news
MAK Wien
1 October 2024, 19h- Clay PCB, an artistic work by Patrícia J. Reis and Stefanie Wuschitz. Their work raises important questions regarding ecofeminism, contemporary design, and the use of technology and its raw materials.
THE FORMAT CONVERSATION PIECES
We need to talk! In the art education format Conversation Pieces we will speak with artists, activists, scientists, and personalities from various fields about select objects from the MAK Collection. Conversation Pieces is dedicated to themes like diversity, feminism, participation or loneliness, symbiotic bodies, racism in collections, planet care, and much more. We use the MAK as a polyphonic place for the exchange of ideas and to engage in various sociopolitical discourses and problems that enable new perspectives on an extraordinary collection. Conversation Pieces can be understood as an impetus to make widespread pictorial worlds and narratives visible and to critically question them by talking about them together.
PRICE
In addition to the event fee, a museum ticket (admission ticket, MAK Annual Pass, Kulturpass, etc.) is required to attend the event. Use the online booking tool for reduced admission, or take advantage of the new Conversation Piece 2024 subscription.
Online Presale
€ 12 (incl. admission to the MAK)
€ 5 (if admission to the museum if free, eg with MAK Annual ticket)
BUY TICKETS HERE
We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded the Nomination Prize in this year's S+T+ARTS Prize by Ars Electronica!
Our project, "Clay PCB: Eco-Feminist Decolonial Hardware," is a key artistic outcome of our PEEK Project (AR580) "Feminist Hacking: Building Circuits as an Artistic Practice," hosted by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
"Clay PCB: Eco-Feminist Decolonial Hardware" comprises two projects:
The Clay PCB: This microcontroller board is made exclusively from urban mined electronic components and features a base of wild local clay, consciously collected from the Austrian forest and fired in a bonfire. The project is entirely open source, with all tutorials and programs available for download on the project website.
The Ethical Hardware Kit: This artistic "survival kit" envisions a future where crucial resources for hardware production are alarmingly scarce. It includes a collection of tools, materials, and detailed instructions designed to empower feminist hacking practices, even in challenging times.
These speculative art and design projects aim to challenge conventional thinking, pushing us to explore innovative alternatives to the prevailing toxicity and exploitation associated with conflict materials essential to hardware manufacturing in a creative and artistic way. In doing so, we aim to transcend traditional boundaries and contribute to a more sustainable and ethical future for hardware production.
Play with Clay PCB
WORKSHOP at AMRO24 Arts meet Radical, Linz by Patrícia J. Reis & Sefanie Wuschitz
Date | 11.5.24 - 11h-14
Venue| @Servus Clubraum
It is an open secret that the hardware in our smart devices contains not only plastics but also conflict minerals such as tungsten, tin, tantalum, silver and gold. The Clay PCB Investigates alternative hardware from locally sourced materials, so-called ethical hardware, to develop and speculate upon renewable practices for the benefit of both nature and humans. We explored different materials, sentient, low-impact, non-toxic, fair traded, recycled and urban mined means of production. The Clay PCB challenges the common PCB (printed circuit board) economies in an artistic, creative, positive and responsible way applying feminist hacking as an artistic methodology and critical framework. The Clay PCB is a PCB board made of natural clay, collected in Burgenland (At) and fired according to ancient craft techniques in a open wood fire. The conductive tracks of the circuit use recycled silver and all the components are recycled from old electronics. The PCB works as a pre-programmed microcontroller (such as the Arduino) empowering artists and creatives to make their own artworks following our feminist hardware minimum standards: Without mining in harmful ways; Environmentally friendly; Under fair working conditions; Manufactured from ubiquitously available materials; Without generating e-wast; Empowering care and repair for all; Our project is totally open sourced and further instructions for Programming and soldering the components, 3D printing files, code can be found in our GitHub https://github.com/FeministHardware/Making-PCBs-from-natural-clay
During the workshop, participants will be guided through each step required to construct their own Clay PCB. Through a combination of presentation and hands-on activities, we will explore the creative potential of these boards for making interactive art. Additionally, we'll engage in speculative and practical exercises and experimentation with digital and analog inputs and outputs that can be connected to our Clay PCB boards.
It is an open secret that the hardware in our smart devices contains not only plastics but also conflict minerals such as tungsten, tin, tantalum, silver and gold. The Clay PCB Investigates alternative hardware from locally sourced materials, so-called ethical hardware, to develop and speculate upon renewable practices for the benefit of both nature and humans. We explored different materials, sentient, low-impact, non-toxic, fair traded, recycled and urban mined means of production. The Clay PCB challenges the common PCB (printed circuit board) economies in an artistic, creative, positive and responsible way applying feminist hacking as an artistic methodology and critical framework. The Clay PCB is a PCB board made of natural clay, collected in Burgenland (At) and fired according to ancient craft techniques in a open wood fire. The conductive tracks of the circuit use recycled silver and all the components are recycled from old electronics. The PCB works as a pre-programmed microcontroller (such as the Arduino) empowering artists and creatives to make their own artworks following our feminist hardware minimum standards: Without mining in harmful ways; Environmentally friendly; Under fair working conditions; Manufactured from ubiquitously available materials; Without generating e-wast; Empowering care and repair for all; Our project is totally open sourced and further instructions for Programming and soldering the components, 3D printing files, code can be found in our GitHub https://github.com/FeministHardware/Making-PCBs-from-natural-clay
During the workshop, participants will be guided through each step required to construct their own Clay PCB. Through a combination of presentation and hands-on activities, we will explore the creative potential of these boards for making interactive art. Additionally, we'll engage in speculative and practical exercises and experimentation with digital and analog inputs and outputs that can be connected to our Clay PCB boards.
