Yes. Well, okay, you are silent, so I will start whatever. Okay, welcome to AMRO24. Good to have you here. I'll start with an applause to warm it up. Okay, that was too long. But no, that's good. It's good to have you here. I cannot see you, so I can't say it's good to see you. And yes, to not make this a slapstick comedy, I started with reading and saying a few things about what is awaiting us in these days. I'm really happy that we reached this moment of starting a festival that is now in its 10th edition. And it has been happening since 15 years, the Art Meets Radical Openness. We are touching the risk of becoming an institution, and we don't want that. So let's, I don't know, find some ideas to shake it off this these days um yeah amro is organized by servus at in cooperation with the time-based media department of the art university of flint and usually start with the information that to warm up so we say thanks to all the funding bodies the ministry we say thanks uh to the funding bodies, the ministry, we say thanks to the Kulturland Oberösterreich and Linz Kultur. Everybody are helping us to be here actually. We have two main sponsors that we say thank you. One is Linz AG, the other one is the Arte Hotel Linz, where some of the participants are staying. I hope it's cozy there. And Arte Hotel Lint, where some of the participants are staying. I hope it's cozy there. And AMRO cannot happen without a long list of partners and supporters. And first on the list, also alphabetically, is AFO, Architectur Forum Oberösterreich, where we are this place that hosts AMRO since many years. We thank also the cooperation with Axioma, Institute for Contemporary Art, for the exhibition that is in the Mertz Gallery, which is down there. We thank BB15, Space for Contemporary Art, hosting the other exhibition where Veronica Krenn was managing the contents. DefLol, the hackerspace, The developer lab of Lint is supporting us since many years. The host of the events also during these days. We say thanks to Dorf TV, which is the community TV station which is streaming me right now. Thank you, Dorf TV. It feels like, again, 2020, where we did the online AMRO, but yeah, it was good support. Merz, Kunstlerinnen und Kunstlerinnenvereinigung, the gallery downstairs that also hosts one of the shows of the festival, is to be thanked. The Piet Zwart Institute from Rotterdam, Potato Publishing, Radio Fro, Raumschiff, the Space and Design Strategies, the Stadtwerkstatt, and Willi Fred, and many more. We also have support from IMAP, the European Media Arts Platform, so impact is to be thanked, and Werkleitz in Germany. And this is because of some special program points that are co-funded from the Creative Europe program of the EU. And this goes through Ars Electronica, which is our neighbor in the Stadthofstadt. And this time we managed to get support also from them. So thank you. Thanks for all these people. We are very grateful. We have the sponsor logos. Yeah. OK. Yeah, AMRO is not only made from logos and funding bodies. It's made from people. And so I mention these people right now as well. AMRO, the program is curated and proposed and developed by Aline Deriek, myself, Gabriela Gordillo, Teresa Mool, who is sitting there, Ushi Reiter, and many more members from the AMRO community. Teresa Mool also took care of the coordination and the production of the festival. We have the Nightline, curated by Gabriela Gordillo, who I hope is at this moment here. You're here? Ciao, Gabi. Cool. It sounded like you were on a train, delayed, so I was worried you couldn't make it. Good that you're here. Emilia Leon, too, who is probably in the back around the bar and waves, is taking care of the very fundamental things like finances and hosting. So she was the one managing where the most of the people in this room are staying the next days. There was a hell of a job. Thank you, Emilia. We have our cooking team. The reason for which probably half of the people in this room are coming to AMRO because of this very renowned food, this is Taro, Jan, Aban, Eva, Gams, and Martina. And we also thank the helping hands, Sofinezza, Tomiris, Dimitrievs, Kik, sorry, sorry, sorry, and Kerem Duzanli, who are available to help out, and this is also very important because we need help, and that's cool that we get that. Maria Orchuoli was taking care of the press. This year we have amazing articles that have been produced and distributed around, around the text and some interviews. It's really cool that we have that. Social media is done by Martina Pizzigoni. So follow the Mastodon account and get in touch. We will distribute some content also there. And tech production, Giacomo Piazzi, Jan-Philippe Ley. and tech production Giacomo Piazzi, Jan-Philippe Ley. This Whirlpool, this blobby thing design is something that was made from our Juan Pablo Linares who takes care of design and the development of the wonderful website. Also Bundes, Markus Panholzer who sits also in the back hidden in the dark was helping out with the website and Ashelina was giving a hand while publishing everything online photographers documentation Martin Brunner and V of a colleague will take care of taking nice pictures of us these days. We have an amazing team of note-takers for the conference. We'll be coming up to that later. From Rebecca Strasser-Kirchweger and Victoria Angial. And then, thanks again to the video streaming team, the squad, I don't know, Antonio Zingaro, Florian Kofler, Vincent Zlandl, Lina Pulido-Barragan, Balin Budaj, and Dortevi, of course. Yes, I want to say something. I don't know, I