“Yandex is an artificial intelligence company… we use machine learning technology to create very smart products.” This and much more is known about Yandex. It is also known that Russia’s largest IT company is very close to the Kremlin.
Not so long ago, the company’s source code was leaked – 44.71 gigabytes in total. It was copied in July 2022 and published on the Internet on January 25, 2023, allowing completely new insights.
The artist duo eeefff proposes to study the code. Together with BG and CDL, eeefff are opening a one-day School of Algorithmic Solidarity at the Humboldt University in Berlin. They will prepare a tool to search the code and enable searchers to delve into the following areas: coded ownership of territories, incidents, patterns of digital colonialism, coded violence, fairy tales about oil, conditions, and more.
The goal is to focus on the infrastructures of coloniality and the infrastructures of solidarity that oppose them.
When is it?
February 23rd (Friday)
The room will be open from 14:00 to 20:00. You can come at any time. Please reserve at least 1.5 hours to walk through the speculative public space environment of the leaked code.
Where?
Humboldt University Berlin
Georgenstraße 47, 0 Floor, Media Theater
For whom?
Activists, artists, researchers and tech-savvy people are welcome. No programming or other skills are required.
What?
eeefff will lead the session, prepare a tool to search inside the code, exercises for rehearsal and collective playing out of the programming code lines.
How to participate?
Please send an email to the School of Algorithmic Solidarity (algosolidarity(at)eeefff(dot)org) and you will receive information and instructions.
What is the School of Algorithmic Solidarity?
The School of Algorithmic Solidarity focuses on the infrastructures of colonialism and the infrastructures of solidarity that oppose them. Specifically, it looks at infrastructural time, algorithmic abstractions, and bodies. In form, it can be a collective experience / radical pedagogical practice / walk to the specific location / LARP protocol / digital togetherness / open-ended situation / affective temporary training zone.
Who is behind it?
eeefff (Minsk/Berlin) are artistic cooperation / made-up institution / cybernetic political brigade / poetic computations / hacking unit / queer time. It is neither one nor all of these. Active since 2013, eeefff creates software-based projects, publications, networks and platforms that critically explore digital labor, value extraction and community formation. Methods include: public actions, online interventions, performative seminars, software and hardware hacking, framing environments and choreographing social situations. Co-organizer of several events, spaces and agencies, including Work Hard! Play Hard!, Flying cooperation, School of Algorithmic Solidarity. More information can be found here.
This project is a collaboration between berlinergazette.de (BG), Critical Data Lab (CDL), and eeefff.