{"id":7,"date":"2019-12-04T00:19:32","date_gmt":"2019-12-03T23:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pratiquesduhacking.com\/en\/?page_id=7"},"modified":"2020-12-02T22:09:52","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T21:09:52","slug":"du-hacker-du-hacking-de-lartiste-en","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.pratiquesduhacking.com\/en\/","title":{"rendered":"On Hackers on Hacking on Artists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From 2016 to 2018, the Hacking Practices research line brought together Pierre Akrich<\/strong> (artist), Fabrice Gallis<\/strong> (artist), Tamara Lang<\/strong> (who obtained her DNSEP \u2013 National Postgraduate Diploma in Visual Arts \u2013 at EESAB Quimper in 2020), Karine Lebrun<\/strong> (artist and teacher at EESAB Quimper), Julie Morel (artist and teacher at<\/strong> EESAB Lorient), Jan Middelbos<\/strong> (polymorphic worker and PhD student at the University of Rennes 2), and Stephen Wright<\/strong> (practice of theory at the European School of Visual Arts \u2013 Angoul\u00eame \/ Poitiers).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hacking Practices were initiated by Karine Lebrun and take place at the European School of Art of Brittany (EESAB). They are a continuation of the courses on the impact of digital culture on artistic practices taught at EESAB since 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2015, an inaugural study day took place at EESAB Quimper, and this laid the groundwork for Hacking Practices. While the research line was yet to begin, we deemed it necessary to study the tricks and skills developed by hackers to thwart control systems with the intuition to bring these processes closer to artists’ ways of doing things, in line with the Snowden case.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The persona of the artist is often associated with non-conformism, with their critical and liberating relationship with society. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, art broke free from the academic institution \u2013 which reflected State-controlled art \u2013 to get rid of the norms in force at that time. Whether from a modernist discourse or an avant-garde position, art has more or less radically opposed capitalist domination and continues to claim its ability to liberate people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

Yet, far from such claimed independence, we couldn\u2019t help but observe lately the proliferation of artistic productions in line with the expectations of an institution that is largely dependent on State policy, itself largely porous to the effects of capitalism2<\/a><\/sup>. In fact, this supposed non-conformism has turned into an art form integrated into the consumer and leisure society, as former Minister of Culture and Communication Jean-Jacques Aillagon stated: \u201cArt has become \u2013 and that\u2019s one of the great effects of the democratization of culture and the sedimentation of public actions \u2013 a cultural object that participates in a singular way in the development of the leisure society, and has sometimes become one of its most appealing centers.\u201d This quotation is from Tristan Tr\u00e9meau\u2019s article3<\/a><\/sup>, which demonstrates in detail how private sponsorship has infiltrated the choices of public commissions, and how institutions have imposed “[\u2026] a relationship of reification and instrumentalization of art, both economically and symbolically.”4<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe artists who interest us\u201d, to quote Jean-Baptiste Farkas,5<\/a><\/sup> refuse to take part in an art practice that asks for excessive appearance modes, to highlight who will be the most visible, who will get the greatest number of exhibitions, reviews and events, in order to capitalize on attention. Instead of wanting to legitimize their practices and go along with the regime of the “attention economy”6<\/a><\/sup>, they play with operational modes that are similar to those used by hackers.
It is not about surrendering and playing along, nor about giving up and stopping all artistic activities \u2013 it is about infiltrating by ruse and slipping in an \u201cestablished order\u201d.7<\/a><\/sup> Hackers do not act in the open and the trouble that some of them maintain \u2013 sometimes via a pact with the company they hack \u2013 participates in the shadow rhetoric and opens up fruitful dialectics between what is hidden and what is visible. What would be an art detached from the criteria of visibility? How can we reconcile the ambiguous relationship between the hackers’ experience and their need to express themselves? Which visibility regimes develop in the shadows? What are the hackers\u2019 ancestral personas and the modern-day poaching practices? Which similarities do hackers maintain with artists? What is an art whose motive is hacking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research line started in 2016 in support of these initial questions.
Espace Khiasma<\/strong> in Les Lilas, the Phakt \u2013 centre culturel Colombier<\/strong> in Rennes, and Practices in Remove<\/strong> in Paris joined the research team and took part in various experiments with EESAB students and several guest participants until 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

