#DNL35 · June 13–15 2025
SHADOWS OF ILLIBERALISM
Resisting the Radical Right
THE 35th CONFERENCE OF THE DISRUPTION NETWORK LAB
studio 1, KUNSTQUARTIER BETHANIEN, marianneplatz 2, 10997 Berlin & STREAMING
Workshop at Stadtwerkstatt, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 11, 10178 Berlin
Curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE)
Streamed for free. No registration required to follow the stream.
Workshop IS not streamed
Franco “Bifo” Berardi · Katrien Jacobs · Florian Cramer/無名 · Anna Krenz · Tonia Mastrobuoni · Péter Adamik · Slavo Krekovič · Donatella Della Ratta · Míriam Juan-Torres · Amber Macintyre · Tina Lee · Yasmeen Daher · Maya Talakhadze · Tatiana Bazzichelli
Exploring the roots of far-right politics and challenging its influence through art, activism, and tech
THE 35th CONFERENCE OF THE DISRUPTION NETWORK LAB
Curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE)
LoCATION: STUDIO 1, KUNSTQUARTIER BETHANIEN, MARIANNENPLATZ 2, 10997 BERLIN
Streamed for free
16:30–16:40 · OPENING
Tatiana Bazzichelli (Artistic Director, Disruption Network Lab, Director, Disruption Network Institute, IT/DE).
16:40 – 18:10 · KEYNOTE: Exhaustion and Hyper-Colonialism: The Disintegration of the West
Franco Berardi (Philosopher, Media Theorist, IT). Moderated by Yasmeen Daher (Philosopher, Co-director, Febrayer Network, PS/DE).
18:10 – 18:40 · BREAK
18:40 – 20:40 · PANEL: Art, Activism & the Rise of Illiberalism in Hungary, Poland & Slovakia
Péter Adamik (Freie Ungarische Botschaft, HU/DE), Anna Krenz (Artist, Architect and Activist, Founder Dziewuchy Berlin, PL/DE), Slavo Krekovič (Artistic Director, A4 Space for Contemporary Culture, SK). Moderated by Tonia Mastrobuoni (Journalist, Correspondent La Repubblica, IT/DE).
Saturday, June 14, 2025 · Get tickets
16:00 · Doors open
16:30 – 18:10 · KEYNOTE: The New Right’s Cultural Hegemony and Contradictions · Get tickets
Katrien Jacobs (Associate Professor, Monash University Malaysia, BE/MY), Florian Cramer (Professor of Artistic Research, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, NL). Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Artistic Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE).
18:10 – 18:30 · BREAK
18:30 – 19:00 · LECTURE PERFORMANCE: Ask Me for Those Unborn Promises That May Seem Unlikely to Happen in the Natural · #2 2025 · Get tickets
Donatella Della Ratta (Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies, John Cabot University. IT).
19:00 – 20:30 · PANEL: Generative AI, Weaponised Language & Political Shadow Campaigns · Get tickets
Donatella Della Ratta (Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies, John Cabot University. IT), Míriam Juan-Torres (Head of Research, Democracy & Belonging Program, UC Berkeley, ES), Amber Macintyre (Research Lead, Tactical Tech, SCOT/UK/DE). Moderated by Tina Lee (Editor-in-Chief, Unbias the News, US/DE).
Sunday, June 15, 2025 · Get tickets
13:00–16:00 · WORKSHOP: Defending Civic Space: Countering Disinformation in Challenging Environments · Get tickets
With Maya Talakhadze (Director, Regional Development Hub – Caucasus, GE).
At Stadtwerkstatt
Sunday, June 15, 2025 · 18:00 · Related event at Tatwerk
AI Framing the Future - The Visual Script That Makes Violence Feel Inevitable
with Donatella Della Ratta at Tatwerk
Podcast: Illiberal Realities: Understanding Propaganda & the Orbanisation of Europe
From our Meetup April 3 at nGbK: Péter Adamik and Sára Szedlár from the Berlin-based Hungarian activist organisation Freie Ungarische Botschaft (Free Hungarian Embassy) gave an overview of how Viktor Orbán's government has built its machinery of power. Listen.
More about the event
Funded by: Hauptstadtkulturfonds (The Capital Cultural Fund), The Reva and David Logan Foundation. Part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.
