Booklaunch: Volumetric Regimes

September 10, 2022 Possible bodies

Tuesday 4 October 20:00 – 22:00 @ Varia, Rotterdam (NL)
https://varia.zone/booklaunch-volumetric-regimes.html

Cover image Volumetric Regimes“This radical multi-form collective investigation traces the cutting edge of how bodies and subjects are rendered technologically. It proposes multi-dimensional forms of intervention, and claims an experimental horizon of the possible, shattering the mantra of unavoidability.” — Olga Goriunova

Six years of trans*feminist disobedient action-research on 3D technologies, paradigms and procedures culminated in Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence (Open Humanities Press 2022, DATA-browser series, eds. Geoff Cox and Joasia Krysa). Compiled by Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting and Jara Rocha), the publication brings together diverse materials on the political, aesthetic, computational and relational regimes in which volumes are calculated. The book foregrounds technological practices that invite widenings of what is possible. With contributions by Sophie Boiron, Maria Dada, Pierre Huyghebaert, Phil Langley, Nicolas Malevé, Romi Ron Morrison, Simone C. Niquille, Helen V. Pritchard, Jara Rocha, Sina Seifee, Femke Snelting and Kym Ward.

The event at Varia celebrates the wiki-to-print paper edition designed and developed by Manetta Berends. It is a special moment in an ongoing multi-local launch, made up of playful contributions, informal responses and interactive formats proposed by comrades in the making of technosciences otherwise.

The evening starts with a performative introduction by the editors, followed by an intervention by designer, artist and researcher Alex Zakkas in conversation with Manetta Berends.

To download the pdf and/or order a paper copy on-line: http://data-browser.net/db08.html
Books will be sold at the event at a reduced price.
All materials have also been published on a dedicated wiki: https://volumetricregimes.xyz/

Death to deadly freshness! Long live lively corruption!

May 17, 2022 Possible bodies

AIrot is looking for an Ageing Software Worker. Join our Rancid Prediction Engine PDP, REPEL & SOS teams!

… a job-fiction by Possible Bodies, editada por Daniel Gasol para A*Desk

[ENG] https://a-desk.org/en/magazine/death-to-deadly-freshness-long-live-lively-corruption/
[CAST] https://a-desk.org/magazine/muerte-a-la-frescura-mortifera-larga-vida-a-la-viva-podredumbre/
[CAT] https://a-desk.org/ca/magazine/muerte-a-la-frescura-mortifera-larga-vida-a-la-viva-podredumbre/

Falling and Floating. A guided tour into Volumetric Regimes

March 22, 2022 Possible bodies

29th March, 17:30-20:30 / Possible Bodies feat. GOB GOB
@Theory Stairs, FedLev Building (Gerrit Rietveld Academie), Amsterdam

Six years of trans*feminist disobedient action research on 3D technologies, paradigms and procedures are about to be published as Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence (Open Humanities Press, DATA-browser series, 2022). The book foregrounds technological practices that provide with a widening of the possible and brings together diverse materials on the political, aesthetic and relational regimes in which volumes are calculated. The ongoing multi-local launch of Volumetric Regimes is made up of playful contributions, informal responses and interactive formats proposed by known and unknown comrades in the making of technosciences otherwise.

The guided tour into Volumetric Regimes: material cultures of quantified presence at Sandberg Institute will touch upon 3D image production tools and the possible practice of dissident worlding by axes, planes, dimensions and coordinates. It will be matched with play session and screening featuring works by Ráchel Plutón and Elio J Carranza.

Continue reading →

Small c vs. big C: How Computational Infrastructures capture technical and social imaginary for public life

November 23, 2021 TITiPI

With The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest
NEW DATE: Friday 4 March 2022, 17:00-18:30 @ SPUI25, Amsterdam

Keywords from conversations and colored dots

In recent years, the communications, sociality and operations of public institutions have become increasingly dependent on Computational Infrastructures provided by Big Tech. From decentralized contact tracing apps for public health to free online school classrooms for education: Computational Infrastructures have rapidly expanded their remit. This conversation will center on how institutions and the lives they are tasked with supporting, are impacted by Computational Infrastructures.

https://spui25.nl/programma/small-c-vs-big-c

Image: word2complex, Varia (Manetta Berends and Cristina Cochior), 2021.

