Email address:
Website & blog:
GitLab/-Hub: tomislavmedak
Twitter: tmedak
\hfill \break
I am a researcher with a PhD on technopolitics and planetary environmental crisis from Coventry Unversity's Centre for Postdigital Cultures. Over the last couple of years, with Valeria Graziano and Marcell Mars, I have initiated of the Pirate Care project. I am politically active as a policy coordinator for the Croatian green-left party Možemo!.
My research interests are in care, ecology, technology and capitalist development, with a particular focus on the commons and the disability. Sometimes I also write on theatre, dance, disability and politics.
Formelry, I was a member of the theory and publishing team of Multimedia Institute/MAMA and a theatre maker with the now dissolved performing arts collective BADco.
\hfill \break
2018-2022 : PhD in Arts & Humanities; Coventry University Supervisors: Professor Gary Hall and Assistant Professor Janneke Adema
*Disrupting technology -- can the planetary technosphere be politically steered toward a post-capitalist metabolism?*
1993-1998 : BA & MA in Philosophy and German Language; University of Zagreb
\pagebreak
Where no collaboration is indicated, I am the sole author or editor by me. Peer-reviewed articles and chapters are noted as such.
- Authored volumes
- Edited volumes
- Book chapters, peer-reviewed and other articles
- Public writing
- Long-form interviews
- Translations
The Hard Matter of Abstraction - A Guidebook to Domination by Abstraction. Organon 1, V_____erlag für Handbücher, 2016.
Shit Tech for a Shitty World. Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Art, 2016. 🔗 PDF on Aksioma's website
\hfill \break
Guerrilla Open Access. Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, eds. Post Office Press & Memory of the World, 2018. 🔗 PDF and source files on Humanities Commons
Public Library. Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, eds. What, How and for Whom/WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015. 🔗 PDF on Memory of the World
Time and Incompletion: Images and Performances of Time in Late Capitalism. Tomislav Medak and Sergej Pristaš, eds. BADco., 2014. 🔗 PDF on BADco.'s website'
Idea of Radical Media. Tomislav Medak and Petar Milat, eds. Multimedia Institute & Arkzin, 2013. 🔗 PDF on Monoskop
Frakcija - Performing Arts Journal: Actionable Image - Agency of Image, Performance of Body, Apparatus of Spectating. no. 19, 2012. 🔗 PDF on BADco.'s website
System.Hack() - Table of Contents. Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, eds. Multimedia Institute, 2006. 🔗 PDF on Monoskop
\hfill \break
'Local Maximum: On Popular Technical Pedagogy'. Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak. In Artistic Ecologies: New Compasses and Tools, edited by Emily Pethick, Pablo Martinez, and What, How & For Whom/WHW, 118–31, Sternberg Press / What, How & for Whom/WHW, 2022.
'Degrowth'. Tomislav Medak, Mladen Domazet and Andro Rilović. In Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, Elsevier, 2019. [peer-reviewed]
'Povijest koja nam diše za vratom' ('History is Breathing down Our Neck'), introduction to the Croatian translation of Andreas Malm's Fossil Capital. Mladen Domazet i Tomislav Medak. Fraktura & IPE, Zagreb, 2018. 🔗 to an online version on IPE's website
'Estetizacija tehnopolitike' ('Estheticisation of Technopolitics'). Filozofija je ženskog roda: Zbornik u čast Nadeždi Čačinovič, edited by Ankica Čakardić, Filozofski fakultete Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, 2019, pp. 67–87.
\hfill \break
‘When care needs piracy: the case for disobedience in struggles against imperial property regimes’. Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak. Soundings 77, Spring 2020. pp. 55–70.
'Care in a techno-capitalist world'. Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak. Ding: A magazine about the Internet and things 3, December 15, 2020.
'Pirate Care'. Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak. Artforum, May 11, 2020.
‘Pirate Care: Against the Crisis’. ...Of Bread, Wine, Cars, Security and Peace -- Exhibition Catalog, Kunsthalle Wien & What, how and for Whom/WHW, 2020, pp. 103–09, 🔗 PDF from KHW's website.
‘System of a Takedown: Control and De-Commodification in the Circuits of Academic Publishing’. Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak. In Archives, edited Andrew Lison, University of Minnesota Press & meson.press, 2019, pp. 47–68. [peer-reviewed]
'Against Innovation: Compromised Institutional Agency and Acts of Custodianship' Ephemera - Theory and Politics in Organisation, vol. 19, no. 2, May 2019, pp. 345–68. [peer-reviewed]
'Learning from #Syllabus'. Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak. In State Machines: Reflections and Actions at the Edge of Digital Citizenship, Finance, and Art, edited by Yiannis Colakides, Mark Garrett, and Inte Gloerich, Institute for Network Cultures, 2019, pp. 115-128.
