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hypothesis

what is a school?

the school as an infrastructure
-what is an infrastructure? > something human designed to facilitate flows
-what flows does a school facilitate?

************

infrastructure (hypothesis)  

*functional 
*institution. or its abstraction 
*manmade *first: maybe the bridge, a path? 
*to facilitate the flow (risk of 'goodism'?) 
*a question of scale? 
*needs a degree of standardi s ation? 
*temporality 
*about the particular of the general?  

school:
contemporary hip of 'alternative schools'-whats the difference with relearn? 
attempt in formulating what are the constitutive-central-essential?-questions about whats education knowledge? space? time? tools?  
*empowering language - a question of enunciation?'calling something university, makes it a university?' 

mottos
tech differences are here to stay

references
http://relearn.be/2015/r/Reroam_material_repository
http://osp.constantvzw.org:9999/p/reroam

...
//////////////////////////////////////// /////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Existing discourse(s)

Call for participation
Relearn is a summerschool which welcomes persons, artists, students,
teachers from all backgrounds and disciplines. Participants will gather
to learn from and teach to each other, beyond the traditional paradigms
of education.
Free, Libre and Open Source Software plays a fundamental role at
Relearn, as it facilitates a different approach to the tools we commonly
use in our practices and lives. For instance, it can allow us to
understand the influence that tools themselves exert on the way they are
used, or the different social relations and economies that are formed
between who creates and uses them. Such a questioning approach to
technology feels urgent, in a time in which more and more social,
political and personal issues are addressed by solely technological means.
In continuation with the previous editions, Relearn will research
convivial, experimental and deviant methods and means in the fields of
design, computing and education, challenging the normal roles and
separations in them (teacher/student, developer/user, art/life...).

Call for tracks
Relearn starts from FLOSS culture and practices as a way to address the
production processes and frameworks involving technology and culture, in
the beginning in the field of graphic design, and in the second edition
expanding to production and education in broader terms. A proposal for
this third edition is to continue by focusing on technology as such.
Questioning what it consists of, how it 'functions', and challenging the
traditional narratives on it. In this moment in which any social,
political and personal problem seems to be approached with a
technological solution, it feels urgent to rework the assumptions and
conceptions we have of technology.
To give an idea of this kind of perspective, there were some interesting
questions resulting from past events, as the following: What's the
difference between 'tech' and 'technology'? How does a file system
relate to an office? Can anything digital be 'immaterial', when it sits
in data-centers or it moves over infrastructures? What happens when
computing becomes 'invisible'? Are interface-design, packaging and
blackboxing similar processes, how do they influence our relation to an
object? How do user-friendliness and efficiency determine the way
software and devices are developed?
Hopefully this way of thinking about tools, networks and infrastructures
can influence the summer school tracks, offering transversal elements to
connect some points in the different worksessions, in relation to one's
own practices and tools.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

DRAFT for the transversal/infrastructural/reroa m /X/Y/Z track:


the questions/urgencies -> education, technology, commonality, infrastructure
the hows -> tools, applied methdologies on the program
the crossing -> immanence, differenc e


**********************************
ok, here some thoughts about what I remember from past discussion (kinda concrete examples of ways of approaching the intersecting levels above)

#e.g. when we talked about the "introduction to the common tools" we discussed a way of introducing(at once):
*the tools we have (actually not-yet) chosen as common
*why a common ground of tools--infrastructure
*the approach at questioning these tools (via some particular examples e.g. last year's 'git')
        that is, it is the same situation/intro that brings this levels together
        [still this is a planned situation in which supposedly someone prepares the intro and needs to be organized and thought through]

#then we thought about a second (middle) moment in which we would get all together and discuss how it's going more than what is being done-> the question was, how to get to this moment in a way that there is not some "call from some outside" that interrupt the playing/the time of the track into the time of the 'school'?-->to have these thoughts ongoing since the beginning so that there are no actual separate moments and places between ways of critically approaching technology, the ideology of a tool, unpacking it, reflecting on the tools agency on the track, on the track's approach to the tool and the track's approach to discuss what it means to critically approach tools...[hence the idea of drafting, right?]

        i.e. if since the begininng it is clear that the attempt of the school is not that of provide/teach exclusive content but to question the very idea of school
-->the reason of the focus on technology (not a preference of the organizers, but something urgent)-->nevertheless it doesn't mean that this is the content and that it is split from how we do it and how we reflect on it. [as from call for tracks and call for partecipants was already clear]

if this goes on since beginning [indeed even since earlier because of calls] then we can just try to meet without any particular planning and see how we can find our way together? Perhaps just meeting under the question "How is it going?" ?
(This idea is also informed by Catherine's input->not always relying on a program but realize the learning in such experience - which to many people sounds terryfing, just meeting together)-->my only problem with this is the underlying idea of "everything will organically work out", but i guess it does not need to be so. Hence, "How is it going?" seems good in that it triggers more question than answers: What?The project?The tool?The school?Me?My track?Overall?The learning?The expectations?The discussion?etc..

