Power ebbs and flows as it is sought, coveted, and lost. When too much power is hoarded, rulers construct thrones to centralize their authority. Seats of power change over time as kings, tycoons, and zealots claim as their prerogative the right to dictate the future. Today, as technology outpaces humanity’s ability to comprehend it, the seats of authority become more difficult to pinpoint and confront. Thrones are no longer hewn from stone or gold, but from code and networks. Server farms, algorithms, and data sets undergird the new infrastructures of control.

Art Hack Day: DETHRONE invites you to upend established order. On February 22 – 24, artists and hackers will converge at Gray Area to create an exhibit from scratch that questions contemporary mechanisms of power, challenges their legitimacy, and envisions new potentials for a world unyoked from colonial and patriarchal systems. Wielding technology in unexpected ways, artists carry with them the potential to not only hack code but also culture. Together, with interspecies dependence and interplanetary cooperation in mind, the people can rewrite the protocols to dethrone malignant rule.

Who are the modern digital monarchs, and how can we confront them? Can we topple ivory towers without descending into chaos or creating new tyrants? What does it mean to live in a world where rule has been decentralized and automated? What does it look like to dispossess or reclaim power in the post-digital age? Art Hack Day: DETHRONE tests how creative visionaries might use art and technology to reconfigure the status quo.