‘Knowledge Commons and Activist Pedagogies: From Idealist Positions to Collective Actions - Conversation with Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak’. Learning in the Age of Digital Reason, edited by Petar Jandrić, SensePublishers, 2017, pp. 243–269.
‘Amateur Librarian - A Course in Critical Pedagogy‘. Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak. Mondothèque :: A Radiated Book, Constant, 2016, pp. 48–56.
'Taken Literally'. Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak and Dubravka Sekulić: In We Need It - We Do It: Croatia at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition/La Biennale Di Venezia 2016, edited by Dinko Peračić et al., Platforma 9,81; POGON–Zagreb Centre for Independent Culture and Youth; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka, 2016, pp. 228–35.
‘The Future After the Library: UbuWeb and Monoskop’s Radical Gestures’. Public Library, What, How and for Whom/WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp. 121–37. 🔗 PDF on Memory of the World
‘Death and Survival of Dead Labor’. Schlosspost, 8 Jan. 2016. https://schloss-post.com/death-survival-dead-labor/
‘Hacking’. Truth Is Concrete: A Handbook for Artistic Strategies in Real Politics, edited by Florian Malzacher, Sternberg Press, 2014, pp. 267–68.
‘Open Source Paradigm in the Arts’. The Theatre, International Festival / Steirischer Herbst, 2007, pp. 87–89.
„System.Hack(1, “Broadcasting”,“Orson Welles - War of the Worlds”)“. System.Hack() - Table of Contents, Multimedia Institute, 2006, str. 49–54.
\hfill \break
'Choreographing Abstractions'. In Published on the Occasion of Tomos Savić-Gecan's Representation of Croatia in the 59th International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, edited by Elena Filipović, Sternberg Press and Kontejner, 2022, pp. 76-83.
'Kultura kao zajedničko dobro' ('Culture as a Commons'), Kulturpunkt, 22 February 2021.
‘In Praise of Bureaucracy’. L.P, Marko Ercegović / Office for Photography, 2017, pp. 55–58.
‘From Independent Cultural Work to Political Subjectivity’. The Art of Civil Action: Political Space and Cultural Dissent, edited by Philipp Dietachmair and Pascal Gielen, Valiz, 2017, pp. 207–27.
‘The Art, the Political Conjuncture, and the Left‘. Schlosspost, 7 Sept. 2016. https://schloss-post.com/art-political-conjuncture-left/
‘Bordering, Social Choreography & Transmodernity : Dance beyond Capitalist Modernity‘. A talk delivered at the Tanzkongress in Hannover, 2016.
‘Open Institutions and the Reform of the Cultural System’. Frakcija - Performing Arts Journal, no. 60–61, 2011, pp. 55–58.
‘Democracy Disassembled’. DemoKino - Virtual Biopolitical Agora, edited by Ivana Ivković and Janez Janša, Maska / Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Art, 2006, pp. 135–40.
‘Energy and Emergence: On Some Problems of Contemporary Artistic Strategies’. Frakcija - Performing Arts Journal, no. 19, 2001, p. 16. 🔗 PDF on Archive.org
\hfill \break
'Civilno društvo i politički rad na ljevici'. 3k: kapital, klasa, kritika, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014., pp. 133–38. Also availabe in English in the original talk form delivered at the conference 'Predicaments of the Left', in Zagreb, 18 Oct. 2013: ‘Civil Society and Political Work on the Left‘.
['Na ulicama Francuske povijest anticipira budućnost' ('In the Streets of France the History is Anticipating the Future')]((http://www.noviplamen.net/glavna/na-ulicama-francuske-povijest-anticipira-buducnost/), Novi plamen, 20 Dec. 2018.]
'Invaliditet - inkluzija - kapitalizam' ('Disability, Inclusion, Capitalism'). Grupa 22, 6 Jan. 2015. 🔗 PDF na Grupi 22
\hfill \break
'Društvene mreže treba regulirati' ('Social Networks Need Regulation'), intervju za Novosti, 15 January 2021.
Together with Marcell Mars: 'Amazon.com: anatomija jedne dominacije' ('Amazon.com: An Anatomy of a Domination'), Bilten, 31 Jul. 2019. https://www.bilten.org/?p=28562
‘O čemu pričamo kada pričamo o bitcoinu?’ ('What Do We Talk about When We Talk about Bitcoin?'), Bilten, 25 Jan. 2018. http://www.bilten.org/?p=21983.
