In 2023 Constant started a new series of yearly publications connected to the new artistic programme covering the next five years.

We looked at ways of making a publication using experimental tools as part of a research into a system for documenting Constant’s activities. We asked graphic designer Manetta Berends to join us through an artistic commission to think with us about this potential system based on tools that are part of Constant’s ongoing work and reflections on promiscuous publishing.

Thinking of a year of activities around techno-disobedient practices as a crossing of people, books, web pages, computers, phones, servers, files, strategies, urgencies, hardware components, emails, etherpads, protest banners, radio broadcasts... sparked questions around what to keep close, follow up, and feed back to.

The main aim was to create a space for ongoing collective processes of capturing/collecting materials, with open ended (re-)publishing possibilities throughout the year, that would include Constant’s publications but, be opened to other circulations as well. In this way, editing and publishing would not take place in the end of a year of activities but throughout throughout instead, and potentially become a shared task between different people or groups.

We asked ourselves what kind of tool could support such way of working and started from the documentation habits that were already present in Constant activities which include local servers, etherpads and different types of web pages. Hooking into these already existing practices and infrastructures, we thought of a system to allow multiple moments of editing to be folded into the yearly documentation of activities, producing a stream of published materials around techno-disobedient practices.

While we did work on these systems in view of this very publication, we realised along the course of the year, once again, that tools are not enough on their own to set new practices in place. An ongoing space of practice in which the editorial work could happen along the year has not been included into the everyday workflow of Constant yet. We still wanted to release the on-going software and the related thinking, to take a step back, share the irony of our own tool-optimism, and reflect on the promises and the potentials in view of a possible use of the system in the next years, at Constant and elsewhere.

The publication is the result of our step into octomode, a system that allowed us to have a publication balancing collective workflows and experimental additions, but with a much more predictable timeline. In the case of this publication, we developed a custom version that allows us to output different PDFs with color separation in view of our riso-printing at Chez Rosi in Brussels. To achieve the separation of colors, we made use of [Imagemagick](https://imagemagick.org/Usage/compose/) and a bunch of hacks in our css styles to make sure to generate both a riso simulation of the two color printing technique for the web version and the correct files to send to the risograph printer.

The code can be found at:
https://git.vvvvvvaria.org/varia/octomode/src/branch/technodisobedience

The writing of the publication was done on several computers connected to the same etherpad, and then styled through templates and stylesheets, and output as html, pdf, audio recordings, crocheted pieces, balaclavas, worms, spirals, amazing collective food moments and many constructed doodles over drinks. We loosely divided the work of writing, editing, styling between the people around the table: the Constant team, joined by Manetta Berends and Alix Turcq.

The publication will be printed and available to the public in our office and on our Calibre platform online in the beginning of 2024.