Ignore All Previous Instructions

With the Web Residencies Call No. 22, !Mediengruppe Bitnik invites artists, technologists, and researchers to create artworks that challenge extractive digital platforms and AI systems. For the tenth anniversary of the Web Residencies program, we look back at the first call in 2016, following up on its question on where to meet online when digital platforms are monopolized and weaponized – a problem we face now more than ever. This edition will explore how to interrupt dominant technological logics – from ad-tech surveillance to prompt injection vulnerabilities – to imagine alternative structures and communication methods. The program seeks proposals that hijack, glitch, and disrupt rather than comply with existing systems, drawing on strategies like Situationist détournement to map routes through and around the grids we are trapped within.