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
talking about profanations instead of "profanation"
infrastructures
urgencies--->the question of the "why"
microways of dealing with the notion of "infrastructure" in which the discussion is brought through methods and concrete applications (so we don't fly to theoretical abstractions)
to not let the theoretical and the political be limited into a sphere, a 'specialization'... keep it intrinsic to the ways.
start by unfolding of the technique and devices (mention those, not start from the macro)
--> ready-free writing which is easy to join (not a narrative) // descriptions, accounts...
a repository of examples: from archive of last  years': memory as participants of previous editions, (e.g.: reflection on the choice of git last year
examples can not be too much symplified, but looked at in the documentation
there are parts of the repository that can be added from participants' own memory, or either proposed from the begginning (from us)
list of small observations
maybe the idea of the glossary
---------

last reroam meeting:
    the draft, that needs to be developed by choosing a few points and  expanding it, and the communal urgencies will somehow select from the  huge list a few points that can be shared and focused on, proposing them  to the tracks and to the ml
   the communal moments / reroam relation..
   
reroam hypothesis:
reroam is just individuals spread through the different tracks (it is not a separated group)
there  is a moment in the day, for example mornings, in which the individuals  that want to join reroam meet, parallelly to the tracks
this moment is about sharing interesting elements that emerged the day before, of infrastructural / relearning issues 
the  reroam session has an indefinite length, maybe in an hour all  individuals spread again through the tracks, maybe some continue to  focus on some things the whole day..
this all contributes to develop a meta-discourse that can be brought and shared in the collective moments.

--------

the list materializing!

glue-binding for all the others
the git 
pad-editable website
bibliotecha (off-line shared textual resources)
reroam != relearn?
plug and play , is packaging a strategy for circulation? 
transparency vocalizing the unsaid
refusing the isolation fo theory/politics in one separated field of expertise. realizing that there is no such thing as the 'apolitical'. Theory is not contemplation. -it's bringing something home as well
room tournee for presenting tracks
end-of the week circle/discussion
virtual machine as a mandatory basic
tech vs technology.  
sovereignity and emancipation gestures
educational complex (as spatial compound aswell as pattern of emotions, memories and perceptions)
"tech differences are here to stay"
how is queerness brought into the urgency of learning
conviviality w/ tools , taking up the word from ill i ch and making own interpretations on the character of a tool for conviviality
collective soup cooking
lunch as the actual moment for encounters and as the evidence of reproductive economies/gestures also to be looked at (attended) from a learning process
the  question of the means-as in means and ends but as well what are  means:medium/instruments/devices/workarounds etc and how they relate to  ends
profanation = the moment in which a tool, knowledge, skill can be put out of its normal functioning, use, and be opened up to else. this conceals the sacrality of the norm
the loop of profanation -> repackaging. for example: openwrt -> tp-link -> piratebox -> whateverbox
open source/ free software . how free software opened up spaces for wierdness and experimentation, by being abnormal, ill-functioning, idiosyncratic, and how it got fixed up. = ubuntu, github etc.
kittens criticism of free software relation to private property--and last years reflections over its efficency productivity role
new babylon utopia and criticism of techno-optimism / utopia operating?
packaging
bot
parade x ?
infrastructural thoughts--or how the question concerning technology became that concerning infrastructure -this year
trinary logic or binary alternative (the neutral)
first edition organized by OSP, second organized around the project of Variable
is the deffinition of infrastructure affected by a notion of scale? of standarization? of flux-managing? or of what  
the immaterialization of that which flows (information)
internal infrastructure relation to documentation
active archive
playing with inputs and outputs-->profanating while mantaining blackboxes?is it possible?
differences between participants: teacher-learner roles still present
the necessity of tracks-attractors-how else?what does this form conceals?not risking?presupposing the impossibility of simply coming together to learn from each others?
how is it possible to evicence self-critique within the school time
editions of relearn existed by themselves, without a lot "next edition" perspective
is relearn an island of time in between life? if it is, can it flow into life? is the continuity achieved through the participants, discourses that flow on enough?
is it an island in work? (some participants said not being able to actually afford that timebreak any more this year) the problem of parenthesis
relation to what is left outside (and examples of how the outside is influenced by relearn nevertheless--trends to be happy and others to be suspicious about)
what conforms a "participant"? network of human+tools+knowledge+presence...?
there is a constant mention to "learning situations" instead of education project 
degrees of self-learning, DIWO learning, DUWO learning, and dependencies
rounded edges in devices and interfaces (unsociable sociability)
the presupposition of participation (there is something presupossed to be joined)
uses of the space and the time of the school: rooms, schedule, intensity, distribution, etc
to what extent Brussels as a space affects the shape of the southern ways of learning, maybe? (this is related to both the reproductive and the decolonial issues)
annotating/note taking-and the tools we use for that (and how notes stop being notes to something but become self-standing since we abuse of pads)

***
Relearn as suspended time?
Is Relearn an island of time in between life?
The term "Summer School" has the connotation of something like a break in between normal life, a refreshing moment in which to try different things, get new ideas, but to then return to a normal work/school situation.
Is relearn be different than that? How does/can it have a continuity out of this week in summer? Is the continuity achieved through the participants, through the ideas and exchanges that come out of the discussions and that we then bring in our life?
And, even more widely, the school as well has been interepreted as 'separated time', a gap in which the structures and relations of life are suspended, and where participants can bracket the outside world, to start as equal participants, putting aside the necessities of life. Can this boundary between life and learning be questioned?
Also, on the other hand, is it an island isolated from the outside economies, work etc? 
Cos in practice, this separation could mean for example that some won't be able to participate, as they have to work/ face necessity...

