Hacking the Spaces

From P2P Foundation
Jump to navigation Jump to search

* Article: Grenzfurther, J and Schneider, F, 'Hacking the Spaces' on monochrome 2009,

URL = http://www.monochrom.at/hacking-the-spaces/, Accessed June 17, 2012.


Discussion

By Aurelie Ghalim, in the study, Fabbing Practices:

" The Austrian artist Johannes Grenzfurthner, writer and founder of the international art and theory group – monochrom – makes a critical study on hackerspaces in the article “Hacking the Spaces” written in collaboration with Frank Apunkt Schneider . In writing the historical context of hackerspaces originally expanding from the counter culture movement and conceived as niches against bourgeois society, Grenzfurthner and Schneider argue that hackerspaces today function quite differently as they initially did. Back in the seventies, these open spaces were imagined as tiny worlds to escape from capitalism or authoritarian regimes. The idea was much more based on micro-political tactics than on hippie’s spirit: Instead of trying to transfer the old world into a new one people started to build up tiny new worlds with the old world. They made up open space were people could come together and try out different forms of living, working, maybe loving and whatever people do when they want to do something.

In a capitalist society, alternative concepts always end up to be commodified such as “indie music” becomes mainstream. According to Grenzfurthner and Schneider, the same happened to hackerspaces when “the political approach faded away on en route into tiny geeky workshop paradises” ."