Herald: So the first speaker for this
conference is lizvlx. And she runs
ubermorgen.com and she is really
interested in software art, photography
and net art. And if you heard about Vote-
Auction that was her. This talk will be
about anti terrorist laws implications on
free thinking and art. Thank you very much
liz.
applause
lizvlx: Well hello, sorry that took a
little bit. I'm using the wrong software
apparently, its not Microsoft so I'm
really sorry. "Do you think that's funny"
that's the title of this talk because this
was a question we got asked quite a few
years ago by a reporter wanting to discuss
a project that we did and I thought it was
the stupidest question I have ever been
asked and I have loved it ever since
because obviously this shit is not funny
at all. So, yeah. Because it's about art-
practice under anti-terror laws. I'm not
going to give this theoretical talk now,
so you're fine it's about practice. I'm
gonna show you a set of projects and focus on
kind of the implications of anti-terror
laws on the project, on the production of
the project most and foremost and also
some of the projects obviously have been
produced before all these crazy ass laws
have come into effect. So let's just get
started. And of course in the end I'll be
doing a Q&A. So a short introduction. So
for us, I mean when I'm talking us means
ubermorgen.com so that's me and my partner
Hans. So we started in the 90s and in the
90s it was really great, I really loved it
because there was nothing happening on the
net really except for the crazy boring
shit and we all thought it was so cool. It
was just really nerdy but nothing else.
Obviously I started working in net-art, in
1995 about. And that was a really great
time because nobody cared what you did on
the net, not because there was no audience
there was a huge audience. But there was
no question about, because you know the
net was still not a dot com rearm so it
was fine, you could just do whatever you
wanted to... There's a little footnote
there because we did get, you know, a few
problems but it was nothing major. Also
because there was no laws in place it
really had an effect onto like European
citizen being kinda hassled by the CIA,
basically local police didn't really want
to help out the CIA at the time, so we
were fine at the time. So in the early
2000s dot com had totally run over the net
which is fine obviously but not only and
we had to really get used to lots of
people bugging us for doing what we did.
But it was just small stuff as you can
see, and especially the lawyers letters.
These were always very creative and always
a good basis for a new project I think.
But also at the time there were all these
people coming at you for doing projects
and its not necessary that you call them
art projects it could be anything really,
that is not commercial. Were you just go
like why shouldn't I do it. But all these
things that got thrown at you, were always
really valuable pieces of information on
how the system works. And you could work
with that. And you could work your way
around it, you sometimes may pay a small
legal fine or whatever, but you would be
fine. Obviously that was not true for our
Vote-Auction project which cost us
enormous amounts of money, but it was
worth it. So in about 2006 to 2008 I kind
of noticed, I started doing a project back
then which was called super-enhanced and I
very much noticed that I was paying more
and more attention to laws that were in
place, not that I was thinking that if I
do this project now I would get into
trouble a, b, c and d but it was in the
back of my head. Which is not really
helping when you're trying to freely
create a new project or a thinking space,
you know? As it is now I feel that all
these anti-terror-laws totally make us
come into this kind of cluster where we
start self-censoring ourselves. Most of
all, you see that when you're on Facebook.
And don't tell me you're not on Facebook,
obviously it's a bullshit platform but
still its really interesting. The same is
true for twitter. I mean how many times
will you say fuck on either of them.
You're not going to post that one picture
of that naked butt or the bare-breasted
lady or whatever, because you're like "ok
I have been using this account for a
really long time, I don't want to get
turned off now, because I'm using imagery
now that might be not legal in the
Facebook kind of sense". But this self
censorship is going on in your head. And
it happens online. But as long as it
happens online it would be kind of fine,
you know it's just Facebook. But this
creeps into offline life as well. I'm very
sure and I have noticed that with lots of
people that the conversations you will
have in real life will mirror the ones you
have online. Because you're getting used
to this kind of speak, this Facebook speak
or twitter speak. And it just censors out
lots of stuff. Our strategies in working
are mostly like affirmative. We're not the
ones that use critical approaches, because
most of the time that's very boring. But
we rather use affirmative techniques and
the other one, but then we figured we need
to come up with a new strategy. And that's
when we started to do secret projects,
because I was just getting really sick of
having this thought in my head all the
time of self-censorship and whatever. So
we just started developing projects
anonymously. But we can't publish them
under our own name which is kind of a bug
but that's the way it is. That's enough
for a little theory in the beginning and I
want to show you a little video of a
project that we did a few years ago and we
did this project because this is like one
more thing i think it is really important.
