Constant

Feedback Pool on Techno-disobedience

Donatella — 2024-06-25T13:43:50Z

Feedback pools are a series of meetings where Constant invites a group of people to review our programme of activities, reflect on the specific research topic of the ongoing year and provide feedback.

In 2023, the feedback pool consisted of Reni Hofmüller (esc medien kunst labor), Tere Badia (Culture Action Europe) and Femke Snelting (The Institute for Technology In the Public Interest).

Artistic commission II & publication Techno-disobedience

imane — 2024-03-25T10:53:35Z

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 was 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 was printed in the beginning of 2024 and is now available to the public in our office and on our Calibre online library.

Splinter: a local travelling server

imane — 2024-03-25T10:30:07Z

Splinter is a small server that travels and allows local and remote access to a set of documentation tools that Constant uses in different contexts. To achieve this modular way of working we connected splinter to circulations, which is a server hosted within the constant Galaxy of virtual servers.

Circulations was started in 2023 as a space dedicated to the continuous publication efforts of Constant. This includes hosting:

a place to store images, notes and other content coming from our collective activities
the tools to experiment and create small publications and other outputs
the published outputs

Constant collects the materials to be used as sources for small publications and the redaction of documentation of these activities and, in this way, they are also made available to all the participants and other interested people.

We find it important to both care for keeping these sources available in the long-term and, to redistribute them for re-use by others. They are made available under the [CC4R license] (https://constantvzw.org/wefts/cc4r.en.html), a document which orients the way in which we approach collaboration and how we imagine and desire sharing and re-use to happen.

Why do we use local servers?

At Constant we have a long standing practice of questioning and finding alternative ways of documentation processes that are collaborative in nature. We have been working on some structures that allow multiple ways of access. One of the ways in which Constant has been doing this is making it possible to write together on etherpads, whether we are connected tot he internet or not.

Our past process on these questions can be read in the first issue of the [Networks of One's Own](https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#episode-1-etherbox) series.

We see how useful it is for companies to use such systems to make their user experience seamless, accessible, economically efficient.
We do it instead for long-term content reliability, to open up access from/to different locations. With our local server approach we chose not to use internet cloud services and such to keep our data but, later, we also realized we wanted to make use of the internet to regain some of the agency to be able to share our content.

Splinter is a fluid entity that we hope we can continue to morph into different versions along the documentation path that Constant takes.

Sharing Techno-Disobedient stories

Peter Westenberg — 2023-10-10T11:51:50Z

Constant invited its public to a moment of sharing and thinking together. We discussed practices that arose during the two collective research worksession of 2023 around Techno-disobedience

The Brussels based artists who joined, brought back a number of 'talking pieces' that helped us think of disobedience as a generative attitude allowing for more community driven, in solidarity, techno- imaginaries and realities.

Through recalling and sharing their stories, anecdotes of situations we went through, reflections on the experiments with reclaiming tech that took place, we tried to constitute relations to larger questions about agency, control and the intersections between technology, labour, care, anti-racism, queer life and trans*feminist techno-politics.

It was an afternoon of collective exchange of stories, images, objects in a convivial setting with snacks, drinks, and a relaxed company.

The worksessions were organised in collaboration with esc medien kunst labor.

Artistic commission #1: Cypher Sex - A Manual for Collective Digital Self-Defense Guides

Donatella — 2023-09-26T11:59:16Z

In the framework of this year theme, Techno-disobedience, Constant was pleased to support the collective Cypher Sex in their work on a Manual for Collective Digital Self-Defense Guides. This support was brought within the framework of the commission call launched at the beginning of the year 2023.

"Cypher Sex is a queer feminist collective aimed at empowering LGBTQ* people, women, and sex workers in their use of online services and digital tools through workshops, guides, and personalized consultancies."

Cypher Sex "wrote the first guide which aims to not only provide specific resources and references but empower the reader to make informed decisions about what to look for on platforms that are constantly changing. Cypher Sex received many requests for translating these guides into other languages for other contexts. However, as each country/city and the sex workers (and kinky queers) who live there have their own (digital) self-defense strategies, a simple translation was not appropriate (or very helpful) for writing a new guide. Therefore, their proposal for Constant's Techno-disobedience commission to write a new "how to" manual that would lay out strategies on how to write locally-oriented digital self-defense guides."

More info about the project in the GenderIT article that was published back at the end of June 2023.

View online : https://www.inventati.org/cyphersex/

Open call: Techno-disobedience worksession in Graz

imane — 2023-07-03T09:08:18Z

This was an open call for participation in the second worksession around the theme of techno-disobedience, which took place from the 23 to the 28th of October 2023 in Graz (Austria) at esc medien kunst labor.

This worksession zoomed in on disobedient tactics as means for finding new pathways to circumvent, question, detour and resist the social and political expectations that come with the authoritarian turbo-capitalist frameworks of Big Tech. We sought to reclaim technology in various ways, as we recognise this push to be about labour, care, anti-racism, queer life and trans*feminist techno-politics.

