the book: (whispering in the reader’s ear) Being -vulnerable means being transparent, open and brave, trusting others to -handle stories with care. By publicly sharing and processing our -narratives, we take ownership of our experiences while contributing to a -collective voice. Even when we incorporate stories from others, our -names remain attached to this collective creation: Ada, Aglaia, Irmak, -Stephen. We have created interfaces highlighting the balance between -communal sharing, individual responsibility and awareness.
-the reader: Interfaces?
-the book: Interfaces are boundaries that
-connect and separate. They’re the spaces that fill the void between us.
-An interface can be an act, a story, a keyboard, a cake; It allows us to
-be vulnerable together, to share our stories with and through each
-other. I am a collection of these interfaces.
the reader: (confused) What do you mean a -collection, like a catalogue?
-the book: Yeah I guess. I weave the words and the -works we created during…
-the reader: we?
-the book: …I mean the four of us, the students of -Experimental Publishing at the Piet Zwart Institute. From 2022 until -today, June 2024, we published three special issues together. We wrote -four theses and made four graduation projects. We grew our hair out and -cut it and grew it again and dyed it. We cared and cried for each other, -we brewed muddy coffee and bootlegged books.
-(The book tears up).
-Finishing a Master’s is a bit of a heavy moment for us and this book -is a gentle archive, a memory of things that have been beautiful to -us.
-the reader: (sarcasm) do you have a tissue, im soooo -touched.
-the book: malaka, just read me.
---Water, stories, the body,
-
-all the things we do, are
-mediums
-that hide and show what’s
-hidden.
-(Rumi, 1995 translation)
All intimacy is about bodies. Is this true? Does it matter? I doubt -it. Do you know? Let’s find out, maybe.
-Once, I thought that everything in the world was either one or zero -and that there was a harsh straight line between them. Then I found out -you could step or hop across the line, back and forth, if others showed -you how. Today, I am no less binary, no less interested in dichotomies, -but I am willing to dance through them if you are too. Can we dance -these dichotomies together, embracing the contradictions of the virtual -and physical, the comfortable and uncomfortable, intimate and -non-intimate? I can’t do it alone, the subject is too heavy and the -binary is too 1011000. I won’t ask you to resolve these contradictions, -I have no desire to. Instead, I hope we can cultivate the tension and -tenderness inherent in holding together incompatible truths because both -prove necessary.
-To dance through these dichotomies I will start in a specific -position, growing from Donna Haraway’s in ’A Cyborg Manifesto”. In her -essay, Haraway explores the concept of a cyborg as a rejection of -boundaries between humans, animals, and machines. A symbol for a -feminist posthuman theory that embraces the plasticity of identity. -Before she does all this dancing, however, she takes a strong stance of -blasphemy. She engages seriously with traditional notions of feminism -and identity but with irony, not apostasy, which is to say without full -rejection—without unbelief. My position as I jump will be the same as -hers, ironic faith. My mocking is grave but caring and my primary aim is -for us only to spin fast enough not to see the line anymore, while still -being able to see the binaries. It won’t be an easy dance for us but I -will do my best to keep softening for you, I promise.
-I will show you a digital body, make it comfortable and then -uncomfortable, lightly intimate, and richly intimate. I have my own -story, my own digital body, of course. This is where I take my second -stance, however. This time, the position is Lauren Berlant’s, from ‘The -Female Complaint’. The book places individual stories as inescapable -autobiographies of a collective experience and uses the personal to -explain an intimate general experience. In our story, the difference -between my body and the collective digital body is unimportant, I hope -you see that. I will tell you my story if you know how to look, but I -will tell you through the stories of many others who shared them with -me. I have no other choice, every time I have tried to tell this story a -chorus of voices has come out.
-Some of the stories I will tell you will carry memories of pain; -physical and emotional. I will keep holding you while you hear this, but -your limbs may still feel too heavy to dance. In that case, I give you -my full permission to skip, jump, or lay down completely. This is not -choreographed and I care deeply for you.
-I love you and hope you see what I saw in these stories.
-Safe dreams now, I will talk to you soon.
---“I think the worst must be finished.
-
-Whether I am right, don’t tell me.
-Don’t tell me.
-No ringlet of bruise,
-no animal face, the waters salt me
-and I leave it barefoot. I leave you, season
-of still tongues, of roses on nightstands
-beside crushed beer cans. I leave you
-white sand and scraped knees. I leave
-this myth in which I am pig, whose
-death is empty allegory. I leave, I leave—
-At the end of this story,
-I walk into the sea
-and it chooses
-not to drown me.”
-(Yun, 2020)
A digital body is a body on the Internet. A body outside the internet -is simply a body. On the internet, discussions about corporeality -transcend the limitations of physicality, shaping and reshaping -narratives surrounding the self. This text explores the intricate -dynamics within these conversations, dancing at the interplay between -tangible bodies and their digital counterparts. The construction of a -digital body is intricately intertwined with these online dialogues, -necessitating engaged reconstructions of the narratives surrounding -physical existence. Yet, the resulting digital body is a complex and -contradictory entity, embodying the nuances of both its virtual and -tangible origins.
-There is a specific metaphor that would allow us to better carry -these contradictions as we further explore digital bodies. Do you -remember that dream you had about deep ocean pie? Allow me to remind -you.
-You were walking on the shore, slowly, during a summer that happened -a long time ago. Your skin was warm and you could feel the wet cool sand -sticking to your feet. The gentle lapping of the waves washed the sand -away as you walked towards the ocean. You stepped, stepped. Then dove. -Underwater, the sea unfolded deeper than you remembered. It was a -vibrant display of life: bright schools of small fish, and tall -colorful, waving corals. It looked like that aquarium you saw once as a -kid. Your arms moved confusingly through the water as if you were wading -through a soup or were terribly tired. On the sandy ocean floor, you saw -a dining table. It had a floating white tablecloth, one plate, a fork, -and a pie in the center of it, on a serving dish. You sat on a chair but -could not feel it underneath you. You ate a heaping slice of pie. It had -a buttery-cooked carrots filling. You woke up. In the world, the sun was -still timid and your bedroom thick with sleep. What a weird dream. You -rubbed your face, sat up on your bed, and drank the glass of water next -to you. You felt full, as if you just ate a plateful of carrot pie.
-There were two bodies in this story. An awake one and a dream one, an -ocean one. In dreams, bodies have their own set of rules, often blurring -the boundaries between waking and sleeping, wanting and fearing. Digital -bodies are very similar to dream bodies. They exhibit a similar fluidity -and abstraction, a defiance of traditional notions of physicality. They -share the blurring and inherent potential nature of dream bodies. They -are slower, stronger, and different. They switch and change and melt -into each other, they lose and regrow limbs, they run sluggishly and fly -smoothly. If we scream in our dreams, we sometimes wake up still -screaming. Our waking bodies react to our dream bodies, they have the -same tears, the same orgasms, the same drives.
-This is a story of two bodies, same but different, influenced but not -driven. A tangible body, full of fluids and organs, emotions and -feelings. Cartilage, bacteria, bones, and nerve endings. A digital body, -cable-veined and loud-vented, shiny and loading.
-The digital body is ethereal and abstracted, embarrassing, graphic, -and real but not physical.
-This is the beginning.
-Framing the discourse around bodies on the internet as a clear-cut -dichotomy feels clunky in today’s internet landscape. The web is today -available by body, cyborg dimensions of the internet of bodies, or -virtual and augmented realities, creating a complex interplay between -having a body and existing online.
-As intricate as this dance is now, it certainly did not begin that -way. It started with what felt like a very serious and tangible line -drawn by very serious tangible people; this is real life and this is -virtual life. Even people like Howard Rheingold, pioneers who approached -early virtual life with enthusiasm and care, couldn’t escape -characterizing it as a “bloodless technological ritual” (1993). -Rheingold was an early member of The Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link (Well), -a seminal virtual community built in the 1980s that was renowned for its -impact on digital culture and played a pivotal role in shaping what -would become the landscape of the Internet. Rheingold’s reflections on -his experience on this primordial soup of the Internet offer insight -into the initial conceptualizations of online life by those joyfully -participating.
-In “The Virtual Community”, Rheingold offers a heartfelt tribute to -intimacy and affection through web- based interactions which, at the -time, were unheard of. He struggles in his efforts to highlight the -legitimacy of his connections, finding no way to do so except by -emphasizing their tangible bodily experiences. The community’s claim to -authenticity thus had to lie in the physical experiences of its members— -the visible bodies and hearable voices, the weddings, births, and -funerals (1993).You’re dreaming again, -good. Would you feel closer to me if you could hear my voice? Is my -voice a sound? Could it be a feeling?