A matter of profanation
The term "profanation" has been proposed to describe the moment in which a tool, knowledge, skill can be put out of its normal functioning, rendered inoperative, and through this can be opened up to other uses, and made again common good. In a sense, it could be considered very similar to a notion of "hacking".
Between the many different paradigms interpreting education, it has emerged also the one of school as a matter of profanation.
In this paradigm, things that are usually 'sacred' in life, as they have a fixed function, a fixed position i n society, are disarmed and laid in a classroom, and by this are transformed. 
In that moment a new generation could look back at the objects, the structures, the values of the previous generations, and question them, create new meanings.
"The school as a nineteenth-century institution put something on the table but in the same motion placed a manual for its appropriate use alongside that something. The contemporary learning environment is full of manuals and instructions, but there is nothing on the table. In both cases, the public character of the school – that is, as the place where anything can happen because two generations are brought into contact in relation to ‘something’ – disappears. And with it disappears the renewing character of the school since the young generation is no longer able to experience itself as new generation in relation to something on the table."
From "In defence of the school" http://ppw.kuleuven.be/ecs/les/in-defence-of-the-school/jan-masschelein-maarten-simons-in-defence-of-the.pdf

TECH vs Technology.  
As much as it has hardly be so present in public discourse, the term technology is confusing and elusive, for the difficulty to give an exhaustive definition of it.
The commonplace aspect of it, the final objects that we use, is far from exhausting the importance and the complexity of the role of technology in life and society. An active inquiry in the meaning of this concept is part of an effort to not fall into a passive relation to the technological.
The shortened version, "tech", seems somehow to have gotten indipendent life, instead, and is mostly connected with information technologies and the economies connected with it. It is even used as verb, 'to tech', in the sense of being employed in the IT sector. In fact, Tech is terminology that is very closely associated with Silicon Valley and has always the connotations of the new, the disruptive, the seamless, the solutionist...
It is interesting then to think of technology which is not tech.. And what are the narratives at work that somehow influence the discourse on technology as a whole..

Educational Complex: architectures of knowledge (
  
The notion of  'complex' both relates to the definition of a spatial compound as well as to the one of a pattern of emotions. Learning is influenced by memories and perceptions of the set of physical structures and spaces that we find ourselves close to; Buildings, staircases, classrooms, desks, the color of walls and the height of ceilings come to define the complexity of a 'learning situation' as much as tools, people and contents. 

How does architectural space affect, influence or pervert learning situations? How did spatial conditions (sites) affect Relearn's previous and present iterations in terms of both organization and community? Relearn 2014 took place at Variable, situated in a 19th century town house with lots of small rooms which in some way also gave a form to the way people got together and shared content (small groups moving from room to room); Zienneke's architectural configuration could lead to a different learning experience. How do notions of scale and dimension inform this learning experience? How does the experience of the 'flat' reality of software relate to the tangible physical reality of architectural space? What are the implications of choosing for a 'stable' spatial learning setting rather then a 'vagabond' one? 

[Educational Complex (1995) is also the name of a sculpture from the artist Mike Kelley that features a collection of architectural models representing all the schools the artist's ever attended plus his childhood home (with all the parts he could not remember left out): https://www.google.nl/search?q=kelley+educational+complex&es_sm=119&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMI34TcmaWSxwIVAQYsCh0K4QA6&biw=1242&bih=910 ]


--
notes from beers night 17.08.015


HOW do we call this a school?

through:

------------



--------------------
scipt:   more ways--->more boxes--->conversations should exit the boxes

genitorial/care    |     signup tasks: cleaning toilets/ get breakfast/  make coffee
--------------------->issues/  gloss/ discussion points (care, sharing responsibility, skills (no  joke, many ways of doing dishes and using a mop), ethics->poissonerie

hypothesis
in practice:
you enter the room, you are already connected to internal network
find a piece of paper--> it links to a pad and it is followed by a short text that says:
    


1) enter here:
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/install_yourself_into_relearn

2) Follow the instructions on the pad.

3) discuss on material/infrastructural elements of Relearn , departing from either the proposed questions or your own.
You have now 20min to contribute with your group t hrough debat ing and note-taking to any of them (or add new field)
You can discuss this examples starting from the notions/voices that you consider more interesting/challenging/urgent.

4) If you feel like it's needed, open a new pad for your discussion and link it to this pad.  

Today and during the whole week it's imporat a nt to keep taking notes along the worksessions and discussions on order to create a possiblity for others to relate and participate to/in your experiments (?).
If you want to continue the discussion, join the conversation starting every morning from 9.30 on in the kitchen.


    notetaking/sharing/ documenting/publication
 notetaking is not sharing is not documenting is not archiving is not publishing
 fields with practicalities(tasks )
 examples from fields questioning