Partner Venues: Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien, nGbK, Stadtwerkstatt.
COLLABORATION PARTNER:
r0g _agency.
Streaming partner: Boiling Head Media.
Technology Partner: Geier-Tronic.
Media Partners: Taz, Il Mitte, UntoldMag
Outreach Partners: Hostwriter, Unbias the News
SHADOWS OF ILLIBERALISM: Resisting the Radical Right
Exploring the roots of far-right politics and challenging its influence through art, activism, and tech
Conflicts are escalating both locally in Berlin and across Europe, with the rise of right-wing extremism and far-right ideologies. On a global scale, since Trump's second term, ultra-conservative social visions are being implemented, immigration policies are being enforced, and national sovereignty and borders are being defended. This context requires a scientific analysis that goes beyond polarisation and the instrumentalisation of conflicts for political purposes, often targeting the most vulnerable sectors of society. In analysing such a complex issue, we propose to use artistic strategies as visual evidence to inform about the reality in which we live and to promote a constructive dialogue between different actors in our field of art and culture.
With the term "shadows of illiberalism" we refer to the concept of “illiberal democracy”, which describes a governing system that hides its nondemocratic practices behind formally democratic institutions and procedures. Amnesty International notes that in July 2014, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave what has come to be known as his "illiberal democracy" speech in Romania, in which he juxtaposes a democratic “Western" system based on liberal values and accountability to what he calls an "Eastern" approach based on a strong state and weak opposition.
To date, Orbán's new right-wing sovereigntist alliance, Patriots for Europe, has gained enough support to become a political group in the EU Parliament, bringing together MEPs from 12 EU member states, including members from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, as well as Hungary. In addition, other members who have expressed interest in joining are from Poland and Slovakia, and other parties that are speculated to join include MEPS from Slovenia and Aternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany.
In Germany, nationalism and far-right ideology have been on the rise for more than a decade, and the AfD as the second most popular party since 2023. Similarly, a conservative movement against "wokeness" is taking over in the US, a country where Donald Trump is the new president since January 20, 2025, criticising race theory, gender rights and queer theory, often provoking irrational chains of reactions supported by conspiracy theories and harassment campaigns based on isolationism, anti-feminism, homophobia, white supremacy as well as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
On the other hand, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has created a threat to neighbouring countries such as Georgia, where a controversial 'foreign agent' law was passed, threatening the existence of many local NGOs working on democracy and civil rights, and the escalation of violence against LGBTQ+ communities made headlines during the attack on Tbilisi Pride 2023, a violent counter-demonstration organised by far-right, nationalist and ultra-nationalist groups.
In such a scenario, which is clearly based on the weaponisation of culture, the role of art and visual culture becomes necessary to produce evidence of these phenomena. This conference builds on our previous 2018 series entitled 'Misinformation Ecosystems', which analysed cultural, political and technological issues related to fake news and right-wing supremacist ideologies through our conferences HATE NEWS and INFILTRATION.
We aim to update a previous debate on the strategic production of misinformation and misleading propaganda by bringing together speakers who share methods (from these or similar cases) that can be used to produce evidence of online hate, systematic discrimination, targeting of women, minorities, and people at risk. The focus will be on the strategic use of online tools by political right-wing groups, the weaponisation of LGBTQ+ culture by far-right groups online and offline, the rise of anti-democratic and authoritarian ideologies in Europe and the complicit role of Big Tech, where algorithms and social media platforms are misused by the far-right to polarise users and increase online traffic.
In this conference programme, we want to raise awareness by reflecting on possible counter-measures from artistic, technological and political frameworks.
SHADOWS OF ILLIBERALISM will showcase technological/media, artistic and activist practices to produce strategies to counteract human rights violations and environmental violence by state or corporate actors. The conference is preceded by a meetup at nGbK where to analyse a specific local case study where to understand how weaponised discrimination works.
Back to top
Full Programme
16:00 CET · Doors open
16:30–16:40 · OPENING
Tatiana Bazzichelli (Artistic Director, Disruption Network Lab, Director, Disruption Network Institute, IT/DE).
16:40 – 18:10 · KEYNOTE
Exhaustion and Hyper-Colonialism: The Disintegration of the West · Get tickets
Franco Berardi (Philosopher, Media Theorist, IT). Moderated by Yasmeen Daher (Philosopher, Co-director, Febrayer Network, PS/DE).