-Even then, and even by people with no interest in undermining the -value of the virtual, the distinction between physical and virtual was -confusing. Rheingold himself reinforces the boundary of body relations -and computer relations by referring to his family as a “flesh-and-blood -family’ and his close online friends as “unfamiliar faces” (1993). -Constantly interplaying digital connections with the physical -characteristics of the kind of connections people valued before the -internet.I will be honest with you, I -have little patience for this recurring line of thought that seeks to -distinguish people’s noses from their hearts, as if there was a physical -love that is the valuable one and a virtual imaginary one that is feeble -and unworthy.
-In any case, his primary interest seemed to be to emphasize computer -relations as valid forms of connection between bodies, not to talk of -any distinction quite yet. It’s the eighties, the internet is still -fresh and new and the possibility to form close relations with strangers -online seems fragile and concerning yet exciting. This is the clearest -the distinction between in-real-life and online has ever been and it’s -still fuzzy and unclear.
-At the same time and in the same digital space as Rheingold, there -was another man, a digital body being formed. This is our second story, -the ocean body we dreamt of earlier is now in a digital primordial soup, -questioning itself and stuck between staying and leaving. In this story, -its name is Tom Mandel and when he died, he did so on the Well.
-Mandel was a controversial and popular figure in this pioneering -virtual community. According to many other members, Tom Mandel embodied -the essence of the Well—its history, its voice, its attitude. Mandel’s -snarky and verbose provocations started heated discussions, earning him -warnings such as “Don’t Feed The Mandel!” (Leonard, 1995). His sharp -comments often stirred emotions that reminded people of family -arguments, fuelling an intimacy that was characteristic of the Well: -both public and solitary (Hafner, 1997).
-Until 1995, Mandel had done a quite rigorous job of keeping his body -separate from The Well and had never attended any of the physical -in-person meetings from the community. His only references to being a -body had been on the “health” online conference, where he often talked -about his illnesses. One day, after nearly a decade of daily -interaction, he posted he had got the flu and that he felt quite ill. -When people wished for him to get well soon, he replied he had gone to -get tested and was waiting for a diagnosis. This way, when cancer was -found in his lungs, the community was first to know. In the following -six months, as his illness progressed, the community followed closely -(Hafner, 1997). They were first to know when Nana, a community member -with whom he had had a publicly turbulent relationship, flew to -California to marry him. The community was a witness and is now an -archive of his declining wit as cancer spread to his brain and his -famously articulate and scathing comments got shorter, fearful, and more -tender.Initially, when a member he often -argued with offered to pray for him Mandel had replied: “You can shovel -your self-aggrandizing sentiments up you wide ass sideways for the -duration as far as I’m concerned.” Later, as the cancer progressed: “I -ain’t nearly as brave as you all think. I am scared silly of the pain of -dying this way. I am not very good at playing saint. Pray for me, -please.
-Before he posted his final goodbye, he chose to do one last thing. -Together with another member, they programmed a bot that posted randomly -characteristic comments from Mandel on The Well—the Mandelbot. In the -topic he had opened to say goodbye, he posted this message about the -bot:
---“I had another motive in opening this topic to tell the truth, one -that winds its way through almost everything I’ve done online in the -five months since my cancer was diagnosed. I figured that, like everyone -else, my physical self wasn’t going to survive forever and I guess I was -going to have less time than actuarials allocateus [actually allocated]. -But if I could reach out and touch everyone I knew on-line… I could toss -out bits and pieces of my virtual self and the memes that make up Tom -Mandel, and then when my body died, I wouldn’t really have to leave… -Large chunks of me would also be here, part of this new space.” (Hafner, -1997)
-
With the Mandelbot, Mandel found a way to deal with what he later -called his grieving for the community, with which he could not play -anymore once his own body died. By doing so, he was starting to blend -the boundaries of intimacy through computers and bodies, driven by his -love and grief.It’s out of care and not -lack of relevance that I am not showing you Mandel’s goodbye message. -It’s enough to know he was deep in the grief of having to leave a -community he loved and cared for and that pain was felt in every -word.
-When he talked about the bot in previous messages, it sounded almost -like a joke. A caring haunting of the platform, to keep his persona -alive for the community in a way that could be quite horrific for those -grieving. In his admission though it becomes clear that this was closer -to an attempt to deal with his grief around losing the community, his -unreadiness to let go of a place he loved so dearly. A place just as -real in emotion, that was built in part by Mandel’s digital body and its -persona.
-In a tribute posted after his death, fellow Well member and -journalist Andrew Leonard tried to convey his own sense of blended -physicality and emotion.
---“Sneer all you want at the fleshlessness of online community, but on -this night, as tears stream down my face for the third straight evening, -it feels all too real.” (Andrew Leonard, 1995)
-
An internet body has bot-feelings if allowed to. Let me explain.
-A bot functions as a different entity from a cyborg, as it does not -attempt to emulate a human body but rather human action and readiness. -Its role is to mirror human behavior online, simulating how a physical -body might act, what it would click on, and what would it say. On social -media, bots engage in a kind of interpretative dance of human -interaction, performing based on instructions provided by -humans.The first bot communities on the -internet are now born, half- mistakenly. They are always spiritual -communities posting religious images created by artificial intelligence, -all the comments echoing choirs of bots praising. Amen, amen, amen. I am -not naive, I know they are built by humans but it is this performance of -religiosity that I am interested in, and how little humanity is shown in -it. It is something else.
-Unlike an internet body, which represents the virtual embodiment of a -person, a bot doesn’t seek to be a person. It comments under posts -alongside many other bots, all under a fake name and photo but nothing -else to give the illusion of humanity. When an internet body has -bot-feelings, it is a disruptive performance. They are feelings that do -not attempt to be human body feelings, they exist as their own genuine -virtual expression.
-In “Virtual Intimacies”, McGlotten also incidentally argued that a -virtual body has bot-feelings (2013). He described the virtual as -potential, as a transcendent process of actualization, making it into, -generally, a description of bots. Internet bodies, as virtual, would be -by this understanding also charged with the constant immanent power to -act and to feel like a human body. It is a constant state of becoming, -of not- quite-pretending but never fully being anything either.
-Most of the time we can tell disembodied bots online from tangible -people and as such they have the potential to be bodies, without ever -trying to be.
-Of course, when McGlotten described the virtual as such he placed it -in a dichotomy, once again, against the “Intimacies” which are the other -side of his book. The emphasis here lies in intimacy being an embodied -feeling and sense and a carnal one at that. Virtual intimacies are, by -this definition, an inherent failed contradiction. However, McGlotten -plays with the real and non-real in new ways, using the text to -highlight how virtual intimacy is similar to physical intimacy and then, -even more, blurring as he shows the already virtual in physical -intimacies. Applying this to a body, rather than an affective -experience, works just the same.
-McGlotten uses a conceptualization of the virtual based on the -philosopher Deleuze’s,A step in a step in -a step, sorry. which can be used to refer to a virtual body -as well. The virtual is in this case a cluster of waiting, dreaming, and -remembering, embodying potential. Something that is constantly becoming, -an object and also the subject attributed to it (2001). An internet body -with its bot-feelings is a body in the process of being one, acting as -one, an ideal of one beyond what is physical but including its -possibility.
-Going a step further in McGlotten’s interpretation of Deleuze, this -also plays into how virtual intimacies mirror queer intimacies as they -approach normative ideals but “can never arrive at them”. Both queer and -virtual relations are imagined by a greater narrative as fantastical, -simulated, immaterial, and artificial—poor imitations and perversions of -a heterosexual, monogamous, and procreative marital partnership (2013). -A virtual body is similarly immanent, with both potential and corruption -at the same time. It carries all the neoliberal normative power of -freedom that a queer body can carry today but also reflects the unseemly -fleshly reality of having one.
-This is where the story continues. The body from the dream ocean -leaves the primordial soup of the internet to stage a disruptive -performance. It moves from potential creation to a wild spring river. A -fluid being, that exists simultaneously inside and outside normative -constructions. It channels deviant feelings and transcendental opinions -about the collective’s physical form genuinely as people use it to -navigate their physicality. Both virtual and queer intimacies highlight -the constructed nature of identity and desire. They disrupt the notion -of a fixed, essential self, instead embracing the multiplicity and -complexity inherent in human experience. This destabilization of -identity opens up possibilities for self-expression and connection, -creating spaces where individuals can redefine themselves beyond the -constraints of societal expectations while still technically under its -watchful eye. In essence, the parallels between virtual and queer -intimacies underscore the radical potential of both to disrupt and -reimagine the norms that govern our understanding of relationships, -bodies, and identity. They invite us to question the rigid binaries and -hierarchies that structure our society and to embrace the fluidity and -possibility inherent in the human experience.
