DNL #15: DARK HAVENS. Artistic Talk "THE GREAT OFFSHORE"
Channel: Disruption Network Lab
Date: 18/04/2019

Disruption Network Lab 
An ongoing platform of events and research on art, hacktivism and disruption in Berlin. 


Berlin, April 5-6, 2019
DARK HAVENS: Confronting Hidden Money & Power
15th Event of the Disruption Network Lab, Kunstquartier Bethanien Berlin, Studio 1.



Web: https://www.disruptionlab.org/dark-havens 
Twitter: @disruptberlin 
Facebook: /disruptionlab 


Artistic Director and Curator: Tatiana Bazzichelli
Community Director: Lieke Ploeger 
Programme Managers: Daniela Silvestrin, Nada Bakr, Monti Harmony


Credits: 
Disruption Network Lab Berlin - www.disruptionlab.org
Video by Rofsofilms - www.rofsofilms.com 
Graphic: Jonas Frankki 
CC Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International 


5 April, 2019
15:30 - 16:15
THE GREAT OFFSHORE


RYBN.ORG (Extra-disciplinary Artistic Research Platform, FR)
Moderated by Ela Kagel (Digital Strategist and Founder of SUPERMARKT Berlin, DE)


RYBN presents the "The Great Offshore" project, an artistic investigation conducted in several tax havens. The Great Offshore addresses the question of representation of offshore finance: due to its opaque nature and the secrecy that surrounds it, it is impossible to picture. The symbolic representations that are usually in use are, as many invitations to evasion, filled by colonial images of exotic islands, of palm trees beaches and golden sands, infinite walls of numbered mailboxes, that contribute to the aestheticisation of financial power. In a similar fashion, as Alain Deneault underlines it, the vocabulary in use to describe offshore finance is not neutral, and produces a positive, technical, legal and legitimate picture, that neutralizes critics. As a consequence, either within semantics or semiotics, we face a representation crisis. To overcome this representation failure, The Great Offshore project seeks for traces of this transnational and liquid financial industry, to capture how it marks local landscapes, architectures and environments. The Great Offshore project aims to reshape the imaginary around tax havens, by re-engaging with the situationist strategies of psycho-geography, enhanced by digital and algorithmic means. During the talk, RYBN will unfold the different chapters that composed the project and its artistic, semiotic and political dimensions.