This is new speak, we all hear it all the
time. Like yesterday I read something on
the news, it talked about a dark figure of
badgers in the forest. I figured, how can
there be a dark figure of badgers in the
forest? Are these illegal badgers? Are
these criminal badgers now? And what I
heard also a few years ago, it was
Russian... deep sea... spider crabs that
were moving into Finnish you know sea
space? And I figured you know, what they
don't have any identity on them or what...
what's the problem? you know this, but
this new speak i mean obviously that's a
lot true for you know all the enemy
combatant bullshit and so on. But this
newspeak, it's really interesting if you
listen to it and it's a real problem if
you just go along with it because it
alters your speech it alters your mind. So
we did this project on oil and it's all
about this. I hope this is not too loud.
music starts: Seven Nation Army by The
White Stripesapplause Where's my
presentation? This video was based on a
marketing campaign by Diesel, it was
called "Be Stupid". laughs I don't want
to add to that, but I'm sure some of you
people in here have bought a Diesel
product. So be proud of yourself you are
officially stupid. I was asked to also
present you know some projects that some
of you might like really know but some of
them might not to give you more of a
context of our work. So I'm going to
present Vote Auction. Vote Auction was a
project we did in 2000 and we usually
produce seals for our projects, not logos
because we're surely not dot com. If we're
anything we're an authority, so we need a
seal, right? That gives you authority.
And, wait I need that. So it was in 2000,
it was a platform for buying and selling
you know votes for the presidential
election in 2000. Gore, yeah Gore against
Bush. You know the one that Bush didn't
win but took home anyways. You're laughing
it's sad isn't it, but then maybe I mean
so much good came out of it, so we should
be happy. It'd be a lot colder probably if
Gore had one, right? He's all into the
climate shit and so on. So that was the
website, we originally got it from this
American called James Baumgartner who was
an art student in the states, and he
started doing this as a thesis project.
But he got you know contacted by the FBI
and such pretty early on and he didn't
want to pursue the idea any more. And Art
Mark who is now Yesman by now and sucks
real bad now but was really good then um
brought him over to us and we took over
and made it a bit bigger I guess. And yeah
well basically you could just you know
sign up as a voter and just put your vote
on sale and as one would be interested in
buying a vote you'd only be able to buy
the votes from a you know from a whole
state to make it more easy. And the prices
of votes in different states varied a lot
obviously, we had enormous amounts of
subscribers. I don't know precisely
because we had a randomizing engine in the
back obviously. And um we got into serious
trouble obviously with this project with
any kind of governmental agency. Any OGA
in the states. And always made special
little websites for them with, you know
just IP filtering and they get their own
websites and laughter I remember also
the Germans were in there as well, I
remember Karlsruhe always contacted us on
I mean the server on a Wednesday at about
11. And always searched through the same
pages and it was really easy then I just,
you could just give them something they
really liked as a website and that's just
some DOS software that would download in
the background. And you know stuff like
that that really worked fine. I'm gonna
show you a little video again, because we
got like this feature on CNN for the
project, this is really bad quality
because it's from TV. I'm so sorry.
TV intro music
TV presenter: In just two weeks the
citizens of the United States will elect
their next commander-in-chief. But could
that decision be rerouted over the
internet? A website engineered halfway
around the world is offering to literally
buy your vote! Today on Burden of Proof:
Bidding for ballots. Democracy on the
block.
announcer: This is Burden of Proof.
lizvlx: Just need to interrupt here a few
times. So this was on prime time US CNN.