---The only laws:
-
-Be radiant.
-Be heavy.
-Be green.
-
--Tonight, the dead light up your mind
-
-like an image of your mind on a scientist’s screen.
-‘The scientists don’t know – and too much.’
-
--“In the town square, in the heart of night (a delicacy like the heart -of an artichoke), a man dances cheek-to-cheek with the infinite -blue.
-
-(Schwartz, 2022)
Let’s care for this digital body. I’ll feed it virtual vegetables -while you wipe away the wear of battery fatigue. And why not encourage -it to take strolls through the network, it might be good for it.
-But what if it falls ill? What if its sickness is inherent, designed -to echo like the distorted reflection of rippling water a corrupted, -isolated, and repulsive physical form? Then we must comfort care for -it.
-Comfort care is a key concept in healthcare, described as an art. It -is the simple but not easy art of performing comforting actions by a -nurse for a patient (Kolcaba, 1995). The nurse is in this story an -artist full of intention, using the medium of comforting actions to -produce the artwork of comfort for the uncomfortable. Subtle, -subjective, and thorough. However, achieving comfort for another is far -from straightforward. It demands addressing not only the physical but -also the psychospiritual, environmental, and socio-cultural dimensions -of distress, each requiring its blend of relief, ease, and transcendence -(Kolcaba, 1995).
-In moments of need, digital comfort may become the only care certain -digressive bodies receive. When the distress a body is in becomes too -culturally uncomfortable, no nurse will come to check on it.
-If care is offered, it’s often only with a desire to assimilate the -divergent body back into expected standards of normalcy and ability. -This leaves those with non-conforming bodies isolated, ashamed, and -yearning for connection and acceptance.I -am talking here about the distress caused by mental health issues that -have direct connections to physicality—self- injuring in any direct -form; food, drugs, pain. The culturally uncomfortable diseases, the -it’s- personal- responsibility, and just-stop disorders. This is a -hidden topic of this text because I cared more about the pain -surrounding them and the reasons to hide rather than the grim -physicality of them all.
-In the depths of isolation and confusion, marginalized bodies often -look for belonging and understanding online. Gravitating towards one -another with a hunger born of desperation, forming intimate bonds -through shared pain. Through a shared sense of unwillingness, a lack of -desire, and a desperate need for physical assimilation with the -norm.
-The healthy body, the normal body, the loved body.
-On the internet, these digital bodies claw onto each other, holding -each other close and comfort-caring for one another. The spaces where -this happens are rooms, or corners of the internet that I’ll call back -places. Back places were initially defined by the sociologist Goffman as -symbolic spaces where stigmatized people did not need to hide their -stigma(1963). In our story, backplaces are small rooms online, tender -soft spaces reserved by those in terrible psychological pain themselves, -where they can find relief, ease, and transcendence.
-Of course, when we speak of digital bodies, their physicality is not -relevant. To comfort care for a digital body one would thus need to -provide relief, ease, and transcendence for the mental, emotional, and -spiritual; through the digital environment of the body and the -interpersonal cultural relations of the individual. As with any place of -healing, however, it is a transient place. It is an achy place, for the -last step of the journey will see them leave the community and -compassion that saw and sustained them.
-There is no other way for divergent people.
-In the past and the present, social scientists have studied the -people in the corners of the internet, characterizing these spaces -between people as deviant. Like children lifting stones to look at the -bugs underneath— simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by the coherence -discovered where once was separation. A partition that was then -reinforced by the scientists themselves as they began documenting the -bugs’ behavior. They eavesdropped on conversations, captured intimate -moments, and asked again and again what made them so different. The more -they probed, the more they made sure to separate their behavior from the -norm to place the deviants against (Adler and Adler, 2005, 2008; Smith, -Wickes & Underwood, 2013).
-The concept of deviance, particularly concerning what people do with -their bodies and how their bodies behave, I find inherently flawed. -Observing from an artificial external standpoint only serves to further -alienate those already marginalized. I like to approach my research into -the intimacy and comfort care expressed in marginalized digital -communities without the alienation of social science. There are many -approaches one can take if one wishes to avoid this, and the one I am -choosing to borrow is a mathematical approach to anthropology. I would -like to borrow from mathematician Jörn Dunkel’s work in pattern -formation. It’s a conscious choice to approach divergences in bodily -behavior through their similarities, not differences. This includes -specificities in atypicality, of course, but also the distinctions -between me as the writer and them as the writer. You as the reader and -you as the community. Me and you, as a whole. Both exist, both separate -but in what is not of such importance.
---“Though many of these systems are different, fundamentally, we can -see similarities in the structure of their data. It’s very easy to find -differences. What’s more interesting is to find out what’s -similar.”
-
-(Chu & Dunkel, 2021)
Individuals who forge and inhabit these communities, fostering -tender, intimate connections amongst themselves, are not deviant but -rather divergent. Deviance involves bifurcation, a split estuary from -the river of appropriate cultural behavior.Of course, the river itself is not a river; it’s -many confused streams that believe themselves both the same and -separate. I don’t know where I’m going with this, I just don’t love the -river of normativity and I’d rather go swim in the ocean of dreams with -you.
-Divergence can be so much more than that. In mathematics, a divergent -series extends infinitely without converging to a finite limit. A -repetition of partial sums with no clear ending, never reaching zero. -Mathematician Niels Abel once said that “divergent series are in general -something fatal and it is a shame to base any proof on them. [..] The -most essential part of mathematics has no foundation”(1826). Drawing a -parallel to social relations would then imply that there is no end to -divergence, too many paradoxes in the foundation of normativeness to -base anything on it.
-Harmonic series are, on the other hand, also divergent series. They -are infinite series formed by the summation of all positive unit -fractions, named after music harmonics. The wavelengths of a vibrating -string are a harmonic series. These series also find application in -architecture, establishing harmonious relationships. Despite their -integral role in human aesthetics, all harmonic series diverge, -perpetually expanding without ever concluding. They embody a richness -that transcends conventional boundaries, blending into one another -infinitely.
- -By likening digital bodies to divergent series, we embrace the -complexity and infinite possibilities arising from their -interconnectedness and deviation from the norm. However, it’s crucial to -note that the divergence I’m discussing here carries a halo of pain, -accompanied by the requirement of bodily discomfort. There are other -forms of divergence, ways to have different bodies that necessitate -creating spaciousness around normativity to allow them grace to -grow.
-The divergent digital bodies we are dancing with and caring for, -however, are of a particular type. If we were to go back to our water -stories, we’d see that the digital bodies we are following are painful -ones. Cold, deep streams, hard to follow, hard to swim in. Their -divergence from the norm makes them so.
-They have intricate relationships with themselves, existing in -unstainable forms devoid of comfort, nourishment, or thriving. What does -comfort mean for a body whose whole existence is uncomfortable? -Moreover, what if the comfort care performed for these divergent bodies -makes them too comfortable being in their pained state of self? Could -they be?I heard the idea of living -questions for the first time in “Letters to A Young Poet” by Rainer -Maria Rilke and then again on the podcast On Being with Krista Tippet. -It may be a bit transparent but this entire text is informed by the -concept of keeping the unsolved in your heart and learning to love it. -Not searching for the answers for we cannot live them yet. The point is -to live it all. It could be that at some point we will live our way to -an answer but it is feeling the questions alive within us that is -important. Do you?
-Caring for a digital body involves providing it with space to live, -giving its experimental bot-feelings tender attention, and revealing -your own vulnerable digital body in response. It’s about giving it an -audience, hands to hold, eyes that meet theirs in understanding. A -rehearsal room, a pillow, a mirror. These rooms, backplaces scattered -across the internet, are hidden enough to allow the divergent to -comfort- care for one another, sometimes to the point where it is only -the same type of divergent digital bodies reflecting back at each -other.
-So far I have talked fondly of divergence and the harmony of -divergent series, and the need to have no finite ending. I’d like to -tell you a different story now. Divergent digital bodies are, by this -point in our text, built and alive as they can be. They are many, they -are together and seeing each other, producing harmonic waves. They are -in backplaces on the internet, but they are less safe than they seem. -They are themselves resonant echo chambers, with an ongoing risk of -catastrophic acoustic resonance.
