Laurence Hill, Director of Brighton Digital Festival, has blogged for us on his curation of The Messy Edge, which takes place in our venue on 13 October. The conference will bring together a mixture of speakers and artists work, including Tabita Rezaire, Usman Haque, Pinar Yoldas, Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke. 

He told us…

“The speaker and artist list for the Messy Edge is essentially a who’s who of the people that are doing interesting work at the frontiers of digital culture that I have come across in the last year. I am so happy to be bringing all of them to Brighton for our conference and I’m particularly happy to be staging it at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, which is one of my favourite spaces. 

The conference grew from two interconnected things. Firstly, my very simplified take on Donna Haraway’s book Staying with the Trouble in which she talks about the impossibility of technology providing a golden future unless we deal with the pressing issues of the present; racism, homophobia, mass extinctions and climate change amongst many others. 

And secondly, from my day to day interest in exploring the politics of technology; the uneven spread of digital privilege, the way prejudices are exposed in the work of Silicon Valley and beyond, the myth of a global, borderless internet, the blind faith in big data and ‘technofixes’. I’m also interested in how the past casts long shadows across our present and into the future in the form of (digital) colonialism.”

Here at ACCA we are looking forward to welcoming The Messy Edge, which will be a day of discussion and provocation. The different speakers and artists will explore what it means to live in the digital age as well as challenging and confronting the frontiers of digital culture to make us question how we communicate within this era.

The talks will explore the joys as well as the pitfalls of living in the digital age and the influences we are securing for our digital future. They will also confront dominating perspectives and provide room for interpretation and new ideas. All of the guests are well versed in the different areas of digital art, discussion and research, so we are looking forward to being challenged with these discussions. The speakers range from artists to activist.

Brighton Digital Festival takes place across Brighton & Hove from 14 September - 13 October.

The Messy Edge - Friday 13 October - 11am-5pm