The OFF! ProgramICT4S 2023

Biography

Jan van Esch is an Amsterdam-based multi-media artist whose practice spans performance, drawing,curation, and social engagement.

Drawing on his background in social and health sciences and international development aid, Jan’s work questions processes of ‘giving’ by delving into the subliminal psychological motives involved in the powerplay between giver and receiver.

Exploring specifically how the Western world deals with waste, especially (re)used clothing, Jan's most recent work uses performance, installation, and drawing to subvert traditional conceptions of the gift.

POST GROWTH PROTOTYPES / Performative Lecture

This lecture/performance is an invitation to a collective and practical examination of our shared future, examining the notion of growth,in its many facets and implications, testing the limits of technology, of politics, and of ourimaginations.

With their series of new artworks, the DISNOVATION.ORG collective invites us to challenge concepts of growth and progress and explore the radical implications of speculative artistic prototypes, such as an economic model based on the energy emitted by the Sun. This research encounters the vital challenges of a shift away from the overexploitation of fossil fuels on which the reproduction of our societies mainly depends today.

How long can we continue pursuing economic growth? What ideological, social, and biophysical factors precipitate the current environmental crises? What agency is available for transformative practices and imaginaries to avert large-scale ecosystemic breakdown?

Biography

DISNOVATION.ORG is a research collective set up in Paris in 2012, whose core members include Maria Roszkowska (PL/FR), Nicolas Maigret (FR), and Baruch Gottlieb (CA). They work at the interface between contemporary art, research, and hacking, and compose tailor-made teams for each investigation together with academics, activists, engineers, and designers. More specifically their recent artistic provocations seek to empower Post Growth imaginaries and practices by challenging the widespread faith that ‘economic growth’ and ‘technological fixes’ will solve the ecosystemic disruptions they produced in the first place. They recently co-edited A Bestiary of the Anthropocene with Nicolas Nova, an atlas of anthropic hybrid creatures, and The Pirate Book, an anthology on media piracy.