-Acoustic resonance is what happens when an acoustic system amplifies -sound waves whose frequency matches one of its natural frequencies of -vibration. The instrument of amplification is important for the harmonic -series, for the music must not match exactly. An exact match will break -it for the object seeks out its resonance. Resonating at the precise -resonant frequency of a glass will shatter it. Digital bodies meet in -these rooms, amplifying their own waves seeking resonance but the risk -of an exact match is that it may shatter them. These spaces full of -divergent digital bodies quickly grow unstable, tethering echo chambers. -Rooms full of reflections, transforming what was once individual pain -into a mirrored loop of anguish. Caring for your own and others’ bodies -becomes increasingly difficult, making permanent residence in the mirror -room unbearable. You all know you must leave before you meet your exact -resonance.
-This is the end of the story. Our digital bodies have a shape, a -sense of life and death, and someone to care for us and to care for. We -are alive and have found intimacy with each other.
-We live in the backplaces, hiding and being hidden online as we have -been for years. We used to be on invitation-only forums, -password-protected bulletin boards, or encrypted hashtags. Now we are -alive in the glitches between pixels, in a shared language of numbers -and acronyms and misdirection. Avoiding a content moderation algorithm, -always hunting the dashboards of social media websites for visible pain -it can cure by erasure. We cannot tell you where to find you or it might -too. We try to stay alive, to hold each other, hiding behind code words, -fake names, and photos. We care for each other as best we can, the blind -leading the blind, the sick caring for the sick. We have brought our -unseemliness, our gory gross bodies to each other and found tender -intimacy and understanding.
-On good days, dashboards are full of goodbyes and my heart swells -with hope, for those of us who make it and for the small bright light -telling us that we may be one of them. At the same time, some of us -leave only to come back ghosts of ourselves, hunting threads with the -empty hope of missionaries.
-Don’t give up, it’s worth it!
-Most of us scoff at this. The idea of leaving only to come back and -tell people you left is uncomfortable, the failed progress that washes -away hope. A healed patient who regularly comes back to the hospital to -encourage the sick, who wish to be anywhere but there. The genuine love -and care within these communities transpire better under goodbye posts. -When people do heal and shed their accounts’ skin, they often leave it -surrounded by all those who once cared for the digital body within -it.
-I’m so proud of you! Never come back, we love you so much.
-Recover, don’t come back. Recover, don’t come back. Recover, never -come back.
-I had a conversation with a friend who once lived in these spaces -between letters but has since moved outside them. When asked, he -mentioned he could only find recovery by leaving that community. His -body has changed since now it is the spitting image of a standard, -healthy body. I didn’t ask, but he knew I’d wonder. He told me he didn’t -like his new body and preferred the divergent one he once built himself. -Why leave then? Why did you stop?
-Because that was no life.
-Now life sparkles, everything feels brighter and more exciting. I got -my will to live back. Before, there was nothing but my body. I was -willing to die for it.
-He pulls up the sleeve of his shirt to show me his shoulder, where he -has tattooed a symbol for a community friend who died.
-I hope I never go back. I miss them every day.
-This is the last dichotomy. For the divergent digital body can’t stay -in a Backplace for very long, the intimacy of it is unbearable. It is an -intimacy that floods, and overruns. In their definition of intimacy in -the context of a public surrounding a cultural phenomenon, the author -Lauren Berlant denotes that intimacy itself always requires hopeful -imagination. It requires belief in the existence of an ideal other who -is emotionally attuned to one’s own experiences and fantasies, -conditioned by the same longings and with willing reciprocity -(2008).If we were to be honest, the -entire exercise of writing this for you requires this very -faith.
-In the context of the intimacy of a Backplace, where divergent -digital bodies have formed a community around existing outside the -healthy and standard, longing and hopeful intimacy becomes a heavy- -hearted and cardinal concept. Being in these rooms and finding care and -love for others like you can be so uncomfortable when the longings, -experiences, and fantasies you are sharing are centered around pain. The -shared cultural experience of existing as a collective divergent digital -body promises a fantasy of belonging, a collective hope, and commitment -that is extremely fragile.
-There is a duality then, if not a dichotomy. As a divergent body, -there is nothing you crave more than to be seen and to be loved in a -space where you are safe, where the faces looking at you are not -repulsed but warm with familiarity. Yet, it is this very warmth that -becomes unbearable and an inherently traumatic intimacy. Being loved at -your worst, at your most embarrassing, cultural borderline self is an -agonizing duality to deal with. McGlotten, who was referenced earlier -concerning the potential of bot-feelings of a digital body, now comes -back to remind us of their impossibility. In his book, he talks of a -digital intimacy that inundates us and is both a source of connection -and disconnection (McGlotten, 2013). We are looking at a smaller scale -than he does, but intimacy in the context of shared vulnerability can be -a need just as intolerable.
-Certain kinds of witnessing can become curses, shivers of resonance -so close to an explosion of glass if only you strike the cord that will -keep me going. Certain kinds of divergence can only end with leaving or -death, truth be told. People in these bodies know this, even if the -digital bodies behave as if there is hope in a future where the -divergence brings joy to one’s life consistently. The shared -vulnerability itself then, is unbearable. I need you to see me, I need -you, who are just like me at my worst, to love me. When you do, I can’t -stand it. It ruins both of us to be seen this way and we need it so -desperately. It has to exist and yet it can’t for long.
-I leave even though I love all of your digital bodies. I leave -because I love you, little digital body and you are me.
-11 Was this the end of this story?
-In the epilogue, you sit your body down and enter your computer. The air
-coming in from the window smells wet and earthy, new. The sun shines low
-on the horizon.
-
You log in to the internet and realize you are being told a story.
-You start to listen, carefully and, full of love, touch the story to let
-it know you are there. Delicate-fingered, curious like a child holding a
-fallen bird. I hold you and the story tentatively.
-
I don’t know if I am touching you, to tell you the truth. Digital
-bodies are stories, like physical bodies are, like dreams are, and like
-water is.
-
Stories that are hard to tell and hard to hear and even more, maybe,
-hard to understand. I have loved these stories and I have loved telling
-them to you. I hope you understand that my goal was for you to live
-these questions, to feel these stories in their confusion. My digital
-body, my bot-feelings, my divergent communities. I have given them to
-you, so they may live longer, like an obsolete but beloved cyborg shown
-in a museum.
-
Look: I was here, Look: I was loved, Look: I was saved.
-
The digital bodies that kept me alive, kept me from becoming fully a
-machine are no longer around in these online rooms. They are in
-different places, being touched by tentative hands, being loved for more
-than their divergence.
-I am too.
-
The rooms, the backplaces, however, are still full of others,
-divergent digital bodies who did not leave, who keep caring for each
-other at the bottom of the whirlpool. There is no happy ending because
-there is no ending. They keep typing and hoping, writing their
-collective pain down on keyboards that transmit love letters to each
-other. I am not embarrassed by my care for you, but you may be so if it
-helps. I know how overwhelming intimacy can be.
-
Telling you these stories was important for me, so much so that I
-will tell you so many more in a different place if you wish to listen to
-me longer. With this story, I dreamt of a digital body for you. It came
-from an ocean of dreams, into a primordial soup that gave it enough
-shape to become wild rivers, deep streams, sound waves. It flooded and
-now, it leaves. A digital body that grew its own feelings, looked for
-others like it, and realized its divergence and the need to leave. A
-dream body, a primordial body, a disruptive body, a divergent body, and
-now, a leaving body. This last story, however, of the leaving and loving
-body, is yet to be told.
-
The sun is now almost up, and the birds are alive and awake, telling
-each other stories just outside the room. We don’t have so much time
-left. I have made you something, to tell your digital body the stories
-of the leaving and loving body. It is a webpage, the address is
-https://vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces/.
-
You open the page, and you are asked to write the characters you see
-in a captcha.
-E5qr7.
-eSq9p.
-8oc8y.
-Fuck.
-You try not to panic, but you know you have been detected.
-
Special thanks to Marloes de Valk, Michael Murtaugh, Manetta Berends,
-Joseph Knierzinger and Leslie Robbins.
-Extra thank you to Chae and Kamo from XPUB3 for the food and moral
-support in this trying time and to my other xpubini for being great and
-eating my snacks and gossiping.
-But most of all I’d like to thank the people in the online communities
-I’ve met and loved, you were of course who this thesis was about. Thank
-you for saving me, I will always remember you.
-
Adler, P.A. and Adler, P. (2008) ‘The Cyber Worlds of self-injurers: -Deviant communities, relationships, and selves’, Symbolic Interaction, -31(1), pp. 33–56. doi:10.1525/si.2008.31.1.33.
-Berlant, L.G. (2008) The female complaint the unfinished business of -sentimentality in American culture. Durham: Duke University Press.
-Chu, J. (2021) Looking for similarities across Complex Systems, MIT -News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available at: -https://news.mit.edu/2021/jorn-dunkel-complex- systems-0627 (Accessed: -08 March 2024).
