Stella Assange
Human Rights Lawyer, ZA/UK/AU
Stella Assange is a human rights lawyer. She grew up in Southern Africa before moving to Sweden, Spain, and then the UK for her tertiary education where she studied politics and law. She holds a degree in law and politics at SOAS University of London, a Master of Science in refugee law at Oxford, and a Master in Public International Law while studying at the Complutense University of Madrid. She met Julian Assange in London in 2011 when she joined his international legal team, and has been so throughout his captivity, including during his asylum period in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and his incarceration in Belmarsh Prison, fighting for his freedom and against his extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States. They have two children together (born 2017 and 2019). Stella and Julian married in March 2022 in Belmarsh high-security prison in south-east London. In 2023, Stella was awarded the Pimentel Fonseca Prize in Naples and received the Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse awarded by The Hist at Trinity College Dublin, on behalf of herself and Julian Assange. She has written for The Guardian, The Daily Mail, and has been profiled by The Sunday Times Magazine.
Sunna Ævarsdóttir
Global Director of Courage International, IS
Sunna Ævarsdóttir is an international lawyer and former member of the Icelandic Parliament for the Pirate Party, serving from 2016-2024. She was the chair of the Parliamentary group of the Pirate Party from 2017-2019 and 2023-2024. Sunna Ævarsdóttir represented the Icelandic Parliament at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) from 2017 to 2024 where she built a distinguished record of advocacy for freedom of expression, the protection of whistleblowers and the release of political prisoners in Europe. During her tenure at PACE, Sunna Ævarsdóttir served as rapporteur for the 2024 report “The detention and conviction of Julian Assange and their chilling effects on human rights” (PACE Doc. 16040). The report led to a PACE resolution that formally recognised Julian Assange as a political prisoner during his incarceration in Belmarsh Prison. In addition, Ævarsdóttir chaired the PACE Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee (AS/JUR) and has been widely recognised for her leadership on anti-corruption, transparency, and privacy rights. www.courageinternational.org
Renata Ávila Pinto
Lawyer, Openness Advocate, GT/UK
Renata Avila Pinto is an international human rights lawyer specialising in the next wave of technological challenges to preserve and advance our rights and better understand the politics of data and their implications on trade, democracy and society. She has been writing about Digital Colonialism since 2013 and was a fellow at the Stanford Institute of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). She represented Julian Assange and WikiLeaks since 2009 and was a member of the legal team defending Assange and WikiLeaks under the direction of Baltasar Garzón. She was prominent in the defense during the Assange’s 2019 arrest and the 2020 legal battles in London, prior to becoming the CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation in 2021. She also represented indigenous victims of genocide and other human rights abuses, including the prominent indigenous leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum.
Chip Gibbons
Policy Director, Defending Rights & Dissent, Journalist, US
Chip Gibbons is an expert on US Constitutional law and journalist and researcher focusing on the US national security state. He is policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent, a U.S. civil liberties organisation that defends the right to know and freedom to act through grassroots mobilisation, public education, policy expertise, and advocacy journalism. For over a decade, he has led their work exposing threats to political expression posed by national security policy. He is currently working on The Imperial Bureau, forthcoming from Verso Books. Based heavily on archival research and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, it tells the history of FBI political surveillance and explores the role of domestic surveillance in the making of the US national security state.
Tatiana Bazzichelli (Moderator)
Founder and Artistic Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE
Tatiana Bazzichelli is founder and artistic director at Disruption Network Lab. Since September 2023, she has also directed the Disruption Network Institute. Her focus of work is whistleblowing, network culture, art, and hacktivism. She is author of Whistleblowing for Change (2021), Networked Disruption (2013), Disrupting Business (2013, with Geoff Cox), and Networking (2006). In 2011-2014 she was programme curator at transmediale festival in Berlin. She received a PhD in Information and Media Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Aarhus University in 2011. Her PhD research, Networked Disruption, was the result of her 2009 visiting scholarship at the H-STAR Institute of Stanford University. She was a jury member of the Transparency International Anti-Corruption Award Committee 2020, the Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Capital Cultural Fund, 2019-2021), and the Kulturlichter Prize (2020-2023).
