AMRO26 / Art Meets Radical Openness / Becoming Unreadable

afo - architekturforum oberösterreich, Wednesday, May 13 at 10:00 AM GMT+2


13. – 16. May 2026
Linz, Austria

AMRO26:
Becoming unreadable

Art Meets Radical Openness
Festival dedicated to Art, Hacktivism and Open Culture

Art Meets Radical Openness is a biennial community festival for art, hacktivism and open cultures. It provides a space for discussion and resistance against technological monoculture, and for sharing and learning together on contemporary issues of our networked times.

The current techno-political moment is dominated by AI and by the strengthening of the alliance between big tech and conservative politics, as well as a blind faith in endless computational growth. All of this relies on forms of “hyper-visibility”, based on the assumption that a constant online omnipresence is normal and desirable. Our interconnectedness forms the basis of mainstream digital cultures and serves as a tool for ubiquitous surveillance and the exploitative appropriation of works and data by big tech, which demands critical opposition.

For its 2026 edition, titled ‘Becoming Unreadable’, AMRO invites its community to reflect on and engage with invisibility, unreadability, ungovernability, and uncomputability as strategies for resistance.. AMRO26 aims at challenging the common understanding of AI, networks and computers, and through its programme, explores approaches that offer real change: low-tech, feminist and community IT, computing within limits, up to even more radical ideas around de-computing, de-networking, de-scaling and de-platforming ourselves. 'Becoming Unreadable' involves evading surveillance by oligarchic tech corporations, operate under the radar, and refuse to comply to the total AI cloud. Non-commercial community infrastructures are fundamental tools in this process, but even more importantly we need to develop new ways of understanding each others and being together as humans. Art Meets Radical Openness wants to be a space dedicated to that.

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Program:

12. May - Pre-opening

18:30 / SPLACE / Kunstuniversität Linz / Hauptplatz 6
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13. May - Opening & Keynotes

18:00 / Exhibition: From the Ashes of the Burnout Machines / Galerie MAERZ / Eisenbahngasse 20
19:00 / afo – architekturforum oberösterreich / Herbert-Bayer-Platz 1
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13. – 16. May, from 10:00-00+
Lectures, concerts, workshops, exhibitions:
full program on [https://radical-openness.org/]
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16. May – Closing event - Night-line
21:00-02:00 / STWST / Kirchengasse 4
with Adel Faure & Rémi Georges, Arnica Montana, Jens Vetter, Lil Data, map(h), Mitsitron, MSHR, Orangetronic, Pasta Gang, & more.
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Showcases:
From the Ashes of the Burnout Machines / Galerie MAERZ
13. - 16. May | (Everyday, 10:00-19:00) | Eisenbahngasse 20
Curated by Davide Bevilacqua, Arianna Forte, Noemi Garay, Lara Mejač, Diane Pricop
Exhibiting artists: 868.labs, S( )fia Braga, MOC Mara Oscar Cassiani, Marco Donnarumma, Fantastic Little Splash, Christina Gruber, Dasha Ilina & Marie Verdeil, Sam Lavigne, Repair and Redress, Mario Santamaría, Ioana Vreme Moser

Decay and Desire / bb15 – space for contemporary art
14. - 16. May | (Everyday, 10:00-19:00); 18th-22nd May, (Tue-Sat, 15:00-18:00) | Hafnerstraße 4
Exhibiting artists: Maja Bojanić and Brin Žvan & jiawen uffline

AMRO26: Becoming Unreadable / SPLACE
12. - 21. May | (Everyday, 10:00-19:00) | Kunstuniversität Linz, Hauptplatz 6
Exhibiting artists: a/o (Anna Watzinger/Olivia Jaques), Zelda Diedrich, Anna Kraher, Juli Laczko,Valie Messini, jiawen uffline


ABOUT AMRO

AMRO, Art Meets Radical Openness, is a festival, a platform and a community for art, hacktivism and open cultures, organized since 2008 by servus.at in cooperation with the Linz University of Art, Department of Time-Based Media and Visual Communcation.

“Art Meets Radical Openness” brings together local and international artists, activists, developers, researchers and hacktivists involved with the culture of sharing and communal production. They are catalysts that spark new discourses and open up new directions of thinking. Free Open Source Software, open tools in general and the use of free licenses are the precondition and basis for the digital practice of a community like this, which impels social transformation. This tangible transformation goes beyond a digital practice and also changes our real life.

https://kulturkarte.servus.at/event/amro-26-art-meets-radical-openness

Today (19 February) I’ll give a keynote lecture about “Tactical Publishing” during the Paper Bonds conference at CEFRES - Centre français de recherche en sciences sociales in Prague. Paper Bonds is about “how self-made books and non-commercial bookmaking practices can foster personal connections, shape identities and build communities across Europe and the Middle East”. Looking forward to listen to leading researchers Hélène Martinelli, Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė and Ali Al-Moussaoui.

https://cefres.cz/en/events/tandem-kick-off-paper-bonds/

#interdisciplinaryresearch #experimentalpublishing #activistpublishing #communicationstrategies #tacticalpublishing #publishing #publishinghistory #indiepublishing #independentpublishing #postdigitalprint #bookmaking #intermediality #fanzine #samizdat #printedmatter #printmaking #analogpublishing #mediaculture #criticalmedia #publishingstudies #criticaltheory #mediastudies #selfpublishing #undergroundpublishing #indiepress

Can corruption shape what we see and hear in the media?
This piece examines how influence, bias, and power dynamics affect U.S. news reporting—and what that means for truth and public trust.
Explore it here: https://www.djoinerbooks.com/how-corruption-influences-u-s-media/
#MediaInfluence #PressFreedom #CriticalMedia #CorruptionExplained
How Corruption Influences U.S. Media and Pop Culture - Dennis Joiner

An in-depth look at how corruption influences U.S. media, shaping news, entertainment, and culture through power, profit, and politics.

Dennis Joiner

Concretely, we are still trying to understand how the network works and how we can interact with the rest of the members.

For the time being we joined a newly formed Digital Ethics working group, where we are in exchange with several representatives of NGOs dealing with critical media or just interested in digital autonomy.

We keep you updated.

https://reset-network.eu/member/servus-at-kunst-und-kultur-im-netz/

#digitalethics #europeannetwork #criticalmedia #digitalautonomy

Reset! network | servus.at – kunst und kultur im netz

Reality testing: measuring the long term impact of journalism

We have to stop pretending that bad journalists aren't journalists.

#journalism #media #CriticalMedia #InstitutionalNarrative #DeepWrongs #MeasuringImpact #cdnmedia

https://www.sherwinarnott.org/2023/08/reality-testing-measuring-the-long-term-impact-of-journalism/

Reality testing: measuring the long term impact of journalism | Sherwin Arnott

When Margaret Wente was getting busted repeatedly for plagiarizing, her publisher, The Globe and Mail, more or less defended her. Critical commentators' noted that no one spins harder or better than a…

Sherwin Arnott
Words matter. When journalists lazily use the word “gunman” when other words are more apt, they make it sound like a profession. Something to aspire to. Do better. #Framing #CriticalMedia #Journalism