Infrastructural publishing

July 24, 2021 Constant, TITiPI, xpub

http://titipi.org/infrastructural-publishing.html

A multi-headed webpage brings together a growing list of publications on infrastructuring otherwise. The page is hosted and asynchronously maintained by a network of networks that includes Anarchaserver (Calafou), Constant (Brussels), Infrastructural Manœuvres (Amsterdam/Brussels), KASK (Ghent), The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (London/Brussels), Varia (Rotterdam) and XPUB (Rotterdam).

Sinking Alloyances + Planetary Burial

May 16, 2021 The Underground Division

22nd May to Sunday 13th June 2021 11:00 – 17:00
Wat Tyler Country Park, Pitsea Hall Lane, Pitsea, Basildon (UK)

Sinking Alloyances + Planetary Burial is the ninth entry to the ROCK REPO – an ongoing enquiry into computational, mineral time and matter.

Artist collective The Underground Division (Helen Pritchard, Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting) have created a new audiovisual installation (3D renderings, models, sound and text) presented at the newly transformed Eco Gallery at Wat Tyler Country Park.

Planetary estuary environments are recognised for their capacities to capture and store carbon, known as carbon sequestering. Quantified, measured and commodified as sinks for so-called ‘bluecarbon’, saltmarshes are rendered back into the flows of carbon trade.

This new artwork meditates on what it means to compute the volumes of carbon that are ‘buried’; the microbiomes and topologies, held together by root lattices of cordgrass in estuaries and mangroves across the world. Showing the liveliness and abundance of estuaries that is in excess of capture.

View on-line: http://ddivision.xyz/rockrepo/sinking/ (allow your browser to play sound).

Radio Implicancies

April 26, 2021 xpub

numbered balls connected to each other with arrows

Testing 2, 1, 4. test. test.

Radio Implicancies is back with eight weekly self-hosted broadcasts developed for and with XPUB, Piet Zwart Media Design Master in Rotterdam; Thursdays from 16:00-17:00 until June 17 included.

Radio Implicancies emits the signals of changing constellations, bringing forth different responses and creating new approaches to the way knowledge and technology interplay and create inherent structures.

With amongst others: The XPUB Department of Digital Records – Case Number: 92 / MIPOLONI – Us / Mozzarella X Gouda – echo / Radio Legends – Macintosh and Windows share a little boogie / Clara X Sugar

Listen online : https://issue.xpub.nl/15/

Hiding trees among the forest

April 4, 2021 TITiPI

Reclaiming Digital Infrastructures (RDI) is a research collaboration with KASK School of Arts in Gent taking serious the question how to understand digital networks and communication tools as an integral part of the art education.

RDI4: Hiding trees among the forest

During this session, Seda Guerses and Femke Snelting will share concrete cases, readings, art-projects and hands-on exercises to explore how obfuscation strategies might evade surveillance, protect privacy and improve security. But could it also be a way to protest, contest, resist and sabotage the increasing grasp that technology has on managing our daily lives?

The pandemic condition intensified our dependency on technologies that survey, extract and optimize data-flows. This changes social, workplace, political, health and educational spheres where technical systems have become central and inescapable. Whether you book your jury via Eventbrite, join an on-line class in Zoom, get notified by your Coronalert app, chat with your colleagues in MS-Teams or work for Deliveroo, the digital expands into the physical to govern both the human and the more-than-human.

Obfuscation methods render data more ambiguous, difficult to exploit and interpret, less useful. They rely on the addition of gibberish, meaningless data; they pollute, add noise, randomize. Obfuscation invokes an intuitive form of protection: it distorts that which is visible to render it less (or in)visible. It hides the trees among the forest.

Continue reading →

How to infrastructure otherwise

March 1, 2021 Constant

Thursday 18 March 18:00-20:00

a picture of a burnt out server park with drawings and annotations on top of it.