In this keynote, Franco Berardi will try to understand the contemporary political crisis as a manifestation of the techno-anthropological mutation that is underway.
Disintegration
The illiberal oligarchy has taken control of the most powerful nuclear powers, US, and Russia, and now it is striving to take control of a number of European countries, while Liberal democracy is losing ground. However, the fight between the two political forms is far from over, and it is resulting in a disintegration of both geopolitical and socio-economic order. This is resulting in a process of disintegration of the Western system. But if we want to understand the roots of this process we must go beyond the political surface and dig up the cultural and psychological roots of the present unravelling. These roots lie crisis of the white supremacy over the world, and the emergence of hyper-colonialism.
ExhaustioN
After the crisis of colonial rule after the Second world war, colonialism has taken a new deterritorialised form (that Franco Berardi labels hyper-colonialism), and has been resurfacing in the new Century, together with the aggressive return of the mythology of white supremacy. Illiberalism is based on the furious return of racism, fuelled by the perception of the exhaustion of white supremacy. Exhaustion is the reversal of the Futurist expansionism of the past Century has cultural, economic, and demographic features, but it is also (and basically) an effect of the aging of the white population, following the prolongation of life-time, and the unstoppable fall of birth-rate.
18:10 – 18:40 · BREAK
18:40 – 20:40 · PANEL
Art, Activism & the Rise of Illiberalism in Hungary, Poland & Slovakia · Get tickets
Péter Adamik (Freie Ungarische Botschaft, HU/DE), Anna Krenz (Artist, Architect and Activist, Founder Dziewuchy Berlin, PL/DE), Slavo Krekovič (Artistic Director, A4 Space for Contemporary Culture, SK). Moderated by Tonia Mastrobuoni (Journalist, Correspondent La Repubblica, IT/DE).
Today, when nationalist and conservative forces are rising across Germany, Europe and beyond, a critical, transnational outlook is more crucial than ever. This panel presents case studies and projects that address the rise of illiberalism across Central and Eastern Europe, focusing specifically on Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. It also looks at the countermeasures that have been adopted both locally and abroad, thanks to the efforts of diasporic communities in these countries and in Berlin. Speakers will explore how art serves to challenge authoritarian power structures, confront propaganda and the ongoing war on culture. The panel will examine the political dimensions of artistic practice and how art and activism can respond effectively to strengthen and support grassroots communities. Which political and artistic strategies can shift public consciousness and drive real political change? Can art truly save us?
Hungary used to be among the rather progressive, well-developing countries in the Central Eastern European region in the 90’s and in times of socialism when the country was often referred to as the “happiest barrack” in the Eastern Block with its soft-handed “Goulash-Communism”. 35 years after the fall of communism, Viktor Orbán has successfully built up during 15 years of reign a “Goulash-Democracy”, or turning the tone more serious, Illiberal Democracy, sending the country economically to the bottom of the league in the EU, its people trapped with low salaries, a more than ever divided society and a constantly shrinking population. Although illiberalism may appear to be gaining strength as well-connected right-wing radicals rise to power around the world, this cannot be a long-term success when paired with mafia-like organised state corruption. Péter Adamik from the Freie Ungarische Botschaft will expose the real face of the Orbán’s System and the authoritarian playbook his government is exporting. In his talk, “Trapped in the Goulash Democracy: Illiberalism is not the answer”, he will use footages from “The Dynasty” – the recent Direkt36’s documentary about the economic empire of the Orbán family, and present artistic and activist practices to generate a critique of the status quo.
Polish women and men have a long tradition of resistance and political art, both of which have shaped Polish culture for decades. Under the conservative PiS government in Poland (2015–2023), democracy became a fragile structure. The determined efforts of thousands of activists, including those abroad, ultimately restored a pro‑democracy administration, proving that collective struggle can succeed. The fight for democracy remains inseparable from the fight for women’s rights, and art continues to serve as a powerful tool of resistance.
