Community servers

From Monoskop
(Redirected from Art servers)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
For interdependent, feminist, trans*feminist, free/libre, self-hosted, autonomous, collective, community and art servers

Servers[edit]

  • Anarchaserver, "a feminist server which contributes to the maintenance of autonomous infrastructure on the Internet for feminists projects. It is an open project, even though moderated where we privilege trust, consensus, autonomy and feminist collaboration for deciding our next adventures in inhabiting this feminist infrastructure, in synchronicity with other feminist servers initiatives. AnarchaServer has some kind of presence in different locations around the world such as calafou, belgium, france, germany, greece, iceland, the netherlands, mexico, sweden, uruguay ..." Website. Wiki. List.
Autistici.org.png
  • Autistici/Inventati (A/I) "was born in 2001 from an encounter of individuals and collectives of the autonomous anticapitalist movement interested in technology and active in the digital rights struggle. We believe that this world is far from being the best world possible. We react by providing a platform and tools for digital self-defense addressing the need of secure, free communication and privacy for activists and other individuals." Based in Milan. Website. IRC server. Mailing lists. Services. Blog. Mastodon account.
Coopcloud logo grey.png
  • Autonomic "is a co-operative that is owned and run by its workers." It runs Co-op Cloud, "a software stack that aims to make hosting libre software applications simple for small service providers such as tech co-operatives who are looking to standardise around an open, transparent and scalable infrastructure. It uses the latest container technologies and configurations are shared into the commons for the benefit of all" (est. 2021). Based in Birmingham. Member of the CoTech Network. Mastodon account. Git. Matrix. Services.
Chatons logo.png
  • Chatons, "free-software online services to decentralize and discover a web on a human scale, united and respectful of your privacy." Initiated in 2016 by Framasoft. Jitsi. Etherpad. EtherCalc. Services.
  • Cl4ndestina, "a feminist activist server that offers hosting for websites of feminist collectives, organisations and social movements based in Latin America." Est. 2016 in Brazil. Git. Sysadmin.
  • CódigoSur focuses "on promoting the use and development of free technologies and the creation of spaces for debate and learning about Free Culture with a gender perspective in Latin America and the Caribbean." Founded 2002. Services.
  • Data.coop "is an association and a cooperative. The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web." Est. 2014/2016 in Denmark. Mastodon instance. Services. Mastodon account. Matrix. Git.
  • Desk Org is "dedicated to free arts, speech and software and reports on recent developments of net based arts and it's on-line community. Desk.org is managed by its artists, authors and their audience. This site is part of a network of independent art servers world-wide and gives support to art projects, artists on-line and access to global resources." Est. 1995 in the Netherlands.
  • diebin.at "is a feminist IT collective that takes care of servers. These servers run various IT services (e.g. mailing lists, websites, email accounts) that can be used by emancipatory projects, initiatives and activists." Est. 2014 in Vienna.
Disroot-root.png
  • Disroot "aims to change the way people are used to interact on the web. We want to encourage and show them not only that there are open and ethical alternatives but also that it is the only possible way to break free from the walled gardens proposed and promoted by proprietary software and corporations, either through our platform, others that have similar values and goals or even their own projects.". Founded 2015 in Amsterdam. Jitsi. Mumble. Cryptpad. Etherpad. Git. Services. Mastodon account.
  • Ecobytes "is a community-supported IT collective. Our aim is, by increasing the number of members and supporters, as well as by joining efforts with other independent IT collectives, to support the expansion of secure infrastructure and services to our communities." Based in Germany. Services. Awesome librehosters.
Framasoft.png
FuturEtic.logo.png
Irational02.jpg
  • librehosters "is a network of cooperation and solidarity that uses free software to encourage decentralisation through federation and distributed platforms. Our values connect transparency, fairness and privacy with a culture of data portability and public contributions to the commons." Forum.
LURK.org.png
Minadoraserver.png
  • Minadoraserver (მინადორა სერვერი) "is a feminist server. We aspire to fire up emancipatory artistic tools and platforms in Georgia, and establish critical connections along the way." Based in Tbilisi. Mastodon instance. List. Zine. Glossary.
Mur.at.logo.gray.png
PIC gardennetworks thumb.jpg
  • Node9.org, "Interdependent open culture gallery. Providing free, sustainable and ethical space for collectives and individuals since 2003. No datacentre media storage and streaming server, social hub and co-op office. From 2020 two field servers located in rural and research ecosystem areas are part of the node9 infrastructure." Hometown: Prague. Websites hosted. Hubzilla channel. Peertube.
NoLog.cz.png
  • NoLog, "a collective supporting free-thinking individuals and organizations in their efforts to change the world for the better. We offer everyone free alternatives to services for which users otherwise pay dearly with their personal data. We can provide individual support and tools to organizations with whom we share common values." Based in Prague. Nitter. Mastodon instances: witter.cz, lgbtcz.social. Cryptpad. Etherpad. Peertube. Mastodon account.
Riseup.net.rainbow.png
Servus.at.logo.png
Spc.org.2023.png
Systemli.org.png
  • Systemli, "a left-wing network and technics-collective that was founded in 2003. Our aim is to provide safe and trustworthy communication services. The project is primarily aimed at left-wing political activists and people who have a particular need to protect their data." Website. Mastodon instance. Etherpad. Jitsi. Services. Friends.
Systerserver.png
Thing.net.png
  • Vedetas "is our feminist server. She exists to help feminist groups in their online activities and to increase women's safety and empowerment on the internet." Est. 2015 in Brazil. Etherpad. EtherCalc. Services.
  • ...