'Od ekonomije dijeljenja do dijeljene eksploatacije' ('From an Economy of Sharing to a Shared Exploitation'), Bilten, 24 Mar. 2017. http://www.bilten.org/?p=17570
'Pa pa proleteri...: automatizacija i kriza rada' ('Godspeed Proletariat: Automation and the Crisis of Labour'). Kulturpunkt, Mar. 2017. http://www.kulturpunkt.hr/content/pa-pa-proleteri-automatizacija-i-kriza-rada
'Pa pa proleteri...: politička kriza i tehnološki razvoj' ('Godspeed Proletariat: The Political Crisis and Technological Development'). Kulturpunkt, Apr. 2017. http://www.kulturpunkt.hr/content/pa-pa-proleteri-politicka-kriza-i-tehnoloski-razvoj
'Neutralnost interneta: što se to mene tiče?, ('Web Neutrality: What's It to Me?') Bilten, 23 Nov. 2015. http://www.bilten.org/?p=10225
'Novi mediji, stari kapitalizam', ('New Media, Old Capitalism') Bilten. 18 Apr. 2014. http://www.bilten.org/?p=514
\hfill \break
'Kapitalizam i invaliditet' ('Capitalism and Disability'). Interviewed by Filip Drača, H-alter, 8. siječnja 2021.
'Čemu nas uči pandemija koronavirusa?' ('What Can We Learn from the Corona Virus Pandemic?'). Interviewed by Ivana Perić, H-alter, 26 Mar. 2020.
'Taking Care of Unconditional Solidarity'. Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak. Interviewed by Hana Sirovica, Kulturpunkt.hr, 8 Mar. 2020.
'Izboriti se za vrijeme slobodno od proizvodnje' ('To Struggle for the Time Freed from Production'). Interviewed by Petra Ivšić, 29 Nov. 2019. Kulturpunkt.hr.
'Tehnooptimizam na staklenim nogama' ('Technooptimism Does not Have a Leg to Stand on'). Interviewed by Martin Beroš and Karolina Hrga, 21. Dec. 2016., Slobodni Filozofski.
\hfill \break
Gilles Deleuze, Bartleby ili formula (from French: Bartleby, ou la formule), Multimedia Institute and Kuda.org, 2013.
Étienne Balibar, Nasilje i civilnost (from French: Violence et civilité), Multimedia Institute and Faculty for Media and Communication, 2011.
Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Mnoštvo (from English: Multitude), Multimedia Institute, 2009.
Hauke Brunkhorst, Solidarnost (from German: Solidarität), Multimedia Institute and Belgrade Circle, 2004.
Jean-Luc Nancy: 2 ogleda: Razdjelovljena zajednica / O singularnom pluralnom bitku (from French: La communauté desoeuvrée / De l'être singulier pluriel), Multimedia Institute and Arkzin, 2003.
\pagebreak
'Camposud Summer Camp', experimental publishing workshop on the 'southern question', convened with Valeria Graziano and Marcell Mars, Calasetta, Aug 26-Sep 5.
'Modeling the Planetary Crisis', guest lecture for BA students at the Coventry Unversity, Feb. 4, 2020.
'Computing the Doughnut: Modeling a Post-Growth Future', guest lecture for MA students at the King’s College in London, Mar. 28, 2019.
'Different Critiques of the Internet' (7 x 4 hours MA joint course at the Leuphana University and Hamburg Media School), convened together with Marcell Mars, summer semester 2017.
Rechtsästhetik: Commons, a two-day course (2 x 8 hours) at the Merz Akademie in Stuttgart, Apr. 10-11, 2015.