This was right in the midst of the
elections and we were really lucky that we
got so much news coverage. This was not
because we are so awesome and doing
projects, this was because we just touched
a topic that lots of journalists really
wanted to talk about, but they didn't have
a specific issue. But if you present them
with a specific issue they have something
to talk about. So they did. We got about
like I don't know how many people we
reached about like 200 to 400 million
people. This was like really all over the
place from, I don't know, you know, they
even discussed it in Russia in their
parliament and so on. And we got our you
know service hacked, and yeah Chan and
Reno who was then you know somebody was on
our... And we got sued by so many people
for either, you know, false promise,
consumerism laws, or you know election
fraud. I need to point out that obviously
it's perfectly legal to sell American
votes in Europe.
laughter and applause
But this is also why vote auction is a big
case in the - for lawyers all over the
place. This was one of the first cases
where people really noticed: Oh internet
and national law is just really bad
together, just don't mix, you know. And
you know, they served us court papers onto
our Nokia communicators. Like faxes, like
30 pages, which obviously doesn't fit on a
communicator. Or on the phone, you know. I
need to serve this to you which is an- it
was ridiculous. But still, I mean they
couldn't shut us down because we just had,
we obviously we were aware that if we kept
on doing this project we would get you
know, people and authority would be
getting more and more interested in us. So
we had just this you know- we bought new
domains because it turned up the one
domain, so we put in the new domain which
gives you a new news story. So that was
fine, in the end we were running on an IP
address but it was all out there so it was
fine because we had the CNN coverage so
there was no problem. So we had no terror
laws at the time so we were no terrorists,
we're just doing voter fraud, right? So
this is, I mean we're obviously not doing
it because we're just providing a
platform, I'm not responsible for any
user. That's what dot coms is. You know
and you got to bring democracy and
capitalism closer together, that's what we
were saying. Yeah wait, there I just see
where is, where's where is he... he yeah
that's him. That was one of our first
providers. TV presenter: Which along with
voteauction.com was named as a defendant
in a lawsuit in Chicago. In Los Angeles
we're joined by internet law professor
Stuart Beagle TV presenter 2: And in
Sacramento, California we're joined by...
lizvlx: He is an asshole.
TV presenter 2: William Woods, chief
counsel to the California secretary of
state, where I'm from. And here in
Washington, Melissa Stratton,
constitutional law expert.
lizvlx: That's my favorite picture. I mean
look at that, I mean for me that project
is also a very complicated way to produce
like a video art. You do this whole
project and then it gets filmed by CNN,
right? laughter and applause If you want
to see more of the video, pretty much all
the videos are available on vimeo. If you
go, you know look for the ubermorgen
channel. So because they'll go on for way
too long because it's 45 minutes and we
don't have that much time. Do dee do de
doo, more screenshots of the guys. Yeah
that's the lawsuits. laughter It's a
paper- I started doing paper sculptures
then at the time because what are you
supposed to do with it, right? And um,
it's very expensive you know. This is from
a show we just did at carol fletcher
gallery in you know London. You know,
Oxford Circus, high scale, good shit. But
obviously it's not so much fun at the time
sometimes. But because I come from a
lawyer's family I cannot be bothered
really. laughter
Now on to something completely different.
This is EKMRZ trilogy, it obviously means
e-commerce. I don't like vowels
apparently. And these are three projects.
It's called Google Will Eat Itself, Amazon
Noir, and The Sound of Ebay. Google Will
Eat Itself, maybe some of you know. That's
the seal again. Google release itself is
just a very easy scheme for, I don't know
a problematic network maybe. It's just,
it's all about, we just bought into we
just participated in the google ads
program and made money with that, and with
the money we made we bought Google shares.