The list includes more or less active servers.

Publications[edit]

Art Servers Unlimited, 1998, PDF.
  • Are You Being Served? (Notebooks), eds. Anne Laforet, Marloes de Valk, Madeleine Aktypi, An Mertens, Femke Snelting, Michaela Lakova, and Reni Hofmüller, Brussels: Constant, August 2014, 182 pp, PDF. "This publication results from an intense writing and editing process that was set in motion as a process of collaborative note-taking in real time, during the event Verbindingen/Jonctions #14. More than eight months later these notes were rigorously edited during a five-day booksprint. Time allowed for a fresh reading of the event and for a reworking of the read threads, thematics and keywords that were to be used. Slides of the talks, audiovisual documentation, original notes and external links were crafted into the pages that are assembled here."
  • Relearn, "A Feminist Net/work How-to", in Portable Relearn Archive, July 2014. Material from the 2014 edition of Relearn, held at Variable, a collectively run F/LOSS Arts Lab in Brussels.
  • Anne Pasek, Benedetta Piantella, Solar-Powered Media. A guide to building your own solar-powered media storage and sharing server, July 2021, 40 pp. "A zine about building your own solar-powered digital media storage infrastructure and sharing it online with the rest of the world. It includes instructions and suggestions about the hardware and software this task requires, as well as ideas and directions for the kinds of applications and aesthetics that seem to work best with such systems."
  • Infrables, Brussels: The Institute for Technology In the Public Interest, May 2022, 30 pp, PDF, PDF. "Infrables make negative use-cases and un-fixing bug reports as a solidary praxis. They are articulations of what extractive digital infrastructures are, and what they are doing. What infrables can we tell to take-down Big Tech narratives and undo their violences? Generated through narrative and extra-narrative accounts, infrables identify oppressive infrastructures or tools, but they also make space for other technological attitudes."
  • Infrastructural Interactions: Survival, Resistance and Radical Care, eds. Helen V Pritchard and Femke Snelting, Brussels: The Institute for Technology In the Public Interest, November 2022, 83 pp, PDF, PDF. "Computational infrastructures generate harms and damage beyond ethical issues of privacy, ownership and confidentiality. They displace agencies, funds and knowledge into apps and services and thereby slowly but surely contribute to the depletion of resources for public life. While data- infrastructures capture public data-streams, they also capture imagination for what a public is, and what is in its interest. We urgently need other imaginations for how we interface with infrastructures, beyond delivering a “solution” to a “need” (or the promise they can fulfill a future need). The workshops, documentation and structures in this workbook are a small contribution to making this complex paradigm shift together." Workbook wiki. Toot.
  • Prospections: "Digital Discomfort", eds. Cell for Digital Discomfort (Cristina Cochior, Karl Moubarak, and Jara Rocha), Utrecht: BAK, December 2022ff. "With “Digital Discomfort,” CfDD continue their collective study of cultures and practices of computation and invites other reflections, grammars, and actions that contribute to a plurality of inter-dependent, anti-colonial, trans*feminist, anti-ableist, and environmentally just worldmaking practices of computation. These contributions grapple with the complex distribution of agencies and stakeholders, even if it’s technically impossible to make the apparatus just “stop.”"
  • Lukas Engelhardt, with Paul Bille and Ada Reinthal, Self Hosting Manual, December 2022ff. "The goal of this publication is to make self-hosting, a topic that comes with several technical hurdles, accessible to a more general public and beginners, while still being a useful resource to more advanced readers. No prerequisites are required from the reader." [13] [14]
  • International Trans★Feminist Digital Depletion Strike, February/March 2023. Published as a webpage hosted and asynchronously maintained by a network of networks. "Especially now our dependency on Big Tech Cloud seems intractable, it is time to reclaim space for renegotiating what might be possible. We want to imagine different infrastructures for collective life with and without computation. By calling for cloud resistance, we want to center slow trans★feminist, anti-racist and anti-imperial server practices. We want local digital storage, self-hosted videocalls, and collaborative server hosting. We want antifa-infras, low-energy graphics and queer circuits. We want accessible development, sustainable tech-maintainance, and feral supply chains. We want the end of work conditioned by Big Tech, and ultimately, the end of work. We want systemic, joyful, techno-political change." (multiple languages)

