Spore Hosts: Hacking social media – Approaches to artistic maneuvers for deradicalization

Right-wing networks use social media and algorithms as efficient tools to push through racist, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQIA+ policies and shift the overall social discourse to the right step by step. With the help of social media, they have been able to install the AfD as a powerful parliamentary arm and an integral part of our party system and have thus been able to translate campaign rhetoric into concrete policy for many years now. In my lecture, I will speak from an artistic perspective about social media as a social stage, which on the one hand is the perfect breeding ground for abbreviating, emotionalizing content and thus for targeted radicalization, but on the other hand is also one of the few spaces in which one can (and must) oppose these dynamics effectively and with a wide reach. I will briefly present two approaches to targeted deradicalization from my own artistic practice and point out the approaches of content creators and projects that take on this work from a non-explicitly artistic perspective. Afterwards, I look forward to a joint exchange and a think tank in which we empower ourselves as active co-creators of our digitalized reality.

Caspar Weimann

Caspar Weimann (they/er/sie) is co-initiator of the internet theater onlinetheater.live, the app "Loulu" and numerous intermedia projects; leads seminars and workshops on post-digital and hybrid theater strategies, on participatory theater on the net and on the theatricality of social media; is an honorary professor and mentor for acting at the ADK Baden-Württemberg, where he is also an equal opportunities officer with a special focus on queer empowerment.