An auto‑ethnographic perspective on feminist Polish activism and political art in Berlin reveals how these practices counter the illiberal narratives promoted by conservative regimes and build transnational feminist solidarity. Berlin is home to a large and partly politically engaged Polish diaspora. Since 2016, the Dziewuchy Berlin collective has organised protests and demonstrations in solidarity with women* and the LGBT+ community in Poland, as well as campaigns for women’s rights in Germany, reacting and responding to political events in both countries and countering right-wing movements. For example, Anna Krenz’s ARTivist interventions—such as Global Scream (One‑Minute Scream, 2019) and Instant Theatre (2020)—blur the lines between art and protest, challenging conventional definitions of political art. Initiatives and projects of Dziewuchy Berlin reshaped perceptions of Polish women in Berlin, showcasing their resilience and resistance, at the same time offering empowerment.
Slavo Kreković, the artistic director of A4, a Space for Contemporary Culture in Bratislava, will talk about “Slovakia's War on Culture: Destruction and Resistance”. Since September 2023, the new Slovak government has launched a systematic attack on democracy, civil society, minorities and also the cultural sector—dismantling institutions, rewriting legislation, and replacing experts with loyal extremists, including those at national institutions as well as the main funding body Slovak Arts Council. The talk maps the unfolding devastation and highlights the tactics of response by the cultural community: the formation of voluntary cultural activist platforms, and waves of protests and artistic resistance. As illiberalism advances through institutional capture and ideological cleansing, the cultural field in Slovakia becomes both a target and a frontline of resistance.
Saturday, June 14, 2025 · Get tickets
16:00 · Doors open
16:30 – 18:10 · KEYNOTE
The New Right’s Cultural Hegemony and Contradictions · Get tickets
Katrien Jacobs (Associate Professor, Monash University Malaysia, BE/MY), Florian Cramer (Professor of Artistic Research, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, NL). Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Artistic Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE).
In order to gain cultural and political hegemony, the New Right can often take contradictory positions: queerness versus anti-gender politics, disruption versus traditionalism, technocracy versus ecofascism, populism versus elitism, etc. These contradictions make their program seem inclusive and attractive to larger demographics. But in the end, they are just a tactic of playing both sides at once. Once in power, the veil comes off. This keynote will consist of two parts: the first will examine the cultural politics of the New Right in general, and the second will focus on gender and sex politics as a case study.
Florian Cramer will address the dialectics of "liberalism" and "illiberalism" - how the latter emerged from the former, and how liberal concepts of spontaneous order informed experimental arts, technological developments, free-market economics, and ultimately the New Right and today’s oligarchic regimes, from the 1950s to the 2020s. The question remains to what extent the cultural regimes of the New Right are aligned with today's oligarchies, whether its fascism can be called postmodern, and whether it doesn’t amount to an extremism of the political center rather than of the political right.
Katrien Jacobs will argue that New Right politics and the struggle for cultural hegemony thrive on apocalyptic world views including gender phantasms and a contradictory “illiberal sex revolution”. The talk is based on research into anti-gender movements in Belgium and the Netherlands, enigmatic grassroots alliances between religious groups, conspiracy theorists and political campaigns against sex education that led arson in several secondary schools. The talk will also look into Naomi Klein’s ideas of “mirroring” to show that New Right cultural hegemony borrows radical-left sex/gender politics, such as feminist critiques of dry-analytical thought and alt-queer D.I.Y. porn-making.
18:10 – 18:30 · BREAK
18:30 – 19:00 · LECTURE PERFORMANCE
Ask Me for Those Unborn Promises That May Seem Unlikely to Happen in the Natural · #2 2025 · Get tickets
Donatella Della Ratta (Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies, John Cabot University. IT).
Generative AI creates speculative visuals that, while not based on factual events, remain plausible, constructing realities that have yet to unfold. Situated within the domain of possibility rather than empirical certainty, these visuals introduce a new form of 'synthetic realism'. By reshaping both past and present through their world-building potential, these seemingly innocuous images—detached from tangible references, historical ties, lineage, or context—wield a quiet yet profound violence against history and factuality.
Sunday, June 15, 2025 · 18:00 · Related event at Tatwerk
AI Framing the Future - The Visual Script That Makes Violence Feel Inevitable
with Donatella Della Ratta at Tatwerk
The lecture performance examines 'speculative violence,' a developing mode of the image’s existence that oscillates between overt destruction and subtle, almost imperceptible effects. Blending text with visuals—including found footage, social media threads, and AI-generated media—the piece takes the audience on an unsettling journey through the violence of the not-yet-realised, traversing landscapes from Palestine to Trump’s America, and implicating oblivious cows.
