Open call: Techno-disobedience commission

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 around the broad spectrum of Techno-disobedience.

With this first call, Constant is looking for practitioner(s) of technologies and techniques of disobedience. Artists, DIY/DIWOers, designers, tinkerers, performers, researchers, collectives, activists and other uncategorised thinkers and/or makers are welcome to apply!

Context

The program that Constant will develop in 2023-2027 tackles what we call SPLINT, "Speculative, Libre and Intersectional Technologies". SPLINT is a term coined to signal the commitment Constant is making to try to answer the question: What could/should be libre and intersectional technologies? Specifically, what kinds of devices and practices might address and counteract the systemic discriminations, oppressions, and exclusions at play in today’s technologies? SPLINT explores the potential of technology through artistic practice and vice versa, at the junctions of intersectional feminisms and open source software. SPLINT investigates the discriminations and structural problems inherent in technology, and nurtures the imagination and imaginative capacity of techno-realities that can contribute to an open, experimental, and equitable digital art field. SPLINT is fueled by four annual themes that will formulate diverse approaches within the research object. The first theme of SPLINT is Techno-disobedience.

With Techno-disobedience, Constant wants to stimulate, highlight and support artistic-activist resistances against technological dominations coming from state control regimes as well as from GAFAM corporations. Constant sees technologies and techniques of disobedience as tools 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 Tech and what could it mean to disagree, refuse, disobey them?

From mundane individual acts to collective coordinated acts of refusal, Constant sees techno-disobedience as multiple and pervasive. This commission aims at giving space and resources for developing, experimenting, investigating, building around tools and practices which inform, sustain, and make possible refusal in the face of Big Tech.

About Constant
Constant is a non-profit artistic organisation that investigates the relation and effects of media and technologies on our society and everyday life through the lens of feminisms, multiperspectivity and the values of F/LOSS culture : to know more about Constant

Practical info
Constant offers a budget package composed of a fee of 4.580€ (17 working days according to the baremas of the CP. 329.03) and refunding of material costs (up to 500€). The working period is flexible; the commission can be developed in a long or short span of time between June and October 2023, according to the individual situations and needs of the applicant(s). It can happen physically in Brussels, online or in a hybrid way. The commission does not have a defined format and experimental proposals are encouraged. A moment will be dedicated to share the outcomes of the commission during the worksession that will take place in the art centre esc medien kunst lab in Graz (AT) from 23 to 28 October 2023. Specific details and practicalities linked to the commission will be discussed with Constant’s team before and during the development of the project.

How to apply and selection procedure
If you are working on a project which is relevant to the thematic of Techno-disobedience, please apply before the 15th of May 2023, by sending a motivation letter to elodie@constantvzw.org.

You can apply in English, French or Dutch. Please, explain your artistic and/or research practice and why you would like to work within this framework. According to the number and relevance of the applications, we will choose one or more applicants, with whom we would eventually speak further. These conversations can take place on-line or in Brussels. Based on these conversations, we will choose one proposal.

Notification of the final decision: 19-05-2023
Start of the commission: 01-06-2023
End of the commission: 23-10-2023


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