"Art Meets Radical Openness" (AMRO) is a biennial festival for art, hackti-
vism and open cultures, organised since 2008 by the net culture initiative
servus.at – Art & Culture on the Net, in collaboration with the Linz Universi-
ty of the Arts, Departments of Time-Based Media and Visual Communicati-
on.
#AMRO26: „Becoming Unreadable“
Under the title "Becoming Unreadable", the 2026 edition of the AMRO Festi-
val examines and critiques the digital conditions under which we live and
work. It questions the notion that constant online omnipresence is normal
and desirable, and traces these uncritical assumptions back into the realm
of open-source software. This interconnectedness forms the basis of main-
stream digital cultures and serves as a tool for pervasive surveillance and
the exploitative appropriation of works and data by Big Tech, which deman-
ds critical resistance.
Alternative approaches to digital technologies such as non-commercial,
ethical, more sustainable and community-building, will be presented and
evaluated within the festival programme.
Ein Zweiakter über eine Familie. In der es beim Erbe nicht um Geld geht. Sondern ums Überleben. Ein Kammerspiel. Jede Geste eine Falle. Jedes Ort ein Testament. Geschrieben und inszeniert von Kurt Raubal. Mit Lotte Loebenstein, Claudius Kölz, Adrian Sylvie und Kurt Raubal.
Eine Koproduktion von radio%attac & RadioORANGE 94.0
In this radio essay, Romina Achatz explores the cultural, philosophical, and literary history of mermaids, undines, and sirens. Beginning with ancient and medieval myths, including the writings of Paracelsus, she traces how water-bound, feminine-coded figures were once understood as embodiments of nature, transformation, and the emergence of the soul.
The essay then examines how, within European traditions, these figures gradually become tied to narratives of love, possession, and projection. Through literary works such as Undine geht by Ingeborg Bachmann, Achatz reflects on the loss of voice, autonomy, and subjectivity, showing how the transition from water to land marks a shift into silence, dependency, and objectification.At the same time, the radio essay opens a queer-feminist and poststructuralist perspective: returning to the water becomes an act of resistance and self-assertion. Underwater, identity dissolves into multiplicity, fluidity, and affect — a space beyond fixed roles and normative concepts of love. Drawing on thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Blanchot, and Franz Kafka, sirens are reimagined not as seductive figures, but as forces, events, and interruptions that destabilize language and meaning.
The essay also connects these ideas to global mythologies, including Mami Wata and Oshun, where water beings appear as powerful, sovereign entities rather than passive objects. In dialogue with voices such as Anaïs Nin and Audre Lorde and bell hooks the essay situates these figures within broader questions of creativity, voice, and resistance.
Finally, Achatz reflects on the ecological and political urgency of these myths today. In the context of climate crisis, displacement, and ongoing violence, the figure of the mermaid becomes an allegory for the fragile relationship between humans and nature — and a call to return to depth, to imagination, and to forms of life that resist domination.
The radio essay unfolds as a poetic and analytical journey into the oceanic — an invitation to listen differently, to embrace uncertainty, and to rediscover the creative forces that lie beneath the surface.
