Oct. 16 – Italian researcher Tatiana Bazzichelli will host a meeting on “The art of networking,” scheduled for Wednesday, November 12 at 7pm at the Italian Institute of Culture in Montreal. The appointment – organized by the IIC – focuses on the alternative use of Internet and digital technologies among artist, hackers and activists communities. Bazzichelli is a sociologist and expert on communication network culture, hacktivism and net art. She has long fought to bring forward the concept of art as a network within the Italian and international art-visual scene, working with different artistic realities, museums and cultural centers. Born in Rome in 1974, Bazzichelli – curator, researcher and essayist – lived first in Berlin and then in Denmark. In Germany, she developed the Disruption Network Lab, an experimental project on art and hacktivism based in Berlin. In Montreal, the researcher will analyze networking techniques, developed in the second half of the twentieth century, which anticipated the structure, and inspired the rhetoric of many contemporary social networking websites. The aim of the conference is to reconstruct the roots of Italian and European collaborative artistic practices that spread since the invention of Internet. Since 1990, within the framework of art and digital culture, networking platforms have been an important tool to share knowledge and experiences. The presentation “The Art of Networking” sees Bazzichelli refer to the concept of the network as a context of active participation. During the debate, she will compare the diversified use of art and technology between the ‘grassroots’ artist, hacker and activist communities involved in networking processes that spread underground before becoming the key element of social platforms. (PO / red)