The internet is the world's largest coal-powered machine. How we can accelerate a transition of internet infrastructure off of fossil fuels by 2030? How might we build bridges with other social movements advocating for just transitions? What are the narratives we can shift and uplift to influence policy and practitioners towards ore sustainable and equitable solarpunk visions?

This workshop will be interactive and center the perspectives of its participants. These conversations emerge from and inform a larger networked exploration of these issues alongside groups like the Green Screen funders coalition on digital rights and climate justice and with Branch Magazine from the Green Web Foundation.

Structure a conversation around on of their cases where they want to tackle an algorithmic program that targets youth and that seriously stigmatizes these youth and their community.

We have enough legal arguments and strategies, but if we really want to fight for these youngsters and their community: how do we make sure we really fight in their interests? How do we make sure this really is their case that reflects their cause and their struggle and how can we make sure a 'win' is also perceived as a win for and by them?

Neom realities is a conversation between a presenter and the audience about "the Line of Saudi Arabia" that is currently being constructed fully embracing and integrating the "green" authoritarian future. Described as a place with no gas emission and fully powered by renewable energy, it promises to its citizens more time to spend "with their loved ones" in a "perfect climate all year around." Underpinning all of these "green revolutionary cocooning places of joy" is surveillance assemblage and platformization logic. This conversation seeks to propel a dialogue about the opportunities, spaces, and hopes of digital and environmental activists in thinking and living in and with Neoma realities.

As of 2022, the urgency of the climate crisis is well documented, yet clear and drastic global action to redress harms by the main contributors, and mitigate further damage, is severely lacking. The internet and digital technologies have a demonstrable impact on the environment. These range from extraction of critical raw materials and natural resources, the extraction of land from under-resourced and racialized communities, to the extractive economic technology business model which undermines the climate and environmental justice movements.

Brainstorming what are our yesses. How do we create sustainable infrastructure that are inherently polluting.

In conversation with Narmine ABOU BAKARI - Circular Tech Economy campaigner of the Greens/EFA in the European Parliament.

The Right to repair is more than just a consumer right. It’s also a pathway to cutting on ever growing material consumption of rare metals and safeguarding resource ownership and protecting human rights from corporate abuses.

This workshop is a conversation on how the Right to repair represents a win for privacy, sustainability and human rights.

By raising awareness of the environmental impacts of digital technologies, the workshop seeks to provide participants with accurate, up-to-date information, enabling them to shape the current debate on the importance of mitigating the environmental impacts of digital technologies through repair and refurbishment. Participants are encouraged to promote the study with their audience and contribute to the campaign held by the Greens/EFA and its main allies in the EU.

Open discussion about the movie on mass surveillance that premiered the evening before at the BELDOCS International Documentary Film Festival.

Mass biometric surveillance is a critical challenge for rights and freedoms in our streets, squares, and other public spaces. The installation of advanced CCTV surveillance systems using facial recognition and behaviour analysis present a turning point for any society. The discussion will provide aspects of the battle against mass biometric surveillance from the perspective of France and Serbia, rounded off with a wider European context through campaigns such as Reclaim Your Face.

Since the early 2000s, three new media collectives from Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Novi Sad have been pioneering and introducing critical cultural, educational, and technology programs. These initiatives have created the invisible regional cultural and activist backbone that has shaped many of the critical media and technology perspectives that we have today in the region. From early net-art experiments, tactical media, hacker culture, and the creative commons period to contemporary political platforms, networks, and movements.

Classification systems are used to shape and control social structures and relationships. The process of classification categorizes individuals, objects, and ideas and assigns them to particular groups based on specific criteria, creating hierarchies and reinforcing existing power structures. One of the most prominent examples of classification as a tool of power is the creation and use of gender categories. This session is a part of ongoing research and will consist of an open dialogue regarding gender options given during the registration process for popular websites. The focus will be on the binary gender categories (male-female, man-woman) and the trend towards more diverse options. The aim is to collectively crowdsource better solutions to the problem of gender classification in interface design.

The goal of the joint discussion is to answer if the pursuit for an ethical approach to technical progress always demands a deliberative approach to sacrificing the other (nature, culture, lives).

The introductory talk tries to connect the history of geopolitical thought, colonial ideologies, and practices with contemporary media theory and the problem of rare earths. An introductory overview will cover the history of the scientific insights in the importance of the given minerals and ores, their uses, the interests of the various transnational corporations, and the human rights violations in connection with the rare-earth extraction and processing sites (especially in Sweden). On the other side, the theoretical overview will show how media theory came to similar conclusions as the colonial ideologists.

