Art Is Not a Thing

Using both the conditions and limitations of the photographic medium, Trevor Paglen's investigations into state surveillance, military operations, and data collection raise questions about truth, deception, and imagination. In this episode, Hannah Balber talks to the American photographer, author, and geographer about UFOs, psyops, the power of manipulation, and how seeing and being seen are deeply political.
Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1.

Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica
Trevor Paglen

In this episode, Hanna Balber talks with architect Marina Otero Verzier about the environmental cost of data centres. Challenging the image of the 'cloud' as an immaterial entity, her project, Computational Compost, uses heat from computer servers to power a vermi-composting machine, thus imagining a potential symbiotic relationship between digital technology and nature. 
Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1.

Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica
Marina Otero Verzier

In this episode, Hannah talks to German media artist Simon Weckert about the societal impacts of digitalisation and his artistic strategies to disrupt, redirect, or reduce the logic of systems to absurdity. His work points to the vulnerability of allegedly infallible digital systems and the risks of relying on them.
Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1.

Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica
Simon Weckert

In this episode, Hannah Balber talks to German-Iraqi artist Nora Al-Badri about the colonial inscriptions borne by Europe’s cultural heritage. Her work, The Post-truth Museum, reignites seemingly irresolvable debates about restitution. In glitchy deepfakes, the artist puts postcolonial theory in the mouths of former museum directors (rather than institutional discourse), in an attempt to signal where discussions of restitution need to start.
Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1.

Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica
Nora Al-Badri
The Post-truth Museum

In this episode, Hannah talks to members of the Kairos Futura collective from Nairobi, Ajax Axe, Abdul Rop and Willie Ng'ang'a. Their project, The Wild Future Lab, won this year's S+T+ARTS Prize Africa, an initiative of the European Commission, recognising pioneering projects in Africa that catalyse social change by blending science, technology, and art. The Wild Future Lab not only creates a blueprint for the future but tries to build that future with resources available in the present.
Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1.

Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica
Kairos Futura
https://www.thefutureisonearth.org/