Photo: Document Photography

Reclaim the role of ‘citizen’ with OK Democracy, We Need to Talk artists Make or Break and participate in their fortnightly News Hacks. Learn the art of news and political analysis and contribute what you collect into their artwork currently on display in the exhibition.

About Make or Break
Make or Break, a collaboration between Connie Anthes and Rebecca Gallo, has worked across gallery, institution, festival and community contexts to produce a range of process-based art projects. These have included creating experimental economies that address precarity and privilege; unveiling speculative monuments; celebrating the invisible labour of strangers and facilitating conversations and workshops as alternatives to traditional forms of research. Make or Break is passionate about exposing invisible labour and deploying artistic methods to question and challenge the social and political systems that influence lives and livelihoods.

 

News Hack #1 | Saturday 1 June 2019, 11am – 3pm 
Seeing like a computer

How do we encounter information and how do we find out about things we are curious about? Are there ways that technology can help us do this better? Together, we will collectively analyse our individual information habits and work out the importance of accessing and understanding the data we read now, whether it’s from media, government or private sources. From our findings we’ll interrogate how computers see the same information and Benjamin Forster will introduce us to how simple computer programs can be written to automatically collect data information on our behalf.
* Workshop requires use of a computer and minimum beginner level computer skills. Please BYO laptop as there will be limited desktop computers available. Light refreshments provided. BYO lunch.

Facilitators: Make or Break & Benjamin Forster

Benjamin Forster is a visual artist, overworked software engineer, and very lazy librarian based in Sydney.

News Hack #2 | Saturday 15 June 2019, 11am – 3pm 

The Citizen Journalist

Reclaim the role of ‘citizen’ with OK Democracy artists Make or Break’s fortnightly News Hacks. What should be in the news that currently isn’t reported on? What are important local issues that need to be investigated? How do journalists learn how to ask good questions? Join the artists and journalist/activist Chris Nash to learn the ropes of citizen journalism, and contribute to the artwork on display.

Chris Nash | Biography

Chris Nash is a journalist interested in empowering publics to pursue democratic accountability – social, cultural, economic, ecological, and political. From 2008 to 2017 he was the founding Professor of Journalism at Monash University, and for the previous ten years Chris was the Director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) at the University of Technology, Sydney. Chris has won a Walkley Award for Journalism, published a book “What is journalism? The art and politics of a rupture” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and has produced many works for cinema, TV and radio.

Artists: Make or Break & Journalist/Activist Chris Nash

News Hack #3 | Saturday 29 June 2019, 11am – 3pm

Citizen Bots

Right now on Twitter, millions of programmed bots have the same access to massive online audiences as world leaders and government bodies; and sometimes their voices are indistinguishable. What does this mean for the ways we value and parse information? How might we redefine the idea of citizen to account for Twitter bots and other forms of automation? Join Make or Break and creative technologist Gwen Taualai as we learn to program and play with Twitter bots to enter and influence conversations, gather data and generate political poetry.

Gwen Taualai is a Sydney-based creative technologist and music composer whose work primarily involves customised Twitter and Instagram hacks to explore themes of privacy and consent, biometric data paranoia, and human connection and disconnection. Gwen has had live interactive audio visual installations exhibited in Vivid 2018, Caldera 2018, Underbelly 2017 and SyncX 2017. Gwen also tutors in the Masters of Interactive Design and Electronic Arts and works as a Computing Analyst at the University of Sydney.

* Workshop requires use of a computer and minimum beginner level computer skills. If you can, please BYO laptop and/or tablet and charger as there will be limited desktop computers available. Light refreshments provided. BYO lunch.

Artists: Gwen Taualai & Make or Break

News Hack #4 | Sunday 14 July 2019, 11am – 3pm

Political Memes

Political memes are increasingly employed by politicians and campaigns to polarise voters along ideological lines, making people feel part of an “in group” using inside jokes, emotional triggers, and parody. But just how effective are they? And what impact do they have on our broader collective culture? Cultural meme creator Ian Milliss and Make or Break will work with you to break down the mechanics of meme-making and virality, and then we’ll work to construct our own memes together and see if we can get them shared widely.

Ian Milliss is a cultural meme-maker, artist, writer and activist whose practice doesn’t really look like art most of the time; his ‘art work’ is really cultural activism that involves working with community and political groups on social and practical living projects. He has worked in the Green Bans, prison reform and trade union movements and has dealt with a wide range of cultural issues including workers and artists rights, sustainable farming, heritage and conservation, and climate change.

* Workshop requires use of a computer and minimum beginner level computer skills. If you can, please BYO laptop and/or tablet and charger as there will be limited desktop computers available. Light refreshments provided. BYO lunch.

Artists: Ian Milliss & Make or Break
Ages: All Ages