Connecting Through Seams Workshop
| Connecting Through Seams Workshop | |
|---|---|
| Name | Connecting Through Seams Workshop |
| Location | Het Nieuwe Instituut, Minus One |
| Date | 2025/09/25 |
| Time | 19:00-21:00 |
| PeopleOrganisations | Hackers & Designers, Ren Loren Britton |
| Type | Workshop |
| Web | Yes |
| No | |
connecting through seams brings together collective experiences and expressions of Hackers & Designers with Ren Loren Britton that challenge impersonal, techno-slick aesthetics prevalent in today’s digital design.
Hackers & Designers with Ren Loren Britton engages metaphorical and practical seams of collective technological praxis. Embracing collective authorship, imperfection and ongoing process, the work reflects H&D's commitment to free/libre open-source principles – challenging impersonal, techno-slick aesthetics prevalent in today’s digital design. What brings us together is a shared sense of urgency: the need to reimagine how we relate to technologies and to each other in the face of systems that often fail us.
This research night will explore how these seams – the boundaries of intersections between systems – can serve as points of connection between communities and technologies. This will be considered through witnessing the edges of collective and community-based technological practices.
The evening will focus on the tension and possibilities at these edges: from the edginess of power dynamics (both the power relations among people and within the technologies we use), to the frameworks of collaboration that share our research practices. We will investigate the limits of "use"– especially when we hack and invent towards dismantling structures that don’t serve us - whether socially, or by engaging our self-hosted servers.
Through a series of collective discussions and hands-on activities, participants will collectively learn about and with the seams present in H&D's and Ren's work for DMOL and learn how to technically engage them – particularly using e-ink readers present during the event.
RSVP
The event is free and open to the public. Rsvp via: https://nieuweinstituut.nl/en/events/connecting-through-seams
Image Description: A series of online and offline experiments snake through the screen. Sewn lines connecting to wires that are sewn into fabrics connected to digital graphics depicting ESP modules move in and out of focus with a lot of movement between many parts of the image. It feels like an exercise in connecting very briefly where somethings come together and others fall apart. There are materials and textures and digital materialities scattered across the image in various connections and disconnections. There are also many icons of the app ’Signal’ indicating the messages are being received, and the backdrop for the collage is a Jitsi (an open source video conferencing system) call.
About the installation connecting through seams
connecting through seams brings together collective experiences and expressions of Hackers & Designers with Ren Loren Britton. In making a soft interface, the makers explored the metaphorical and practical seams of collective technological praxis. Embracing imperfection, collective authorship, and ongoing process the work reflects H&D's commitments to free/libre open-source principles – challenging impersonal, techno-slick aesthetics prevalent in today’s digital design.
Visitors of connecting through seams are invited to contribute to the patchwork by connecting to WiFi modules sewn into the fabric. Scanning the QR code grants access to the local WiFi network and opens a pop-up interface.
Credits
Concept and design: Ren Loren Britton Anja Groten Pernilla Manjula Philip
Development: Heerko van der Kooij
This work is a continuation and extension of H&D's collective practice. H&D currently consists of nine members who form the ‘H&D COOP,’ a decentralized organization that aims to distribute power over decision making. H&D COOP members are: Loes Bogers (NL), Selby Gildemacher (NL), Anja Groten (DE), Heerko van der Kooij (NL), Juliette Lizotte (FR), Pernilla Manjula Philips (SE), Karl Moubarak (LB), slvi.e / Sylvie van Wijk (NL) and vo ezn (GE).
Hackers & Designers (H&D) is a self-organized collective working at the intersection of technology, design, art and education. H&D develops empowering learning formats, builds and maintains free/libre open-source tools, self-hosts technical infrastructures, and produces experimental on- and offline publications.
H&D currently consists of nine members who form the ‘H&D COOP,’ a decentralized organization that aims to distribute power over decision making. H&D COOP members are: Loes Bogers (NL), Selby Gildemacher (NL), Anja Groten (DE), Heerko van der Kooij (NL), Juliette Lizotte (FR), Pernilla Manjula Philips (SE), Karl Moubarak (LB), slvi.e / Sylvie van Wijk (NL) and vo ezn (GE).
Ren Loren Britton is a trans*disciplinary artist-designer who reverberates with trans*feminism, technosciences, radical pedagogy and disability justice. Trans*feminist technoscience in their work follows the long wiggle of cyberfeminism; focusing on trans*, as in, transgender and trans*, as in, crossing contexts with feminist concerns. They are interested in the ways that socio technical systems & media makes lives accessible and pleasurable. Departing from the understanding that we live in an ableist white supremacist world, and therefore to be able to follow a justice oriented direction, their work begins from the assumption that we must rethink the terms of who fits where in all places, all scales, with what friction (or not) and why. This set of considerations brings them to their interest in disability justice which upholds and values all non-normative bodies and minds.