There exists a specific quality of silence that precedes the interruption of a signal, a liminal tension that in Eastern Europe has never been perceived as a void, but rather as a space of tactical possibility. While the West has built its digital empire on the promise of frictionless fluidity, turning the interface into a transparent veil that conceals the mechanisms of surveillance, artists emerging from the rubble of the Eastern Bloc have made friction their primary language. Figures such as Olia Lialina (Russia), Alexei Shulgin (Russia), and Vuk Ćosić (Slovenia) paved the way for a generation that sees malfunction not as the failure of technology, but as the revelation of its ideological nature.
This attitude does not arise in the vacuum of contemporary laboratories but is rooted in a genealogy of dissimulation that has traversed decades of state censorship and material scarcity. The practice of samizdat has found its contemporary counterpart in the corrupted file and the manipulation of obsolete hardware. Artists such as Igor Štromajer (Slovenia) and Dasha Ilina (Russia/France) embody this continuity, working with low fidelity and opacity as forms of resistance.
The glitch becomes a form of critical citizenship. Artists such as Katja Novitskova (Estonia), Aleksandra Domanović (Serbia), and Luiza Margan (Slovenia) use systemic error as a refuge, creating zones of interference where identity fragments into uninterpretable signals.
Observing the practices of artists such as Wojciech Puś (Poland), Anna Łuczak (Poland), and Jakub Jansa (Czech Republic) today means confronting an archaeology of the present that challenges the linearity of technological progress.
Archaeologies of Dissent
Digital error acts today as the final frontier of an individual sovereignty not yet mapped by algorithmic capital. In the context of the former Eastern Bloc, this awareness is the extension of a historical memory that has always viewed technology as an instrument of control and, at the same time, a potential space of escape. The legacy of clandestine radios lives on in the intentional manipulation of code, where the breaking of technical norms becomes a political act of reappropriation.
The fascination with the glitch in these regions does not respond to a passing aesthetic fashion but constitutes a forensic analysis of the infrastructures that govern our daily lives. When a Polish artist such as Wojciech Puś or a Romanian collective decides to work with the decay of the video signal, they are not citing retro-futurist nostalgia but highlighting the precariousness of a system that claims to be eternal. The contrast between the brutal solidity of Soviet architectures and the volatility of digital data creates a semantic short-circuit that calls into question the stability of the present.
From this perspective, obsolete hardware is not electronic waste to be discarded but a witness to heterogeneous temporalities. Artists such as Igor Štromajer (Slovenia) and Dasha Ilina (Russia/France) introduce an element of uncertainty and noise that contemporary platforms desperately try to eliminate.
The connection between the dissident tactics of the past and contemporary practices lies in the ability to operate in the interstitial spaces of the system. Artists such as Sasha Puchkova (Russia) and Luiza Margan (Slovenia) use data compression and file corruption to create zones of anonymity and disturbance.
The glitch is no longer the symptom of a system breaking down but proof that the system can be inhabited and diverted from its original purposes. In this transformation of incident into intention, visible in the works of Katja Novitskova (Estonia) and Aleksandra Domanović (Serbia), lies the heart of post-digital resistance.
Samizdat of the Algorithm
The circulation of corrupted images and niche software in Eastern Europe follows a distributive logic that closely mirrors the rhizomatic structure of twentieth-century clandestine literature. While the centralized platforms of the West impose visibility models based on popularity, underground networks born from the tradition of dissent prioritize resilience and untraceability.
The concept of digital samizdat manifests through independent servers and decentralized databases. Artists such as Olia Lialina (Russia) and Vuk Ćosić (Slovenia) are deeply aware of how visibility on a mainstream platform often coincides with a form of capture. The choice of low-fi becomes a mechanism of defense.
This distrust of total transparency is a lesson learned from the totalitarian experiences of the past. The practice of manipulating code to generate distortions, visible in the works of Dasha Ilina (Russia/France) and Igor Štromajer (Slovenia), becomes a metaphor for the need to hide in plain sight.
The collective dimension of these practices reinforces the idea that resistance is not an isolated act but a process of community building. Artists such as Jakub Jansa (Czech Republic) and Anna Łuczak (Poland) embody this collective and autonomous dimension.
Aesthetics of Friction
The aesthetics of contemporary platforms is dominated by an obsession with the ‘smooth.’ By contrast, digital practices in Eastern Europe celebrate friction, transforming interaction into an experience of critical awareness. This choice to make viewing or listening difficult serves to denounce the invisible violence of an interface that, while promising freedom, confines the individual to a labyrinth of predetermined choices.
Through the use of the glitch, the image fragments, revealing the pixels and mathematical structure that support it. This process of defamiliarization is fundamental for breaking the hypnotic bond of social networks. When the video stutters or colors invert erratically, as in the works of Wojciech Puś (Poland) and Luiza Margan (Slovenia), the viewer is torn from their trance and repositioned in their bodily and situated reality.
Friction also manifests in the temporality of these works, which often require long loading times or specific hardware now out of production. Artists such as Katja Novitskova (Estonia) and Aleksandra Domanović (Serbia) impose this deliberately frustrating rhythm as a form of resistance.