Lisa Ling
Whistleblower, Former Technical Sergeant, US Air Force Drone Surveillance Programme, US
Lisa Ling began her military career in the early 1990s as a medic, surgical technician, and nurse. She transferred from Army Nurse to Air Force Combat Communications where she participated in operations, maintenance, and security of networked communications systems. As networks grew in size and complexity and the burgeoning ISR enterprise demanded more technologists to build, expand, operate, and maintain, her unit was moved and assimilated into the Drone Program. It was then she began working on the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS). Throughout her career she deployed to various sites and her last active-duty assignment was at Beale Air Force Base in California. After her military service, she travelled to Afghanistan to see first-hand the effects of what she participated in. She has a BA in History from UC Berkely.
John Kiriakou
Former CIA Counter-Terrorism Officer, Anti-Torture Whistleblower, US
John Kiriakou is a journalist, former CIA counterterrorism officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counterterrorism consultant for ABC News. He was responsible for the capture in Pakistan in 2002 of Abu Zubaydah, then believed to be the third-ranking official in al-Qaeda. In 2007, Kiriakou blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program, telling ABC News that the CIA tortured prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that the policy had been approved by then-President George W. Bush. He became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act — a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of the revelation. Kiriakou is the author of eight books, including The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror; Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison; The Convenient Terrorist: Abu Zubaydah and the Weird Wonderland of America’s Secret Wars; and The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis. www.johnkiriakou.com
John Goetz
Investigative Journalist, US/DE
John Goetz is an investigative journalist and filmmaker. His work has appeared in Der Spiegel, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Los Angeles Times, the Sunday Times, and The Guardian and his films have been shown on ARD, ARTE, Channel 4, MSNBC, DR and at film festivals around the world. The author of four books, Goetz has also worked as a producer at CBS’s “60 Minutes” and at the CBC’s “fifth estate”. As a staff journalist at Der Spiegel, he won Germany’s Nannen Award for his story about German war crimes in Afghanistan. In 2011, he joined the broadcaster NDR as Editor of Investigations and created the investigative cooperation between the Süddeutsche Zeitung and NDR. His film “Snowden’s Great Escape” won the best documentary award in 2015 from the German Television Academy. His 90-minute documentary “In Search of Monsters” about the men and women who tortured the former Guantanamo prisoner Mohamadou Slahi was awarded an International Emmy.
Jesselyn Radack
Director, Whistleblower & Source Protection at ExposeFacts, US/FR
Jesselyn Radack heads the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts. As Director of WHISPeR, her work focuses on the issues of secrecy, surveillance, torture and drones, where she has been at the forefront of challenging the government’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers. Among her clients are national security and intelligence community employees who have been investigated, charged, or prosecuted under the Espionage Act for allegedly mishandling classified information, including Daniel Hale, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, and John Kiriakou. She also represents clients bringing whistleblower retaliation complaints in federal court and other administrative bodies. Previously, she headed the National Security and Human Rights program at the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection organization, served on the DC Bar Legal Ethics Committee and worked at the Justice Department for seven years, first as a trial attorney and later as a legal ethics advisor. She received the “Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence Award” in 2012, the “Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award” in 2012 and was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s “Leading Global Thinkers of 2013.” She is a graduate of Brown University and Yale Law School.
Michael Sontheimer (Moderator)
Historian and Journalist, DE
Michael Sontheimer is a journalist and historian. He was one of the founders of the daily newspaper taz die tageszeitung (1979–1983) and a founding member of the Green Party in West Berlin (1978). He has written ten books on political and historical topics, the most recent of which is Berlin – Stadt der Revolte (written with Peter Wensierski, Ch. Links Verlag, 2018). He was a staff writer for DIE ZEIT in Hamburg (1985), editor-in-chief for taz (1992–1994) and a staff writer for Der Spiegel (1995–2024), where he coordinated publications with Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks. Since 2008, he has been a member of the Kuratorium of the taz Panter Foundation.