See also the event websites below.

Events, projects, workshops, collaborations, resources[edit]

1990s, 2000s[edit]

ASU
ASU2
  • ASU2, KUC Lamparna, Labin, Croatia, 8-15 September 2001. ASU2 = [.art +.alt +.act] + [servers+streamers+spaces] + UNLIMITED. A meeting/festival with hands-on workshops, demos, trainings, presentations, discussions, public performances, webcasts of non-profit cultural organisations/projects/initiatives from the fields of net.art, alternative technologies and activist media. Organised by Z. Blace and LABinary, with Joanne Richardson and support of Nina Czegledy, in collaboration with mama, Ljudmila and pro.ba. Over 70 participants. Website.

2010s[edit]

Are You Being Served 2013.png
Feminist Server Summit 2013.png
  • Are You Being Served?, meeting days, Constant and multiple locations in Brussels, 12-15 December 2013. "The fourteenth edition of the meeting days Verbindingen/Jonctions was dedicated to a Feminist review of mesh, cloud, autonomous, and DIY servers. ... How do we keep a sharp eye on the politics and ethics of hosting technologies when all so often (paraphrasing the Free Software Foundation), software is sold as service? ... We questioned what is seemingly commonly understood by terms such as server, service and hosting and were curious to investigate what could make current networking technologies into hospitable habitats for critique, as space for artists and solidarity, teaching and learning." VIDEO,MEDIA.
    • Feminist Server Summit, 14 December 2013. A "meeting between various DIY and independent server projects. We were interested in discussing the potential of a feminist server practice, and curious about possible approaches to it. We mixed live interventions with pre-recorded interviews and e-mail correspondence so that we could hear from as many server-related projects as we could." Interventions: Mur.at (Jogi Hofmüller), Samedies (Juliane De Moerloze), all2all (Frédéric Jadoul), Domaine Public (Frederic Peeters), Camp (Sanjay Banghar), Guifi (Gabriel), Calafou (Spideralex), !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Irational (Kate Rich), Autistici (Martino), Bibliotecha (PZI), Kein.org (Jan Gerber), Réseau Citoyen (Olivier Meunier), Neutrinet (Laurent Peuch), FaiMaison (Kheops), servus.at (Uschi Reiter). [20] [21]
  • Technologies of Autonomy, conference stream, Autonomy (im)possible!, Art Meets Radical Openness (AMRO) festival, Linz, 29 May 2014. "The time of ridiculing those who were not taken seriously as “paranoid geeks” seems to have passed at the moment, as the surveillance scandals have reached the mainstream. There is a newly awakened discussion of decentralizing infrastructure and alternative possibilities outside the realm of the large monopolists that determine access to information and tools and cooperate with secret services. Do these new insights actually result in a chance for alternatives, and who really needs them? Why is digital self-defense left up to the users?" Unitary Networking, [22]. [23] [24] [25] [26]
  • Relearn 2014, Variable, Brussels, 7-11 July 2014. Relearn "starts from the idea that tools are increasingly mediated by software and the algorithmic and legal dynamics that constraint and shape its use. Reconnecting to the physical and digital material of those tools is a means of (re)asserting ownership and ensuring active participation in the future of our work practices." Schedule. Pad archive. Git. Images. [27]
THF 2014.png
  • TransHACKfeminist! camp, Calafou, Barcelona, 4-11 August 2014. "The TransH@ckFeminist (THF!) convergence, organised in collaboration with Calafou & /etc (eclectic tech carnival), is a gathering of intersectional feminists, queer and trans people of all genders interested in better understanding, using and ultimately developing free and liberating technologies for social dissent, as an alternative to the corporatisation of technologies and the digital world. We understand technologies in their broadest sense including computer systems, (distributed) networks, “pirate”, community and/or independent radio/ tv, guerilla knitting and gardening, looming, hardware hacking as well as gender hacking." VIDEO. Report. Report (ES). [28]. [29]
Ministry of Hacking 2014.png
  • Ministry of Hacking, exhibition, esc, Graz, 27 September-28 November 2014. "The concept of connectivity is one possible counter position that focuses on practices of freedom in the net, and combines social and technical networks. In order to provide a visible forum for the concept of connectivity, the esc media art laboratory in Graz has been transformed into the subversive headquarters of a MINISTRY OF HACKING, with internationally connected "Departments": "Department of Trust", "Department of Shadows and Waves", "Department of Care and Wonder", "Department of Anonymity", "Department of Difference", "Department of Tactical Feminism". The networked Departments conceptualize guidelines and lines of flight that act as manifestos and spatial embodiments of connectivity." [30]
