A project by Social Impact within the frame of Linz 2009 European Cultural Capital of Europe 

As the first trade fair for counter culture and resistance technology the Subversive Fair presents recent works which constructively undermine hegemonic power structures, and appropriate the production of public space.

Subversive highlights from the realms of (political) interventions, fashion, (an)architecture, performance, artistic provocation, (satiric) art, hacktivism and actions will be presented. The artists will be present and visitors can participate in DIY- workshops, action tours, lectures, product presentations, and film screenings. This enables a direct transfer of knowledge and know-how and pushes the idea of an international, long-term conspiratorial network. The duration (four days), structure, organisation, ambience and setting of the Subversive Fair is modelled on conventional fairs.

Concrete Themes

• The effects of recuperation - the appropriation of subversive techniques by capitalist (culture) industry, as well as the intertwining of the advertising, fashion and music industries with the sex appeal of active political resistance - will be thematised and discussed.
• Subversion often rubs up against the realm of legality or collides with it. Therefore, questions about punishment and/or repression will be raised (e.g. refusal of funding, silencing through the media, but also imprisonment).
• Further events such as lectures, moderated talks, (product) presentations, action tours through the fair, workshops dedicated to the transfer of specialised knowledge and techniques, as well as the experimental and playful testing of ideas, technologies and strategies will complete the fair's programme.

The Issues

Themes

Visual Phenomena
This theme emphasises visual aesthetics and practices which primarily undermine our habitual perceptions and that give new shapes to practices emerging from the realm of fashion, advertisement, and architecture.

Examples: Anarchitecture, Sticker Safaris, Subvertising and Billboard Liberation, Cross-Dressing

Technical Devices
This theme shows how technical tools are never neutral but are always already implemented within society's power hegemonies and social practises by the contexts of their development and appliance. In the field of tension set up between technological possibility and social desire, social and technological developments mutually influence each other. Part of this theme are technical products, both hard- and software. Besides tools for intervention and tools for networking, tools for discourse and information transfer will be presented.

Examples: Hacktivism & Conceptual Hacking, SMS-Guerilla Projector, Radical Games

Social Strategies
This theme includes social actions which undermine and question hegemonies in an invisible way, or that open up new possibilities of action. In this way the social order can be attacked by a subversive and practical instrument and produce a counter-public in a precise way.

Examples: Camouflage, Subversive Affirmation, Invisible Theatre, Shoplifting, Performance, Copyriot

Further:

Contributions for the discourse programme

Concepts, texts, and concrete ideas for lectures, moderated talks, product presentations, action tours through the fair, workshops dedicated to the transfer of special knowledge and techniques, the experimental and playful testing of ideas, technologies and strategies.