Against the hegemony of innovation, they invite citizens to "bite the machine", reopen the black boxes, regain control, transform the technical imagination. Their different approaches—under-surveillance, tactical media, speculative design, statactivism, media archeology—explore and experiment with machine hardware, behind the scenes of artificial intelligence, surveillance algorithms, facial recognition, data visualization.
These acts of digital disobedience deploy antidots against the platform governmentality and sovereignty (GAFAM). They re-inscribe the history of code, encryption and calculation in a critique of contemporary culture and re-open avenues for citizen emancipation.
"Doing a work of hacking" here covers social and political issues as much as aesthetic ones: reflexivity (criticism), autonomy, independence, reappropriation of material cultures (against obsolescence and against the opacity of systems). The question of diversion is central to it, humor and parody occupy a prominent place.
By proposing to "think through art", the book addresses different figures of this digital disobedience through the works of several international artists:
Trevor Paglen (USA),
Paolo Cirio (Italy, USA),
Julien Prévieux, Benjamin Gaulon, Christophe Bruno,
Samuel Bianchini (France),
Bill Vorn (Canada), Disnovation.org (France, Poland, Russia), HeHe (France, Germany, United Kingdom).
Jean-Paul Fourmentraux, socio-anthropologist (PhD) and art critic (AICA), is a professor at the University of Aix-Marseille and a member of the Norbert Elias Center at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). He is the author of several books on digital (counter-)cultures.
