5 Petaflops Against Empire. Martix Navrot

Error 417 Expectation Failed Foundation and Medialab Matadero present 5 Petaflops Against Empire, a series of speculative prototypes, micro-scripts, and instructions/hacks that explore how we can reclaim collective computing power. The project stems from Navrot’s imagination of concrete apartment blocks in his hometown of Wronki, Poland, where he envisioned a scenario in which the residents of post-PRL apartments run their own their modular furniture building GPU micro servers. The project focuses on reclaiming microcomputing power, among other methods, from advertising trackers that operate in all browsers, but also explores the connection of computers in networks and, in general, the search for computing power wherever it may be hidden. In this session Navrot will provide a fictional/speculative framework in which all participants will interact with different roles in a future or potential scenario that will be inspired by Navrot's research and his own experience rooted in the reality of Eastern Europe.

This conference is part of the OpenLAB of LAB 4: Weird Futures.

Martix Navrot is a performer, poet, visual artist, university lecturer, creative technologist, and AI programmer working at the intersection of video games, open-source culture, and blockchain thinking. Their artistic and research practice revolves around queer futurism, radical imagination, and the critique of Big Tech, absurdity, and play. They create systems, games, LARPs, apps, physical objects, and performances that use code and speculative fiction as tools of resistance against dominant infrastructures and conventions, exploring the microaesthetics of the internet and guerrilla digital practices. Martix has exhibited their work and led workshops and talks at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Krupa Art Foundation in Wrocław, the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, the Morris Gallery in London, SODA Manchester, and the Unsound Festival in Kraków, among others.

Error 417 Expectation Failed is an independent foundation supporting radically contemporary internet and net-based art practices. In 2025, it focuses on projects that challenge tech-authoritarian systems through misdirection, opting out, and pushing back, resisting in solidarity and creating spaces for technological practices that serve collective needs rather than exploit them.