Segundo Encuentro TransHackFeminista Mexico THFMx2015.png
  • Second TransHackFeminist-México Meet-up (THFMx2015), Puebla, Mexico, 25-31 July 2015. Organised by Centro Comunitario ADA - Accion Directa Autogestiva. "We are joyfull to summon feminist, queer and trans* bodies and collectives who are hacking the patriarchal–capitalist system. ... We believe that our dissident bodies and identities can, as well as changing their own spaces, generate technologies and tools for liberation. The tradition of free software enables us, today, to amplify hardware and software to hack bodies, gender, academia, gynecology, maternity and child-rearing as well as operating systems, distributed networks, autonomous servers, “pirating”, open media, electronic devices." Program. CfP, (es). Report (es). [31]
  • Radical Networks, conference, Integrated Digital Media at Magnet NYU, Brooklyn, NY, 24-25 October 2015. Organised by Sarah Grant, Erica Kermani, and Amelia Marzec. Program.
  • Autonomous Infrastructures stream, THF! 2016 Third TransHackFeminist- Meet-up, Studio xx, (Tio’tia:ke a.k.a Montreal), unceeded Kanien’keha:ka* (Mohawk) territory, 18-22 August 2016. "While we recognise that no infrastructure can be fully autonomous, since autonomy is relative and as they depend, for instance, on already existing communication networks and technologies designed by mainstream companies (such as computers, servers, undersea cables, and access devices), what does it mean for us to conceive and use autonomous infrastructures?" Website. CfP, (fr), (es). [32]
  • homebrewserver.club, Rotterdam, 2017ff. "A monthly gathering for those in Rotterdam who (wish to) host their own online services from home, rather than using commercial and privacy unfriendly alternatives."
Ruminating Relearn 2017 2019.png
  • Relearn 2017, Poortgebouw, Rotterdam, 29 August-2 September 2017. "This year's Relearn general focus is to reconsider forms of self-organising in regard to both machinic systems and social formations. We started to use the term 'co-autonomies' to refer to these ideas. We hope to make use of the proposed tracks as a looking glass to reconstruct notions of agency and consider ways of maintaining them. Particularly within the current political and economic vortex, we would like to discover ways in which co-autonomies can be re-explored, re-shared and re-created from many different angles." Documentation (2019).
  • Radical Networks, conference, Chem Creative, Brooklyn, NY, 19-22 October 2017. Organised by Sarah Grant and Erica Kermani.
Welcome to the Federation 2018.png
  • Welcome to the Federation, series of gatherings, Varia, Rotterdam, June-December 2018. A project by Roel Roscam Abbing in collaboration with Manetta Berends. WttF "explores alternative federated ecosystems for online services such as social media and chat. It will focus in particular on those software projects whose activities have stimulated new interest for their underlying protocols, such as XMPP or ActivityPub, in part by their focusing on design, language and user experience (UX). The WttF question is to explore how arts and design communities can play a supportive role in these processes by contributing skills, knowledge, time and exposure."
Networks with an Attitude 2019.png
  • Networks with an Attitude, worksession, various locations in Antwerp, 7-13 April 2019. Developed by Constant in collaboration with ooooo, Varia and amongst others Samenschool, City harbour, Wireless Antwerp. "The internet is dead, long live the internets! In 2025, the internet will consist of either gated communities or decentralised independent instances. For those who want to be connected while choosing their own dependencies, there is no other option than to draw up new networks and experiment with both historical and innovative protocols. During this intensive week we stretched the imagination of what a network is, and what it can be."
Relearn.be 2019.png
  • Relearn 2019, Varia, Rotterdam, 7-9 June 2019; Hacktiris, Brussels, 21-22 June 2019; La Générale, Paris, 6-8 September 2019. Facilitated by Varia, OSP, Anne Laforet and Quentin Juhel. "For the Rotterdam control point on the Relearn curve, we propose to together attend to a subject zone where different digital network practices intersect. This subject zone can morph into multiple directions throughout the session. Our specific interest is in how publishing formats operate with/on/through this zone. ... You are invited to come and experiment with the local Relearn server that travels between each session of the curve."