-Deleuze, G., Boyman, A. and Rajchman, J. (2001) Pure immanence: -Essays on a life. New York: Zone Books.
-Goffman, E. (2022) Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled -identity. London: Penguin Classics. Hafner, K. (1997) The epic saga of -the well, Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/1997/05/ff-well/ -(Accessed: 01 February 2024).
-Haraway, D.J. (2000) ‘A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and -socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century’, Posthumanism, -pp. 69–84. doi:10.1007/978- 1-137-05194-3_10.
-Hyacint (2017) Harmonic series to 32,
-https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:
-Harmonic_series_to_32.svg.
Kolcaba, K.Y. and Kolcaba, R.J. (1991) ‘An analysis of the concept of -comfort’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 16(11), pp. 1301–1310. -doi:10.1111/j.1365- 2648.1991.tb01558.x.
-Leonard, A. (no date) All Too Real, https://people.well.com/. -Available at: https://people.well.com/user/cynsa/tom/tom14.html -(Accessed: 01 April 2024).
-McGlotten, S. (2013) Virtual intimacies: Media, affect, and queer -sociality [Preprint]. doi:10.1353 book27643.
-Rumi, J. al-Din and Barks, C. (1995) ‘Story Water’, in The Essential -Rumi. New
-Schwartz, C. (2022) Lecture on Loneliness, Granta. Available at: -https://granta.com/lecture-on-loneliness/ (Accessed: 08 March 2024).
-Smith, N., Wickes, R. and Underwood, M. (2013) ‘Managing a -marginalised identity in pro-anorexia and fat acceptance -cybercommunities’, Journal of Sociology, 51(4), pp. 950–967. -doi:10.1177/1440783313486220.
-Yun, J. (2020) ‘The Leaving Season’, in Some Are Always Hungry. -University of Nebraska Press.vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces
-Hi.
-I made this play for you. It is a question, for us to hold together.
Is all intimacy about bodies? What is it about our bodies that makes
-intimacy? What happens when our bodies distance intimacy from us? This
-small anthology of poems and short stories lives with these
-questions—about having a body without intimacy and intimacy without a
-body. This project is also a homage to everyone who has come before and
-alongside me, sharing their vulnerability and emotions on the Internet.
-I called the places where these things happen backplaces. They are
-small, tender online rooms where people experiencing societally
-uncomfortable pain can find relief, ease, and transcendence.
-
I made three backplaces for you to see, click, and feel: Solar
-Sibling, Hermit Fantasy, and Cake Intimacies. Each of these is the
-result of its own unique performance or project. Some of the stories I
-will share carry memories of pain—both physical and emotional. As you
-sit in the audience, know I am with you, holding your hand through each
-scene. If the performance feels overwhelming at any point, you have my
-full permission to step out, take a break, or leave. This is not
-choreographed, and I care deeply for you.
-
Solar Sibling is an online performance of shared loss about leaving
-and siblings. This project used comments people left on TikTok poetry. I
-extracted the emotions from these comments, mixed them with my own, and
-crafted them into poems. It is an ongoing performance, ending only when
-your feelings are secretly whispered to me. When you do, by typing into
-the comment box, your feelings are sent to me and the first act closes
-as the sun rises.
-
Hermit Fantasy is a short story about a bot who wants to be a hermit.
-Inspired by an email response from a survey I conducted about receiving
-emotional support on the Internet, this story explores the contradiction
-of being online while wanting to disconnect. As an act it’s a series of
-letters, click by click.
-
Cake Intimacies is a performance that took a year to bring together.
-It is a small selection of stories people told me and I held to memory
-and rewrote here. The stories come from two performances I hosted.
-First, I asked participants to eat cake, sitting facing or away from
-each other and sharing their stories about cake and the Internet. The
-second performance was hosted at the Art Meets Radical Openness
-Festival, as part of the Turning of the Internet workshop. For this
-performance, I predicted participants’ future lives on the Internet
-using felted archetypes and received stories from their Internet past in
-return. Now the stories are here, each of them a cake with a filling
-that tells a story, merging the bodily with the digital and making a
-mess of it all.
-
The play ends as all plays do. The curtains close, the website stays
-but the stories will never sound the same. For the final act, I give you
-the stories. It’s one last game, one last joke to ask my question again.
-Digital intimacies about the digital, our bodies and the cakes we eat.
-For the last act, I ask you to eat digital stories. To eat a comment, to
-eat a digital intimacy. Sharing an act of physical intimacy with
-yourself and with me, by eating sweets together. Sweets about digital
-intimacies that never had a body. There is no moral, no bow to wrap the
-story in. A great big mess of transcendence into the digital, of
-intimacy and of bodies. The way it always is. Thankfully.
-
This thesis is an assemblageI live -somewhere in the margins of scattered references, footnotes, citations, -examinations embracing the inconvenience of talking back to myself, to -the reader and to all those people whose ideas gave soul to the text. I -shelter in the borderlands of the pages my fragmented thoughts, flying -words, introspections, voices. Enlightenment and inspiration given by -the text “Dear Science” written by Katherine McKittrick. of -thoughts, experiences, interpretations, intuitive explorations of what -borders are, attempting to unleash a conversation concerning the -entangled relation between material injurious borders and bureaucracy. I -unravel empirically the thread of how borders as entities are manifested -and (de)established. How does the lived experience of crossing multiple -borders change and under what conditions?
-The eastern Mediterranean borderlandI -use the word borderland to refer to Greece as a (mostly) transit zone in -the migrants’ and refugees’ route towards Europe., I -happened to come from, proves to be one of Europe’s deadly borders -towards specific ethnic groups. The embodied experience of borders and -practices of (im)mobility change radically depending on the various -identities of the people crossing them. As I moved to the Netherlands I -started more actively perceiving bureaucracy as another multi-layered -border. I was wondering how this situation is shifted and transformed -moving towards the European North. What is the role of bureaucracy and -how it could be perceived as a mechanism of repulsion for some bodies - -a camouflaged border?
-But what is my starting point and where does my precarious body fit -within the borders that I am touching? The language of the -administrative document is rigid and hurtful but myself lies between the -margins of these lines. This thesis does not consist of an excessive -inquiry about the profoundly complex concepts of borders and -bureaucracy. On the contrary, it is initiated by personal concerns, -awareness and my positioning. I choose to structure my argument and talk -through a personal process that is being unfolded in parallel with the -writing period. Accordingly, these words are dynamically being reshaped -due to the material constraints of the bureaucratic timeline. A more -distant approach became personal and tangible with -auto-ethnographicalI perceive -auto-ethnography as a way to place myself, my lived experiences, my -identities, reflections in the (artistic) research and talk through them -about structures and within the structures of social, cultural, -political frameworks. elements as I was trying to squish -myself and my urgencies under these thresholds and fit the A4 document -lines.
-I would like at this point to acknowledge and state explicitly my -privilege recognizing the different levels of otherness produced by the -several bordering mechanisms. My European machine-readable passport as a -designed artifact dictates and facilitates the easiness of my mobility. -In other (many) cases the lack of it creates profoundly a severe -barrier“Passports still function as a -technology to control movement. Technologies like RFID chips and face -recognition are part of a control system for digital state surveillance. -Designing a passport is relative to design a surveillance tool. The -analysis of passport designs rarely looks at the social consequences of -identification, control, and restriction of movement, which can have -violent consequences.” (Ruben Pater, 2021). I do not intend -in any respect to compare my case to the lived experiences and struggles -of migrants and refugees. I utilize the paperwork interface of my -smaller-scale story in order to unravel and foreground the -aforementioned questions.
-This thesis is very much indebted to some text-vehicles that -mobilized my reflections and nourished the writing process. “Illegal -Traveller, an autoethnography of borders” and “Waiting, a Project in -conversation” both written by Shahram Khosravi as well as “The Utopia of -Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy” by -the anarchist anthropologist David Graeber. Graeber initiated his -research utilizing the horrendous prolonged bureaucratic processes he -had to follow in order to place his sick mother in a nursing home. In -parallel, Khosravi’s work is itself the outgrowth of his own ‘embodied -experience of borders’, of ethnographic fieldwork among undocumented -migrants. I found valuable and inspiring in both texts the personal -filter through which they articulate their positioning and develop -critique.
-I follow a zoom-in approach in mapping my thoughts beginning from the -large-scale rigid border as entity and ending up at the document as the -smallest designed artifact of the bureaucratic labyrinth. In the first -chapter, I touch the concept of borders in relation to migration. I -begin with a personal inspection and comprehension of material borders -as entities. Alongside, I interweave in the text the concept of -hospitality as a cultural attitude towards ‘strangers’ from the state’s -perspective. Conditional and unconditional. How the document I hold in -my hands reflects positions on the government’s conditional hospitality -and what constraints it dictates.