Hence Google Will Eat Itself, right? And
we didn't do it on a huge big scale,
because we were not so interested in that
any more after doing stuff like vote
auction. So we just did this more as a
conceptual piece. I think at the scale
that we did it in uh it would have taken
us like something like 300 million years
to buy the whole of Google. But then it
gets, maybe it'll get like real cheap in
the meantime. So who knows, yeah? For this
project also still no terror laws, then
that it wouldn't really be covered by that
anyways. But of course nasty letters from
Google, and we got you know blocked on
Google which is great, you know? I once
got disqualified from a conference, that
was awesome. And then you know that one I
really like. But if you get a lawyer from
Google, a lawyer's letter from Google
that's fine because we all know you can't
talk to google, right? There's no phone
number, you know? You can have, you can
know someone who works at google. But
officially you can't talk to them. So
there's nothing they can do to you really
because they can only send letters, but
not react again because they don't want to
be bothered. So that's fine, so you can
just make a new story out of it. But we
closed the project. We made about I think
like 400˙000€ and it's still sitting
there. It's in a kind of a fund thing and
it's Google to the people. But it's not
doing anything, because money shouldn't be
doing anything. The next one was Amazon
Noir which was basically just using the
look inside the book function of Amazon to
download the whole books. Just search for
lots of terms and then recombine the book.
They look quite measly afterwards but it's
all about the content, who cares? And that
project got kind of interpreted as if we
were focusing on free books and all that
and information for all and we're not
interested in, we're not activists. I'm
maybe an actionist but I'm not an
activist. So I don't have a political
agenda. I don't say that this is good or
this is bad. I just might find some things
interesting. And so we sold the software
to Amazon because they didn't like it
obviously. So we sold this software to
Amazon in the end and made some money with
that. laughter and applause
And last one of that trilogy is called The
Sound of Ebay, and I just really wanted to
do a project with teletext imagery because
teletext is just so great. And my mom
still uses it and. But then my mom used to
be a programmer so that's, I guess that
explains it. So basically it just, this is
a lyrical project. It makes the music with
your user data. And I'm not gonna play the
music, but I'm gonna show the images
because i love them so much. I mean it's
just the best parts of teletext obviously,
I got there's like this, there's one
person who won't talk to me anymore after
I've done that because she thinks it's
porn. laughter
It's really pixels I mean come on. If you
see porn in this shit you're sick. I mean
seriously.
laughter and applause
I'm gonna jump through that because
there's not enough time I think. Oh maybe,
no we got... There's another set of
projects I... we did. This is actually the
ones I like doing most because this is
where I get to do some coding. I love
doing coding in Perl and I will never code
in anything else I think. And we don't
need that ruby shit. And basically this is
also yeah this is the... from IP-NIC. We
learned, with vote auction we learned how
important the seal is, right? Because we
got all these legal letters with lots of
seals right? Texas, Internet Attorney, and
shit like that. And so we got our own seal
with the Internet Partnership for No
Internet Content. Also sometimes we will
get asked by you know, different...
entities, companies and whatever like you
know you do fake banners and shit like
that and I wanna. They want you to take it
offline and usually when you talk to big
companies and you want them to do
something they tell you: Um I'm not sure,
I'm not the right person to talk to. They
just send you to someone else and never
get solved. So we just mirrored that. And
so whenever someone asks us to take some
information off our servers, I say you
know, you need to speak to a different
department. And because that's real
complicated I made this form. And it's the
universal content and/or domain removal
form. It's very complicated, this was not
what it was in the beginning. And it was
you know it's like when you transfer a
domain. It's hard, right? You need to sign
all that and fax it and not with all of
them, but some of them. And you just need
to put lots of bureaucratic barriers in
there, right? You still got to think you
really want to get the shit solved, right?
You do. But there's just so much paperwork
that you got to fill out. Not you but the
other people who want to get the stuff
offline. And all the departments... The
shit never gets solved. And then I coded
it and basically it just works like that
you can just put in any domain and it just
creates a legal document and that you it's
fine you know we have so many the wording
is just fine. And like a preliminary, you
know injunction or whatever and then you
just send it out. We didn't automize it,
because we didn't want to be the ones to
blame in the end again. We figured the
user can send it out by themselves, you
know? We're not going to be the clowns,
yeah? And take on your own responsibility,
right? And you just send it out, and if
you have a legal document where it says
you know this domain I don't know i'm so
cool dot com is supposed to be taken
offline, because they're engaging in child
pornography. I guess lots of providers
will take it offline, in the beginning not
to do anything wrong. So this worked
really well and it's... again I think it's
important to use stuff that comes back to
you. In form of legal papers in this
context, to make something else out of it.