\hfill \break
2019:
'Public Library and the Property Form', introductory talk with Marcell Mars at the eponymous seminar at Raven Row, London, Dec. 3
'Degrowth and the Aporia of Utopia: Developing a Future-Oriented Vision of Social Wellbeing within Planetary Boundaries', refereed panel presentation at the 16th Historical Materialism conference, London, Nov 7-10
'Accelerated Technocapitalism and the Politics of Non-Complicity', panel presentation at the Never Again conference in Warsaw, Oct. 25-26
'Against Innovation: Comporomised Institutional Agency and Acts of Custodianship', joint panel presentation with Marcell Mars at the Pirate Care conference, Coventry University, Jun. 19-20
'Amazon.com: An Anatomy of a Domination', joint presentation with Marcell Mars at the Delivered the Same Day: Amazon.com and the Post Office, a one-day seminar organised by the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Jun. 3
'Ecology and Technology', public talk at the Peščenica Cultural Centre in Zagreb, May 10
2018 :
Panel presentation and a workshop at the Out of the Shadow - Alternative Modes of Knowledge Production, Conservation and Distribution event, organised by the Global Emergent Media Lab, Concordia University, Montreal, Nov. 22-23
'System of a Takedown: Control and De-commodification in the Circuits of Academic Publishing', talk at the Center for Expanded Poetics, Concordia University, Montreal, Nov. 21
'Aestheticization of Technopolitics: The Internet, the Far Right and the Warming Planet', refereed panel presentation at the 15th annual Historical Materialism conference, London, Nov. 8-11
'Scale and Structure: Planetary Technology and Sited Agency', panel presentation at the Digital Cultures conference, Lüneburg, Germany, Sep. 19-21
'Against all Odds: Can we Transform the Global Technosphere to Prevent Extreme Climate Change', talk at the Green Academy summer school, Vis, Croatia, Aug. 27-30
'Transformation of the Technosphere and the Critical Agency of the Degrowth Movement', refereed panel presentation at the 6th International Degrowth Conference, Malmö, Sweden, Aug. 21-25
'Guerilla Open Access', introductory panel presentation at the Radical Open Access 2 conference, Coventry University, Jun. 26-27
'Against Innovation', panel presentation at the conference Shadows of the Dawn: Migration and the Indeterminacy of Community and Immunity, Brunel University, Apr. 17-18
2017 :
'Disrupting Technological Change', panel presentation at the Labor and Technology Symopisum, Institute for Labor Studies, Ljubljana, Oct. 4.
'Estetizacija tehnopolitike', talk at the Conference in Honor of Nadežda Čačinovič, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Zagreb, Sep. 29.
'Black-boxing Politics: How Techno-Solutionism Obfuscates Social Antagonism', talk at the Plan D conference, Zagreb, Sep. 28.
'Logistical Transformation of the World and the City', presentation at the Mine, Yours, Ours festival, Rijeka, Apr. 4.
2016 :
Panel presentation at the Unboxing: Algorithm, Data, Democracy conference in Berlin, Dec. 12.
'Technologies for a Degrowth Transition - A Faustian Bargain?'', refereed paper, 5th International Degrowth Conference in Budapest and Green Academy on the island of Vis, Aug.
'Beyond the Paradigm of Control', talk at festival My, Yours, Ours in Rijeka and net.cube programme at Gallery Miroslav Kraljević in Zagreb
'Bordering, Social Choreography & Transmodernity - Dance beyond Capitalist Modernity', talk at Tanzkongress in Hannover, Jun. 16-19
'Technological Systems and Social Transition - Do Open Technology and Design Matter', talk at D Day in Zagreb
2015 :
'The Left, the Political Conjuncture, and the Art', panel contribution at the Transitions 3 festival, Athens, Nov. 27-28
'Urban Disturbance, Political Emergence', talk at Spielart festival in München, Oct. 10
'Write Off', 'Illegal Copy', 'Shelf', short presentations at the Ideographies of Knowledge symposium at the Mundaneum in Mons, Oct. 3
'System of a Takedown', panel presentation at the Authorship and Quotiations symposium at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Feb. 19-20
'Technological Development, Post-Capitalist Transition and Underdevelopment', refereed paper, conference Reflections on Capitalism in Belgrade, Jun. 22-27
\hfill \break
Digital Scholarship Workflows
I have been integrating and documenting workflows I use in my scholarly work, covering a range of actions from digitisation, annotation, referencing, plaintext authorship, storage and backup, to presentation and web presence. It includes workflows based on ScanTailor, OCR tools, Zotero, Diigo, Hypothesis, Markdown, Atom, Pandoc, Git, Reveal.js, reveal-md and Nikola.
The tutorial can be found on my website.
\pagebreak
Centre for Postdigital Cultures
a reseach centre at the Coventry University :
- Ph.D. fellow, 2018 to present.
a non-profit organization working in technology, digital culture and social theory :
- President of Association, 2005 to present.
- Active in urban justice and commons-related contestations, affiliated to Right to the City Zagreb, 2005 to present.
- Co-ordinator of the Croatian Creative Commons affiliate project team, 2004 to present.
- Co-coordinator of free software and free culture advocacy activities, 2003 to present.
- Co-coordinator of theory and publishing programme, 2000 to present.
a theatre collective :
- performer, dramaturge, director, 2002 to present.