Feminist Hardware: Making Printed Circuit Boards with Natural Clay
WORKSHOP at Hangar, Barcelona by Patrícia J. Reis & Sefanie Wuschitz
Date | 18.10 - 20.10.2023
Venue | Hangar, Barcelona
It is an open secret that the hardware in our smart devices contains not only plastics but also conflict minerals such as tungsten, tin, tantalum, silver and gold. Hence, technology is not neutral. In this workshop, given by Patrícia J. Reis (PT/AT) & Stefanie Wuschitz (AT), we investigate alternative hardware from locally sourced materials, so-called ethical hardware, to develop and speculate upon renewable practices for the benefit of both nature and humans.
During the workshop we will make Printed Circuit Boards with natural clay using recycled silver as main electrical conductors. We will model the boards, paint the circuit and fire it in an open fire at Hangar. On our last day participants will solder all electronic components and test our circuit for an interactive microcontroller board that can control digital and analogue sensors as inputs and speakers, leds and motors as outputs. The final boards will be shown in a public presentation on the last day and can be taken home by the participants by the end of the event.
This workshop is part of the “Fem_Lab exchange Catalonia-Austria” project, a collaboration between Mz* Baltazar’s Lab and Hangar, supported by the Delegation of the Government of Catalonia to Central Europe and the Ramon Llull Institute.
Schedule
Wednesday, October 18th from 10 am to 3 pm
— Project Introduction
— Modelling the clay
— Paint the circuits
Thursday, October 19th from 10 am to 3 pm
— Firing the clay
— Soldering electronics
Requirements: No previous knowledge required.
If you have but you mustn’t:
— Clay modeling tools (dough roller), thin brushes, old plastic/metals bowls, old yogurt cups, and sandpaper
— Gloves, Apron or working clothes
— Old electronics such as: old Arduino Atmegas, magnets, Schottkydiodes, resistors, capacitors, leds, LDRS, DC motors
Practical information
Days: October 18 & 19
Time: from 10 am to 3 pm
Place: Sala Polivalent
Language: English
Limited to 12 participants.
Free of charge. Prior registration is required via this link.
Patrícia J. Reis & Stefanie Wuschitz are both media artists and researchers based in Vienna (AT) holding a post-doc position at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, as the main researchers of the project FEMINIST HACKING: BUILDING CIRCUITS AS AN ARTISTIC PRACTICE – an international art-based research project, which proposes a strategy and method for empathic, eco-sentient, de-colonial and anti-racist for hardware and art making. Feminist hacking involves an intensive knowledge-sharing process, through workshops and other forms of exchange and is financed by FWF – Austrian Science Fund | PEEK (AR580) Stefanie Wuschitz funded Mz* Baltazar’s Lab – A feminist Hackerspace and artists runned space based in Vienna. Patrícia J. Reis joined the collective in 2013.
Free of charge. Prior registration is required via this link
or visit Hangar
Images: Janine Schranz
SALON OF OPEN SECRETS - SOS: “NEW MATERIALISM, FEMINIST PRACTICES”
Experiences in progress by Patrícia J. Reis, Stefanie Wuschitz, Taguhi Torosyan 2021
with Karin Reisinger, Patricia J. Reis, Taguhi Torosyan, Stefanie Wuschitz, Barbara Huber and Karina Jarrett
Date | 10.03.2021, 5.00 p.m.
Venue | Online
Event within the Frame of 100 years of Admitting Women to Study at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
SOS stands for Salon of Open Secrets*. Now what does that mean?
What are Open Secrets? The elephants in the room? Gossip? Publicly censored and stigmatised topics? Everything at the same time, but not exclusively. We define Open Secrets as a very situated niche of embodied experiences, know-hows and fun – of being female*, of bending binaries with/through/in art, technologies, engineering and materials science and of connecting to each other in the most unexpected and life-assuring ways.
SOS is a virtual reenactment of our cozy hackerspace studio/gallery. It is a place, a conversation, happening and relationship. Our Salon wants to reconnect to all of you out there making and creating, succeeding and failing to do things and to think with things. With those who manage to stay fascinated with the promise that technologies always held: to create a better and more liveable future for all.
*Format: Each month, we will be holding an open online conversation with an artist, feminist, hacker, maker, scientist on the existing challenges and their solutions – weaving an interconnected web of materials, components, ecologies, economies, labor, hardware, geographies, ethics and politics of becoming in our more than human world.
www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org
www.feministhacking.org
Karin Reisinger – feministische Ökologien
Registration:
fgd@akbild.ac.at
Event within the Frame of 100 years of Admitting Women to Study at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
SOS stands for Salon of Open Secrets*. Now what does that mean?
What are Open Secrets? The elephants in the room? Gossip? Publicly censored and stigmatised topics? Everything at the same time, but not exclusively. We define Open Secrets as a very situated niche of embodied experiences, know-hows and fun – of being female*, of bending binaries with/through/in art, technologies, engineering and materials science and of connecting to each other in the most unexpected and life-assuring ways.
SOS is a virtual reenactment of our cozy hackerspace studio/gallery. It is a place, a conversation, happening and relationship. Our Salon wants to reconnect to all of you out there making and creating, succeeding and failing to do things and to think with things. With those who manage to stay fascinated with the promise that technologies always held: to create a better and more liveable future for all.
*Format: Each month, we will be holding an open online conversation with an artist, feminist, hacker, maker, scientist on the existing challenges and their solutions – weaving an interconnected web of materials, components, ecologies, economies, labor, hardware, geographies, ethics and politics of becoming in our more than human world.
www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org
www.feministhacking.org
Karin Reisinger – feministische Ökologien
Registration:
fgd@akbild.ac.at