Mutual Training for/by Portal Workers

This worksession brings together a group of 20 'portal workers' to engage in mutual training as a form of collective inquiry. The session will provide participants with modes of attunement to each other's rehearsals for collective life that are sometimes-depleted, some-times wild and feral and shiny -- reclaiming, letting go and shaking assumptions against the imposed narratives of the self-centered powers, from their very very centers and also not. Through the joyfully dissident technosciences, mourning humanities, rebel poethics, organising tactics and complex crafts that continue to try to world otherwise the many worlds that fit in this.

The session is designed as a mutual training ground for and by portal workers. It is a spacetime to actively attend to, register and acknowledge the sensibilities, perspectives and modes of intervention that portal work towards liberation might entail. As an insurgent collective research situation, it will allow us to read each other's work in resonance and in solidarity with each other but without the need to cohere. 

+ info: https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Mutual_training_for-by_portal_workers 

Complicit Chips, informal sharing

Sunday, October 6th from 18:00 to 20:00
Jetsesteenweg 388, 1081 Brussels https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/HQ

Complicit Chips gathers a group of researchers, activists, and artists to explore the complexities of high-density chips produced by NVIDIA.

NVIDIA is an enterprise recently transformed from a mid-sized producer of hard and software for accelerated computer graphics into a self-proclaimed 'world leader' of artificial intelligence (AI) computing. As of 2024, NIVIDA is valued at $2 trillion, surpassing Amazon and Google to be dubbed the 'Taylor Swift tech for investors'. Yet NVIDIA's chips for computing AI are resource-intensive offerings that—alongside game graphics, forest monitoring and medical devices—now include technologies used for policing and militant purposes. NVIDIA's numerous contracts with military agencies such as DARPA and arms companies such as Lockheed Martin are widely known. It's also clear that the their chips are directly and indirectly linked to the development of automated drones used in targeted killings and surveillance (in conflict zones like Gaza, for instance). Simultaneously, NVIDIA's hardware is now found in all Tesla vehicles, powers large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, and exists in the chips of many smartphones. We're looking to reckon with the way that the computing industry is interwoven with both warfaring operations and everyday life. The fact that NVIDIA produces software powered chips that we want for our screens and games, but also are used in the Israel 1 supercomputers matters — a lot. It's worth figuring out how our own actions are intertwined with the issues at hand.

After two days of collaborative community research on the nebulous world of software-operated hardware, we will informally share what we found. Drinks and delicious Syrian vegetarian and vegan food served!

For more details, visit this wiki page summarising the Complicit Chips research session: https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Complicit_Chips.

Rendering Research at ERG (BXL); Book launch feat. Elodie Mugrefya

Possible Bodies (Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting) feat. Elodie Mugrefya will present their upcoming book Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence on Thursday 24th March at 17.30, at ERG (école de recherche graphique), 87 rue du Page – 1050 Bruxelles – as part of the Rendering Research workshop organized by DARC (Aarhus University), CSNI (London South Bank University) and transmediale festival for art and digital culture. All welcome.

The ongoing multi-local launch of Volumetric Regimes is made up of playful contributions, informal responses and interactive formats proposed by known and unknown comrades in the making of technosciences otherwise. For the occasion of Rendering Research we will be joined by Elodie Mugrefya, who we invited to re-interpret, critique, and/or remix materials from Volumetric Regimes through her sensibility for technocolonial knowledge production.

 

Elodie Mugrefya is a member of Constant, Brussels where she takes part in its artistic and collective researches while developing a writing practice that intersects with Constant's themes of interest; notably notions surrounding collectivity, technological infrastructures and socio-political troubles. Constant develops projects across art and technology and operates through its commitment to free/libre open source cultures and intersectional perspectives. https://constantvzw.org/

 

+ info: https://www.centreforthestudyof.net/?p=6230 

+ info on the overarching context of Rendering Research: https://transmediale.de/projects/aarhus-university-london-south-bank-university

s o m a t o p o l o g i e s / Constant_V 04/07-16/09 2018, Brussels

Para la edición veraniega de Constant_V, Possible Bodies feat. Spec presenta Somatopologías, un set de materiales para una película-en-proceso. En la vitrina encontrarás renderings-3D de densidades diversas, preguntándose por los regímenes de verdad que convergen en las imágenes biomédicas volumétricas. Aquí, una coalición entre la tomografía y la topología está operativa para alinear matemáticas, carne, computación, hueso, ciencia anatómica, tejido y lenguaje. Pero cuando la vida se hace demasiado probable, Possible Bodies pregunta oblicuamente: ¿qué otros 'cuerpos' pueden ser imaginados?

gráfica/impresión riso en colaboración con Speculoos: https://speculoos.com/en/
+ info Constant_V: http://constantvzw.org/site/-Constant_V,196-.html

Ageing companions / Geprogrammeerde veroudering / Les cyborgs vieillissants

Ageing companions explores the interconnected ageing of bodies and technologies.