The lecture performance is happening in the context of Donatella Della Ratta’s residency at the Disruption Network Institute (1 May-1 November 2025), as part of the research “Speculative Violence. Ethics, Aesthetics, and Power in the Age of AI-Generated 'Synthetic Realism'”, granted by the Italian Council (Public Call 2024). The research project investigates the role of synthetic images—those generated by artificial intelligence—within contemporary dynamics of violence, analysing their ethical, political, and aesthetic implications.
Read more about the research here.
19:00 – 20:30 · PANEL
Generative AI, Weaponised Language & Political Shadow Campaigns · Get tickets
Donatella Della Ratta (Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies, John Cabot University. IT), Míriam Juan-Torres (Head of Research, Democracy & Belonging Program, UC Berkeley, ES), Amber Macintyre (Research Lead, Tactical Tech, SCOT/UK/DE). Moderated by Tina Lee (Editor-in-Chief, Unbias the News, US/DE).
In recent years, the consolidation of far-right movements within institutional frameworks across both Europe and the United States has marked a significant shift in the political landscape. This evolution has been accompanied by the articulation of political agendas rooted in rhetorics of violence — discourses that intensify social polarisation, incite hatred, and reinforce structures of discrimination. What emerges is a new paradigm of performative transgression, one that is both disseminated and magnified through the algorithmic logic of social media and the infrastructure of automated technologies and generative AI.
According to Míriam Juan-Torres, we are in what scholars call the third wave of autocratisation, marked by leaders who rise to power by mustering popular support and then legitimise authoritarian practices under the guise of defending democracy from perceived “Others.”
Once in power, countries seem to transform into competitive autocracies, where seemingly certain democratic institutions coexist with targeting of opponents and marginalised communities and creating an uneven playing field. In the talk “The Paradox of Authoritarian Populist Politics: Appropriating Democracy, Advancing Authoritarianism through Othering”, Míriam Juan-Torres will look at the specific approach of authoritarian populism, which combines tactics from both the authoritarian and populist playbooks, and how gender specifically is leveraged to advance six strategies to further the authoritarian populist project.
In the talk “Far-Right Campaigns: Shadowy Networks or Institutionalised Practices?” Amber Macintyre will examine what institutionalised practices are involved behind the scenes in creating far-right language and imagery through an analysis of a database of political firms and observations of centre-right campaign practitioners. Far-right digital campaigns have been understood as “shadowy” yet recently it has become clear that recognised institutions – especially technology firms – have shown their support for far-right ideals. Furthermore, the language and image within far-right campaigns is often based on analysis that technology firms support including data collection and analysis.
Following her lecture-performance Ask Me for Those Unborn Promises That May Seem Unlikely to Happen in the Natural #2 (2025), Donatella Della Ratta will join the panel discussion to explore how speculative generative AI technologies extend the reach of violence into the realm of the not-yet-realised. Her contribution interrogates the destabilisation of conventional notions of fact and evidence, particularly within contested political and mediated landscapes—from the ongoing war in Palestine to the socio-political dynamics of Trump-era America.
Sunday 15 June
Workshop · Defending Civic Space: Countering Disinformation in Challenging Environments
Sunday 15 June, 13:00–16:00, Stadtwerkstatt (Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 11, 10178 Berlin)
Register here
With Maya Talakhadze (Director, Regional Development Hub – Caucasus, GE)
Max 30 participants. No prior technical knowledge or special equipment are required.
Around the world, civic space is becoming increasingly restricted. In many countries, governments are using legal, administrative and narrative tools to limit activism, weaken independent media and discredit opposition voices. This workshop will examine how disinformation - including conspiracy theories and misleading narratives - is used to justify these actions. It will also explore the wider impact of such tactics on protest movements, media freedom and the safety of human rights defenders.
Led by Maya Talakhadze, Director of the Regional Development Hub - Caucasus (Tbilisi, Georgia) the session will draw on case studies from Georgia, Hungary, Russia and Turkey to examine both strategies of repression and forms of resistance. These examples will help participants to recognise how disinformation is weaponised to shape public perceptions and undermine democratic space.
