Manuel Beltrán is an artist, activist, and researcher. His artworks and projects have been widely presented in Europe and abroad. He researches and lectures on contemporary art, activism, contemporary social movements, post-digital culture and new media. As an activist, he was involved in the Indignados movement in Spain, the Gezi Park protests in Turkey and several forms of independent activism and cyber-activism in Europe and beyond. In 2012 he co-founded the art collective Plastic Crowds and since 2013 he is head and co-founder of the nomadic school and artistic organization Alternative Learning Tank. In 2015 he founded the Institute of Human Obsolescence, through which he explores the future of labour, the socio-political implications regarding our relationship with technology and the economic and governance systems surrounding the production of data.
Ruth Catlow is an artist, curator, and writer. She is co-director, of Furtherfield, co-founded with Marc Garrett in 1996, an artist led organization for labs, debates and exhibitions around critical questions in arts, technology and society. Furtherfield’s Art Data Money program seeks to develop new economies and a commons for arts in the network age and to cultivate diversity in the blockchain development space. She co-edited ‘Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain’ with Torque Editions & Liverpool University Press (2017) and devised the ongoing ‘DAOWO’ workshop series with Ben Vickers (Serpentine Galleries) & in collaboration with Goethe-Institut London (Oct 2017- Mar 2018). Catlow is named by the Foundation for P2P Alternatives in their list of 100 women Co-creating the P2P society.
Jérôme is an Art Advisor and Art Historian, based in Switzerland. He has 20 years´art market experience, mainly as expert and Head of department in the Fine Art auction business. Jérôme has a strong knowledge of Art finance and Art as an investment, both as a project manager for an Art investment fund and as investment manager for private clients. Jérôme is currently the Chief Art Officer of Maecenas, an art investment platform that allows for the fractional ownership of artworks. Maecenas lets investors create and manage their own liquid fine art portfolios and through the platform, art galleries and art collectors can raise cash against their existing artworks.
The Demystification Committee investigates the covert, extended systems of power that shape society. This exploration encompasses the study of platforms, legal frameworks, machines and communication networks.The Demystification Committee currently focuses on the toxic relationship between sovereignty, anonymity and finance, as well as the friction between communication networks and their physical surroundings.The Demystification Committee is a framework for art and research.
FairCoop is an international community of more than 300 active people growing in participation, and in the process of establishing a global cooperative ecosystem for an equal and fair economy. It was launched on September 17, 2014, after months of activist networking from various fields of alternative economy. The cooperative understands that the transformation to a more fair monetary system is a key element. Therefore, FairCoin was proposed as the crypto currency upon which to base its resource-redistribution actions and building of a new global economic system. FairCoop organises itself through the Internet outside the boundaries and controls of nation-states and combines the advantages of new decentralised technologies with ethical principles and experiences of activists. Sebastian Kuehs and Roland Alton will be at site, they are supporting FairCoin communication at fairkom.eu, which is based in the Austrian Alps.
Sarah Friend is an artist and software engineer focused on the development of games, interactive experiences, and open source tools. Her work to-date has been concerned with the polar concerns of privacy and transparency, how to design ethical interfaces, and the political and environmental implications of technology.She is currently working at a blockchain development studio on tools for accounting and analytics, while maintaining an art and game-making practice. Her work has recently been part of exhibitions at the British Public Library, The Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, and Radical Networks, a conference in Brooklyn.
Inte Gloerich is a researcher and project coordinator for MoneyLab at the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. She has a background in media studies, holds an MA in New Media and Digital Culture from the University of Amsterdam, and has participated in various research projects on the politics of digital technology, digital economy, and online identity.
Kei Kreutler is a researcher, designer, and developer interested in how cultural narratives of technologies shape their use, previously across such diverse fields as satellite observation and biotechnology. In 2017 at Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture, and Design, she co-developed Patternist, an augmented reality platform for urban research, sci-fi visions, and alternative economies. Currently, she is Creative Director at Gnosis, a prediction market platform on the Ethereum blockchain, and lives in Berlin.
Marija Bozinovska Jones explores social, computational and living architectures. Her work revolves around formation of identity in an era of technocapitalist amplification and perpetual online presence, probing the self as a datafied and distributed identity through MBJ Wetware. Unpacking cryptic ways of forging subjectivity, her recent interests include auto-regulation and coping mechanisms: from trends in self improvement to Decentralized Autonomous Organisation models.
Marija Bozinovska Jones has performed at CTM, presented at Transmediale and MIRA Festival and exhibited internationally. She holds an MA in Computational Arts at Goldsmiths and BA in Art and Design at Central St. Martins.
Geert Lovink is a media theorist, internet critic and author of Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012) and Social Media Abyss (2016). He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne. Since 2004, he is researcher at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences where he is the founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures.
René Mahieu is an economist at the Institute of Human Obsolescence and PhD candidate in the economics and governance of online privacy at Delft University of Technology. He investigates the changing economic role of humans in the production process and its social and political consequences, and researches the future of privacy in a world where personal data is becoming the dominant economical asset. As an activist, he is treasurer of Noodzaak, an NGO that provides housing for undocumented migrants through a new cooperative model, by sharing the use of otherwise vacant space, by migrants and active citizens. He writes on socio-political issues and participates in movements such as Artists in Occupy Amsterdam.
Stephanie Polsky is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work focuses on political economy and cultural identity in relation to the digital. Most recently, she was a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London’s Department of Visual Cultures, and Principal Researcher at Vienna University of Technology’s Institute of Art and Design. Having published and lectured widely in the fields of cultural studies and critical theory, she is currently preparing the manuscript of her third book, entitled ‘The End of the Future: Governing Consequence in the Age of Digital Sovereignty,’ which explores how the rapid proliferation of access to digital platforms has radically refigured the terms and topography of representation, politics, and cultural expression.
Emily Rosamond is an artist, writer and educator. She is Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Joint Programme Leader on the BA Fine Art and History of Art. She completed her PhD in 2016 as a Commonwealth Scholar in Art at Goldsmiths. Her recent research focuses on character, reputation and financialization in contemporary art.
Brett Scott is a journalist, campaigner and the author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money (2013). He works on financial reform, alternative finance and economic activism with a wide range of NGOs, artists and students, and writes for publications such as The Guardian, New Scientist, Wired Magazine, Aeon and CNN.com.
Nathaniel Tkacz is Reader in Digital Media at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick. His work investigates the political, economic and organizational dimensions of digital media. He is author or editor of a number of books, including Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and The Moneylab Reader (2015) with Geert Lovink and Patricia de Vries.
Jelena Viskovic is an artist and designer based in Berlin. Her work combines speculative design methods with game development strategies. Her work Nirgendheim uses a narrative framework which allows architectural structures and game mechanics to provide alternative ways of interacting with opaque technological systems of control and governance. Recently, Jelena co-founded Patternist, a mixed reality game creating new models of economic exchange. She is a member of Rites, a game design collective based in Budapest. She holds a postgraduate diploma from the Strelka Institute in Moscow, and an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art in London.