Vectors - Perspectives of Digital Culture: On Vectoralism and How to Deal With It
Note: This event is also available online! Please find the link to the Jitsi chat at: https://mi2.hr/2026/05/o-vektoralizmu-i-kako-se-s-njime-nositi/
In 2004, writer and theorist McKenzie Wark wrote "A Hacker Manifesto", a seminal work that describes an economic system based on the commodification of information, and the control and ownership of "vector" - the means by which information is transmitted, processed and stored.
With the dawn of generative AI and the new internet-driven industrial revolution, what is unfolding around us increasingly resembles Wark's description of the world. The relentless commodification and control of data has allowed the vectoralist class to command growing aspects of everyday life, pushing the world to the brink. Yet, the infrastructure that makes all of that tick is built on the backs of the hacker class.
Generative AI, eroding labor rights, and the emerging data economy are only some of the symptoms of this transformation. Will we become beholden to the current political and economic systems of power? What can the hacker class do to take back ownership of vectors and the means of production in this digital age?
We will explore these questions in "Vectors – Perspectives of Digital Culture", a discursive program starting with a study on vectoralism, a concept introduced by Wark in A Hacker Manifesto.
The group talk is led by an international team consisting of (in alphabetical order):
ai carmela netîrk - anarchafeminist lofemme translesbian psyborg hacker migrant mycorrhizal mediatrix.
Writer, historian, historiographer, videographer, editor, livestreamer, vision mixer, system administrator.
Trained in the square occupations of 15M, Occupy Wall Street and Gezi Commune, after the vectoralist global counterrevolution she focused her energies in separatist transfeminist spaces.
https://systerserver.town/@ai
Joyce Ng (also known as BitOwl) is an engineer and hacker who is passionate about making technology open and accessible to all, down to the hardware level. She believes that having technology that is open and verifiable is essential for democratizing technology and protecting against malicious actors.
She contributes to UnderGND.Online (pronounced Underground Online), a loose association of hackers and organizers worldwide helping equip communities with the tools and frameworks to organize in a climate of rising authoritarianism and decreasing digital freedoms and privacy.
Vedran Gligo - a self-taught DIY hacker/artist/organizer/educator. Strongly applying open source principles in everyday life and practice and working to empower the local community by holding free and open digital workshops through the hacklab01.org project which he co-founded in 2009. Working with Format C Art Org, he is active in the fields of free culture, promotion of the GNU/Linux system, glitch art production, large-scale collaborative online art, independent cultural production, (h)activism, and more. He is one of the curators and founders of Fubar – a glitch and variable art biennale and a member of the Croatian Association of Interdisciplinary Artists (HUIU).
Vectors – Perspectives of Digital Culture is a discursive program dedicated to contemporary digital culture, technology, and political theory through public readings, discussions, and study groups hosted at Klub MaMa in Zagreb.