Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Date September 2007 / Category News
The festival 'Nieuwe Grond: the Artist as Opinion Leader' features next a series of interesting lectures and performances an event with the notorious Yes Men. The Yes Men have infiltrated the public communication of corporate companies as Exxon, Halliburton, and Dow Chemicals, and deliver lectures as representatives of the World Trade Organisation. Their pranks involve a WTO call for legalizing slavery, a Dow Chemical press release pretending to pay appropriate compensation for the victims of the scandalous Bophal accident in 1984, and a call for replacing the democratic voting system through selling the votes to the highest bidder. Besides the lecture 'Roping and Branding: Riding the Corporate Bull with the Yes Men' the event features the documentary 'The Yes Men'.
Festival, Nieuwe Grond: The Artist as Opinion Leader,
September 27th - 30th, Landgoed De Horst, Driebergen (NL)
Lecture, Roping and Branding: Riding the Corporate Bull with the Yes Men,
Saturday 27th September, 17:30-19:30
Tags Event
Date September 2007 / Category Publications
with Hans Bernhard: Subversion ist Schnellbeton. Zur Ambivalenz des Subversiven in Medienproduktionen, in Thomas Ernst, Patricia Gozalbez Cantó, Sebastian Richter, Nadja Sennewald, Julia Tieke (eds),
SUBversionen. Zum Verhältnis von Politik und Ästhetik in der Gegenwart. Bielefeld: transcript, 2008, pp. 63-81 .
Tags Article Communication German
Date September 2007 / Category News
The recent trend in Germany towards surveillance is threatening civil rights seriously. The right wing minister for Inner Affairs even requires clandestine online searching of personal computers next to wiretapping, and data retention. This would be similar to house searches without even notifying the occupants. The constitutional legality does not approve the practice why CDU and CSU politicians currently try to change the laws. The plans for data retention of all citizen's Internet traffic, phone calls, e-mails and even the logging of geographical location in relation to mobile phone communication will be in effect soon. A growing group of concerned citizens is organizing actions for defending what is left of our civil rights.
Date September 2007 / Category Publications
with Bernhard Rieder: Beyond Engineering. Software Design as Bridge over the Culture/Technology Dichotomy, in: Pieter E. Vermaas, Peter Kroes, Andrew Light, and Steven A. Moore (eds.), Philosophy and Design: From Engineering to Architecture, Dordrecht: Springer, 2008, pp. 152-164.