-In the second chapter, I unpack bureaucracy and focus on its -bordering function. From migration ghost bureaucracies to the -educational bureaucracies of my surroundings to even smaller components -of this apparatus. I end up analyzing the document as a unit within this -complex network. Through the “interrogation” of the form as an artifact -are emerging issues related to language, graphic design and -transparency, universality, and underlying violence.
-In the third and last chapter, I bridge the written text with the -ongoing project that runs simultaneously as part of my graduation work -in Experimental Publishing, where I mainly speak through my prototypes. -Talking documents(5) are performative bureaucratic text inspections, -vocal and non-vocal, that intend to create temporal public interventions -through performative readings. The intention is to underline how the -vocalization of bureaucracies as a tool can potentially reveal their -territorial exclusive function and provide space for the invisible -vulnerability.
---“on the other side is the river
-
-and I cannot cross it
-on the other side is the sea
-I cannot bridge it”
-(Anzaldua, 1987)
How a border is defined? How, as an entity, does it define? How is it -performed? I used to think of borders in a material concrete way, coming -from a country of the European South that constitutes a rigid, violent -border that repulses and kills thousands of migrants and refugees. In -the following chapter, I will attempt to explore the terrain of material -borders in relation to bureaucracy as another multi-layered filter.
-What constitutes a border? Is it a wall, a line, a fence, a machine, -a door, an armed body or a wound on the land? When somebody crosses a -border are they consciously aware of the act of crossing? I am crossing -the pedestrian street and walking on the white stripes to reach the -pedestrian route right across. Are the white stripes a border or a -territory to be crossed to reach another situation? Does the way I -perform my walking when I step onto the white stripes change? Is there -any embodied knowledge about what could be classified as border? Under -which circumstances does this knowledge become canonical? I hop over a -fence that separates one garden from another. What if instead of -assuming that the fence is a device or a furniture or a material of -enclosure, it is just part of the same land? The process or act of -jumping a fence can be itself a moment of segregation and a moment of -re-establishing or demonstrating the bordering function of it.
-Borders could be considered as devices of both exclusion and -inclusion that filter people and define forms of circulation and -movement in ways no less violent than those applied in repulsive -measures. Closure and exclusion are only one function of the -nation-state borders. Of course, borders are not always that visible or -treated and perceived as borders, as Rumford argues they are “designed -not to look like borders, located in one place but projected in another -entirely” (Rumford, cited by Keshavarz, 2016, p.298)
-As institutions, they seem to be much more complex, flexible, or even -penetrable in comparison with the traditional image of a wall as a -bordering device that demonstrates in a way itself. Crossing and borders -are inherently defined in relation to each other. “Where there is a -border, there is also a border crossing, legal as well as illegal” -(Khosravi, 2010).
-I started thinking about hospitality as a cultural behavior and as an -inseparable term in the context of borders due to a recent personal -bureaucratic experience. Hospitality can be instrumentalized to describe -an individual’s as well as a nation’s response towards strangers within -their enclosed territory - a property, a home, a land, a country. What -does hospitality mean and how hospitality under specific circumstances -can be a tool in the hands of a state?
-I will share a personal story related to hospitality and bureaucracy. -I was recently evicted from my previous house [31/01/2024] due to a -trapping contract situation. My former roommates and I were forced to -terminate our previous contract and sign a new one that further limited -our rights. The bureaucratic free market language of the contract, the -foreign law language barrier, the threats of the agent and the precarity -of being homeless in a foreign country forced us to sign the new rental -agreement which was the main reason for our eviction. Currently, I am -hosted temporarily by friends until I find a more permanent -accommodation. Meanwhile, the government requires me to declare the new -address which I do not have within five days of my moving. Consequently, -I have to follow another bureaucratic path. This involves requesting -permission for a short-term postal address while declaring the addresses -of my current hosts [4/02/2024]. I gathered the required documents, I -processed a 9-page-text and another one with the personal data of my -hosts and myself and answered questions about:
---why don’t I have a house,
-
-who are the people who host me,
-what is my relationship with them,
-where do I sleep,
-where do I store my belongings,
-how many people are hosting me and accordingly their personal -data,
-for how long,
-why I cannot register there,
-what days of the week do I stay in the one house and
-what days do I stay in the other house,
-whether and how am I searching for a permanent place and
-what is the tangible proof of my search?
All these questions provoked thinking around the concept of -conditional hospitality as a behavior of the state towards strangers. I -can see that on a smaller scale it is being applied to the hospitality I -receive from my friends in the middle of an emergency. I am wondering, -though, whether is it that important for the government to know on whose -couch I sleep or where I store my belongings. The omnipresent gaze of a -state who has the right to know every small detail about myself while at -the same time questioning people’s hospitality in case of emergency. It -seems that forms of knowledge are inseparably related to forms of power. -It will take 8 weeks for my request to be processed and for the -government to approve or reject if I deserve my friends’ -hospitality.
---“Today as yesterday, her land and her time are stolen, only because -she is told that she has arrived too late. Much too late”
-
-(Khosravi, 2021)
Waiting can be considered as a dramaturgical means embedded in -bureaucratic procedures that camouflage power relations through the -manipulation of people’s time. When people are in the middle of a -bureaucratic process and waiting for the government’s decision on their -case or just waiting for their turn. “The neoliberal technologies of -citizenship enacted through keeping people waiting for jobs, education, -housing, health care, social welfare or pensions turn citizens into -patients of the state” (Khosravi, 2021). I waited two weeks for a -response from the municipality only to discover that my request was -rejected [16/02/2024].
-Contemporary border practices mirror past colonial practices, as they -exploit migrants’ time by keeping them in prolonged waiting, “like the -way colonial capitalism transformed lands to wastelands to plunder the -wealth underneath” (Khosravi, 2021). The current border regime, known by -extended waiting periods and constant delays, is part of a larger -project aimed at taking away wealth, labor, and time through colonial -accumulation and immediate expulsion.
-When someone opens their house to a guest, a stranger, someone in -need, means that they open their property to someone. Hospitality is -interweaved with a sense of ownership over something. Expanding the -concept of hospitality to a nation-scale, we could say that the -nation-building process involves people asserting artificial ownership -over a territory even if they do not own any property within this -land.
-Conditional hospitality is tied to a sense of offering back to the -home-land-nation-state-country as a way to win or trade your permission -to enter and enjoy the hospitality of a place. Coming from specific -places in comparison to others, having to offer some special skills or -your labor - if it is asked for - can be possible conditions that may -allow somebody to receive hospitality. I would say that an efficient -check of these conditions is regularly facilitated through bureaucratic -channels. The concept of unconditional-conditional hospitality is -closely related to exchange. When you do not have something to offer -according to the needs or expectations of a “household”, you may not -receive the gift of hospitality.
-The notion of hospitality is excessively instrumentalized within the -Greek context portrayed as an “ideal” intertwined with the -nation-building narrative and as a foundational quality - product by the -Greek tourist industry. However, the Greek sea has been an endless -refugee graveyard and the eastern Aegean islands a “warehouse of -souls”For further reading: -https://wearesolomon.com/mag/focus-area/migration/how-the-aegean-islands-became-a-warehouse-of-souls/ -for the last many years. In this case, conditional hospitality applies -primarily to those who invest in and consume.
-Hospitality can function as a filtration mechanism that permits -access – lets in – the ones who deserve it, those who have “passports, -valid visas, adequate bank statements, or invitations” (Khosravi, 2010). -By doing this, unproductive hospitality is being avoided due to -sovereign state’s border regulations and checks. Conditional -hospitality, is about worthiness, is directed towards migrants deemed -good and productive – skilled and capable for assimilation- or a tiny -minority of vulnerable and marginalized asylum seekers who lack -representation. Only in a world where the nation-state’s boundaries have -been dismantled and where the undocumented, stateless, non-citizens are -unconditionally accepted, only at this moment, we are able to imagine -the “political and ethical survival of humankind” (Agamben, 2000). -Hospitality does not seem a matter of choice but a profound urgency, if -humanity desires to foster a future together.
