https://pad.riseup.net/p/transfeministdigitaldepletionstrike-keep

Proposal for transmediale 2023 / 8th March feminist strike

From Cloud to Crowd - a day of scaling preparations for the 8th of March
Convened by NEoN Digital Arts with contributions by a.o.: TITiPI, Varia, transmediale, In-grid and many others.

On the 8th of March 2023, NEoN Digital Arts calls for a counter cloud action day, asking institutions, their partners, audience, funders and supporters to make an effort to withhold from using any cloud-based applications for that day. As part of transmediale [THEME], NEoN convenes collectives and organisations committed to trans*feminist approaches to technology, to prepare for the international trans*feminist strike together.

On this day, we will get together to document the depletion of community resources by Big Tech infrastructure, to understand the privilege to protest and the way protest expresses an ability to imagine different possibilities for organising across scales for collective life after the cloud. We will dream up alternative methods of survival, imagine local networks for collaborative authoring, and transnational modes for communicating otherwise. We will hold an initial meeting at transmediale in February to plan the strike actions, and together compose strike songs, poetry and slogans to be performed as part of the upcoming annual trans*feminist strike.

From Cloud to Crowd is part of The Trans*Feminist Counter Cloud Action Plan [LINK], a series of activities organised by NEoN at irregular moments yet with a continuing commitment between 2022-2027. It was dreamt up by TITiPI, in response to NEoN Digital Arts Wired Women programme and NEoN Director's desire to reimagine its tangled computational infrastructure to better support programming, and care more about all its digital interactions. The plan is to take care of descent and dissent from the cloud whilst partying in the ruins of Big Tech depletion. It offers ways to get the most from a hyperscaledown for the cloud and a hyperscale up of collective organising to learn about slow feminist and queer server practices, including storage, videoconferencing, collaborative working, low-power graphics, and related practices within the field of (digital) art practices and community organising.


Partners and Collaborators

NEoN Digital Arts (SCIO) aims to advance the understanding and accessibility of digital and technology-driven art forms and to encourage high quality within the production of this medium. NEoN has organised exhibitions, workshops, talks, conferences, live performances and public discussions and established itself as a platform to showcase national and international digital art forms. Going forward NEoN will be refocusing its programming, with the aim of reconsidering our place and purpose as an organisation; a time to take positive, meaningful action. We will redesign our programme, policies and framework and rethink ways in which communities and people with diverse lived-experiences can meaningfully engage in the governance and programming of NEoN. Our aim is for NEoN to be more responsive to, and supportive of, diverse grassroots artists, groups and communities. https://neondigitalarts.com/

TITiPI is a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists initiated by Miriyam Aouragh, Seda Gürses, Helen Pritchard and Femke Snelting. Together they convene communities to hold computational infrastructures to account and to create spaces for articulating what technologies in the “public interest” might be when “public interest” is always in the making. They develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, computation, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. https://titipi.org/

varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam) is a space for developing collective approaches to everyday technology. As varia members, we maintain and facilitate a collective infrastructure from which we generate questions, opinions, modifications, help and action. We work with free software, organise events and collaborate in different constellations. varia figures things out as they go, tries to keep notes, is multilingual, has open hours and can be contacted at info[@]varia.zone. http://varia.zone/ 

In-grid is a web-based gallery space, archive and artwork in themself, their interface an intermediary facilitating conversation between their visitors. Developed over the course of 2020 and opening on 1st June, this process-led programme of interventions aims to unsnarl what collaborative making might be, and what disruptive methods of artistic production can offer in terms of physical and online outputs. Through artistic intervention, performance moments and a public programme of events, Ingrid will question how we exchange concepts and communicate as individuals and as collectives. By repurposing existing systems of discourse and interchange, Ingrid hopes to comment on the potentialities of the digital, while also acknowledging that threats to privacy, agency and digital equity are increasingly commonplace. What happens when the system fails? https://www.in-grid.io/in-grid/ 

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Impossible/possible de-install Party

Schedule a moment together. Set a deadline. De/recontaminate. Letters to loved ones. Breaking up. 

#Installlinux
#Erasetwitter
#Degooglify
#DigitalDetox
#Decloudify
#DigitalRetox

By the end of the day, we are prepared for a public breakup. We commit to a moment of de-installment and publicly break up with one of our extractive replationships. 

“Dear Twitter, we both know that staying together is no longer a viable option for us, and it is time we accept it. Circumstances have changed and have, sadly, worked against us.” 

As we party together to celebrate this difficult moment, we will produce break-up letters, announcements of our de-installment, consider the highs and the lows, and look forward to alternative methods of communications. 

Outputs can take the form of direct messaging twitter and facebook; a leaflet campaign, wiki, billboards, a printer on top of a building; when something is printed, it falls to the street …  

Drop in discussion session conducted throughout the day with a ticketed party to end. 








