How to influence politics to fight for our digital rights? How do we make sure politicians and policymakers are aware of what is at stake in the technology space? How can we regulate big tech companies, curb their power, and improve the control we have over our data, the platforms, and the devices we are so dependent on? What role should governments play, and how can we make them understand the urgency to act? What can we do as concerned citizens, researchers, and artists? 

In CODE, artists and non-artists work together on projects that address these issues and bring them to a wider audience. On this web project, we present the results from this collaboration, and we ask politicians to respond to the issues raised by the CODE participants. We also question them about their own responsibilities to address our lack of digital agency.

Core themes

Code Themes

about Code

CODE seeks to bring together artists, non-artists, politicians, policymakers and researchers from Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands to engage in dialogue, critical discussion, and artistic intervention. CODE does not refer to coding, instead it focuses on the code of digital ethics. With this project, we are trying to influence public policy on a national and international level, by creating awareness for issues at hand, and by defining ways in which we can improve laws and legislation that will protect us as digital citizens and consumers. We want to inspire and facilitate cross-disciplinary collaborations which hopefully have the potential to catalyse systemic change. 

CODE 2022 is the second edition of CODE. It is organised by IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture] together with School of Machines, Making & Make Believe (Berlin), Werktank (Leuven) and Privacy Salon/Privacytopia (Brussels/Antwerp). 

CODE 2022 started with a call for applicants. Selected participants had the opportunity to work closely together over a period of three months in a co-creation process consisting of a series of events: two workshops, a hackathon, various presentations at inspiring festivals, and an online exhibition. In this period, we developed projects, interventions and awareness campaigns to expose the power of tech companies and to activate politicians, policymakers and citizens to take action. During development, participants were guided by professional mentors to aid the creation of their works. These were digital artist Rosa Menkman, art curator Régine Debatty and artist duo Effi & Amir. 

What you are looking at right now is the online exhibition of CODE’s outcomes. This website serves as a way to document the different projects that were developed over the course of the entire programme. There is a strong focus on the general themes and issues raised by the participants of this year’s CODE. These themes can be seen in their works, and serve as the overarching concepts that we used in our interviews with politicians. 

The interviews with politicians are a core part of this online exhibition, since these are ultimately the people we need to inspire to make changes to public policy and law. These interviews show how various politicians view the issues raised by the projects, and how they feel these issues could be addressed. We hope that by helping people create critical art on issues in the digital realm, we can catalyse changes within public and political awareness. 

CODE 2022 is realised thanks to the kind support of Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie Fonds Soziokultur, Fonds voor Cultuurparticipatie, Stichting Democratie & Media, Nederlandse Ambassade in Duitsland (Koninkrijk der Nederlanden), Nederlandse Ambassade in België (Koninkrijk der Nederlanden) and Goethe Institut.