The topic of this diploma thesis is body modification culture phenomenon called 'suspension'. It is a voluntary act of suspending a human body from hooks or piercings that have been temporarily pierced through the skin. Suspension is an age-old technique practiced for example by North American Indian Mandan tribe. It has been brought to the modern era and body modification culture by modern primitives. The part of the thesis is a placement of suspension to the broader sociocultural and historical context, there will be also space for development of concept of body, embodiment and pain in the western word and ritual aspect of suspension. The source for this work is mainly accessible literature, internet pages dedicated to body modifications and participant observation completed with interviews with people who had been suspended.

Diese Arbeit verbindet zwei Perspektiven, nämlich den Blick auf die soziale Praxis des digitalen Ungehorsams mit dem anhaltenden Diskurs über zivilen Ungehorsam in der politischen Theorie. Digitaler Ungehorsam entwickelte sich im Verlauf der Evolution digitaler Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien in überraschendem Facettenreichtum: vom BTX Hack des Chaos Computer Clubs über den Widerstand der Cypherpunks für die weltweite Verbreitung von Verschlüsselung hin zu Anonymous, Aaron Swartz und Edward Snowden. Reload Disobedience plädiert für eine Revision des dominierenden Verständnisses von zivilem Ungehorsam und stützt sich dabei auf Theorien von Hannah Arendt, Michael Walzer und Etienne Balibar. Viele Beispiele in der Geschichte des digitalen Ungehorsams werden diesem neuen Verständnis durchaus gerecht, doch gibt es gleichzeitig Faktoren, die weitere Fragen aufwerfen: Kann ziviler Ungehorsam anonym sein oder automatisiert durchgeführt werden? Wie verändert sich das kollektive Handeln, das maßgeblicher Teil der Tradition zivilen Ungehorsames ist, durch die globale Vernetzung? Um diese und andere Effekte digitalen Handelns zu verstehen, diskutiert die Autorin die Entscheidungen der digital Ungehorsamen sowie Möglichkeiten und Grenzen digitalen Handelns im Kontext demokratie-theoretischer Überlegungen. Eine Kernthese der Arbeit ist, dass ziviler Ungehorsam in digitalen Formen potentiell eine neue Direktheit des Politischen erzeugen kann. Gleichzeitig muss sich diese Praxis einer besonderen Unsicherheit sowie neuen Risiken und Herausforderungen stellen, um dem demokratischen Geist des zivilen Ungehorsams unter neuen Bedingungen gerecht zu werden. / This work combines two perspectives, namely the social and activist history of digital forms of disobedience with the ongoing discourse around civil disobedience in political theory. In the course of the internet’s evolution, digital disobedience developed in a surprisingly multifaceted nature: From cases like the BTX Hack of the Chaos Computer Club, to the Cypherpunks and their effort to spread encryption, from Anonymous to Aaron Swartz or Edward Snowden. This work argues for a broader understanding of civil disobedience than the mainstream in political thinking suggests based on arguments from a radical democratic line of thinking, inspired by Hannah Arendt, Michael Walzer and Etienne Balibar. Many cases of digital disobedience meet the spirit of this new understanding, while at the same time their digital nature provokes a new set of questions as well. For instance the question, if civil disobedience may be anonymous or even automated. How does the internet change collective action which is often seen as a core element of the tradition of civil disobedience? The author discusses the choices and principles behind digitally disobedient action as well as the possibilities and limits of digital action in the context of democratic theory. She shows that civil disobedience in digital action even develops a new directness of encounter that adds a new potential to this delicate form of political action. Nevertheless, digital practices of civil disobedience are at the same time precarious and faced with new risks and challenges, like automation of and the risk of elitist tech-avant-gardes overriding the democratic spirit that civil disobedience is rooted in.

The diploma thesis Public sphere in networked society concerns about the relation of public sphere and cyberspace. Cyberspace is defined as new social institution, which is not embodied Habermasian normative ideal of critical public sphere, but in contrary it constitute new forms of inequalities and new forms of fragmentarization and commercialization. Explored are therefore also theories which critically deal with concept of public sphere and better describe the reality of cyberspace. The expansion of Cyberspace and horizontal communication network also relate with transformation of contentious politics. The thesis provides an overview of historical development of new action repertoire of contention - virtual sit-in. As an embodiment of all these societal shifts, which are seen as an elements of change in power balance, is presented Operation Payback orchestrated by hacktivist group Anonymous. Keywords Cyberspace, public sphere, hacktivism, action repertoires, repertoires of contention, virtual sit-in, electronic civil disobedience, Anonymous, Operation Payback

In diploma thesis Open Call I focus on unequal position of artists in current art world in which, despite the transparent practices like open calls, still persists the cult of name, the power of networking and personal recommendation. This topic I artistically process in form of practical artistic intervention, which is close to the tactics of 1:1 scale of Arte Útil - specifically by creation of software tool called Nomin. Its purpose is to support weakened or marginalized groups of artists. Nomin uses properties of email protocol SMTP to allow its users-spectators to send fake self-recommending emails - from email addresses of famous curators to the inboxes various galleries or other art institutions. During development of program Nomin and its technical background (software documentation, web page etc.) I followed the paradigm of free, libre, open source software (FLOSS) and also the methodology of agile software development in order to provide in this gesamtsoftwerk the users-spectators with fully functional, user-friendly software and give them possibility to influence further development of Nomin or directly participate on it. Created artwork is thus not a single artefact but rather a set of interconnected objects and practices grounded in the network of social bonds and behaviours which balances on the edge of institutional critique, useful art, participatory art and collective performance.