This session proposed a focus on forms of collective care in face of technological dispossession: as corporate platforms expand their re-organisation of everything as-a-service, the domains of care and reproductive labour are threatened crucial areas which need active involvement to keep complexity at work and resist harmful disruption.

We wanted to try joyful abolitionary tactics and methodologies that allow us:

... to collectively learn how to process, heal, discuss, deal with the complexities of being 'together', to care for, those we know and those we do not know.

... to connect to precarious works of feeding and providing for others.

... to be dreaming of doing away with structural oppression and violence.

We looked at multiple ways of doing, testing, trying: slowing down, jamming, reversing, future-speculating, feminist manoeuvres, joy and killjoy, being lazy and inefficient, nonsensical approaches, 'good enough' tech, (k)notworkings and many others we don't know of yet.

From mundane individual acts to collectively coordinated acts of refusal, techno-disobedience is multiple and pervasive. To be able to write our own ustopias (combined utopia and dystopia, as each contains a latent version of the other) we looked into the knowledges and practices of unruliness and misconduct, as means to deviate tech from its determinist and solutionist path.
This was a week of collective engagement in constructing intersectional, futures in solidarity.

Practical info
This worksession will take place from the 23rd til the 28th of October 2023 in Graz in the exhibition space esc medien kunst labor in Bürgergasse 5, 8010 Graz and at local partners such as Traumwerk, Spektral, mur.at and the Invisible Lab. Additionally to participants from esc and Constant, there will be space for about 12 people for the whole week. Participation is free of charge. Constant will cover costs of transportation, breakfast+lunch, and lodging for all participants.

Application
If you are interested in joining, please send us an email at: info@esc.mur.at with a short introduction of yourself. We also ask you to send us a description of a "first-aid kit", existing or imaginary, that relates to the questions and topics of the worksession.
Kits, and especially first-aid ones, often come with narratives and imaginaries of technical solutionism or post-apocalyptic prepping. We would like instead to stimulate a collection of situated issues that urge aid and care in face of continuous and distributed crises, and of technical objects or systems that could be useful for collective forms of support and healing. What are the damages that surround us for which we can imagine ways to heal, to support, to organize, to riot about?
The kit could contain devices and objects, but could also consist of or include a glossary, a methodology, a collection of texts, body movements...

Let's come together to develop and try out these "care repair kits" as objects and practices to mutually care for.

The deadline for sending your application is Thursday 31st of August 2023.

Constant's Collaboration Guidelines have been conceived in regard to all our activities. These guidelines will be brought up and activitated during this worksession too. Please read them carefully before applying:
> https://constantvzw.org/wefts/orientationspourcollaboration.en.html

About Constant & worksessions
Constant is a non-profit artistic organisation that investigates the relation and effects of media and technologies on our society and everyday life through the lens of feminisms, multiperspectivity and the values of F/LOSS culture.
Constant's worksessions are transdisciplinary collective residencies. We create a temporary working environment where participants from different backgrounds come together to develop projects and research ideas. They offer a mix of presentations, workshops, hands-on moments, collective brainstormings and experimentations, and sometimes public moments such as visits, debates, screenings, etc...
This worksession is organised in the framework of Constant's program that turns this year around 'techno-disobedience'. The worksession in October is organised by esc medien kunst lab: https://esc.mur.at/, and is a follow-up from the first one that took place in Brussels in June 2023.

About esc medien kunst labor
esc medien kunst labor is a non-profit association in Graz that focuses on art and art production in technological contexts. We want to understand the impact(s) technology has on individuals, groups, communities and society and think together with different practicioners.

Copper Infused with Blessing: hands-on workshop

imane — 2023-05-24T11:23:39Z

The Fear Healing Bowls are part of the arts of protection in Islamic tradition, practiced in different cultures across time. Through many layers such as written prayers, ornamental elements representing beauty and locality, symbols of Divinity, craft knowledge(s), water and sound: this bowl is seen as a medicinal ritualistic tradition of soothing.

Growing up in Deir-Ezzour, I remember my grandmother would offer the bowl filled with blessed water to someone experiencing fear or anxiety, reciting verses of the Quran with the intention to calm and sooth.

The workshop was a one day event exploring the theme of Techno-disobedience through acts of soothing and protection as gestures of resistance. In the company of the artist Joud Toamah, we explored the possibly various traditions through the medium of healing bowls. We invited participants to take the healing bowls as a point of departure for activating collective rituals and embodied knowledge(s) through engraving, carving, sewing.

Joud's intention was to remember, honor and share this soothing practice to open up a discussion to different soothing languages that could be expressed, remembered and honored through the bowls.

Practicalities over the workshop:

Places are limited. Please register by sending an email to : imane@constantvzw.org

This workshop was organized in collaboration with GC Pianofabriek.

Techno-Disobedience: an afternoon of exchange

Peter Westenberg — 2023-05-22T10:21:34Z

A collective jamming jammers* session!

