Photo credits: re:publica/Gregor Fischer
Arts & Culture
Digital technologies are changing our every day culture in a multitude of ways. We are living in the middle of the post-digital age. The Internet is omnipresent – particularly in the arts and in culture. Digital art (from remixes and GIFs to net-art to virtual reality and interactive text-based adventures), creative activism and politico-cultural questions on decision-making all are points we want to discuss with you at re:publica. Or even better - let’s build prototypes!
What roles do museums and exhibition spaces play in today's world? What can libraries do to close the digital gap? How is the distribution and consumption of music and other media changing? What are the latest developments in VR and what impacts will they have on us as a society? How are our personal interactions and societal values changing? We would like to discuss open approaches in cultural institutions, the opening of archives, creative activism, as well as collaborations between the maker scene, programmers, and artists.
This thematic cross-road invites artists, cultural experts, representatives of cultural institutions and researchers to contribute to this track - we welcome installations, performances, exhibitions, workshops and other contributions at least as much as a talk or panel. Your session can be anything from a Bingo to a theater piece.
We look forward to your projects, ideas and topic on arts & culture and are eager to see what kinds of experiences new technologies will offer us in the future.
- Arts & CultureFemaleTake your photos to an entirely new level by visiting our Animated GIF Photobooth. Capture as many GIFs with your squad to show that you are squad goals or want to take a personal one to show off on the gram? We will make that happen! With a click of a button, you get to share your cool photos on social media.
- Arts & CultureFuture-Spotlighting the African and struggles specific to the African, this discussion will focus on how AFROfuturism could reclaim ownership over African identity through creative activism, political resistance, arts & culture.
- Arts & Culture-The arts (music, film, sculpture, painting, etc) industry in Ghana suffers limited reach, this is due to the fact that there is lack of knowledge about alternative forms of licensing to practitioners and stakeholders. Most actors in the space are often aware and use the traditional forms of licensing (copyright), the knowledge on what pertains is limited. This session seeks to introduce the audience to alternatives forms of licensing (copyleft) and its benefits to increase the reach of the arts.
- Arts & Culture-This session will explore the tradition, humour and dynamism of Ghana’s most widely spoken language. While English is the official language, Twi is the most popular. How has the Internet and technology affected and impacted Twi and vice versa? We explore the resilience and track the journey of this beautiful and often witty language and its effect on the worldview of its speakers as they navigate the brave new world, from the past through the present and into the future.
- Arts & CultureWaste-Join Teresa Dillon (Professor of City Futures/Bristol) and Amanortey Kisseih (Accra/Vienna) for a conversation on how artists are producing 'urgent eco-critical stories' that reimagine repair and its associated cultures. Positioned within debates on degrowth, the Right to Repair and UN Sustainability Goals, the discussion draws on the documentary 'Welcome to Sodom’ (2018), which traces the lives of people working and living on the eWaste site at Agbogbloshie, Accra.
- Arts & Culture-Looking into critical systems that will reveal how our environments affects our art process.
- Arts & CultureFuture-Join us in a provoking discussion about new institutional models for the transition we want to see in society. What things, ways of doing and thinking do we have to unlearn in order to reimagine the future? In this session we will share different approaches from creative hubs across Africa, Europe and Latin America on their strategies and approaches to foster creativity, arts, social integration and entreuprenership from a perspective of permanent processes of learning and unlearning.
- Arts & CultureAmidst a flattening of global culture where communications technology is working towards a kind of homogeneity; African vernacular knowledges reveal a deep ‘’regionality’’ in the techne knowledges of certain cultural practice. In an extended communal research encounter, we invite you to participate in the exploration of coding the vernacular forms found in Southern African beadwork and unpack a vocabulary for vernacular algorithms.
- Arts & CultureFemale-We employ the efficiency of theatre as a communication tool to create awareness and debunk gender stereotypes in technology. This will be a random flash mob style gathering with a melodramatic act centered around a young woman and her technology career choice. We will engage attendees in a session of fun while passing on the message, “Tech is not a man’s world”.
- Arts & CultureFuture-This talk uses Africa’s Legends: Reawakening, a game designed from the ground up by Leti Arts in Ghana and Kenya, to reflect on how game design can be used to correct media misrepresentations about Africa, discuss current issues, and ignite imaginations of African cultural heritage. It examines the current state of the video game industry in Africa, and how creating quality and meaningful digital entertainment for a mass pan-African market requires technical and creative design innovations.
- Arts & CultureFuture-This talk will engage questions on visual research, data, and decolonisation in a global information society using readingzimbabwe.com as a case study. The digital archive problematizes how a single country's 60 year published history has been created, distorted, and engenders a space where a variety of critical lenses are interwoven to question research truths in the Zimbabwean context.Complacency allows the ambiguities and complexities of marginal contexts to be concealed and even obliterated.
- Arts & CultureFuture-Let's think "Beyond Slavery": Afroroutes is a one-of-a-kind VR experience conceived as a journey through 3 displaced African heritages, immersing users in Rituals and Ceremonies to experience that well-conserved memory form, but also to feel the power of Music as a strong anthropological tool. Connecting Afro-diasporic narratives: alterity and heritage transcendence within the digital era, Afroroutes is a trigger to open a crucial debate about diasporic identity.