-What about the crossers who managed to travel and reach the desirable -“there”, the ones who transcended the borders and the control checks of -the ministries of defense(7), the ones who enter but do not own papers, -the paperless? What does it mean to be documented and what is -inefficiently documented within a territory? They are threatened if they -get caught by authorities and also according to the official narrative, -they threaten. Since the physical mechanisms of bordering did not -succeed in repulsing them, the bureaucratic border appears as an -additional layer of filtration. The undocumented are non-citizens, they -might be crossers or burners(8), both, or even none. “Undocumented -migrants and unauthorized border crossers are polluted and polluting -because of their very unclassifiability” (Borelli, Poy, Rué, 2023). The -loss of citizenship, denaturalisation, makes somebody denaturalised, -they are rendered unnatural. “Citizenship has become the nature of being -human” (Koshravi, 2010).
-According to Hannah Arendt, the right to have rights and claim -somebody else’s rights is the only human right (Arendt, as cited by -Khosravi, 2010, p. 121). The foundational issue with the Universal -Declaration of Human Rights is its dependence on the nation-state -system. Since human rights are grounded on civil rights, which are -essentially citizens’ rights, human rights are tied to the nation-state -system. Consequently, human rights can be materialized only in a -political community. “Loss of citizenship also means loss of human -rights” (Khosravi, 2010)
---“…This is a transcribed recording of -my phone during a protest on migration at Dam Square in Amsterdam. I -insert part of the speech of a Palestinian woman addressing the matter -of undocumentedness. Date and time of the recording 18th of June 2023, -15:05. “✶” means undecipherableI am here for the rights of -the children which haven’t be in the taking part in the education since -they have undocumented mothers and they are more than ✶ years. I am here -to represent mothers who are looking for a place to have a sense of -belonging or how long are you trying to continue humiliating them and -the female gender. I am here to express my frustration with -INDImmigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst - -Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service. So -frustrated. And I will not stop talking about democracy. Democracy is -the rule of law where everybody feels included. Democracy is a rule of -law where everybody feels * We, undocumented people, we don’t feel a -sense of belonging from the system.”
-
Apart from the rigid visible borders, bureaucracy related to -migrants, refugees and asylum seekers can also constitute an in-between -less visible borderland. I used to perceive bureaucracy as an immaterial -and intangible entity. However, now I can claim that this assumption is -not true. Bureaucracy is material and spatial and can be seen as an -apparatus, a machine, a circuitry, an institution, a territory, a -borderland, a body, a zone – a “dead zone of imagination” as Graeber -claims. It can be inscribed on piles of papers, folders, drawers, -booklets, passports, IDs, documents, screens, tapes, bodies, hospital -corridors, offices, permissions to enter, stay, work, travel, exist, -come and go, leave, visit family, bury a friend.
-Bureaucratic documents especially those related to migration, can -become territories or should be interpreted “as sites where social -interactions happen, where power relations unfold and are contested” -(Cretton, Geoffrion, 2021). When these bureaucratic objects are used and -manipulated, they can constitute sites of “confrontation, reproduction, -negotiation and performance” (Cretton, Geoffrion, 2021) shaping social -relations and producing meaning.
-Bureaucracy related to asylum seekers reveals the profound bordering -nature of these practices, as a continuous process of producing -otherness. Accordingly, I see bureaucracy as a practice that raises -material and symbolic walls for specific groups of people who are -rendered unwanted and unwelcome because they dared to cross the borders -of the Global North.I am referring to the -desirable potential destinations of migrants and refugees corresponding -mainly to Global North countries. It is as if they could -never manage to eventually arrive and shelter their lives within the -desirable “there”. “In these bordering processes, we can detect the -“coloniality of asylum” (Borelli, Poy, Rué, 2023).In this text they insert the concept of the -“coloniality of asylum” introduced by Picozza, which talks about how -asylum systems are intertwined with colonial legacies and power -dynamics. These systems are often colonial structures reinforcing -hierarchies between nations and reproducing patterns of domination and -oppression. In this framework, asylum is not just about offering -protection but also about regulating and managing populations in a way -that reflects colonial relationships. Bureaucracies in -practice act as filters, determining who, from an institutional -standpoint, deserves to receive protection and who does not. They -operate as systems that classify non-citizens and place them in a social -hierarchy of disproportionate unequal obligations, lack of rights and -access to institutional support.
-While I had this inherent concern about borders and bureaucratic -structures in relation to migration, I decided to start zooming in and -explore my own bureaucratic surroundings through my personal lens. As a -student, I was eager to understand and dig into the educational -institutions’ bureaucratic mechanisms being driven by smaller-scale -bureaucratic struggles and peers’ narratives, stories and experiences. -How can higher education in a European country reflect policies around -migration and border control less profoundly. How can education filter -and distinguish, how it can reproduce efficiently itself?
-I gradually started perceiving the bureaucratic apparatus as an -omnipresent immaterial border - a ghost infrastructure - that one always -encounters but does not really see, a borderland that lies in the gray -zone between visibility and invisibility. Bureaucracy renders us -“stupid” and vulnerable in front of it. It is rarely questioned but it -should be performed efficiently for people to exist properly.
-The contradiction embedded in many cultural and educational -institutions lies in the level of unawareness regarding surveillance via -multiple bureaucratic rituals that (re)produce docile behaviors. How -these mechanisms are masked and standing in the margins of the visible -nonvisible sphere.
---“This is what makes it possible, for example, for graduate students -to be able to spend days in the stacks of university libraries poring -over Foucault-inspired theoretical tracts about the declining importance -of coercion as a factor in modern life without ever reflecting on that -fact that, had they insisted their right to enter the stacks without -showing a properly stamped and validated ID, armed men would have been -summoned to physically remove them, using whatever force might be -required.”
-
-(Graeber, 2015)
The genuine essence of education is not bureaucratic at all, neither -does it have to fit and ground its foundations under a bureaucratic -roof. “The pedagogical process runs counter to the hierarchical, -impersonal qualities of bureaucracy” (Cunningham, 2017). However, people -working in educational institutions acknowledge the fact that entrenched -bureaucratic systems impose their material constraints on teaching -structures and on how these actors in this process interact with each -other.“Students and staff are treated as human capital” (Cunningham, -2017). This determination can dehumanize people involved, like when -“faculty-as-labor” and “students-as-consumers” are marginalized and -treated as just variables.
---“there is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a -document of barbarism”
-
-(Benjamin, cited by Pater, 2021)
From fences and armed police to nation-state mechanism of -less-material bordering to bureaucracy to the elements of bureaucracy to -the document itself as the minimum unit of an apparatus. Understanding -and unhiding the violence of a form -violence materialized and at the -same time camouflaged by the language structure, the vocabulary, the -graphic design, their ability to render subjectivities that fit and -don’t fit within the controlled territory of the lines of the form. A -language that fragments, classifies, places and un-places. Thus -bureaucratic apparatus is something more than a metaphor it is also a -symbol. It is hard to see that there are many more layers beneath the -purpose it propagates. A metaphor that is so perfectly materialized as -well as naturalized that you cannot even see it.
-The bureaucratic apparatus can be considered as something more than -an infrastructure that organizes institutions, markets, states, etc. It -can constitute itself an institution, a textual institution. As the -factory generates commodities and sets them within a circuit of motion, -bureaucracy generates documents and sets them throughout a communicative -circuitry (Cunningham, 2017). An institution that organizes and -(infra)structures other institutions and similarly reproduces itself -through text. The materiality of a text document reflects the ideology -of the interconnected institutions and their underlying bureaucratic -systems. Language occupies a dual contradictory role as the foundational -element of bureaucracy. Language can become a shroud to conceal the -violence and reinforce hierarchical structures and simultaneously can be -transformed into the rigid rational cell itself. They shape their own -narratives, they reflect the institutional narratives.
-One of the great powers of bureaucracies is their ability to render -themselves transparent. It seems that bureaucracy does not have to say -anything more beyond itself, is self-referential and self-contained. It -is boring or most likely is supposed to be boring. “One can describe the -ritual surrounding it. One can observe how people talk about or react to -it” (Graeber, 2015). The supposed universality of the form which is -carefully constructed can be partly attributed to the individuality and -impersonality of many bureaucratic processes. “Bureaucracies operate -through an assemblage of hierarchy, impersonality, and procedure in -order to complete organizational tasks with maximum efficiency” (Weber, -as cited by Cunningham, 2017, p. 307).
-I had to open a discussion with students from non-EEA (non European -Economic Area) countries in order to understand that they have to -conduct tuberculosis x-rays“To keep the -Residence Permit, some non-European students need to visit the Dutch -Public Health Authority (GGD) after they arrived in the Netherlands. -They will undergo a medical test for tuberculosis (TB). This is a -requirement from the IND (Dutch Immigration Office)”. (Introduction -days, 2021) when they arrive in the Netherlands. It seems -that for the Dutch state, their bodies might be more threatening than -bodies coming from a European country. The relativization in the quality -and the quantity of paperwork requested from different “groups” of -applicants in a specific context deconstructs the myth of the -universality of the bureaucratic form.
