Femke Snelting
 Femke Snelting. Photo: Michael Murtaugh, 2014. | |
| Born | Netherlands |
|---|---|
| Lives in | Brussels, Belgium |
Femke Snelting develops projects at the intersection of publishing, trans*feminism and Free Software. With the Brussels-based association for art and media, Constant, she experimented with Free Culture as a trans*feminist practice through performative publishing, curatorial processes, poetic software, experimental research and educational prototypes. Her thinking about reuse was sharpened as part of her work with the Libre Graphics Movement in dialogue with the practice of Open Source Publishing (OSP), a design collective that she co-founded in 2006.
Currently Femke works in various constellations on re-imagining computational practices to disinvest from technological monoculture and the regime of The Cloud. With Miriyam Aouragh, Seda Gürses and Helen Pritchard she runs The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest, a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists on what computational infrastructures do to collective life. With Jara Rocha, she edited Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence (Open Humanities Press, 2022). The publication resulted from a collective disobedient research project, which interrogated the concrete and at the same time fictional entities of “bodies” in the context of volumetric technologies.
Femke supports artistic research at MERIAN (Maastricht) and contributes to Nubo, a cooperative that provides locally hosted, Open Source digital services. In the context of SoLiXG, she develops Counter Cloud Imaginaries, non-sovereign institutional infrastructures and methods for infra-resistance. With the Infrastructural Rehearsals collective, she collaborates on proposals and interventions that challenge top-down hegemonic approaches to the climate crisis, from green-washing tech capitalists to state-sponsored initiatives. (2025)
Contents
Publications
- co-editor, Tracks in Electr(on)ic Fields, Brussels: Constant, 2009, 332 pp. (English),(French),(Dutch)
- co-editor, Are You Being Served? (Notebooks), Brussels: Constant, 2014, 182 pp, PDF. (English)
- co-editor, I Think That Conversations Are the Best, Biggest Thing That Software Has to Offer its User, Brussels: Constant, 2015, 351 pp. (English)
- co-editor, Mondothèque: A Radiated Book / Un livre irradiant / Een irradiërend boek, Brussels: Constant, 2016, 225 pp. (English),(French),(Dutch)
- co-editor, The Techno-Galactic Guide to Software Observation, Brussels: Constant, 2018, 244 pp. (English)
- "Codes of Conduct – gemeinsame Werte in alltägliche Praxis umsetzen", in Die schönen Kriegerinnen. Technofeministische Praxis im 21. Jahrhundert, ed. Cornelia Sollfrank, Vienna: transversal texts, 2018, pp 89-110. (German)
- "Codes of Conduct: Transforming Shared Values into Daily Practice", in The Beautiful Warriors: Technofeminist Praxis in the 21st Century, ed. Cornelia Sollfrank, Colchester: Minor Compositions, 2019, pp 57-72. (English)
- co-editor, Networks Of Ones Own 1: "Etherbox", Brussels: Constant, Sep 2018. (English)
- co-editor, DiVersions, Brussels: Constant, 2019. (Dutch),(French),(English)
- co-editor, Iterations, Brussels: Constant, 2020, [172] pp. Website.
- with Helen V. Pritchard and Jara Rocha (The Underground Division), Rock Repo, 2020. (English)
- editor, with Peter Westenberg, vi.zine.air, Brussels: Constant, 2021, [36] pp, PDF. (English),(Dutch)
- editor, with Elodie Mugrefya, DiVersions v2, Brussels: Constant, 2021, 256 pp, PDF. (English),(French),(Dutch)
- editor, with Peter Westenberg, Reclaiming Digital Infrastructures, Brussels: Constant, 2021, 64 pp, PDF. (English)
- with Élodie Mugrefya, "Collectively Setting Conditions for Re-Use", MARCH, Spring 2022. On the CC4r license. CC4r Library List. (English)
- editor, with Jara Rocha (Possible Bodies), Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence, Open Humanities Press, 2022, 338 pp, PDF. Publisher. (English)
- with Jara Rocha (Possible Bodies), "So-called Plants", in Plants by Numbers: Art, Computation, and Queer Feminist Technoscience, eds. Jane Prophet and Helen V. Pritchard, Bloomsbury, 2023, pp 85-103.
- co-editor (Crickx research group), Publi Fluor. Affaires de lettre à Bruxelles. Letterzaken in Brussel. Letter business in Brussels, Brussels, 2024, 384 pp. Toot. [1] (French)/(Dutch)/(English)
- with Manetta Berends, "Tools shape practice shapes tools...", Teknokultura. Journal of Digital Culture and Social Movements, Madrid: UCM, November 2024, PDF. A history of two decades of doing graphic design with free, libre and open-source tools.
- editor, with Eva Weinmayr, PARSE 21: "Ecologies of Dissemination", Summer 2025. Toot.
Interviews
- Cornelia Sollfrank, "Performing Graphic Design Practice, Femke Snelting", 2014, 33 min. Video interview; part of the artistic research project Giving What You Don't Have. (English)
- Cornelia Sollfrank, "Forms of Ongoingness, Interview with Femke Snelting and spideralex", Oct 2019, 42 min. Video. Transcript. Conducted Sep 2018 at HEK, Zurich. Part of the Creating Commons project. (English)
- Geraldine Juárez, "Render me grey: Interview with Possible Bodies", Sink, 30 Oct 2019. (English)
- "Rendimi grigio: Intervista con Possible Bodies", Sink, 30 Oct 2019. (Italian)
- Eva Weinmayr, "Interview with Femke Snelting", in Weinmayr, Noun to Verb: An Investigation Into the Micro-politics of Publishing Through Artistic Practice, Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, 2020, PDF. Conducted Mar 2020. (English)
- "Son(i)a #344: Femke Snelting", Radio Web MACBA, 28 Jan 2022, 51 min. Podcast.
See also
- The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)
- Constant
- Open Source Publishing
- De Geuzen