Kristinn Hrafnsson
Editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, IS
Kristinn Hrafnsson is an Icelandic investigative journalist who has served as editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks since September 2018. He was spokesperson of Wikileaks from 2010 to 2017. At WikiLeaks he was key in the research and production of the "Collateral Murder" video and travelled to Baghdad to interview survivors. He was also involved in the publication of other significant disclosures, such as diplomatic cables and intelligence files as well as other material documenting US war crimes in the ‘war on terror’. He wrote reports for Icelandic media outlets that highlighted systemic issues in finance and politics. Until 2009, he hosted the investigative programme Kompás on Stöð 2 (Channel 2), exposing corruption. He also investigated the collapse of Kaupthing Bank in 2008 for the public broadcaster RÚV. This report, which concerned substantial loans to bank managers, was suppressed by a court injunction in 2009. After his contract with RÚV was not renewed in 2010, Hrafnsson began working closely with WikiLeaks. He was named Icelandic journalist of the year in 2004, 2007 and 2010 by Iceland's National Union of Journalists.
Stefania Maurizi
Investigative Journalist, Regular Contributor, Il Fatto Quotidiano, IT
Stefania Maurizi is an investigative journalist who writes for il Fatto Quotidiano, after working fourteen years for L’Espresso and la Repubblica. Among international journalists, she is the only one who has worked on all WikiLeaks secret files, excepting the very few published by WikiLeaks without media partners. She is also the only journalist who has conducted multi-jurisdictional FOIA litigation to access the full documentation on WikiLeaks. She published Edward Snowden’s files on Italy with Glenn Greenwald and revealed the confidential agreement between the US and the family of Giovanni Lo Porto, the Italian aid worker killed by an American drone. Her book Secret Power. WikiLeaks and Its Enemies, foreword by Ken Loach, Pluto Press, has been translated in English, French, Spanish and German, and has won four major journalistic awards. www.stefaniamaurizi.it
Ewen MacAskill
Reporter, Former Guardian's Defence and Intelligence Correspondent, UK
Ewen MacAskill has been a reporter since 1973. The biggest security story he did before joining The Guardian was publication of leaked classified documents from the UK's nuclear submarine base. At The Guardian, he started as chief political correspondent and then diplomatic editor, both based in London. He covered the Second Intifada, the Iraq war, Afghanistan and other conflicts. He was The Guardian's Washington bureau chief for six years from 2007 and spent a year in New York as a general correspondent. He returned to the UK as defence and intelligence correspondent through to 2018. He wrote a handful of stories from the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables but mainly covered the political reaction in Washington and later the campaign for the release of Julian Assange. He flew with Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald to Hong Kong in 2013 to interview Edward Snowden and to write stories based on his trove of NSA documents. They won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage. He left the Guardian staff in 2018, but continues to contribute occasional articles on various issues, including the increasing repression of Palestinians in the West Bank. www.theguardian.com/profile/ewenmacaskill
Jack Poulson
Executive Director, Tech Inquiry, US
Jack Poulson is the Executive Director of the nonprofit Tech Inquiry, where he leads a project for exploring international procurement and lobbying. He was previously a Senior Research Scientist in Google's AI division and, before that, an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Stanford. He completed his PhD in Computational and Applied Mathematics at UT Austin in 2012 before serving as an Assistant Professor of Computational Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech. After two years as a Research Scientist in Google’s AI division working on recommendation systems and natural language processing, he resigned in protest of the company rolling back its international human rights protections and transitioned (back) into the nonprofit sector. His work focuses on data curation of the interface between tech companies and weapons manufacturers with the U.S. government and supporting civil society and tech workers in opposing related abuses. https://techinquiry.org
Joseph Farrell (Moderator)
WikiLeaks Ambassador, SZ/UK
Joseph Farrell is a British journalist and editor who has worked for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Centre for Investigative Journalism, where he served on the Board of Trustees for a decade. He has worked with WikiLeaks since 2010 and is the organisation’s Ambassador. He has served as a section editor on many of WikiLeaks’ most significant publications, including the Iraq and Afghan War Logs and Cablegate, among others. His work with WikiLeaks has made him the target of an ongoing FBI investigation, alongside other WikiLeaks associates. He was a member of the Civil Society Coalition at the WIPO diplomatic conference on a treaty for copyright exceptions for persons with disabilities in Marrakesh, Morocco, and has participated in international election monitoring missions as part of independent observer delegations.
