Hackitectura is a group of architects, artists, computer specialists and activists founded by José Pérez de Lama, Sergio Moreno and Pablo de Soto in 1999. Their practice uses new technologies to create temporary spaces that can escape the formal structures of control and surveillance which are regulated by technological and political means in contemporary society. Inspired by hacker culture, they use free software and communication technologies to subvert established power structures through bottom-up organisation and by creating alternative connections between disparate spaces. The group often works collaboratively, carrying out research into the effects of communication and technology on physical spaces, the formation of social networks and how these can be put to work for an activist agenda.
They have collaborated with Indymedia Estrecho on mapping and creating links across the Straits of Gibraltar or Madiaq, the highly militarised zone that is the shortest distance between Africa and Europe. As part of a series of projects they established a network link that became a free public interface between the two continents creating an 'alternative cross-border communication space', a counter-strategy to the increasing surveillance and security regimes of the border. The project also included a series of regular events that took place on either side of the straits. Called Fada'iat or 'through spaces' the events included workshops, actions, and seminars bringing together migration, labour rights, gender and communication activists, political theorists, hackers, union organisers, architects and artists in a temporary media-lab that could become a permanent public interface between Tarifa and Tangiers. Combined with direct actions against the detention of migrants, for a time the event created a network of communication, action and solidarity between the two continents.
Helge Mooshammer and Peter Mörtenböck, 'Pablo de Soto [Interview]', in Networked Cultures: Parallel Architectures and the Politics of Space (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008), pp. 135-137.
Observatorio Tecnológico del Estrecho, Fadaiat: Freedom of Movement - Freedom of Knowledge, 2006 http://fadaiat.net/ [accessed 2 February 2010].
José Pérez de Lama, 'Hacking in public! From DIY Geopolitics to Urban Space', AA School of Architecture - Lectures Online, 2009, http://www.aaschool.ac.uk//VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=1123 [accessed 1 March 2010].
"Making a cartography of an "Other‑territory"-a border zone of
high strategic importance co‑inhabited by social processes of great
intensity and violence-become a necessary tool to orient ourselves
and our practices/praxis."
- Observatorio Tecnológico del Estrecho, Fadaiat: Freedom of
Movement - Freedom of Knowledge, 2006 http://fadaiat.net/
"Transacciones/Fada'íat, eventually, was a foundational
festival, in the anthropological and original sense of the term;
festival as a form of knowledge, a form of producing new
subjectivity, imaginaries, worlds. It was like a rite presenting
the new myths of origin of the multitude in the Straits of
Gibraltar; - which is, indeed, a place that is not isolated from
the world, but a central node in the global fight between Empire
and the multitude...
"
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http://mcs.hackitectura.net/tiki-index.php?page=txt_AcousticSpace
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