During those two years, it appeared to us that the hack was a much larger gesture than the one we usually attribute to the computer programmer, offering a whole constellation of personas, from the solitary deed to collective movements, from the anonymous person to Edward Snowden.
Hackers, as represented in our collective imagination, develop a wide range of differing interpretations, are being referred to as cyberterrorists by the media or, in a more positive vein, called cyberactivists and hacktivists. Even within hackers\u2019 communities, from Black hats to White hats, from Grey hats to Script kiddies, the activities differ depending on intentions \u2013 or even territories \u2013 and cannot fall into a category of homogeneous political subjectivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Our research started from the hacker before moving towards the notion of hacking that is more open to the heterogeneous realities of our practices and is less subject to the still dominant image of the \u201cwhite western male\u201d. We also felt that it was necessary to free ourselves from the current trend that is turning hacking into an innovation-looking phenomenon. The start-up replaced the hack that is now part of Newspeak thanks to a well-tested reversal mechanism. Engaging in double dealing and maintaining the trouble, thwarting classifications, making our practices less identifiable and therefore less seizable in the face of attempts at assignment and recontextualization, are all main elements that have contributed to the foundations of Hacking Practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This publication is not a report of the activities that have been carried out since 2015.
It presents some of them and extends the research with new contributions from artists, theorists, researchers, teachers, and activists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This second part further highlights feminist hacking practices with contributions from Sophie Toupin<\/strong>, the<\/strong> SCRUM brigade<\/strong>, and Ma\u00efa Izzo-Foulquier<\/strong>, who passed away in late 2019 while we were still working on the website. She was an artist and an activist who campaigned for the STRASS8<\/a><\/sup>, and who defended an artistic practice characterized by multiple identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

One of the new contributions comes from C\u00e9dric Mong-Hy<\/strong> who, through his mushroom hunting activity, walks with the “entanglement of the living” that he connects to the world of hackers.
Olivier Marb\u0153uf<\/strong> revisits the Black Code Sessions<\/em> and the film Black Code \/ Code Noir<\/em> by Louis Henderson in a text that echoes the murder of George Floyd, an African-American man, in the continuity of the necropolitical history that his analysis puts into perspective.
Ann Guillaume<\/strong> takes another look at the notion of “ninja practice” in an interview that resituates her work in the current state of her practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the course of the meetings organized during the research, Tamara Lang<\/strong> \u2013 a student until June 2020 \u2013 enlightened us with her critical point of view. She chose to contribute to this second part with an account of the years she spent at school, documented by a few pages taken from her final year dissertation. Jan Middelbos<\/strong> imagined the “BOTe secr\u00e8te” in the manner of the samizdats that were secretly distributed, and thus took on the edition\u2019s digital format. Fabrice Gallis<\/strong> recounts the history of the experiments he has carried out since 2015, which he questions and compares with examples from art history. Pierre Akrich<\/strong> relates daily actions supported by images, sound and video recordings. Julie Morel<\/strong> publishes a downloadable book that refers to the multiple layers of a work revealing itself in the folds of its variations.
Finally, Jean-Baptiste Farkas<\/strong>, Stephen Wright<\/strong> and Karine Lebrun<\/strong>\u2019s contributions take another look at the research line\u2019s key moments and thus complete the multiple entries of Hacking Practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole project works like a continuous movement whose dynamics do not stop with the publication of these pages. Hacking is a deed that we are all capable of committing.<\/p>\n\n

  1. In 2013, Edward Snowden \u2013 who used to work for the NSA (National Security Agency) as a network administrator \u2013 revealed that the latter was running a global surveillance program. American companies like Google, Facebook, Youtube, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype, AOL and Apple, to name a few, gave access to their users\u2019 data and thus participated in this surveillance program. See Dan Schiller\u2019s article, \u201cG\u00e9opolitique de l\u2019espionnage \u2013 Geopolitics of Espionage\u201d, Le Monde diplomatique<\/em>, November 2014. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. This movement began as early as 1981 during Lang\u2019s term as a Minister, when the State policy consisted in raising public awareness regarding the most diverse \u2013 including the most subversive \u2013 artistic practices through a program of extension and decentralization of art centers. Thus, by subsidizing artists and by encouraging corporate sponsorship, the State has positioned itself as a mediator and main sponsor. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. \u201cLa kitschification des espaces publics. Au sujet de la d\u00e9signation de l’\u00e9quipe de Didier Fusillier pour la gestion des quais de Seine \u00e0 Paris. \u2013 Kitschifying public spaces. On the appointment of Didier Fusillier\u2019s team to manage the Seine quays in Paris.\u201d Published on November 8, 2011 on his blog: http:\/\/tristantremeau.blogspot.com\/2011\/11\/la-kitschification-des-espaces-publics.html<\/a> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  4. Ibid.<\/em> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  5. \u201cThe Good, the Bad and the Hacker\u201d, transcript of the lecture delivered at EESAB Quimper in 2015. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  6. L’\u00c9conomie de l’attention. Nouvel horizon du capitalisme?<\/em> \u2013 The Economy of Attention: New Horizon of Capitalism?<\/em>, under the direction of Yves Citton, La D\u00e9couverte, 2014 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  7. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life<\/em>, Paris, Gallimard, 1990 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  8. Syndicat du travail sexuel en France \u2013 Union of Sex Workers in France [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    From 2016 to 2018, the Hacking Practices research line brought together Pierre Akrich (artist), Fabrice Gallis (artist), Tamara Lang (who obtained her DNSEP \u2013 National Postgraduate Diploma in Visual Arts \u2013 at EESAB Quimper in 2020), Karine Lebrun (artist and teacher at EESAB Quimper), Julie Morel (artist and teacher at EESAB Lorient), Jan Middelbos (polymorphic […]<\/p>\n

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