Terry Albury
Former FBI Agent, Whistleblower, US
Terry Albury is a former FBI counterterrorism agent whose nearly 17-year career began in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. After years of ideological compromises, he made a series of unauthorised disclosures to The Intercept resulting in the comprehensive and exhaustive journalistic piece known as The FBI’s Secret Rules. His revelations stemmed from an internal crisis of conscience as he witnessed the U.S. government’s baseless and vindictive targeting of vulnerable and marginalised communities under the specious pretext of national security. This act of civil disobedience was rewarded with a prosecution under the Espionage Act and a sentence of four years in federal prison. In a display of solidarity, multiple scholars of constitutional law along with The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press submitted amicus briefs on his behalf which contextualised the importance of these revelations especially as they pertained to holding the FBI accountable for blatant and repeated abuses of law under the opaque and duplicitous “war on terrorism.” Today, he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he supports the work of lawyers, civil rights/liberties organizations, academics, and journalists.
Thomas Drake
Whistleblower, former Senior Executive at the National Security Agency, US
Thomas Drake is a former senior executive at the National Security Agency and whistleblower who exposed the post-9/11 warrantless mass domestic surveillance program; 9/11 intelligence failures; billions in fraud, waste, and abuse; and endemic corruption. He was also a criminal defendant in the Obama Administration’s signature Espionage Act prosecution against him that collapsed and he went free. Previously he served in the Air Force and Navy and was a principal in a boutique dot com with a practice in management consulting and information technology. He is featured in the documentary Silenced and on the “United States of Secrets” episode of PBS’s Frontline. He now speaks and writes on privacy, technology, democracy, governance and defending civil liberties and our inalienable human rights. http://witnessblower.net
Suelette Dreyfus
Technology Researcher, Executive Director, Blueprint for Free Speech, AU
Suelette Dreyfus is a technology researcher, journalist, and writer. Her fields of research include information systems, digital security and privacy, the impact of technology on whistleblowing, health informatics and e-Education. She is the Executive Director of Blueprint for Free Speech. Her specific work at Blueprint is to raise the standards of protection for whistleblowers. She is a specialist in cybersecurity technologies and in integrity systems that work as corrective mechanisms in society. Suelette founded Blueprint in 2014 with a view to improving the standards of laws and practice around the globe that protect freedom of expression. Her work examines digital whistleblowing as a form of freedom of expression and the right of dissent from corruption. She is also a researcher and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne.
Andy Müller-Maguhn
Wau Holland Stiftung Board Member, Courage Advisory Board Member, DE
Andy Müller-Maguhn is a member of the German hacker association Chaos Computer Club. Having been a member since 1986, he was appointed as a spokesman for the club in 1990 and later served on its board until 2012. In an election in autumn 2000, he was voted in as an at-large director of ICANN, which made him jointly responsible with 18 other directors for the worldwide development of guidelines and the decision of structural questions for the Internet structure. His term lasted two years, and from June 2002 to June 2004, he operated as an honorary board member of the European Digital Rights Institution (EDRI), an umbrella organization for European NGOs which campaigns for human rights in the digital age. In 1995, Müller-Maguhn founded the “Datenreisebüro” (‘Data Travel Agency’), since 2002 based in a Berlin office. The Datenreisebüro organises workshops which train system administrators in data protection and data security. www.wauland.de
Mark Curtis (Moderator)
Co-Director, Declassified UK, Journalist, UK
Mark is the co-founder and co-director of Declassified UK, an investigative media outlet examining the UK's real role in the world. Curtis has written six books on British foreign policies and international development, including Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam (Serpent’s Tail, 2012, updated 2018) and Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses (Vintage, 2004). Mark worked on international development issues for over 25 years. In this work, Mark published over 120 reports on issues such as food/agriculture, mining, tax, corporations and trade. He is a former Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and is also a former Director of the World Development Movement (now called Global Justice Now), Head of Global Advocacy and Policy at Christian Aid and Head of Policy at ActionAid. He is a graduate of Goldsmiths, University of London and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Matthew Kennard
Author, Investigative Journalist, UK
Matt Kennard is an investigative journalist and author. He worked as a staff writer for the Financial Times in the US and UK and is the author of three books, Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy (2023), which investigated the rise of global corporate power, Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror (2012), which investigated the degradation of the US military during the War on Terror and The Racket; A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire (2015), which investigated how the US rigs the global economy for the benefit of its elite. Matt Kennard was formerly Head of Investigations at Declassified UK and since January 2026 he is Head of Articles at Palestine Deep Dive, to raise the voices of Palestinians in Palestine and the diaspora. www.palestinedeepdive.com
Scott Ludlam
Designer, Researcher, Former Senator for Western Australia, AU
Scott Ludlam was an Australian Senator between 2007 and 2017 and Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens. As spokesperson for digital rights, Scott took an interest in the WikiLeaks project as the attacks on the publisher stepped up, anchoring the early campaign in defence of the organisation in Australia. He works as a writer, designer, researcher and freelance troublemaker, and is based between Sydney and the South Coast. His first book Full Circle was published in 2021. https://scottludlam.org.au
Esteban Servat
Founder, EcoLeaks AR/DE
Esteban Servat is an Argentine scientist, frontline environmental activist and founder of EcoLeaks, which helped build mass local resistance against fracking in Vaca Muerta (Argentina) through the publishing of censored documents. Currently based in Germany, he has been building international grassroots networks of solidarity, campaigns and movements connecting Global South & North activist groups over various environmental struggles. In 2021 he co-founded Debt for Climate, a global grassroots movement bringing together workers, indigenous, feminist, faith, social, environmental and climate justice movements from the Global South and North to cancel the debt of Global South countries in order to enable a just energy transition.
