The exhibition project HACK.Fem.EAST seeks to present experimental and artistic practicesof artists and activists working in digital networks in Eastern Europe. Main topics are media, art and hacking. Protagonists are women or projects in which women play an important role.

Aim of the project is to provide and to develop a network platform. This is achieved through five elements: the exhibition, the opening event, two days of conferences, a publication in newspaper format and a website.

Central idea is to involve women artists to develop independently their concept in each of the14 rooms of the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien and be part of the network formed by the all groups and artists/activists participating.

Existing networks from 11 Eastern countries are at the heart of the project and form the basis of the exhibition. A total of 11 networks are invited to the various rooms of the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien to introduce their work, their strategies and their aims in the form of video and computer installations, documentations and presentations.
The result is a “network of networks”.

A two day long conference on 10 and 11 May held at the outset of the project intends to bring the lines and networks together and discuss on women perspective in the Eastern cultural scenario. Its aim is to provide a forum based on radical invention - media and Internet art projects, performances, network platforms, software development, artistic coding, organisation of media festivals, etc.

More information on the exhibition are published on the NGO-supplement of Taz, the Berlin daily newspaper, in an edition of 30.000 copies to coincide with the exhibition opening (9 May 2008). Another integral component of the project is this website, with an up-to-date and open presentation of the project’s processes and developments, summarizing them and putting them up for discussion.

Tatiana Bazzichelli (IT/DE)

Tatiana Bazzichelli a.k.a. T_Bazz (Rome, 1974), is a Communication Sociologist and an expert in Media Art, Hacktivism and Net Culture. Since the 90s she organized events and conventions such as Cum2Cut (Berlin, 2006, 2007), HackMIT! (Berlin, 2007), Hack.it.art (Berlin 2005), Art on the Net in Italy (Berlin 2005), MediaDemocracy and Telestreet (Munich, 2004) and AHA (Rome, 2002). She is the founder of ‘AHA: Activism-Hacking-Artivism’, a networked project based in Berlin, which received an Honorary Mention in the Digital Communities category of the Prix Ars Electronica 2007. She manages the aha@ecn.org mailing list and writes on art, media and technology for many Italian magazines. In 2006, she published the book “Networking. The net as Artwork” presented last year at Transmediale07.

www.networkingart.eu
www.ecn.org/aha
www.cum2cut.net
www.tatianabazzichelli.online.de

Gaia Novati (IT/DE)

Gaia Novati is involved since many years in the Italian queer countercultural movement. She has worked with radio and visual media projects. Co-founder of Sexyshock, communication laboratory on gender theme and first sex-shop managed by women in Italy, she is interested since long in independent pornography. She is one of the organizers of Cum2Cut, Indie-Porn-Short-Movies Festival in Berlin (2006-2008), where she lives since 2006.