The lifecycles of different species are linked via electronic circuits with limited lifespan: accessories that measure biorhythms or monitor the growth-rate of specimens; interactive medical implants, networked pacemakers or wireless defibrillators are an everyday reality. As minerals, plants, animals, people and machines wear out, the technologies they carry and/or are part of, age as well. The ageing processes of biological and technological merge and it is not always so clear whether we are faced with physical or programmed obsolescence.

The worksession takes place from 17 until 23 June 2018 in the kunstenwerkplaats and gemeenschapscentrum De Pianofabriek, Brussels.

+ info: http://constantvzw.org/site/-Ageing-companions-.html

boundaries do not sit still / a.pass (Brussels) january-april 018

[Research centre 18/I curated by Femke Snelting]

In Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter, feminist theorist Karen Barad examines how apparatuses stabilize and destabilize boundaries. “Apparatuses are dynamic (re)configurings of the world, specific agential practices/intra-actions/performances through which specific exclusionary boundaries are enacted.” she writes.


As an ‘external guest’ invited into the research center from January until April 2018, I would like to turn Barad’s parental advisory into an invitation to experiment, speculate and reflect on the intra-actions through which in- and exclusionary boundaries are performed in a.pass itself.

Boundaries do not sit still follows from a long interest in the interdependent relations between technology and practice, resulting in a series of projects and questions that have been invited into dialogue with a.pass at several occasions.

How do digital tools and artistic research co-construct each other? How are gestures, discourses and behaviours shaped, oriented, communicated and defined through the (digital) apparatuses at work? How is research articulated and in what way are its boundaries enacted through software, infrastructures and devices?

These questions will be addressed in mentorings, informal meetings within/around a.pass and in research activities related to The Possible Bodies inventory. In addition, I will host five Monday Readings (with Martino Morandi, Seda Guerses and Sina Seifee).

 *

At the start of 2018, Possible Bodies is one-and-a-half year under-way. It will have had rotations in an art institution in Stuttgart (Schloss Solitude), a technology-oriented centre for arts production and research (Hangar) and a design college (Bau) in Barcelona. From January onward, we open up the inventory in and to a.pass as a resource to be reworked, annotated, appropriated and expanded. Possible Bodies changes rhythm in order to prepare a fourth rotation in the fall that might take the shape of a publication.

The presence of the Possible Bodies inventory, its methodologies and some of its agents at a.pass can hopefully allow further inquiries into the tensions between ‘probable’ and ‘possible’. As an object of study, we will for example be exploring the workings and worldings of Slicer, an open source software platform for medical image informatics, image processing, and three-dimensional visualization. The software ecology of Slicer interests us because it allows us to explore processes of articulation, dissection, separation, segmentation, segregation and difference.

+info: https://apass.be/boundaries-do-not-sit-still/ + https://apass.be/possible-bodies/

[workshop] vibes and leaks

24-26 04 2017 at École de recherche graphique
rue du page, 87, Ixelles, 1050,BXL - Belgium

VIBES & LEAKS
(version français plus bas)
During the week's worksessions, we propose to look at the activity of organs & muscles that have previously been described in passive terms. We'll focus broadly on gender pedagogies, looking at what the implications are for biological development, when gender is learnt. The sessions will be discursive, but also body-based, priviledging bodily knowledge alongside concepts.
We'd be interested in looking at the various ways that tounges and gender are wrapped round each other - what is the reach of erasure of tongues, and how does this shape collective behaviour in terms of politics, aesthetics, and ethics? How can we trace that erasure back through counter-normalisation and identify material evidences all the way down to weak enunciation, perhaps not even communication, perhaps not even identification, perhaps not even discipline?

But understanding speech acts in broader terms - for example the "organ speech" of Elizabeth A. Wilson, we'd like to invite participants to create exercises that communally test our relation to being gendered, whether that is through the tounge, the diaphragm, the writing or the intestines.