The workshop will begin with a short presentation on the global trend of shrinking civic space and its impact on activism, providing a common ground for deeper engagement. Participants will then work in small groups to compare real cases, analyse government rhetoric, and reflect on resistance strategies that have been effective in different contexts. Interactive exercises throughout the session will encourage critical thinking, creativity and collaborative learning. The workshop will conclude with a strategic discussion on countering disinformation, amplifying independent voices, and sustaining civic engagement in increasingly challenging environments.
This workshop is designed for around 25 international participants with an interest in media freedom, human rights and governance. No prior technical skills or special equipment are required.
Watch talks from related conferences
Playlists: Go to our YouTube playlists for Infiltration, Hate News & more (see all playlists)
Some suggestions:
Infiltration: Mapping the International Far Right · Julia Ebner & Patrik Hermansson
Facing Ideologies & Strategies of Hate · Caroline Sinders, Øyvind Strømmen, Cathleen Berger, Margarita Tsomou
Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory · Alistair Alexander
Uncovering Corruption: On Strategic Harassment, Mexican Trolls and Election Manipulation · Andrea Noel, Renata Avila
Across & Within Right-Wing Extremism: Investigations and Interference · Mattias Gardell, Richard Gebhardt, Janez Janša, Christina Lee
Transgressions Then & Now: How does the Alt Right Reenact Counter Culture? · Florian Cramer, Stewart Home, Tatiana Bazzichelli
Back to top
Speakers
Franco Berardi
Philosopher, Media Theorist, IT
Franco “Bifo” Berardi is a philosopher and media theorist, and was a key figure in the Italian Autonomia movement of the 1970s. He is cofounder of the magazine A/traverso (1975–1981) and of Radio Alice, the first free radio station in Italy (1976/1978). In 1994 he organised the international Congress “Cibernauti” (University of Bologna). He published around twenty books, translated in many languages, including English, Italian, German, Turkish, Spanish, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Chinese and Russian, such as And: Phenomenology of the End (Semiotexte, Los Angeles, 2014), Heroes, Mass murder and suicide (Verso, London, 2015), Futurability: The age of impotence and the horizon of possibility (Verso, London, 2017), The third Unconscious (Verso, London, 2022), and Chaos and the Automaton (Minnesota, 2025).
Katrien Jacobs
Associate Professor, Monash University Malaysia, BE/MY
Katrien Jacobs is Associate Professor in Digital Media and Communications at Monash University Malaysia. She is also a Research Associate at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Ghent. Jacobs has lectured and published widely about sexuality and gender in and around digital media, contemporary arts and activism in Chinese societies and the EU. In 2022 she published Tit-For-Tat Media: The Contentious Bodies and Sex Imagery of Political Activism (London and New York: Routledge, 2022). She is an artist-scholar who is currently preparing a new book and artwork about restorative Deepfakes and AI Bodies. Her work can be found at katrienjacobs.com.
Florian Cramer [Taiwanese name 官無名]
Professor of Artistic Research, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, NL
Florian Cramer is a practice-oriented research professor in Artistic Research and Emerging Forms of Cultural Production at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. He is a supervisor in the Dutch Professional Doctorate Arts + Creative pilot program as well as a co-supervisor of PhD candidates at Leiden University and University of Amsterdam. Outside his school, he is an associate member of the Pearl River Delta-based 展銷場 Display Distribute collective, which proposes the concept of “Semi-Autonomous Zines” as a way of scoping the development of zine and independent publishing cultures in East and South East Asia. He serves as a board member of Stichting Lezeren, an artist-run non-profit organization for free Dutch language and literacy courses. He is on the advisory board for the arts magazine Neural and the peer-reviewed journal APRJA (Aarhus University), and on the advisory board of PASS, the Center for Practice-Based Art Studies of University of Copenhagen.
Péter Adamik
Freie Ungarische Botschaft, HU/DE
Born and raised in Budapest, Péter Adamik moved to Berlin in 2019, where he immediately joined the Freie Ungarische Botschaft. He studied Scandinavian literature and culture and holds a master's degree from the University of Freiburg. He currently works as a project manager at the Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (known in German as "EVZ"), focusing on events, networks and political communication at the foundation, which supports civil society organizations in Eastern Europe with a special focus on remembrance of German National Socialist persecution and its consequences for today's political-educational context, as well as work for human rights and international exchange.