Clara López Rubio
Filmmaker, ES/DE
After studying at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin (dffb), Clara López Rubio closely followed the Assange case for nine years and wrote and directed the awarded documentary HACKING JUSTICE (2021) which has been released in European movie theaters and broadcasted on several European public television stations. López Rubio is a Documentary Campus, Doklab Navarra, CIMA Mentoring 1 & 1, IDFAcademy and CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator alumna. She is currently working on the development of the documentary project AMAZONAS together with Waorani women of the Ecuadorian Amazon. https://www.lesmutins.org/hacking-justice
Deepa Govindarajan Driver (Moderator)
Lecturer in Governance, Regulation and Risk, Henley Business School, UK
Dr Deepa Driver lectures in the areas of state and corporate accountability, regulation and governance at the University of Reading. Her research interests lie at the intersections of democracy, human rights and finance. Between 2019 and 2025, Deepa served as the legal observer in the extradition case against Julian Assange in the UK. Deepa currently serves as vice-chair of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers (UK); and as vice-chair of the board of Finance Watch, Brussels. Her career to date includes roles at Citigroup, Lloyds Banking Group, the FSA(UK) and in consulting, both in continental Europe and in the UK. Deepa's comments at this event are in her personal capacity.
Robert Trafford
Deputy Director, Forensis; Assistant Director, Forensic Architecture, UK/DE
Robert, or Bob, is an Assistant Director at Forensic Architecture, and the Deputy Director of Forensis e.V. In each organisation, he supports team members with project coordination and strategy, research, scriptwriting, and partnership-building. He also supports both organisations’ fundraising and donor stewardship and leads FA’s editorial team. Robert joined Forensic Architecture in 2017, before which he worked as a freelance journalist. He has reported for The Intercept, The Times, The Independent, Vice, and elsewhere. Robert holds a BA (Hons) in Philosophy and Theology from the University of Oxford, and an MA in Investigative Journalism from City, University of London. Robert formally joined Forensis in 2025. www.counter-investigations.org
Institute for Dissent and Datalove
Collective of Hackers, Artists, Activists and Tinkerers, DE, FR, US
The Institute for Dissent and Datalove is a loose collective comprised of hackers, artists, activists and tinkerers. It overlaps with networks of solidarities involved in active defense of free speech and free/libre technologies, technology critics and political interventions. The Institute for Dissent and Datalove has so far mostly been used for operations of de/re-contextualization of large datasets, de-formatting of formats and playful use of liberating algorithms. It tries to criticize and deconstruct itself, while remaining grounded in uncompromising collective practices of autonomy and solidarity.
