WHITE PAPERS ON DISSENT
COMMISSIONED BY BARBARA CUETO / VAN ABBE MUSEUM: JUNE 21 - APRIL 22
White Papers on Dissent is a discursive programme dedicated to the investigation of blockchain as a tool for radical imagination. Though panel discussions, artist talks, participatory events, and a podcast it aims to collectively practice the making of the world otherwise, thinking through the technology to rehearse new social and political imaginaries.
White Papers on Dissent moves away from the economic discourse surrounding blockchain to understand the technology as a social apparatus. The programme examines how blockchain can articulate new ways of organising in a community circumventing hegemonic economic principles like the accumulation of capital and the focus on productivity. And, thus, reformulate the notion of value beyond the market. In this way, the project investigates how the particular characteristics of the technology can potentially re-address power structures and create alternative forms of governance adapted to the shared goals and wishes of a community. Therefore, the discursive project explores technology as a tool to concoct new elsewheres and otherwises: new forms of utopia with a biopolitical production adjusted to the characteristics and desires of the post-digital society.
The curator of White Papers on Dissent is Barbara Cueto. She is interested in the intersection of activism, new technologies and contemporary art. She is fascinated with how decentralised technologies are prompting new social constructions that compose new political and economic infrastructures, and how artists rehearse these imaginaries in their practices, giving us a glimpse in a world post-crisis.
Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio and Barbara Cueto
Audio Production, editing and sound design: Lucia Scazzocchio
Narrated by Barbara Cueto