Anna Krenz
Artist, Architect and Activist, Founder Dziewuchy Berlin, PL/DE
Anna Krenz is an artist, architect, author and activist. She studied architecture at the Technical University of Poznań and the Architectural Association in London. She is the founder and member of the women-led design studio Sinus_3, which focuses on architecture, ecology, and the design of public space. From 2001 to 2025 she worked for the Nordic Folkecenter for Renewable Energy in Denmark and from 2003 to 2012, she co-directed Galerie ZERO in Berlin. 2007-2009 she was editor-in-chief of the design magazine VOX Design, and re:design magazine. She is the founder of the feminist collective Dziewuchy Berlin, founder and chair of the association Ambasada Polek e.V., initiator and member of the Polish Women’s Council+. Member of nGbK and BBK, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Nordic Folkecenter. Krenz is actively involved in local ecological projects in Puszczykowo and Poznań (Poland). Lives in Berlin since 2003 and is a single mother.
Slavo Krekovič
Artistic Director, A4 Space for Contemporary Culture, SK
Slavo Krekovič is a musician and sound artist, musicologist, contemporary music and new media art curator and cultural organizer, based in Bratislava. He is co-founder and Artistic Director of NEXT Festival of Advanced Music and independent cultural centre A4 – Space of Contemporary Culture in Bratislava. From 2013 to 2017, he was the Head of the Multimedia study programme at the Faculty of Fine Arts (FaVU) of Brno University of Technology. He is editor-in-Chief and publisher of the ¾ cultural magazine, one of the founders of Mag.Net – Electronic Cultural Publishers network. He performs music with electronic and interactive instruments solo or as a member of various experimental projects (Voice Over Noise, Shibuya Motors, VRITTI, Bratislava Improvisers Orchestra, SWAG Ensemble). He holds a Mgr. (MA) and PhD degrees in Musicology and a Master degree in Sonology (Instruments and Interfaces Programme) from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and STEIM.
Donatella Della Ratta
Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies, John Cabot University, IT
Donatella Della Ratta is a scholar, performer, and curator specializing in networked technologies and generative AI. Currently Associate Professor of Communication at John Cabot University, she is a former Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. A former journalist and TV author for Italian public broadcaster Rai Television, from 2007 to 2013 she served as the Arab world community manager for the Creative Commons. She has curated several international art programs, including Syria Off Frame in collaboration with the Luciano Benetton Foundation, Venice, 2015. She is co-founder and board member of SyriaUntold, and a member of the advisory board of the Cinema Futures initiative at Locarno International Film Festival. In 2025, GEN_, the documentary she has co-authored with Gianluca Matarrese, was selected in the international world doc competition at Sundance Film Festival. Donatella's research on Generative AI and speculative violence earned her the Italian Council award 2024-25 from Italy's Ministry of Culture.
Míriam Juan-Torres
Head of Research, Democracy & Belonging Program, UC Berkeley, ES
Míriam Juan-Torres is a multidisciplinary researcher, writer, and public speaker with expertise on authoritarian populism, polarization, and human rights. Míriam is the Head of Research at OBI's Democracy & Belonging Forum at UC Berkeley. In the past, she worked as a senior researcher for More in Common, where she was the co-author of “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape” and the lead author of “Britain’s Choice: Common Ground and Division in 2020s Britain”. Míriam has taught courses on human rights and international criminal law as an associate professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Míriam is a board member of FundiPau, Foundation for Peace in Catalonia, and co-chair of the Board of the Belong Network in the UK. She has fieldwork experience in Ghana and Colombia, where she worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and interned at the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She holds a master in Global Affairs from Yale University and a law degree from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Amber Macintyre
Research Lead, Tactical Tech, SCOT/UK/DE
Amber Macintyre is an investigator and trainer examining technology, activism and politics. She is the project lead of Tactical Tech's Influence Industry Project, producing research and delivering capacity building to hold private firms and political parties to account. Amber’s PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London examined the use of personal data in civil society campaigns, comparing and contrasting practices of campaign analytics against surveillance. The research was drawn from her experience working with civil society campaigns, including her role as Digital Activism Officer at Amnesty International. She holds a Masters in International Law and the Settlement of Disputes from University of Peace, Costa Rica.