feel like saying it. So I have a personal thought that comes these days, and I will dedicate a lot of thoughts to three people that are not here. I will dedicate a lot of thoughts to three people that are not here. And one of these was a person I was hoping would be here this time at the festival. But it's not possible that this person is here. That was my brother. And yeah, I'm thinking about him. And two other people that would be lovely to have around, will be around soon. in drugi dve ljudi, ki bi imeli čudovito, da bi bili tudi skupaj. Moj mali srce, Neidio in Matilde, so bili v hospitalu. In jih sem podelil s vami, ker je to bilo tudi nekaj, kar me je vse toliko vzpomenilo v vseh razgovarjah. Ne vem, nikoli sem nič tako delal, ampak, da, zelo mi je bilo. Yeah, I missed this thing. Okay. Thank you. So we are here, AMRO24, Dancing at the Crossroads. This title comes, I'd say, two minutes more because of the context. It's nice to talk about this. The title comes from the community discussions we have. As I said, there is a group, very informal, messy conversations going on in the night with in the club room but ideas are coming out there and it's really cool and I think this year is it was a special moment for that so the crossroads is it's a crossroad we feel we see it's a complex multi crisis that we are facing there are like like the climate impact is the factor rising with people having burnouts, wars, outbreaks, invasion, colonial exploitation, violence. We see strengthening nationalisms and rising fascism. It's very worrying. And all of these things are connected together. They are overlaid. It's a mess. And we observe how these digital technologies that we all work with are deeply connected to that. And we want to discuss that. We see that AI is a new metaphor. This happens in the last couple of years. Big rise. couple of years, big rise. We see also a lot of discussions about technological degrowth and also how to resist the normative and authoritarian impact of digital technologies. Those are all topics that are present in the program and I'm really glad that we, through the open call, through the two years of research lab and conversation with many, many of you, this all come up. I think the program is, yeah, great. And I congratulate to all the proposals from you. The applause is on you. It's really cool. And, yeah, the title was actually inspired from Patrick Diriak, who was writing an article about the need of dealing with this thing. So he was writing, We are at the crossroads. And the fact that you are overwhelmed by polycrisis and we are paralyzed and we don't know what to do in all this crisis. Yeah, we are dancing, we are oscillating, we're not happy. It's like we don't know which way to choose. We don't want to say there is a binary solution. So there is a feeling of powerlessness, paralysis, and yeah, we are at the crossroads. We don't know where to go. And I think this is like the feeling that we, this discomfort is something that we'll probably share, all or many of us. And I'm really happy that we have now three and a half days to discuss this and go into details, and yeah, that we can spend time together about this, and yeah, grow together. Thank you, that was it. I want to welcome you to AMLO 24, and now welcome on the stage Brigitte Hütte, Director of the Kunsthalle, to say greetings, and bring also the words of a partner that has been with us for many years. Thank you. So good evening. Davide said everything, so I just can repeat some things. But I would like to say that all our best wishes are with your family, Davide. That's the important thing. And it's wonderful to have you here. And it's wonderful to have you here and it's wonderful to have you all here, all friends of AMRO, all guests and all who are with us today. Welcome to AMRO Festival from my side, AMRO 2024, Art Meets Radical Openness. What an important approach, what an important approach. It's the tenth edition of the festival dedicated to art, activism and open culture. Happy anniversary. And tenth, 15 years ago, so it's the same as 15 years ago. We all have questions in which direction we are going, and we don't even know if we can choose this direction or if there is anybody else or any society or any company or who makes the choice. AMRO came out 15 years ago from the cooperation between the arts universities, what it was mentioned, and the Net Culture Association Servus AT and it can look back to a long collaboration that brings artists together with activists and their topics into institutions and out from our university. We have been together developing projects such as the AMRO festival today, meet the bot, feed the bot, conversations with computers and the design week and so on and so on and we hope we have many more activities together. The cooperation with the Department of Time-Based Media from our university is also expanding with interface cultures also from our university, the TAM Lab, and visual communication also from the Arts University. This year, there will be also a workshop in cooperation with the Department of Space and Design Strategies, and you know it's also from our Arts University. Open source and open culture, but also sustainability in knowledge infrastructures are topics that are very important at the AMRO Festival, but also at the University of Art and Design. AMRO24 has the topic Dancing at the Crossroads and invites its community to focus on the consequences of work automatization and data extraction and the social consequences of a perhaps resistible rise of total AI. And these two sentences