A hands-on conversation on the ongoing techno-political transformations in (remote) learning environments. How to infrastructure otherwise in more just and solidary ways? On de-schooling, interdependent learning and The bundle theory of the student-user. With Martino Morandi, Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting.

In the context of the series Commoning Education/Educating the Commons organised by Station of Commons.

Volumetric Regimes: material cultures of quantified presence

February 24, 2021 Possible bodies

A book in the making / edited by Possible Bodies (Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting)

A diagram tracing the continuum

Contributors: Sophie Boiron, Maria Dada, Pierre Huyghebaert, Sina Seifee, Phil Langley, Nicolas Malevé, Romi Ron Morrison, Simone C. Niquille, Helen V. Pritchard, Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting, Kym Ward.

Published by Open Humanities Press (2021) in the DATA browser series, edited by Geoff Cox and Joasia Krysa. Design and lay-out implemented by Manetta Berends based on a template developed by Stuart Bailey.

wiki: https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/book/

DiVersions v2

January 6, 2021 Constant

a stack of books on a wooden table

Second version of a digital and printed publication with new and reworked contributions by among others Rahel Aima, Anaïs Berck, Gert Biesta, Z. Blace, Daniel Blanga Gubbay, Cristina Cochior, Sarah Kaerts, Anne Laforet, Phil Langley, Marie Lécrivain, Nicolas Malevé, Elodie Mugrefya, Zoumana Meïté, Mia Melvær, Martino Morandi, Michael Murtaugh, Colm o’Neill, Hari Prasad Adhikari-Sacré, Kris Rutten, Amir Sarabadani, Femke Snelting, Saskia Willaert.

DiVersions engages with the potential of on-line cultural heritage for welcoming various forms of collaboration, allowing conflicts to show up, and make space for other narratives. In dialogue with cultural institutions and their collections, the project experimented with digitized and digital heritage to open up databases, metadata, catalogs and digital infrastructures for other imaginations.

DiVersions is initiated by Constant and developed in partnership with: UGent – Department of Educational Studies, Werkplaats immaterieel erfgoed, meemoo – Vlaams Instituut voor het Archief – Expertisecentrum Digitaal Erfgoed, RoSa – Kenniscentrum voor gender en feminisme.

Editorial team: Constant (Elodie Mugrefya, Femke Snelting)
Wiki-to-print publication designed and developed with Open Source Publishing (Sara Magnan + Gijs de Heij)

Printed copies: 10 euro (excl. shipping). To order, send an e-mail to info@constantvzw.org

Infrastructure solidarity: a conversation with Miriyam Aouragh

January 6, 2021 Constant, TITiPI

A conversation about current and future technological infrastructures for solidarity. Elodie Mugrefya, Femke Snelting, Wendy Van Wynsberghe of Constant, speak with media anthropologist and activist Miriyam Aouragh about the relations between political activism and technological criticism. How to organise for social change on-line when Tech Giants profit from our interactions?

In the context of (Staying) in the Movement and following from the panel discussion Revolution and Solidarity This Time organised by De Wereld Morgen and moderated by Omar Jabary Salamenca and Joachim El Yacoub on 13 January.

Collective Conditions Reader (update)

October 30, 2020 Constant

This reader is an evolving companion to Collective Conditions, a worksession held in November 2019 in Brussels. Whether you prefer to read, watch or listen, this reader offers different lines of thinking for non-divisive ways of doing “complex collectivity”. It contains materials from trans*feminist collectives on ally-ship, non-violent communication, score-making, anti-colonial and intersectional activism, but also ways of doing developed within Free Culture and Free, Libre and Open Source software. The reader was recently updated by Loren Britton, Peter Hermans and Constant.

Download compiled PDF: http://constantvzw.org/collectiveconditions/reader.pdf
On-line version: https://constantvzw.org/wefts/ccreader.en.html
To order a printed copy (5 euros excl. delivery), send an email to: donatella@constantvzw.org