Yasmeen Daher
Philosopher, Co-director, Febrayer Network, PS/DE
Yasmeen Daher is a feminist activist and a writer. She holds a Doctorate degree from the department of philosophy, University of Montreal with focus on ethics and political philosophy, she had taught previously in different institutions including Bir-Zeit University in Palestine and Simone de Beavour Institute in Canada. She is the co-director and editorial director of Febrayer - A Network for independent Arab Media Organizations, based in Berlin. Yasmeen’s research sits at the intersection of political theory, ethics, and direct political action, all of which are deeply rooted in a commitment to feminist, social, and anti-colonial movements. Her work seeks to understand how authoritarianism reshapes agency—and how alternative ethical and political imaginaries might challenge it.
Tonia Mastrobuoni
Photo: Thomas Lobenwein
Journalist, Correspondent La Repubblica, IT/DE
Tonia Mastrobuoni is a German-Italian journalist, born in Brussels, grew up in Rome, and graduated in literature. Currently, she is the Correspondent for Germany and Eastern for La Repubblica, formerly La Stampa. From 2001 to 2011, she was the Economic and Financial Reporter for Reuters, Apcom, Il Riformista, Radio Radicale. In 2017, she won the most important Italian journalistic prize, Il Premiolino. For Mondadori, she has published the books The Unexpected: Angela Merkel, a Political Biography (2021) and The Erosion: How sovereignties are sweeping away democracy in Europe (2023). She is working on a new book about the extreme right in Germany for Feltrinelli that will be published in autumn. The title is The Plague.
Tina Lee
Editor-in-Chief, Unbias the News, US/DE
Christina Lee is a writer, editor and researcher. She is the editor-in-chief of feminist cross-border newsroom Unbias the News and head of publications at Hostwriter.org, an award-winning international network that helps journalists easily collaborate across borders. In 2019, she was editor-in-chief of the book Unbias the News: Why Diversity Matters for Journalism, a collaboration between Hostwriter and 40 international journalists, published by Hostwriter and Correctiv. She holds a JD in US American law and an LLM in international law and has worked at NGOs throughout the US and Europe focusing on issues of migration and minority rights. In 2016, she co-founded the website Migration Voter with Miriam Aced to examine the role of migration in elections and offer an alternative source for people frustrated by vague and confusing coverage of migration and elections. She speaks at events in Europe and internationally on the topics of cross-border journalism, misinformation, feminism and migration.
Photo: Maria Silvano
Tatiana Bazzichelli
Artistic Director, Disruption Network Lab, Director, Disruption Network Institute, IT/DE
Tatiana Bazzichelli is founder and director at Disruption Network Lab. Her focus of work is whistleblowing, network culture, art, and hacktivism. She is author of the books Whistleblowing for Change (2021), Networked Disruption (2013), Disrupting Business (2013), and Networking (2006). In 2011-2014 she was programme curator at transmediale festival in Berlin. She received a PhD degree in Information and Media Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Aarhus University in Denmark in 2011. Her PhD research, Networked Disruption: Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and the Business of Social Networking, was the result of her 2009 visiting scholarship at the H-STAR Institute of Stanford University. In 2019-2021 she was appointed jury member for the Capital Cultural Fund by the German Federal Government and the city of Berlin, and in 2020-2023 jury member for the Kulturlichter prize, a new award for digital cultural education in Germany.
Maya Talakhadze
Director, Regional Development Hub – Caucasus, GE
Maya Talakhadze is the Director of the RDH – Caucasus. With a solid legal background, she brings a wealth of experience spanning public institutions, private sector entities, and civil society organizations in Georgia and beyond. Her career reflects a multidisciplinary approach, with active contributions to areas such as governance, human rights, access to information, and policy reform. Maya has played a key role in strengthening Georgia’s media ecosystem, working collaboratively with national and international stakeholders to promote its independence, transparency, and resilience. She also served as a researcher at the Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), where she focused on issues related to access to information, open governance, and civic participation. Currently, Maya is pursuing her PhD at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. She remains committed to advancing democratic values, informed civic discourse, and empowering civil society actors.