And also it just cuts out the middleman
again. You don't need a lawyer, you don't
need a court, you just need your own court
papers and that's fine. The next one I did
was the Bank Statement Generator. It's a
weird account statement, and it's a
generator that works like that, you just
enter a starting figure and you pretty
much and you enter some other shit and
your name and blah and so on. And then you
enter how you want to feel when you get
the statement. You know, pretty much
everyone has the same deductions right?
You go to H&M and you do some Amazon and
so on. And yeah I don't think you can ever
really get high numbers but you know you
just from suicidal to total mania that's
what you can kind of decide for yourself,
how you want to feel. I got that because
we were really broke at the time and I
remember I was sitting at home I got open
letters and one letter from the bank and
it said like oh you're in debt. And I felt
really bad. And then I figured why am I
feeling bad because of ink on paper? This
is really crazy, and it's um it's so this
is always what I say: This is just pixels
on screen and the other one's just ink on
paper. Especially because we're not
talking about personal letters, we're
talking about letters, they get sent out
by servers that are signed by people. You
can't talk to a person about them. So
they're not a letter, that's not what
constitutes a letter. This is fucking
newspeak. So if you react to anything that
gets sent to you by a server with an
emotional reaction, something's wrong with
you, you know?
applause
So this is, I put this in here because my
daughter really really loves it. It's
Clickistan. Clickistan, I put it also, put
it in there because we developed this
project for the Whitney Museum of American
Art. And it was a bit of a hassle, it's
Clickistan so it's like a Javascript click
game. And I just used lots of stuff that I
already had and you know Javascripted it
around, it's all weird and stuff. But we
couldn't release it right away because
they were concerned about the wording. And
they were concerned about the words. I
couldn't use the words muslim,
fundamentalist, and terror. And I had not,
I had not put them in any special you know
context, these words. Like, there was this
one screen where it said are you allergic
vegan muslim or i don't know whatever. And
you just, and it's clearly not a political
project but there was no way they would
release the project with these words in
it. So I figured okay I don't... I'm
really bad with getting censored, so
that's not cool. So I proposed to them, if
it were okay with them if we just took
these words out and instead put in the
word you know variations of the word
censor. And they were like oh that's fine.
laughter
I thought "no not really, but I'll go
ahead." So that's yeah it was fucking
crazy. I'll show you the video, it's an
online game but you're not gonna play it
now. But you can watch the video.
repeated mouse clicks
chiptune music
applause
Okay. Well this is like a small project we
did, I don't know it feels like at least
10 years ago. And this is what we call a
web painting. Basically, I mean you can
read a bit for yourself.
laughter and applause
We just took the text and pretty much
everything else from a website called Iris
scan obviously. And just, just exchanged
the words, to make the content and the
message a bit more clear I guess. We have
not used this in a performative way yet,
but if we could ever find a pardon to do
that I would gladly set it up on, you know
I don't know, a conference you know? An
airport? And just see you know if people
are gonna participate. You know it's just
a small moment. You can go to your own
private room if you want to. By the way
that's what you call uh affirmative
approach, right? Versus critical... And
Alanohof, the alano ranch. That's... this
is this really small project we did a few
years ago. It's just a regular fake site,
right? And it's about this fake farm into
role that produces organic meat from these
hounds. It's all very well and we just
produced it for this small you know
cultural association, a club in Tirol. And
she said can you do something that will
you know give us our you know a title page
on our you know tyrolean newspaper? And I
mean that's, it's easy it's fun. But it's
really just a fun project, right? We got
into so much trouble because of this
project.
applause
We have you know like we had five
different times and you were there right
we had police standing in front of our
doors at home right? It's like Sunday
evening, it's Sunday evening I'm by myself
because my partner just went to Sofia for
whatever he always does there. And you
know, knock on the door and it's these two
police guys they're like oh mumbles I
like look at them, go like you're not here
for Alano, are you? And they're like:
yeah. And I'm like, what the hell? You
know it's been like, four years since we
did the project and they're still coming.
