surveillance cameras, bug an opera house to broadcast its performances outside, send a parcel containing a camera to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and physically glitch a building. In 2014, they sent a bot called «Random Darknet Shopper» on a three-month shopping spree in the Darknets where it randomly bought items like keys, cigarettes, trainers and Ecstasy and had them sent directly to the gallery space.

Their works are shown internationally, most recently in exhibitions at: Aksioma Ljubljana, Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, CAC Shanghai, House of Electronic Arts Basel, Super Dakota Brussels, Aksioma Ljubljana, Kunsthaus Zurich, Onassis Cultural Center Athens, Public Access Gallery Chicago, Fondazione Prada Milano, Shanghai Minsheng 21st Century Museum and the Tehran Roaming Biennial. They have received awards including the Swiss Art Award, PAX Art Award, Prix de la Société des Arts Genève, the Golden Cube from Dokfest Kassel and a Honorary Mention from Prix Ars Electronica.

!Mediengruppe Bitnik are Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo, and are currently based in Berlin. wwwwwww.bitnik.org

RYBN.ORG

RYBN.ORG (1999) is an artist collective based in Paris, leading extra-disciplinary investigations on complex systems and phenomena within the realms of economics and cybernetics – high-frequency trading, financial algorithms, flash crashes, market infrastructures, tax avoidance opaque schemes and offshore financial circuits, artificial artificial intelligence, digital labour, etc.

For Figure It Out, RYBN.ORG & la Labomedia (Orléans) have conducted a research series of interviews and practical workshops; in this research, the ‘art of living through system failures’ has been situated at a collective level, within political, judicial and financial fields. The corpus includes very actual strategies, such as the creation of legal personhood of rivers (Parlement de Loire), the hacking of legal entities to create a grey area for usage property (Clip, Mietshaüser Syndikat), the ignition of a referendum for expropriate multinationals in Berlin (Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen), the use of complex financial tools for nullifying private property (Foncière Antidote), the setup of independent radio infrastructures for technical self determination (∏-Node, Mur.at, Tetaneutral, les Chatons), and lands acquisition to preserve forests from intensive exploitation (Hauts les cimes). www.rybn.org

ŠKART

Through the architecture of human relations and permanent inner conflict, together with countless various collaborators, ŠKART (rejects/ausschus/scarto) group (1990, Architecture Faculty, Belgrade), continuously questions and combines edged forms of poetry, architecture, graphic design, publishing, music, performance, film, comics and alternative education.

For ten years, the group engaged in a self-publishing-self-distribution strategy in anti-war street actions including Your shit = Your responsibility and Survival Coupons. Subsequently, and for almost a quarter of a century, the group initiated and developed new collectives and networks such as Non-practical Women, Horkeskart choir, MoonChildren choir, Defiant Pensioners, and Poetrying. In 2011 the group participated in the Venice Biennial of Architecture with SEE-SAW / PLAY-GROW (polygon of dis-balance). ŠKART have performed, work-shopped, exhibited and lectured in Europe, America and Asia. Retrospective exhibitions have been held in Rijeka (Kortil, 2009), London (Space, Hackney, 2010), Belgrade (MPU, 2012) and Nagoya (AICHI Triennial 2013). 

The recently published book, Škart: Building Human Relations Through Art (by Seda Yildiz, published by Onomatopoeia) captures traces of Škart`s practice from the 1990s to present.

Keit Bonnici

Keit Bonnici is a transdisciplinary artist and designer, who has studied and lived in Malta, London and Vienna. His conceptually-driven and practice-based research is embedded in speculative thinking and an assemblage of designing objects, interventions and narratives that question the social, political and cultural territories of space. Keit investigates the production and consumption of spatial domains positioning the work within surreal materialisation and radical situational insertions.

Azahara Cerezo

Azahara Cerezo is a visual artist currently based in Girona (Catalonia, Spain). She has exhibited solo work at Bòlit Contemporary Art Centre (Girona) and Centro de Arte La Regenta (Las Palmas), and taken part in group shows at Bienalsur (Cúcuta, Colombia), Santa Mònica (Barcelona), Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem, Netherlands), MUSAC (León) and MACBA (Barcelona), among others. Her projects have been selected in the European programme ARTeCHÓ - Art, Economy & Technology, the Paradigm Shifts grants by mur.at (Graz, Austria) or the Summer Sessions art and technology residencies (V2, Rotterdam and Hangar, Barcelona). She graduated in Audiovisual Communication (Autonomous University of Barcelona) and holds a Master in Visual Arts and Multimedia (Polytechnic University of Valencia). Since 2022, she is also a collaborating teacher at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). www.azaharacerezo.com

 

Rakel Vella

Rakel Vella’s main interest lies in merging the physical and virtual spaces in her work. Her research focused on modern surveillance in contemporary society followed by an interactive sculpture at the intersection of physical and virtual realms. Influenced by physical and natural surroundings, Rakel combines fundamental design elements with technological media, such as video, 3D sculpture and computer-generated art.

Figure It Out The Art of Living Through System Failure is co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe program.

In Malta it is supported by the NGO Co-financing Scheme of the Malta Council for the Voluntary Sector, under the Ministry for Inclusion, Voluntary Organisations and Consumer Rights, as well as the Conference Scheme of the Ministry for Finance and Employment.

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.