I read from here, from this paper, were translated by Deep L. So we know in our every life how important these tools are for us. Thank you very much for the cooperation, and thank you and many thanks to the big and great team of AMRO, Davide Bevilacqua, Christoph Nebel, Uschi Reiter, and so on. Give them please a big applause. Many universities and colleagues are associated with AMRO and are speaking here, but the festival itself is free for everyone to attend, and there will be workshops and exhibitions, night performances and interventions. So all the best for these two days and have a good time at AMRO 2024. Yeah, thank you. I have it also on paper. I thought I'd try. So on behalf of the University of Art and the Department of Time-Based Media, I would like to welcome all participants very much to this event. I would like to especially thank the team of the Net Culture Initiative Servus, especially to Davide Bevilacqua. Another thank goes to Ushi Raito. She's been there from the start and the festival owes its title Art Meets Radical Openness to her initiative. Applause. Applause. Now, like many of you, I've grown up with pop culture, rock, blues, jazz, free jazz, fire music, and so on, and so on. So inspired by this year's AMRO title, Dancing at the Crossroads, I will recite a song text. It's not from Robert Johnson, where the big story is that he was at the crossroad, met the devil, and learned guitar playing playing or played better than before. I will recite the song lyric. I must note that the content of the lyric is not directed at you, but at someone who is probably not present here. I also mentioned, please do not make any video or audio recordings and instead listen to the song the original later. So the song is by Tracy Chapman. It's released in 1989 before internet, social networks and anything. And it's titled Crossroads. As you folks think you own my life, but you never made any sacrifice. Demons are on my trail. I'm standing at the crossroads of the hill. I look to the left, I look to the right. There are hands that grab me on every side. All the reasons why I live my life. Some say the devil be a mystical thing. I say the devil, he a walking man. He a fool. He a liar, conjurer and a thief. a fool, he a liar, conjurer and a thief. He tried to tell you what you want, tried to tell you what you need. Standing at the point the road will cross you down. What is at your back? Which way will you turn? Who will come to find you first? Your devils or your gods? your devils or your gods. All you folks think you run my life, say I should be willing to compromise. I say all you demons go back to hell, I save my soul, save myself. Thank you and please listen to the soul. I have to say I'm really expressed by the professionality of the festival and by all those inputs and talks and also thanks for the flowers. Hello and welcome to the AFO Architekturforum Oberösterreich, which I actually discovered a long time ago, 2012, to be precise, as the ideal spot or place for this gathering. for this gathering. The place exists since 1887 and has roots as open soup kitchen, which is, I think, very interesting. 1927, the building was commissioned and extended by the city of Linz. The architect is Kurt Kühne. Why I am telling you that, by the way, I think it's impressive how people build buildings for like poor people, for example, if you compare it to the situation of today. And also impressive Also impressive is that the new building functioned as open soup kitchen until 1968. So why I am here? After my long active time at Servus AT, I started working here in 2017. So today I welcome you as an official cooperation partner in the house and at the same time as Servus AT board member as well as an early developer of Amro. When you take part in a festival, it's not necessarily a matter of course that you look into the origins of the event. While in the very early days it was mainly about the use of Linux and free open source software in cultural artistic production, the focus increasingly shifted to the context and the political implications of technologies themselves. So we are interested in what goes on behind the shiny screens and surfaces of displays, how digitalization is changing our everyday lives, what power structures are associated with it and what dependencies we fall into or who or what is responsible for this. The interest in people who are also concerned with leads to this format AMRO. But however, the opportunity to spend quality time together has always been essential. This includes having breakfast together and eating together. And I think in times like this, this is once again a privilege, and I'm looking forward to the coming days with you. And of course, I also would like to thank, I didn't know that the crew of Amro, who was really mainly, I mean, I didn't organize anything, I have to say. I just, yeah, get the flowers. But it's amazing, so many helping hands. But at the end end I know that the core team is very small. So a big applause for all who made it possible. And yeah, the next speaker and a very important figure is Eileen Derrick, and I open the stage for you. I even get an introduction. Thank you. Ah, you're right. It's very dark out there. All right. I hope that all of you by now have read our statement about the space that we want Amro to be. And I just want to explain this came out of discussions among the local community about the space that we want AMRO to be. And I just want to explain, this came out of discussions among the local community and also in the organizing team. Preparing AMRO 2024, we