I don't know it's because of the dogs you
know don't do anything. It's not a cat,
you know? We know don't... laughter and
applause I don't understand that, don't
say anything mean about cats on the
internet, yeah. laughter We all bow our
heads to the gods, right? But now
basically it was also a newspaper that got
behind it and there was some you know dog
hating forum that totally loved the site.
But I mean seriously, I mean they made
police people drive to the About address
we put on the on the website. And drive
there and there was like this local police
guy who knew up front that there was no
farm there. And we read all the card
papers and so on it says like oh i went
there and there's no farm and no one
around knows it. We had... but the thing
was we had to pay money for that because
there was no imprint on the website in the
beginning. And this is actually you
know... this was not a problem early on
because basically this means I mean this
is a, it's a fake site, you know? If
police contact you and you're like no
we're artists, this is a fake side they're
like fine. And the first two police people
that contacted us, they were also okay
that's fine yeah. Actually it's
interesting kind of a book and so on. But
you know laws change over time. And now,
you know they really made us put an
imprint in there, otherwise you know we
could have you know paid as much as
20˙000€. And they were like if you put the
imprint in now, you only pay like 200. And
we're like we're not paying 20˙000€ for a
freaking dog, obviously not. For you know
we paid more than 20˙000€ for you know
doing the whole vote auction bullshit, but
not for a dog, you know? So that's all you
know, judicial stuff you know? See? It's a
yeah "Tötung von gesunden Hunden", killing
you know healthy dogs. We should have put
up that we're only killing sick dogs.
laughter Mea culpa, yeah. So now on to
something a lot more serious. This is a
project that's very close to my heart.
It's called Superenhanced. And started
doing this in about 2006 to 2008. And
actually I want to, this is important for
me for various reasons. Also because of
the talk that's going on right now
obviously all the time. We're all being
listened to and so on and I don't
understand how anyone could not have known
that. I seriously don't. Because we all
know that anything that's technically
possible will be done. We know that from
ourselves, even if it's only very often
only very little because we're technical
incapable, yeah? But there was something
else on the agenda and that was you know
the issues of enhanced interrogation,
Torture Taxis, super max prisons in the
states. And I personally don't really
understand, I mean I do understand, but I
still don't understand why there's this
huge uproar now about you know the NSA
bullshit, but there was never any of that
big upper already really got to people
being imprisoned. And this is also you
know, this is where real terror laws
started happening, right? And this is and,
no nothing. I didn't hear anything and we
did this project. And one part of the
project is a this is just image material
from our research. I did like half a year
of research on this project. And then I
programmed the Superenhanced generator
together with a friend of mine. And it's
basically an interrogation software.
Because it's always the problem in
interrogations who's to fucking blame if
anything goes wrong? So we did a software,
so the software is to blame, right? So you
can only follow your orders, and
everything it's fine. So basically it just
runs you through and if you don't answer
properly you get into trouble. So that's
not fun, I know, I'm so sorry. We used
this in a few performances, in Palestine I
think. Yeah that's right we went to Israel
and went to Palestine and I really gotta
say the one, the performance in Israel
didn't work out. Because the people we got
as volunteers, they just totally fucking
chickened out. I mean it was really just
like you know, what do you do in the
beginning? Like you throw a bit of water
into people's faces or whatever? As an
enhancement rate and they're just
chickened out. Versus the people in
Ramallah they were fine because they were
all really experienced. laughter No
seriously there was a hundred percent of
all the people that were you know there
for our talk had experience in being
detained. I mean really detained, not
just, you know? And about 50% had been
more than once. So this is the system
graph of the generator. And more images,
sorry to spoil your party. And, wait...
We're looking for a specific image. Oh
that's, if you want to read a good book
this is really close to my heart now. Read
this book by Murad Kurnaz. Just read it.
It might not be a nice christmas present
but use it for easter time somebody got
nailed on a cross there. so that's fine
applause We worked together with this
guy, Chris Arendt who was a guard in
Guantanamo. And he lived with us for two
months. You know, so we could do more
research and talk and block. Get the
hands-on approach, that's what we like.
