ARTIVISM: The Art of Subverting Power is the 30th conference of Disruption Network Lab. The conference analyses how art and activism can be combined to shift media attention onto important social issues, targeting unethical corporations and corrupt governments working against the public good.

The programme presents distributed techniques and methods of provoking social and political justice using digital technologies for social awareness and political criticism. Invited speakers range from artists, political activists and developers to human rights advocates and truth-tellers. The history of Artivism in relation to digital culture dates to the early 1990s, connecting projects of hacktivism and network culture. However, the point of inception of this concept can be identified in the 1980s, when artists experimented with different art forms, from performance, media art, video art, street art and culture jamming, to denounce power abuses and criticise consumerism. The conference ARTIVISM: The Art of Subverting Power analyses the political impact of today’s forms of art and activism (artivism) in the field of social networking, hacking, whistleblowing and leaking, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The aim is to provide a lively platform of debate and exchange analysing the current transformation in political and technological criticism, as well as reflecting on the need of artistic practices today to reveal inner structures and logics of political, economic and technological systems.

This programme is following a series of publications and events held in Italy after the death of artivist Giacomo Verde, whose work is remembered during the conference with a homage screening of his last 2019 performance “Il piccolo diario dei malanni” (The Little Diary of Ailments).