Devised and delivered by TITiPI, NEoN Digital Arts, Varia & In-grid 
The Trans*Feminist Counter Cloud Action Plan is taking place at irregular moments yet with a continuing commitment between 2022-2027. The plan exists to take care of descent and dissent from the cloud whilst partying in the ruins of Big Tech depletion. The plan offers ways to get the most from a hyperscaledown to learn about slow feminist and queer server practices, including storage, videoconferencing, collaborative working, low-power graphics, and related practices within the field of (digital) art practices and community organising. The activities gathered in the Trans*Feminist Counter Cloud 

Action Plan are:

The plan is organised around intense experiences yet designed to avoid burnout. Everyone who signs up makes a commitment to computational sustainability, community maintenance and collective transformations. The programme benefits counter-infrastructure-makers, as well as the imaginaries of local operators who interact with servers and institutional processes. 
The Counter Cloud Action Plan is not a recipe but a provocation.
For background on the Counter Cloud Action Plan (CCAP), please consult http://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Counter_Cloud_Action_Plan 

Dreaming in the Ruins of Big Tech Programme 

Over the course of a day in an interactive dream space, together we will reimagine our tangled computational lives and seek to take care of descent and dissent from the cloud whilst partying in the ruins of Big Tech depletion.

Digital Depletion Strike Workshop 

On the 8th of March each year, as part of an international trans*feminist strike, NEoN Digital Arts calls for a counter cloud action day, asking institutions, their partners, audience, funders and supporters to make an effort to withhold from using any cloud-based applications for that day. During this workshop together we will prepare ourselves for alternative methods of survival, dream about local networks for collaborative authoring, compose and write strike songs, poetry and slogans that can be performed with multiple cloud alternatives as part of this annual trans*feminist strike. 

This workshop includes discussions about the depletion of community resources by Big Tech infrastructure, struggling for survival, the privilege to protest and the way protest expresses an ability to imagine otherwise. 
Limited spaces, booking required. All physical materials provided.   

Impossible/possible de-install Party

Schedule a moment together. Set a deadline. De/recontaminate. Letters to loved ones. Breaking up. 

#Installlinux
#Erasetwitter
#Degooglify
#DigitalDetox
#Decloudify
#DigitalRetox

By the end of the day, we are prepared for a public breakup. We commit to a moment of de-installment and publicly break up with one of our extractive replationships. 

“Dear Twitter, we both know that staying together is no longer a viable option for us, and it is time we accept it. Circumstances have changed and have, sadly, worked against us.” 

As we party together to celebrate this difficult moment, we will produce break-up letters, announcements of our de-installment, consider the highs and the lows, and look forward to alternative methods of communications. 

Outputs can take the form of direct messaging twitter and facebook; a leaflet campaign, wiki, billboards, a printer on top of a building; when something is printed, it falls to the street …  

Drop in discussion session conducted throughout the day with a ticketed party to end. 


Partners and Collaborators 

This Counter Cloud Action plan is dreamed up by TITiPI, in response to NEoN Digital Arts Wired Women programme and NEoN Director's desire to reimagine its tangled computational infrastructure to better support programming, and care more about all its digital interactions. 

TITiPI is a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists initiated by Miriyam Aouragh, Seda Gürses, Helen Pritchard and Femke Snelting. Together they convene communities to hold computational infrastructures to account and to create spaces for articulating what technologies in the “public interest” might be when “public interest” is always in the making. They develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, computation, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. https://titipi.org/


NEoN Digital Arts (SCIO) aims to advance the understanding and accessibility of digital and technology-driven art forms and to encourage high quality within the production of this medium. NEoN has organised exhibitions, workshops, talks, conferences, live performances and public discussions and established itself as a platform to showcase national and international digital art forms. Going forward NEoN will be refocusing its programming, with the aim of reconsidering our place and purpose as an organisation; a time to take positive, meaningful action. We will redesign our programme, policies and framework and rethink ways in which communities and people with diverse lived-experiences can meaningfully engage in the governance and programming of NEoN. Our aim is for NEoN to be more responsive to, and supportive of, diverse grassroots artists, groups and communities. https://neondigitalarts.com/



varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam) is a space for developing collective approaches to everyday technology. As varia members, we maintain and facilitate a collective infrastructure from which we generate questions, opinions, modifications, help and action. We work with free software, organise events and collaborate in different constellations. varia figures things out as they go, tries to keep notes, is multilingual, has open hours and can be contacted at info[@]varia.zone. http://varia.zone/ 


Ingrid is a web-based gallery space, archive and artwork in themself, their interface an intermediary facilitating conversation between their visitors. Developed over the course of 2020 and opening on 1st June, this process-led programme of interventions aims to unsnarl what collaborative making might be, and what disruptive methods of artistic production can offer in terms of physical and online outputs. Through artistic intervention, performance moments and a public programme of events, Ingrid will question how we exchange concepts and communicate as individuals and as collectives. By repurposing existing systems of discourse and interchange, Ingrid hopes to comment on the potentialities of the digital, while also acknowledging that threats to privacy, agency and digital equity are increasingly commonplace. What happens when the system fails? https://www.in-grid.io/in-grid/