And he's kind of okay now. He was in a
really bad state then. But I don't feel
bad for him because I feel bad for the
victim not for the perpetrator. I'm sorry
Chris, he knows that. That's a set of
photographs we did with our kids. People
find it offensive. Billy always laughs
about it, right? Stop laughing Billy.
That's her little sister Lola. That's, we
don't need that. That's a grown-up person.
And that's a funny thing too. I mean,
these pictures I found on the back up of
my iPhone and I had never seen those
pictures before. I had not, I mean I know
my research, I had not seen those pictures
before. And when I had to you know sift
through my backup I found all these
pictures of Guantanamo courtrooms. I found
that really strange, but it was very you
know helpful. So this is, there's more to
show obviously, but there's not so much
time. There's just like one thing I want
to say before we kind of end this and
it's: If we always talk about these issues
now of privacy and so on, please bear in
mind that this is a first world problem.
The southern hemisphere does not suffer
from you know being spied on all the time.
They suffer from not getting any fucking
attention. So just bear that in mind, that
it's kind of a luxury problem that needs
to be discussed obviously. Second forget
crypto because crypto is elitist. I'm not
saying don't do it at all obviously, it's
something that yorman(?) has to pursue.
But if you try to find a solution for the
situation now it's not going to be crypto
because nobody can fucking use it.
inaudible interjection Okay? And then,
to all these engineers of the internet,
all the sysadmins with so much power and
lots of, you know, intelligence very
often, lots of brain, but so little
education. So you know, so little amount
of books have you ever read. So little
knowledge and so much responsibility.
Please, read a book. Read a motherfucking
book. I just applause Maybe not the
"Allgemeinbildung for dummies" that I just
saw on the train last week, but something
like that, okay? We need to close now, I
mean we were running a bit late with
starting it, but how much more time do we
have? Yeah so um I'd rather stop now and
we have time for some Q&A, what do you
think about that? I'm not going to run a
vote on it.
Herald: Okay for any question there is...
just cue on the microphones in the room.
Question: Hi...?
lizvlx: Hi!
Q: Okay hi, you seem to like confrontation
so mine is what's your point?
applause
lizvlx: You just asked me again, do you
think that's funny? That's the same
question again. There's no point in a
confrontation. I'm not the confrontation
the fucking terror law is the
confrontation. I'm just mirroring that
shit. If you got a problem with that, then
you're not doing anything. And you don't
need to do anything i'm not telling you
what to do what, not at all you know. I'm
just doing the stuff that I think makes my
life more enjoyable.
Herald: Number two.
Q: Hi, I wasn't going to say anything but
the last few words provoked me. On behalf
of people that I know who don't live in
the first world, surveillance is a
problem. And if you think that it isn't,
you're wrong. sporadic clapping
lizvlx: Well I spend lots of time in
Africa and Near East. Most of all in
Africa. And I know surveillance is not an
issue in a slum. It's just not, because
nobody even knows that you're alive. So
you cannot be surveilled. No, they really
have issues of visibility. And I know
intellectually, of course. And so on, yes
I know where you're coming from. But
still, I mean. I don't know how many times
you're in Africa, but last time I checked,
not really, no I.
Q: I don't work in Africa, I work in the
Americas, but um I think it's a good point
for a discussion but i don't think that
it's helpful to state to make a broad
statement like that in this kind of
environment where you have this stage. And
we certainly would really like to talk to
you more about that. Because it's not good
to say. It's not like internet
surveillance is not necessarily a problem.
But surveillance is a problem. On the
street, surveillance is a problem, having
people outside of your house watching you
24 hours a day is a problem.
lizvlx: No we don't want to, that's not
what I mean, obviously. Surveillance it's
not a problem it's just ugly bullshit that
no one needs. It's just idiotic, you know?
It just makes sense and it no obviously.
But there is no street surveillance in
most of Africa, you know? So it's not it's
a different world there and I just want
you...
