Techno-disobedience

During 2023 Constant’s research focuses on artistic-activist resistances against technological dominations from state control regimes as well as from GAFAM corporations.

Through worksessions, workshops and artistic research commission, Constant looks at techniques of disobedience as a means to question and resist the paradigm of an all-controlling and regulating technology.

If civil disobedience illustrates how one can and should disobey a law they consider unjust, technological disobedience is posed here as a question: what obligations do we feel are put forward by Big PATCH (Patriarcho-colonial Big-Tech progress) and what it could mean to disagree, refuse, disobey them?

In everyday life, one can already notice tiny forms of defection from the unspoken but deeply felt obligations to consume, to keep up to date, to be connected, to produce, to pose oneself as a data-subject. But...

  • Do you sometimes enter or exit from the open doors of the metro without scanning your transport card?
  • Do you keep a little manual lid covering your camera on your laptop or phone?
  • Do you always try to repair your devices before buying new ones?

From mundane individual acts to collective coordinated acts of refusal, techno-disobedience is multiple and pervasive.

Every time period carries its own need to disobey, but how is this knowledge transferred? To answer this question, we will dig up previous tools of resistance to revitalise the ground and we will consider how to best reclaim tech and recognise this push to be about labour, care, anti-racism, queer life and trans*feminist techno-politics.

The collective research that arises aims to connect and cross-pollinate, find new pathways to circumvent, detour and resist the social and political expectations that come with the authoritarian turbo-capitalist frameworks of Big PATCH.

Let’s jam together sinuous paths of entangled and liveable techno-lives.


Related events

Sharing Techno-Disobedient stories

2023
Constant invites you to a moment of sharing and thinking together. We will discuss practices that arose during a collective research week around Techno-disobedience that was organised in (...)

Techno-disobedience commission: Cypher Sex - A Manual for Collective Digital Self-Defense Guides

2023
In the framework of this year theme, Techno-disobedience, Constant is pleased to support the collective Cypher Sex in their work on a Manual for Collective Digital Self-Defense Guides. This (...)

Open call: Techno-disobedience worksession Graz

2023
This is an open call for participation in the second worksession around the theme of techno-disobedience, which will take place from the 23 to the 28th of October 2023 in Graz (Austria) at esc (...)

Copper Infused with Blessing hands-on workshop

2023
The Fear Healing Bowls are part of the arts of protection in Islamic tradition, practiced in different cultures across time. Through many layers such as written prayers, ornamental elements (...)

Techno-Disobedience: an afternoon of exchange

2023
Join us during a collective jamming jammers* session! It will be the opportunity to discuss, discover, enjoy exchanges with the group of participants at the worksession Techno-Disobedience, (...)

Open call workshop: the Age of Dust

2023
Hackers & Designers and Constant invite you to join us for a three-day workshop in our studio in Koekelberg, taking place on 15, 16 and 17 September 2023. Generations after the eruption (...)

Workshop: DEDBUG

2023
Most contemporary electronics devices which are built today have small to very small components, called SMD (surface-mounted device) components. In 2019, 83% of broken devices and other (...)

Open call: Techno-disobedience worksession

2023
!!! LAST DAYS TO APPLY! DEADLINE EXTENDED UNTIL 4 MAY 2023 !!! This is an open call for the worksession Techno-disobedience This worksession looks at techniques of disobedience as a means to (...)

Open call: Techno-disobedience commission

2023
Constant starts a series of artistic commissions in the framework of its 5-years research programme called SPLINT: "Speculative, Libre, Intersectional Technologies". This year’s topic revolves (...)