Presented map shows relationships between social, technological, informational, and ecological elements that make up the anthropogenic ecosystem in which a migratory bird, the Northern Bald Ibis, is becoming wild again. There's an interactive version of this map available with guided audio-tours in four chapters.In conversation with the Waldrapp Conservation and Research Team we created this assemblage of infrastructural elements that are in close relationship to the migratory bird that became extinct in the 17th century in Europe. Since 2013 the number of rewilded North Bald Ibis rose from zero to almost two hundred as a result of the LIFE research project led by Johannes Fritz. A majority of birds is equipped with GPS senders for tracking and monitoring. Hence, our interest was in taking a closer look on what kind of data is being produced and how it is being used within the project.

It was realized by Vladan Joler, Gordan Savičić and Felix Stalder in 2022. Its first public appearance was at the exhibition "Can you see me now" in Zürich, a show curated by !Mediengruppe Bitnik.

Didactic performance with overhead projectors and LP

A new form of extractivism defines life in the 21st Century. It is one that reaches into the furthest corners of the biosphere and the deepest layers of human cognitive and affective being: The stack that underpins contemporary technological systems goes well beyond data modeling, hardware, servers, and networks. Today’s full stack reaches into capital, labor, and nature while demanding an enormous amount from each. Vladan Joler’s New Extractivism gathers different concepts and images of this ‘new extractivism’ together. They add up to a blueprint—for a machine-like superstructure; a super allegory that encompasses the whole world.

https://extractivism.online

We will not produce conference merch and goodie bags so bring your old light coloured t-shirt, hoodie, tote or any other textile garment and have a nice print on the spot!

Matrijaršija is an autonomous cultural center in Belgrade that aims to become a powerful generator of turbulent art by providing space for non-institutional and outsider art. The organization is a network of various individual and collective living artistic phenomena that recognizes and encourages existential and work practices that merge into a specific form of preserving and conserving semi-hidden art. Matrijaršija's creativity is poetically and categorically difficult to define and is dedicated to recognizing the codes of social roles and structures in order to enable their recombination. It is a virtual and material meeting place for illustrators, nomads, poets, printers, self-proclaimed geniuses, art students, dreamers, publishers, artisans, provocateurs, intellectuals, as well as a much larger and unlimited network of artistic production (Fijuk), an annual festival (Novo Doba), and an autonomous cultural center (Matrijaršija).

The global technology market, including its production, maintenance, operation and governance is rife with vast environmental extraction which is inherently colonial in nature. From resource extraction, energy and resource consumption, labor exploitation, implications for land rights, contributions to tools of policing, warfare, surveillance and harm, and centralisation of decision making power and economic concentration central to the technology market is all part an parcel of a wider picture of colonialist extractivism. The digital crisis is an environmental crisis is a colonial crisis.

For this discussion, we would like to reflect on what would need to change in the digital rights eco-system to facilitate meaningful organising to address this multi-faceted reality. This discussion will take as a starting point the Decolonising Digital Rights in Europe Draft Programme, currently open for consultation. The conversation will be in informal discussion format. Ideally, participants come having already reviewed the draft decolonising programme.

The Decolonising the digital rights field process, led by EDRi and the Digital Freedom Fund (DFF) seeks to change the power structures within the current digital rights field in Europe, working towards a vision of a field of organisations working on digital rights issues well-equipped to tackle structural oppressions linked to technological harms.

Digital technologies and infrastructures are entangled in extractive systems that are driving environmental and climate crises. Currently, huge investments are being made into tech-driven climate ‘solutions’ that actually threaten to make existing problems worse. Through interactive discussion, this session aims to build awareness and capacity among digital rights advocates to debunk false climate tech solutions and work in solidarity with the climate justice movement, which has long called attention to the dangers of technologies such as carbon capture, geo-engineering, carbon offsets, and more.

Outcomes from this discussion will help inform a process lead by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), in collaboration with the Green Screen coalition and friends, to articulate a set of principles and commitments for advancing earth justice in norms, standards and regulations relating to the internet and digital technologies.

Climate Whistleblowers (CW) seeks to defend whistleblowers, as well as strategically litigate and advocate on their behalf where their disclosures speak to climate-related issues. The climate crisis is getting rapidly worse. Despite growing pledges of climate action, global emissions are breaking records. Climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss rage on and drive instability, displacement, and conflict. Whistleblowing can be a crucial tool for the climate movement. In the past decades, whistleblowers stood behind the world’s biggest scandals – revealing mass surveillance, tech irresponsibility, tax fraud and money laundering on an unprecedented scale. Whistleblowing is becoming increasingly common and legislative protection is improving.

More and more step forward to protect public interest despite huge personal risks. CW acts as a shield for these climate sentinels. Through their work as lawyers, journalists, and activists, experienced whistleblowers’ advocates behind CW have learnt to protect them and ensure their disclosures are impactful. It empowers climate whistleblowers through its legal, scientific, and human network.

We live in a time of centralized platform dominance coupled with escalating over-production of generative surrogate culture. In this situation, experiences from past pirate struggles might take on a new kind of relevance, which does have very much to do with copyright.

We'll use our different experiences of confronting Spotify as a jumping-off point to a wider discussion.