We'd love a fluid movement between topics, excercises and rest, so while we propose to touch on the following, we are open to movements and interventions:
- Genealogies of the voice and other non-linear tales of tonges:
- Glottopolitics
- Somatopolitics of the voice
- Alexia and speechlessness
- What do we want fathers for, if we've got the internet?
- Circluding
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vibes and Leaks
(version française réduite)
Pendant cette worksession, nous vous proposons de regarder de plus près ce qui est dit dans le titre, sous la forme passive, de l'activité des muscles et organes buccaux. Plus largement, nous nous intéresserons aux questions des genres dans la pédagogie qui impliquent une part du développement biologique, quand on apprend les genres. Les séances seront plutôt basée sur le discours, mais il y aura aussi des exercices corporels, nous privilégierons les connaissances du corps par rapport aux concepts.
Nous nous intéresserons à savoir comment genre et la langue s'enroulent.
Nous aimerions avant tout inviter les participant.e.s à créer des exercices à tester avec le groupe qui interrogeraient notre manière d'être genré que ça soit avec la langue, le diaphragme, l'écriture ou les intestins.

Nous soutenons la fluidité entre les différents sujets, exercices et autres et bien que nous proposons ce type de travail, nous sommes ouvert.e.s aux mouvements et interventions.

intervenant.e.s :
Jara Rocha
Kym Ward
Xavier Gorgol
la &galerie? vous invite !

TONGUES IN THE MAKING

Acaba de publicarse el libro del proyecto de archivo de oralidad "Parlez-vous Saint-Gillois?".

Info gral. del proyecto, y expo/acciones relacionadas:
http://www.constantvzw.org/site/-Parlez-vous-Saint-Gillois,187-.html?lang=en

La publicación se puede descargar completa y libremente aquí: 

http://parlezvous1060.be/media/publication.pdf

Y el proyecto se puede visitar/escuchar/leer aquí: 

http://parlezvous1060.be/p/info/

Participé con una contribución textual: Tongues in the making (pág. 89)

relearn 2015 - call for porposals

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.

call for proposals. 
NOW. HERE:  

http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/relearn_2015_proposals


+ info: http://relearn.be/r/about.html 

REROAM worksessions

(at Relearn Summerschool - Variable - Schaerbeek - BXL - 6-11 june 2014 )

Chairs attached to a school fence, signifying the school is en toma [occupied] (Chile, 2011)

What would it mean to design a school in terms of a nomadic learning   situation? Probably we need to think differently about its physical   characteristics as well as its location and access to pedagogical resources. Then: what is a pedagogical resource? What is the meaning of   "learning infrastructure"? What would an itinerant educational object   look like, and how would it be produced and shared? Do educational   objects actually "learn"? How?

Reroam  proposes daily exercises, a collection of present models, experiences  and theories that examine the physical situations  where learning  happens. Thinking through conviviality and discomfort, we  look for  spaces that would facilitate disensus.Taking our bodies into  account,  we will take a moment every day to speculate together about  ways that  we could make re-learning situations physical.

Prepared by: Catherine Lenoble, Jara Rocha & Femke Snelting

+info: http://relearn.be/ 
(+ soon on schedule)

Relearn 2014 (Variable, BXL)

Relearn is a summerschool with as many teachers as it has participants. It is about sharing and trying Free Culture practices, and is entirely done with Free, Libre and Open Source software. Relearn takes place in Variable, a collectively run F/LOSS Arts Lab in Brussels. It 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.

Relearn starts on Sunday July 6 at 11:00 and ends Friday 11 July at 19:00
It takes place in Variable, Rue Gallait 80, Brussels.

+info: http://relearn.be/
+references: http://relearn.be/r/pedagogy::references
+schedule: http://osp.constantvzw.org:9999/p/summer-school-2014-schedule

Are you being served? / On s'occupe de vous? / Wordt u al geholpen?

de hoy al domingo, en BXL > Festival Verbindingen / Jonctions 14

A feminist review of experimental (mesh - cloud - autonomous - DIY) server technologies 

"To stay connected across multiple devices, we have come to expect unlimited access, provided by companies that traffic large amounts of data as a result. The necessary infrastructure that is put in place effects our understanding of place, both virtually and physically and it has become increasingly difficult to be intimate with the technologies that we feel familiar with. We started to wonder about what would make current networking technologies into hospitable habitats for critique, as space for artists and solidarity, teaching and learning.

What does it mean to serve and to host? What should server technology of today be about? How to re-appropriate networks for creative experiment? How to invert, detour, parasite and deflate web 3.0 notions of ’service’?"

+ Programa para descarga: http://constantvzw.org/vj14/documents/