About the project

Authors of the project:
Velimir Zernovski, Jovanka Popova, Elena Trencheva


Hacking the Future is an open, participative, research project that aims to initiate a process of structural mapping and critical positioning of artistic practices, as well as various types of civil activism which refer to strategic acts related to the public space, media, digital culture and new media.

The conceptual frame of the project was developed during the workshop “Development of curating and mediating contemporary art”, lead by d-r Dorothee Richter, as a part of the international symposium and workshop “Curating Exchange” organized by press to exit project space in Skopje, in 2012.

The project research is based as an open archive that will be constantly updated and in which the rhizomatic merging of digital archives and knowledge recourses with similar subject matter will be treated...

By combined methodology in archiving internet links and materials with tactical content of joint or individual action through new media, as well as self- education through web-accessible library, the project’s aim is to provoke reaction and raise questions on subjects related to the media, oppressive mechanisms related to censoring, stereotyped determinant of identity and activities related to specific marginalized entities in public sphere in a certain social context.

The presented projects are referring to historiographical attempts and contemporary tactical practices that act on shaping or exposing of social norms in public sphere, including the virtual as multidimensional public space for acting trough different kinds of "hacker" practices on established heteronormative matrix.

Beside their role as socio-designers and educators, the artists that operate and use the social networks or other kind of communicational systems, are "enjoying" in making attacks on comfort and lethargy of everyday life.

This project presents artists, artistic practices, activists, scholars in the field of technology, electronic, free software as well as cultural workers who are striving to a systematic review and penetration into the system codes of social and institutional oppressive mechanisms related to distribution of power in media, which are used by alternative and pervasive representation, tactical methods and inventions for realization of interests in the field of social integration, gender equality, cultural-political strategies etc.

Tactical media are not perfect; they are in permanent process of development and modification, performative and pragmatic, constantly questioning the media and the way they work. Although they include alternative media they don’t restrict themselves to that category. The term "tactical" strives to "destruct" the dichotomies of any kind of restriction: amateur versus professional, alternative versus mainstream, even privet versus public. Its hybrid forms are always temporal (Lovnik, G).

Individuals and informal groups interested in artistic and activist practices in relation to tactical media can submit suggestions on the web-platform and e-mail address ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ), which will be available for sharing materials of executed projects, ideas and proposals for future realization, as well as associated links and literature.