The aesthetics of friction teaches us that digital freedom is not found in ease of use but in the capacity to inhabit and understand malfunction. Only through confrontation with the limits of the medium, as demonstrated in the works of Dasha Ilina (Russia/France) and Sasha Puchkova (Russia), can we hope to glimpse what lies beyond the horizon predetermined by the architects of Silicon Valley.
Sovereignty of the Obsolete
The dictatorship of the new finds in Eastern Europe a radical opponent in the figure of the obsolete object. Reciting the praises of superseded technologies does not mean taking refuge in a mythologized past but using the longevity of material tools as evidence against the programmed fragility of modern devices.
The artist who chooses to program on machines considered ‘dead’ by the market performs an act of technological sovereignty. Artists such as Igor Štromajer (Slovenia) and Vuk Ćosić (Slovenia) reclaim a time when computing was not yet synonymous with intensive data extraction. These devices become fortresses of involuntary privacy.
The use of the obsolete acts as a critical counterpoint to the hypocritical ecological narrative of large technology companies. Artists such as Wojciech Puś (Poland) and Anna Łuczak (Poland) demonstrate the aesthetic vitality of thirty-year-old hardware as a living denunciation against systemic waste.
The sovereignty of the obsolete reveals that true obsolescence is not technical but that of our critical spirit in the face of market promises. Keeping forgotten machines alive is a way to preserve ways of thinking and creating that risk disappearing.
Geographies of Interference
The map of global digital power is not a smooth surface but a territory scored by geopolitical fractures. Eastern Europe, situated at the border between Western infrastructures and autocratic ambitions, has developed a unique sensitivity in navigating these tensions.
Post-digital practices in this region often play on the friction between different regimes of visibility. Artists such as Katja Novitskova (Estonia), Aleksandra Domanović (Serbia), and Dasha Ilina (Russia/France) hack surveillance infrastructures to make them visible or use local cryptographies to protect spaces of freedom.
A crucial aspect is the ability to connect the global struggle against surveillance capitalism with the specificities of local contexts. This geographic rootedness gives their works a political density that is often missing in the more polished productions of Western digital art.
Interference also manifests as a refusal to adhere to aesthetic canons imposed by global centers of power. Artists such as Jakub Jansa (Czech Republic), Luiza Margan (Slovenia), and Sasha Puchkova (Russia) create an international of noise that unites the peripheries of the world in a common critique of digital centralization.
Ontology of Failure
Technological failure, when elevated to artistic practice, ceases to be a negation of success and becomes a new affirmation of being in the digital world. In the context of post-Soviet dissident culture, to fail means to escape the metrics of efficiency and productivity that algorithmic capitalism imposes on every human activity.
Through the deliberate practice of error, the artist does not seek to correct the machine but to reveal the truth of its fallible, human, and ultimately mortal nature. In an era that dreams of digital immortality, the insistence on the file that will not open or the hardware that overheats, as in the works of Igor Štromajer (Slovenia), Dasha Ilina (Russia/France), and Wojciech Puś (Poland), acts as a necessary memento mori.
This acceptance of failure also allows us to deconstruct the mythology of the ‘technological solution’ to every social problem. When art exposes its own ruptures, it invites the viewer to stop seeking salvation in the next software update. The glitch is not merely a visual event but an ethical invitation to reconsider our relationship with the tools we use.
Failure thus becomes a vital paradox: only when the machine stops functioning as it should do we truly begin to think about what it really is and what power it exercises over us. This awareness is the most precious gift of Eastern Europe’s dissident traditions.
The final insight is that the future of digital resistance does not lie in overcoming the glitch but in its radicalization. We must learn to fail better, to fail with intention. The lesson of Eastern European artists, from Olia Lialina to Katja Novitskova, from Igor Štromajer to Dasha Ilina, is clear: in a world of algorithmic perfection, imperfection is not a defect to be eliminated but the last trace of our humanity that still resists total capture.
Bibliography:
Flash Art – “Glitch as Resistance: Eastern European Digital Practices” (2025)
e-flux – “Post-Soviet Glitch: The Politics of Digital Failure” (2026)
Fakewhale – “Benoit: The Aesthetics of Corruption” (2025)
Artforum – “Hardware as Resistance: Obsolete Media in Eastern Europe” (2025)
ZKM Karlsruhe – “Glitch: The Art of Malfunction” (exhibition catalogue, 2026)
Ars Electronica – “Eastern European Post-Digital Practices” (festival report, 2025)
The Guardian – “How Eastern European artists are hacking the digital future” (2026)
MIT Technology Review – “The Politics of Glitch in Post-Soviet Spaces” (2025)
Flash Art – “Samizdat 2.0: Digital Resistance in Eastern Europe” (2026)
e-flux – “The Obsolete as Resistance” (2025)
Art in America – “Glitch Art and the Post-Soviet Condition” (2026)
Benoit – “The Aesthetics of Failure” (personal essay, 2024)
Documenta 16 – “Peripheral Resistance: Eastern European Digital Practices” (catalogue, 2027)
The New York Times – “In Eastern Europe, Glitch Art Becomes Political Resistance” (2026)
Wired – “Why Eastern European Artists Embrace Digital Failure” (2025)
