AHA: The Art of Networking
The main concepts of AHA Project are Activism: political activism, Hacking: technological activism, Artivism: artistic activism.
Artistic activism means any kind of free and open creativity, to promote the idea of critical use of media, to stimulate consciuos experimentation on expressive language without any censorship.

Since 2001, Activism-Hacking-Artivism Project follows a collective path, as result of an Italian movement that from the beginning of the Eighties struggles for an independent and self-managed use of mass-media (video, computer, radio and written text). Today more than ever, this movement is demonstrating to be one of the most valid alternatives to official information in Italy.

In Italy, technological, artistic and political activism is closely interconnected in a common network spread over the whole country, and consisting of collectives, activists and artists alike. Their common denominator is to give life to an alternative and independent way of producing information, cultural consciousness and communication.

Principal activities of Activism-Hacking-Artivism project are the organisation of exhibitions/events about Italian net art and hacktivism, the diffusion of Italian collective artistic projects within art and media festivals or conventions and the development of an international mailing list about artistic activism and artivism, aha@lists.ecn.org. This is a collective virtual place which advocates the free use of art and software. To date, in the AHA mailing list there are around 600 subscribers. AHA list is part of the neighbourhood of nettime mailing list.

Activism-Hacking-Artivism is also a project on artistic experimentation that uses technology in its most vital manifestations, necessarily including the critical and self-managed use of mass-media. No more art-objects but network processes, no more originality but reproducibility, no more representation of a unique singularity but collective action. From 2002 to date, AHA project has presented many exhibitions in different Italian cities and, since 2004, in Germany and Denmark.

Activism-Hacking-Artivism project is hosted by Isole nella Rete (www.ecn.org). Isole nella Rete hosts the majority of alternative radical, underground Italian web sites. Created in 1996, it is considered the oldest counterculture server in Italy.

About net art and hacktivism in Italy
Activism-Hacking-Artivism is a networking project. The concept was created in Italy by Tatiana Bazzichelli as a consequence to the demonstrations of July against the G8 Summit of Genua (2001), which did not only consist of hard clashes, repression and violence, as most of mass-media have reported, but were also an important experience for those who wanted to create bottom-up information, with digital cameras, radical websites, independent radio networks.

In a specific way, the correct meaning for this network of practices is the word hacktivism. Hacktivism is the fusion of hacking and activism, technology and political action. Hacktivism is a rhizomatic, free and open source phenomenon. According to this point of view, hackers are not just those who destructively intrude into computer systems (and who should be more correctly called 'crackers'), but those who share the good of knowledge, who fight for free communication and access for all, aiming to create and spread knowledge for the public domain.

Italy is a country which exists between extreme differences. On the one side, there is a strong monopoly of the information which doesn't allow indipendent people to express liberally themself. On the other, there are many intellectuals and activists speaking up against this political and social situation.
The protests of Genua in 2001, millions of people protesting against the war in Iraq and the repeating general strike are only the tip of the iceberg.

While the institutionalised politics of Italy appear as a rigid system, in the past ten years an active, very heterogeneous and internationally connected net of countercultures has developed which organises actions and demonstrations and is reknown for its vast variety of media initiatives.

These initiatives use different means of spreading ideas: radio, net streaming of videos, mailing lists, local TV stations, websites. Often does the content not only deal with political issues, but is also concerned with subjects relevant to net and new media culture, such as the question of copyright, free networks etc.

Activism-Hacking-Artivism project is focused on the activities of the Italian independent and countercultural media movement, presenting exhibitions, panels and workshops with artists, hacktivists and theoreticians involved in the Italian net culture. To read more about it, we suggest to download the book: "Networking, The Net as Artwork", written by Tatiana Bazzichelli and published in English by the DARC, Digital Aesthetics Research Centre of Aarhus University (2009).

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