The Network We (De)served
From January to April 2019 on behalf of Varia, Manetta Berends and me taught a thematic course at the Experimental Publishing Master’s programme at the Piet Zwart Institute. Responding to new developments in federated social media and the trimester sought to understand what on-line federation is and how novel forms of publishing could be imagined in that environment. Consequently the trimester was centered around practices of self-hosting, the history and practice of computer networking, feminist servers, diy chatbots as publication tools, shared on-line spaces and hybrid publishing practices.
We started of with a <homebrewserver.club> inspired tour to set up self-hosted servers at home which became the basis for all networking and zine experiments of the thematic project.
The project was presented in Varia as an evening where visitors could visit each of the students to learn about their research and get a copy of their project zine. These zines took the form of hybrid publications, bundle of printed zines and an on-line webring.
The publication bundle cover
Cover and zine by Artemis Grylliaki
Zine by Paloma
Zine by Biyi Wen
Zine asking to list the on-line networks you have ever been part of
Photos by Florian Cramer
The Network We (de)Served, (XPUB Special Issue #08) Thursday, 04 April 2019 at Varia
Dear guest,
We traveled from home to home by bicycle, setting up homeservers. As friends and companions on this Infrastructour, we studied our routers over drinks served by our hosts. Where possible we installed our servers in our homes, in other cases we had to depend on another member of the group. While self-hosting together we questioned our understandings of networks, autonomy, online publishing and social infrastructures, where each of us departed from a different question. We would like to share our personal (yet interconnected) routes with you, tell you a story, present our web- and printed zines, and invite you to explore our homebrewed network.
Date: Thursday, 04 April 2019 Location: Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam Entrance: Free Start: 19:00
Contributors: Simon Browne, Tancredi Di Giovanni, Paloma García, Rita Graça, Artemis Gryllaki, Pedro Sá Couto, Biyi Wen, Bohye Woo, Roel Roscam Abbing, Manetta Berends, Lídia Pereira, André Castro, Aymeric Mansoux, Michael Murtaugh, Steve Rushton, Leslie Robbins.
Brought to you by the Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental Publishing (XPUB) of the Piet Zwart Institute, and Varia, Centre for Everyday Technology, Rotterdam, April 2019.