Davide Dormino
Visual Artist, Activist, IT
Davide Dormino (Udine, 1973) is an independent artist. He uses marble, bronze and iron. His public and environmental artworks reveal a search for meaning through references to themes that are essential to humankind. Among his most famous works are Breath (2011), permanently installed at the United Nations in New York, and Anything to say? (2015), a travelling sculpture dedicated to courage and freedom of expression, exhibited in 26 European capitals and awarded the Prix Èthique by the AntiCor organisation in 2016. Since 2002, he has been teaching Drawing, Sculpture and Installation at RUFA. He lives and works in Rome. www.anythingtosay.com
Manja McCade
Artist, Co-Founder, Julian Assange Archive e.V., DE
Manja McCade is a contemporary artist living and working in Dessau, Germany. Her practice spans painting, installation, and conceptual work and focuses on questions of responsibility, power, memory, and resistance. Alongside her studio practice, she has been deeply engaged in artistic and activist work connected to Julian Assange. Her installation Belmarsh Live translated the conditions of isolation and political pressure surrounding Assange’s imprisonment into a visual and spatial experience. McCade is a co-founder of the Julian Assange Archive e.V.. She understands art as a form of ethical positioning rather than neutral production. www.julianassangearchive.org and www.manjamccade.com
Becky Haghpanah-Shirwan
Director, A/POLITICAL, UK
Becky Haghpanah-Shirwan an art historian, curator and the Director of A/POLITICAL, a London based Art organisation championing radical artistic practices and legacies. She holds a degree in Art History from The Courtauld Institute of Art and an MPhil in Post-Soviet Émigré Art from Bristol University. At A/POLITICAL, she has developed a significant collection of socio-political art and produced numerous large-scale interdisciplinary projects. Museum exhibitions include US OR CHAOS (BPS22, Belgium), EAST / WEST (National Gallery of Bulgaria), and TORTURE (Station Museum of Contemporary Art, USA). She has recently co-edited Pornopolitics and Other Precedents, a monograph on Pyotr Pavlensky, and The Game: All Things Trump on Andres Serrano. www.a-political.org
Andrei Molodkin
Artist, RU/FR
Andrei Molodkin's artistic practice is a leading example of Political Minimalism. Molodkin's projects have been censored throughout his career, from the Venice Biennale in 2009 where he represented his country in the Russian Pavilion – to 2021 when 'Whitehouse Filled with the Blood of US Citizens' was deemed too dangerous to show and was pulled from its intended location due to political tensions in the lead up to the Insurrection in Washington D.C. Recently, he has made headlines with 'Putin Filled with Ukrainian Blood', a globally exhibited work produced in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The work was smuggled into Moscow and live-streamed on Red Square during the Victory Day parade. During the World Cup in Qatar, Molodkin presented a sculpture of the World Cup trophy filled with Qatari oil. It had a symbolic price of $150m to match the amount of money allegedly spent on bribes and kickbacks to FIFA officials. Last year, he publicly sold blood-soaked copies of Prince Harry's Memoir, and projected a sculpture filled with the blood of Afghans onto St Paul's Cathedral to comment on Harry's remarks in Spare about his number of kills in Afghanistan.
Mauro Forte
Activist, Free Assange Napoli, IT
Mauro Forte is an architect and media activist based in Naples. Since the 1990s he has been involved in radical political practices, starting with his militancy at Officina 99 and with Radiolina, a pirate radio within the Italian network of independent radios.
He later took part in Indymedia Italy, contributing to grassroots media infrastructures for counter-information and freedom of expression. In Naples he helped coordinate the campaign for the liberation of Julian Assange, contributing to making the city the first major metropolis to grant him honorary citizenship. He collaborates with Liberi Edizioni, an artistic-editorial project directed by Nicola Angrisano, reclaiming public space as a site of political information.
Raja Stutz & Claudia Daseking
Assange Support Berlin, DE
Claudia Daseking and Raja Stutz have closely followed the political and media developments surrounding the Assange case for years. Together with other dedicated individuals, they have been campaigning actively in Berlin to raise public awareness of the case and its significance. They have organised events such as film screenings, readings and panel discussions, as well as carrying out street campaigns. They are united by the belief that the Assange case has impacted our fundamental values and rights, and that it is crucial to inform public opinion to counter misrepresentations in the media and encourage politicians to take action.
Facilitators:
Tatiana Bazzichelli (Founder and Artistic Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE) · See The Reasons Behind
Institute for Dissent and Datalove (Collective of Hackers, Artists, Activists and Tinkerers, DE, FR, US) · See Art as Evidence & Resistance
A Symposium by Disruption Network Lab. Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the Reva & David Logan Foundation. In cooperation with the Wau Holland Foundation and HAU Hebbel am Ufer.