Association Operation:City/Operacija grad
a co-ordinating organization of Zagreb independent cultural sector :
- Board member, 2011 to present.
iCommons
an international organisation with a mission to develop a united global commons front by collaborating with open education, access to knowledge, free software, open access publishing and free culture communities around the world. iCommons closed its operations in 2016. :
- Board member 2006-2010, and president of the board 2010-2016.
\hfill \break
Exhibition Paper Struggles, co-organised with Marcell Mars, Dec. 2020.
Exhibition Pirate Care: Learning from disobedience, co-organised with Valeria Graziano and Marcell Mars, within Rijeka Cultural Capital of Europe 2020, produced by Drugo More, Nov. 2020.
Seminar Public Library and the Property Form, co-organised with Marcell Mars, Dec. 2019.
Conference Pirate Care, co-organised with Valeria Graziano and Marcell Mars, Jun. 2019.
Workshop Deliver the Same Day: Amazon.com and the Public Library, co-convened with Marcell Mars, Jun. 2019.
Conference Radical Open Access, co-convened with Marcell Mars of Guerilla Open Access panel, Jun. 2018
\hfill \break
Festival Mine, Yours, Ours, curator, Rijeka, 2017.
Lecture series Political Technotope, organiser, 2016.
Conference Media against Democracy?, convenor, Apr. 2014.
Lecture series Program of the Capitalist City, organiser, 2014.
Conference Idea of Radical Media, convenor, Jun. 2013.
Conference Economy of Crisis Capitalism and Ecology of the Commons, Nov. 2012.
Lecture series The Future of the Book, organiser, 2009.
Conference The Neoliberal Frontline, co-organiser, Dec. 2008.
YAXWE hacker camp in Pula, co-organiser, Sep. 2007.
International free culture movement conference iCommons Summit in Dubrovnik, co-organiser, Jun. 2007.
Free Culture festivals Freedom to Creativity!, co-organiser, 2005-2007.
Lecture series Knowledge Society and Free Information Flows, organiser, 2005-2010.
Free software summer camp Summer Source, organising team, Sep. 2003.
Tactical Media Camp - a pre-event of the last Next5Minutes conference, organising team, Jul. 2003.
International conference New Media Culture Week - Critical Upgrade for Cyber Utopias, editor, May 2002.
Lecture series in political philosophy, media studies, aesthetics, co-organiser, 2000 to present.
\hfill \break
Exhibition Pirate Care: A Survey of Practices, co-organised with Valeria Graziano and Marcell Mars, Nov. 2021.
Conceptual exhibtions and conferences around the Memory of the World/Public Library project, co-curated with Marcell Mars, 2012 to present.
Exhibition Extravagant Bodies, co-organised with the curatorial collective Kontejner, 2007.
Conceptual exibition System.hack(), co-curated with Marcell Mars, 2005-2007.
Exhibition Peer Economies, curatorial team, co-roganized with What, how and for whom/WHW, 2006.
OutInOpen/Touch Me, exhibition on info- and bio-art, curatorial team, in collaboration with the curatorial collective Kontejner, 2005.
\hfill \break
A Future Wasted? - Austerity, Privatisation of Public Services and Enclosures of Public Goods, public debate, organiser and moderator, Feb. 2012.
A Critique of Creativity - Economic Transformations, Cultural Work and Self- Organizing, public debate, organiser and moderator, Dec. 2011.
Conference Open Institutions - Institutional Imagination and Cultural Public Sphere, co-organiser, Jan. 2011.
Conference Exit Europe - New Geographies of Culture, organising team member, Nov. 2009.
\pagebreak
RePUBLIC in the Orchestra Pit, theatre performance, dramaturgy, 2019.
Correcting Rhythm, theatre performance, dramaturgy, 2017.
Spores, dance performance, concept and dramaturgy, 2016.
Institutions Need to be Constructed - Stasis, video installation, co-author, 2103.
A Pound of Hysteria, Acceleration... - Melodrama, theatre performance, concept, 2013.
TVolution will not be televised, interactive installation, co-author, 2012.
Is There Life on Stage - Excercises in Terraforming, theatre performance, dramaturgy, 2012.
Black and Forth, theatre performance, dramaturgy, 2011.
Responsiblity for Things Seen, interactive installation presented at Venice Biennale, co-author, 2011.
The League of Time, theatre performance, dramaturgy and performer, 2009.
1 poor and one 0, theatre performance, co-director and performer, 2008.
Deleted Messages, theatre performance, co-author and performer, 2004.
RibCage, theatre performance, performer and co-author, 2003.
Diderot's Nephew, or Blood is Thicker than Water, theatre performance, performer, 2002.