were all very, very aware of the need to find the right balance between getting stuff done and taking care of one another. This was a really important aspect this year and we don't always get it right but we want to keep trying and we want to invite you to join us in making this effort. So the poly crisis that we face, that we are currently confronted with, can affect all of us very differently, depending on our background, our life experiences, our personal situation, or where our loved ones are in the world, anywhere in the world. And in addition, any one of us may be struggling with hard things in our lives. And that's why it's important to be kind, to be generous, to take care of one another. So please also help us take care of our physical space. You heard we have a lot of helping hands, but we're basically a small team. We don't have people to clean up, so be careful about leaving bottles around, things lying around. Don't forget to wash your dishes when you finish eating. If you notice that somebody else has forgotten, that's fine, just take their dish and wash that one too. And yes, please read the statement if you haven't yet. Please think about it. It's something that's very important to us. So Davide announced that I wrote it. Yes, I put the conversations into words, into sentences, but that's it. And especially at the nightline in all the venues, we share the code of conduct with the Stadtwerkstatt. So please take that seriously as well. And in case anything is making you uncomfortable, if you're not making you feel not entirely safe, or if you're feeling unwell physically or emotionally, you can go to the info point here or to the bar at the venues for the nightline and the people working there will connect you with someone from the team who will be prepared to help you. So that's a concept that has become more and more established, fortunately, and that's an effort that we appreciate too. But as we take care of each other and look after one another, it's also important not to overlook moments of joy, to find moments of joy wherever we can, to share with one another. Maybe dancing, not just going back and forth, but actually dancing is probably a joyful thing to do, because we should never underestimate the subversive power of joy. Thank you. of joy. Then I get to introduce Teresa Moll. Hello, I'm here for the organizational part only. So I'm quickly talking about the daily routine of the festival. So I'm quickly talking about the daily routine of the festival. So we have small conference blocks in the mornings, and then we have workshops in several places in Linz in the afternoons. And each evening we have alternating evening locations. You'll find the whole program on the website, which is actually easy to use, but we will also print it out and we will be hanging it in the space. The workshop links are on the website, but there is already waiting lists as I've seen and heard. Talk to the workshop hosts if you really want to get in there, or talk to us. We might manage it or not. I'm sorry. So we will be having breakfast in the mornings from 9 to 10, and dinner from 18 to 19, like from 6 to 7. I'm not going to mention the kitchen chain again. It's weird, but please take care. We will be having a person who's responsible for the kitchen chain, but nevertheless, tomorrow we will be in DH5 in the evening. On Friday we will be in Stadtwerkstatt and Saturday here. Dinner is always in the evening. On Friday, we will be in Stadtwerkstatt and Saturday here. So dinner is always in the venue we will be spending the evening. And the night lines are in Stadtwerkstatt both days. We have two solo exhibitions. One is in Merz from Sanela Jahic under the calculative gaze. It's in the main floor of this building. Then we have the Corporation exhibition in BB15 from Nicolas Gouraud. Unknown label. It's very worth to see it. And then we have Amro showcase exhibition in the basement of Afo. So you go downstairs in the basement of this building or take the elevator with minus one or UG and there you see a selection of very nice works, mostly video works to showcases like objects. Bring some time, it can get cozy and there is also sitting possibility as well. Then I'm coming to the photo documentation and well video documentation we have DorfTV which is here and we will be filming and streaming all of the conferences and the two photographers are trying to document everything, like from morning to evening. They will be hopping around with their bikes and scooters and jump into every places. If you don't want to be on pictures, if you don't want to be documented or photographed, please let me know. You can just come up to me or even talk to them. We try to avoid asking when they step into the locations because it's nice to catch no artificial moments, nothing staged. So please inform us beforehand. Yeah, and well, we have a beautiful bookshop over there with books of the participants. We have beautiful merch and gadgets. If you want to have a reimbursement or artist fee or if you want to have a reimbursement for material costs, please contact Amelia. She's in the back. And then we have the two amazing note-takers for the Etherpad, and we will be sharing the link with the survival kit. It is in the survival kit, and it is on the website on the right side on the top, it says live stream, and there you'll find a link for the Etherpad, and you can collect your own questions. It's going to be public, so everyone can see everything. So also take care of what you share with others. That's it for today. Enjoy the keynotes and see you.