2020s[edit]

De-platformization, 2020
  • De-platformization, Ethics and Alternative Social Media, symposium, workshop, Display, Prague, and online, 25-26 September 2020. "We seek to open a discussion, which will not only critically discuss platforms and commercial social media, but explore possibilities of the commons through a number of practical and theoretical positions, public discussion and hands on workshop. We know and repeatedly analyze a host of issues with commercial social media and digital labour, but little attention is paid to efforts at building alternatives, such as community-run social media and other forms of de-platformization." VIDEO (Artyčok).
ATNOFS, 2022
  • A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS), series of events in six chapters, Varia, Rotterdam; HYPHA, Bucharest; LURK, online; ESC, Graz; Feminist Hack Meetings, Athens; Constant, Brussels, March-October 2022. A collaborative project "formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers. Understanding servers as computers that host space and services for communities around them, this project exists inside, and in between, roaming servers and different networks. Its decentralized programme was developed in 6 chapters hosted in 5 different locations." ATNOFS website. Radio broadcast. Publication.
THF2022
  • TransHackFeminist Convergence 2022: Feminist Infrastructure, Calafou, Barcelona, 1-8 August 2022. "From below and from the sides, sometimes precarious, sometimes not very visible or invisible. What is our feminist infrastructure? The one that gives us a mattress, a den, a space of peace, fresh water and shade when we are on fire. The one that shares with us a little piece of land from which we can see the stars and imagine possibilities." Zine. [34]
Digital Depletion Strike, 2023

See also[edit]

Community radio, Community television, Art and activism


Software
communities of practice

Art and technology centres, Circuit bending, Community servers, Copyright activism, Data activism, Demoscene, Digital libraries, DIY biology, Federated networks, File sharing, Free software, Game art, Hacker culture, Hackerspaces, Hacktivism, Internet activism, Libre graphics, Live coding, Live video, Maker culture, Media archives, Net art, Neural aesthetics, Open hardware, Shadow libraries, Software art
See also Art and culture.


Art and culture

Avant-garde and modernist magazines, Dance, Artists' publishing, Graphic design, Photography, Typewriter art, Multimedia environments, Design research, Video activism, Urban practices, Zine culture, Demoscene, VJing, Live cinema, Art and technology centres, Cyberfeminism, Art and activism, Community television, Hacktivism, Community servers, Hackerspaces, CD-ROM art, Circuit bending, Pure Data, Media archives, VVVV, Maker culture, Glitch art, Live coding, Locative media, Libre graphics, Electromagnetism, Surf clubs, DIY biology, Decolonial aesthetics, Post-digital, Neural aesthetics.
See also Visual art.