This afternoon we opened our doors to the public to give the opportunity to discuss, discover, enjoy exchanges with the group of participants at the worksession Techno-Disobedience, which took place during the previous week. In the garden of our studio, we informally shared stories, findings, experiments and delicious food. Everybody was welcome !

Techno-Disobedience looked at techniques of disobedience as a means to question and resist the paradigm of an all-controlling and regulating technology. If civil disobedience illustrated how one can and should disobey a law they consider unjust, technological disobedience was posed here as a question: what obligations do we feel are put forward by Big Tech and what it could mean to disagree, refuse, disobey them?

* A jamming device, existing or imaginary, is normally used to interfere with and disrupt communication systems such as mobile phones or GPS tracking, but we think of it as an analogy or metaphor for other type of disturbances, so a 'jammer' can also be a hand-tool, a body-movement, a text, a language, a building, a cloth, a verb, etc.

More info:
https://constantvzw.org/site/Open-call-Techno-disobedience-worksession.html

Open call workshop: the Age of Dust

Peter Westenberg — 2023-05-16T15:40:21Z

This was an open call from Hackers & Designers and Constant to invite artists to join for a three-day workshop in our studio in Koekelberg, taking place on 15, 16 and 17 September 2023.

Generations after the eruption of the Volcano, three communities meet around the discovery of a mysterious mineral: the Dust. Essential source of energy, sacred healing powers, geological warning, what messages and hopes does the Dust carry? When different belief systems meet, how to find a common ground? How will their encounter shape the world of tomorrow?

In this transformative journey, participants played out social and somatic dynamics to resist conventional narrative stereotypes and think beyond humans while experimenting with collaborative storytelling.

The workshop happened in three different parts that transformed the space into a stage for exploring fiction. Everyday was a combination of: a bit of technique with the making of techno-magic objects (toy-hacking, experimental audio devices, soldering...), a bit of world-building (imagine characters, collaboratively expand them, their world, and culture), a little live action role playing (embodying the characters in their encounters with each other and activate the techno-magical objects).

Participation:

No experience in role playing, or technical skills are required.
The workshop is open for all ages starting from 7 years to 99+.
You can join for one, two or 3 day(s).
Small children are welcome, childcare will be available.
The space is on the ground floor and DIY wheelchair accessible (please write us to discuss specific needs).
We will speak French, Dutch and English. Participants don't need to speak all languages.

If you would like to participate, please write an email before July the 1st to: juliette@hackersanddesigners.nl

mentioning:

Your name
Your age,
What is your child(ren)'s age who need childcare
Which days you will attend (1 , 2, or 3 days)
if you have any accessibility needs.
Participation is free.

We will get back to you after the 10th of July to confirm your registration.

Drinks and a vegetarian lunch will be offered during the workshop.

Dates: 15-16-17 September 2023
Time: 10:00 to 18:00
Languages: French/Dutch/English
Reservation mandatory: maximum 15 participants

The Age of Dust was a live action role play imagined by Juliette Lizotte for Lava Lines, an exhibition at Biblioteka in London in 2022. The project evolved in the context of Hackers & Designers 2023 program Hopepunk. The technical part was developed in close collaboration with Loes Bogers (H&D) and Emma Pareschi.

Workshop: DEDBUG

Wendy Van Wynsberghe — 2023-04-24T11:31:05Z

Most contemporary electronics devices which are built today have small to very small components, called SMD (surface-mounted device) components. In 2019, 83% of broken devices and other electronic waste is shipped to the global south without any form of environmental processing, limiting the potential of these components. The amount of e-waste we collectively produce will only grow over time and to remove the increasing influence of governmental and corporate ownership of our digital lives we need to take back control of our devices. To achieve this objective, we need to familiarize ourselves with forgotten circuit-building techniques.

The DEDBUG project revives and facilitates free-form, point-to-point construction techniques for those small, surface-mount components and allows for the construction of circuits with SMD components without the requirement to design a circuit board beforehand.

The workshop will coved the background of free-form construction, each of the DEDBUG tools and how to work with components salvaged from e-waste to make new (and weird!) devices. Each participant left with flex-pcb sheets with the DEDBUG toolkit and basic electronics tools to experiment with at home. As the toolkit fitted in a C5 sized envelope, it was also shipped to workers in the informal sector surrounding waste management sites throughout the global south.

The weekend had three main threads: enhancing legibility of the electronic landscapes and pcb's, learn what chip or component can be useful, salvage the chips and components we want to use to build a circuit with.

Practicalities about the workshop
> Bring trash electronics to work with
> This workshop has a limited amount of tools, for 10 participants. We want to bypass the first come first served principle, so we ask for you to introduce yourself and why you want to come. Please send your e-mail to wendy@constantvzw.org
Deadline for registration: 21 May 2023
> Open for all levels, we help each other
> Lunch is provided by Constant

*This workshop was hosted by Unbinare, an anarchist e-waste reverse engineering laboratory and Constant.

*For more information -> https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/an-ontology-of-electronic-waste

View online : Unbinare website