Belgrade is consistently losing its green places, which could result in dangerous climate change repercussions. Did you know that 46% of the central Sava riverbank in Belgrade has suffered almost total ecological destruction and that New Belgrade has lost about 20% of its natural or nature-like land cover during the previous 20 years? Why should this concern us, considering both the need to protect public places and the need to adapt cities to climate change?

Dobrica Veselinović will present the story of "Do not let Belgrade drown" (Ne davimo Beograd), a local green left grassroots movement formed in 2014, at that time aimed at criticising and reforming the current political system. It has since grown from a small scale resistance to large scale protests, and has later got involved in electorial politics. The movement was active in urban and cultural policies, sustainable urban development, and equitable use of shared resources. In 2022 elections the movement won seats in the national parliament and in the local Belgrade assembly where is became the second biggest political force.

In the SEE region, air pollution is more than just a passing gas.

Doing your part to raise awareness of air pollution and climate change? Here's the opportunity to get your hands and souls dirty!

Join us to help you assemble your personal open source sw/hw nose in the air - Klimerko - to start monitoring nasties lurking in the air around you polluting your outdoor space.

The best part?

The dominant Sustainable AI discourse has yet to be supported by a well-developed theoretical basis which incorporates the materiality of AI systems, supply chains and life cycles, negative externalities that fall outside of carbon emissions, and the enduring historic nature of how these externalities are unequally distributed. This session will collectively crowdsource strategies to engage with the inevitable tensions that these gaps surface, and proposes ways forward.

Discussion prompts will include:

The immaterial marketing of AI technologies that elides the material reality of infrastructures supporting AI technologies

The continuities of colonial capitalism that profits from the exploitation of natural resources and labor that supports them

The call for environmental scientists to work with with technology activists to identify what evidence is needed to assess the net impact of green technologies on environmental repair

Organising for climate justice within the technology industry.

“When the wind of change blow, some people build walls, others build windmills.”
(Chinese proverb)

Set of discourses and practices named “critical librarianship” are (still) not easily reconciled with the word: piracy. However, taking an ethical and political approach to library work using critical reflection in seeking ways to bridge the gap between professional theory and practice is represented by an international movement of library and information workers that considers the human condition and human rights above other professional concerns. While pursuing a socially just, theoretically informed praxis that exposes the ways how libraries and profession consciously and unconsciously support systems of oppression, librarians have a choice between an instrumental view of their profession or principled engagement. Coming closer to resistance over normative structures and dominant ideologies critical librarians provoke abstractions of professional discourse (neutrality, democracy, freedom, diversity, inclusion) encouraging countercultural imagination based on traits of piracy: the feeling of being undefined, on an endless idea of transformation, insistence on pitting the shapeless and the possible against the identical and constant. Since the very roots of critical librarianship (also known as alternative, progressive, radical, and socially responsible) were providing library workers with an arena for voicing dissent against established, hegemonic practices, commons-based happiness in uncensored libraries provides tools for everyone to become (amateur) librarian. In relating the dichotomy between hacktivist tactics and professional librarianship this conversation aims to rethink the foundational idea of (public) library within its shadows that provide: universal access to knowledge for each member of the society and producing knowledge about knowledge and its transfer.

Along the way from our venue, KC Grad, to Dorćol Plac, Cetinjska 18, we’ll talk and visit a few Klimerko community spaces.

Pondering topics: Responsible Tech? Along the way let’s have a conversation about the following digital culture trap: Somehow we think that along with the endless hard work, there will be a shortcut! It is not a straight journey - Can we find out how to get there and rethink and reset and recalibrate - people first, creativity second, technology third?

Desiree Zeljka Milošević is a President of Internet Society Serbia, Belgrade Chapter, Internet Society England Chapter and a Board Chair of Share Foundation. She is an active connector, Internet public servant and a member of the global Internet governance community. She served as Special Adviser to the UN Under-Secretary and Chair of the Internet Governance Multistakeholder Advisory Group, as Trustee of the Board of Internet Society and on the Board of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Currently, she co-chairs the RIPE Cooperation Working Group and serves as a Councillor at Generic Name Supporting Organisation at Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and represents Name.com at Registrars Stakeholder Group at ICANN. When she is not advocating for the free, global and open Internet, Desiree is working on growing Klimerko citizen science network and DesCon.me conference – an annual IoT Ecology and Sustainability Hackathon for South East Europe which she founded in 2015.

Michelle Thorne (@thornet) is working towards a fossil-free internet. She is the Director of Strategy and Partnerships at the Green Web Foundation. She served 12 years at the Mozilla Foundation, most recently as Mozilla’s Sustainable Internet Lead where she helped establish a funder coalition for digital rights and climate justice, and earlier as the founder of the Mozilla Festival. Michelle publishes Branch, an online magazine written by and for people who dream about a sustainable internet, which received the Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanities in 2021. She is also a co-organizer of Open Climate.