Presented at
HOPE X (2014),
July 18, 2014, 10 a.m.
(60 minutes)
Mending (or fixing/repairing) - part of the spectrum that includes hacking, alteration, and making - can become a political act in a time of cheap goods, outsourced labor, and low wages. What is mending's role in a new model of production and consumption, one where artisans and individuals face off, perhaps quixotically, against mass production? Can repair become economically viable? How does mending contend with goods that are poorly made in the first place, when globalization undermines local resources, when companies design objects AND supply chains to be repair-resistant? Panelists from the repair movement will discuss the opportunities as well as the barriers to making repairs in the human realm: social (habits and systems), economic (prices, labor), and technical (parts, design). Repairing things, rather than discarding or putting up with broken objects or systems, connects deeply to the hacker/maker movement and to sustainable ecology. Panelists will address how repair can be beautiful as well as potentially disruptive. This panel includes activists and artists, attorneys and organizers - drawn to repair as process and performance. An act of repair has the possibility of political significance or an act of resistance, and brings the possibility of transformation to ordinary objects and larger systems alike.
Presenters:
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Tiffany Rad
as Tiffany Strauchs Rad
Tiffany Strauchs Rad is an attorney, professor, and senior computer security analyst who has spoken on reverse engineering and the Right To Repair Act. She is co-author of the book Security in 2020 and her security, legal, and policy research has been featured in publications and media such as 60 Minutes, Washington Times, NPR, MIT Technology Review, PC World, Popular Mechanics, Ars Technica, Der Spiegel, 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, CNN, Wired Magazine, Reuters, Huffington Post, and others.
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Vincent Lai
Vincent Lai has been leading the Fixers' Collective, a project-in-residence at the Proteus Gowanus gallery in Brooklyn, since 2010. While he loves to fix and tinker, he's still interested in all opportunities to learn a new and novel way to fix anything. He remembers his first computer, a TRS-80 Model I, and his first HOPE in 2000.
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Sandra Goldmark
Sandra Goldmark is the cofounder of Pop Up Repair, an itinerant repair service for household items of all kinds. Founded and staffed by theater artists, the project provides an alternative to the cycle of use-and-discard consumer goods.
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Miriam Dym
Miriam Dym is founder of Logo Removal Service and other disruptive art-business ventures. She has shown at museums and galleries in the U.S. and abroad, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art and SFMOMA. She has held residencies at The Watermill (Long Island, New York), Cite des Arts (Paris), and Stanford University Digital Art Center.
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