Q: Well not the first world is bigger than
Africa as well, you said the southern
hemisphere...
lizvlx: Well we yeah we I get to a point,
but I was making a different point.
Q: Okay.
Herald: Back to one.
Q: Hello? You talked about uh self-
censorship.
lizvlx: Yeah.
Q: Is there a connection to pure
reflection, and... between self-censorship
and reflection so what is reflection to
you, and what is self-censorship?
lizvlx: Well, especially when it comes to
Facebook you know, right when you type in
your message it already gets recorded.
Even if you delete it, right? So that's
right the case of you're just self-
reflecting. But they get it then you self-
censor yourself and then still... So it's
because it gets all very fuzzy I think.
And I think the fuzziness is kind of an
issue right there. Because if you just
censor yourself because you don't want to
say that that's fine. But if you don't
want to say it because of some other
implications that will happen that are
fucking crazy, then you have a real issue,
I think.
Q: Thank you.
lizvlx: welcome
Herald: Three now.
Q: Yeah um
lizvlx: hi:
Q: I see art as being something on the
fringe and I think that's what you're
doing. But I'm interested in what you,
what you think will happen when this will
get internalized. I think you see my
point. So you know, art is always
something like exploratory, something kind
of out there. And eventually it becomes
mainstream. I mean it takes time, but it
will become mainstream. So what do you
think will happen when this becomes
mainstream?
lizvlx: Well I only know, I mean, I see
lots of our work in the context of
Viennese Actionism and you know that was
in the 60s when it just smeared each other
up with you know any kind of body fluids
and so on. And that's still not really
mainstream in a way. So I can't go back to
any historical parallel really.
Q: I don't think there's any historical
parallel. I think this is always new.
lizvlx: But I guess it just in a way it
becomes more mainstream because it gets
old, you know? It's like an old computer
with the old website, for example.
Q: So it never really gets internalized in
a certain sense?
lizvlx: It might not, which I really like,
yeah.
Q: Weird stuff, thanks.
lizvlx: Yeah, you're welcome. good
question!
Herald: There is time for one last
question, which is to the guy in the
microphone one.
Q: Hi I have a follow-up.
lizvlx: hey
Q: The first thing is concerning the
surveillance in the first world. I mean if
you're in Africa often too, or often. I
mean how many people there have mobile
phones and will have in the next years and
what will they do with it. That's actually
my question and i think that's why i don't
think this first world third world thing i
don't think that works at all. Because our
aim is to make one world, and in this one
world we all will have this problem. And
the second question is how does like
animal rights law abuse how does that
somehow refer to anti-terrorist laws.
lizvlx: Well okay first question. Lots of
people have phones in Africa. Extremely,
an enormous amount. Because they use it
for payment. They don't use it for
internet surfing. Because that's not
possible. So it's a totally different
usage. So surveillance comes in from a
totally different aspect. So you can't
make these people profiles out of their
behavior. It's just a really different
world. If you want to make it one world
that's great, but it's not there yet. So
it doesn't make sense I think to impose
our first world scenarios onto theirs.
Because it's not the situation yet, you
know? But at least that's also what i get
from you know talking to people from
Africa. That's one thing and the second
one, how does that correlate with
antiterrorist? Because it doesn't matter
to them any more. Because if they want to
take your website offline or whatever
you're doing they want to stop it, they
will find some kind of aspect in any kind
of law business, they'll find and then
they'll get at you. And also I mean
obviously when it comes to animal rights,
you're quite quickly in a terrorist scheme
because it's like the anti-organized
crime. There was quite a bunch of
activists incarcerated in Austria because
of animal rights activism. So actually
that's really close together. What you
wouldn't think but it actually is by now.
Um we have yeah if you can we have a 30
seconds question from the Signal guy up
there.
Signal Angel: That's fine so we had a lot
of questions on IRC on why did you put
your daughter on stage? laughter
lizvlx: Why is my daughter on stage?
Because she likes being with me. Yeah it's
very easy. It's a family business
situation. I asked her if she wanted to be
in the audience or up on stage with me
she's opted for the stage version.