Public space is not only made of streets.
It is also made of rooms.
Chairs facing a stage.
People sharing the same air.
A microphone waiting for someone to say the thing that may stay in another person’s head.
We painted holes to make people look down.
We made postcards to make people look up.
Now we are entering conferences.
Sending messages through ears and into brains.
Not only to inform.
To create a reaction.
ARTivism: Hacking culture to defend privacy
DARK Prague 2026
Prague, October 2 to 4, 2026.
Accepted.
Decentralization only matters when people use it.
But most people do not begin with protocols, architecture diagrams, or cryptography.
They begin with meaning.
With a story.
With a feeling that something important is being taken away.
This talk starts with art as activism.
It looks at projects such as System Err 2052, where theatre turns privacy, autonomy, and technological control into something an audience can experience together.
The stage becomes a testing environment.
The audience becomes part of the system.
Abstract ideas become choices with consequences.
From there, the talk moves into cypherpunk culture, where code, art, resistance, and imagination have always worked together.
Building privacy technology is not enough.
People must understand it.
They must trust it.
They must be able to use it without becoming experts first.
Usability is not decoration added after the serious work is finished.
Usability is part of the resistance.
A privacy tool that nobody can understand protects nobody.
A decentralized network that nobody wants to enter remains an empty room.
Developers are not only building software.
They are shaping what kinds of freedom people can actually reach.
Pleasure without permission
Big Time Sensuality: The Politics of Pleasure
Prague, November 4 and 5, 2026.
Proposal submitted.
Not yet accepted.
Mainstream platforms decide what people can publish, discover, support, and sometimes even imagine.
They decide through recommendation systems, moderation policies, payment restrictions, commercial priorities, and rules that can change overnight.
Lawful adult expression often disappears inside these systems.
Artists lose access to audiences.
Communities lose spaces they built.
People are told which desires are acceptable enough for an advertiser.
This proposal looks at decentralized erotic networks as another kind of public space.
A playground.
A gallery.
A stage.
A small bug inside a much larger system.
These networks can give artists more control over their work and their relationships with audiences.
They can make space for queer expression, fantasy, furry art, anime-inspired work, experimental media, and specific consensual interests that centralized platforms may suppress or hide.
People do not have to remain passive consumers.
They can become curators.
Supporters.
Collaborators.
They can help shape the culture around them instead of waiting for an algorithm to choose it for them.
Decentralization can also reduce dependence on companies that take large fees, block payments, demonetize adult creators, or remove accounts without warning.
Open protocols can help art travel while creators keep their identities, communities, and independence.
But freedom is not the absence of responsibility.
It requires consent.
Privacy.
Legality.
Age-appropriate access.
Accountable community governance.
Decentralization does not remove responsibility.
It asks more people to carry it.
The goal is not a network without rules.
It is a network where the rules are not controlled by a single invisible hand.
Erotic art should not have to wait quietly for institutional permission.
Neither should the communities growing around it.
Sharing is caring
TEDxSofia
Sofia, November 28, 2026.
Open data sounds technical.
It often looks like a file nobody opens.
A spreadsheet on a government portal.
A map hidden behind a difficult interface.
A public record published because somebody was required to publish it.
But data becomes powerful when someone takes it out of storage and puts it into motion.
A transport dataset can show which neighbourhoods are being left behind.
A public budget can reveal what a city values.
Environmental measurements can make invisible pollution visible.
A map can help people repair a street, protect a place, or organize a community.
Sharing is not the final step.
It is the beginning of another person’s work.
Open data allows journalists to investigate.
Artists to interpret.
Developers to build.
Researchers to connect patterns.
Citizens to ask better questions.
But publishing data is not enough.
It must be understandable.
Reusable.
Accessible.
People must be able to find it and know what they are allowed to do with it.
The talk is about moving from access to action.
From downloading a file to changing something outside the screen.
Open data cannot change the world by itself.
People change the world.
Data can help them see where to begin.
One last thing
A conference is a temporary public space.
It has streets made of corridors.
Walls made of people.
Doors made of questions.
For a few minutes, everyone agrees to listen.
That creates an opening.
An idea can enter through the ears.
It can reach the brain.
Sometimes it stays there.
Sometimes it leaves the building inside another person and becomes a project, a conversation, a piece of code, a protest, or a different decision.
We are not entering these rooms only to describe the world.
We are entering them to disturb it a little.
Some people will listen and do nothing.
Speak anyway.
Subscribe to our RSS | About Us | Discuss... |
Licensed Under Creative Commons license by Pepita