-Undoubtedly the success of bureaucracy is drawn from its efficiency -in relation to schematization as an efficient material quality. “Whether -it’s a matter of forms, rules, statistics, or questionnaires, it is -always a matter of simplification (Cunningham, 2017)”. Bureaucracies -ignore the social existence of a person and fragment, classify and -define them under specific perspectives. Why do they ask for this -information instead of others? “Why place of birth and not, say, place -where you went to grade school? What’s so important about the -signature?” (Graeber, 2015)
-There is a great materiality in bureaucracies. Bureaucratic -procedures are often compared to a labyrinth which appears as a -similarly complex structure constituted by simple geometrical shapes -(Weber, as cited by Cunningham, 2017, p.310). Bureaucratic documents can -be complicated and multiple due to this infinite accumulation of really -simple but at the same time contradictory elements. A constant -juxtaposition of letters, symbols, stamps, signatures, paper, ink, -barcodes, QR codes within a circuit of workers, interweaved and -interconnected offices, repetitive performative tasks and rituals.
-Underneath every bureaucratic document, there is a good amount of -graphic design labor. What kind of visual strategy is embedded in -administrative objects that the design aspect of these artifacts appears -to be invisible? The material decisions applied as well as the material -constraints attributed to the document can transform or produce -different textual meanings and consequently understandings.
---“This does not mean that constraints limit meaning, but on the -contrary, constitute it; meaning cannot appear where freedom is absolute -or nonexistent: the stem of meaning is that of a supervised -freedom”
-
-(Barthes, 1983)
When I encountered the green logo of the municipality of Rotterdam I -did not cultivate any feelings of enthusiasm or even boredom. A big -calligraphic “R” with the flawless green ribbons that penetrate it on -the left corner of a 229x162 mm standardized dimension folder with a -transparent rectangle that reveals my inscribed name and surname from -the inside part. I did not put any aesthetic critique over this but I -rather felt this rush of stress for the expected response to my -objection letter or a fine or a tax to be paid within a specific -timeline cause another fine would come if I did not comply with -this.
-One month ago (from the writing present), my friend Chae made for my -birthday this amazing Dutch-government-like biscuit forms, recreating -the entire layout of the document using the interface of a crunchy -biscuit. She used the same color blue scheme and she placed the biscuit -form inside the same standardized dimension folder 229x162 mm with the -same transparent layer that reveals my name and surname. According to -literary critic and theorist Katherine Hayles:
---“to alter the physical form of the artifacts is to change the act of -reading and understanding but mostly you transform the metaphoric and -symbolic network that structures the relation of world to world. To -change the material artifacts is to transform the context and -circumstances for interacting with the words, which inevitably change -the meaning of the word itself. This transformation of meaning is -especially possible when the words interact with the inscription -technologies that produce them”
-
-(Hayles, 2002)
In the latter case, the inscription technology used is the sugar blue -paste and the handwriting of Chae. The text in the white-blue government -document forces a different reading from the white-blue biscuit -document, even if they carry the same bits of information. If I do not -read carefully the text in the folder and if I do not act according to -the suggested actions there is a threat. The level of threat varies in -relation to the case, the identities of the holder, the state, the -context, etc. There is no room for negotiation in bureaucracy and this -is the omnipresent underlying violence. The threat of violence shrouded -within its structures and foundations does not permit any questioning -but on the contrary creates “willful blindness” towards themI am referring to those people subjecting others to -bureaucratic circles shaped by structurally violent situations as well -as people in positions of privilege who deliberately ignore these -facts.. Bureaucracies are not stupid inherently rather they -manage and coerce processes that reproduce docile and stupid -behaviors.
- -This chapter is mainly a constellation of some prototypes I created -while writing and coping with personal bureaucratic challenges. I -provided some further space for my anxiety by unpacking and exploring -the material conditions that nourished it within this timeline.
-An administrative decision on a case may not seem necessarily hurtful -in linguistic terms. However, it can be injurious and severely -threatening. By performing the bureaucratic archival material of my -interactions with the government, I aim to draw a parallel narrative -highlighting the bordering role of bureaucracy and the concealed -underlying violence it perpetuates.
-A bureaucratic text does not just describe a reality, a decision, a -case or an action, but on the contrary, it is capable of changing the -reality or the order of things that is described via these words. -Bureaucratic official documents are inherently performative. These texts -regulate and bring situations into being.
-My intention in transforming bureaucratic texts into “playable” -scenarios is to explore how embodying these texts in public through -collective speechI imagine the theatrical -play as a “human microphone”, a low-tech amplification device. A group -of people performs the bureaucratic scenario in chorus, out loud, in the -corridor of the school’s building, in the main hall, at the square right -across, outside of the municipality building. The term is borrowed from -the protests of the Occupy Wall Street Movement in 2011. People were -gathered around the speaker repeating what the speaker was saying in -order to ensure that everyone could hear the announcements during large -assemblies. Human bodies became a hack in order to replace the forbidden -technology. In New York it is required to ask for permission from -authorities to use “amplified sound” in public space. can -provoke different forms of interpretations and open tiny conceptual -holes. “The meaning of a performative act is to be found in this -apparent coincidence of signifying and enacting” (Butler, 1997). The -performative bureaucratic utterances - the vocal documents - attempt to -bring into existence -by overidentifying, exaggerating, acting- the -discomfort, the threat, the violence which is mainly condemned into -private individual spheres.
-How performing a collection of small bureaucratic stories can -function as an instant micro intervention and potentially produce a -public discourse. Where do we perform this speech, where and when does -the “theater” take place? Who is the audience? I am particularly -interested in the site-specificity of these “acts”. How can these -re-enactments be situated in an educational context and examine its -structures? Is it possible for this small-scale publics to provoke the -emergence of temporal spaces of marginal vulnerable voicings? According -to the agonistic approach of the political theorist Chantal Mouffe, -critical art is art that provokes dissensus, that makes visible what the -dominant narrative tends to undermine and displace. “It is constituted -by a multiplicity of artistic practices aiming at giving a voice to all -those who are silenced within the framework of the existing hegemony” -(Mouffe, 2008).
-I started working and engaging more with different bureaucratic -material that my peers and I encountered regularly or appeared in our -(e)mail (in)boxes and are partly related to our identities as foreign -students coming from different places. I chose to start touching and -looking for various bureaucracies that surround me as a personal filter -towards it. From identification documents and application forms to -rental contracts, funding applications, visa applications, quality -assurance questionnaires related to the university, assessment criteria, -supermarket point gathering cards, receipts. A sequence of locked doors -to be unlocked more or less easily via multiple bureaucratic keys. The -methods and tools used to scrutinize the administrative artifacts are -not rigid or distinct. It is mainly a “collection” of small bureaucratic -experiments - closely related to language as well as the performative -“nature” of these texts themselves. I was intrigued by how transforming -the material conditions of a piece of text could influence the potential -understandings and perceptions of its meaning.
-Title: “Quality Assurance Questionnaire
-Censoring”
-When: October 2023
-Where: XPUB studio wall
-Who: myself
Description: Some months ago my classmates and I -received an email with a questionnaire aimed at preparing us for the -upcoming quality assurance meeting within the school. Ada and I had a -meeting, in an empty white room with closed doors, with an external -collaborator of the university. The main request was to rate and answer -the pre-formulated questions covering issues about performance, -different and multiple topics related to the course, the teaching staff, -the facilities, the tools provided. The micro linguistic experiment of -highlighting, censoring and annotating this document aimed for an -understanding of what a quality assurance meeting is within an -educational institution.
-Reflections-Thoughts: This experiment was my first -attempt to start interrogating and observing the language and the -structure of a bureaucratic document. How these “desired” standards -propagated through text. What is the role of the student-client in these -processes as an esoteric gaze of control over the course and their -teachers? My focus was to locate and accumulate all the wording related -to measurements, rate, quantity, assessments, statistics. Highlighting -the disproportionate amount of metrics-related vocabulary was enough to -craft the narrative around this process.
-These ‘rituals’ are components of a larger “culture of evidence”, -serving as a tool that blurs the distinction between discourse and -reality (Cunningham, 2017). This culture of evidence influences how -people perceive and understand information. The primary purposes of -these metrics are twofold: they play a role in the marketing sphere, -attracting potential students to the university as well as they are -utilized in interactions and negotiations with the government, which -increasingly cuts budgets allocated to universities.
-Title: “Department of Bureaucracy and Administration
-Customs Enforcement”
-When: November 2023
-Where: LeeszaalCommunity
-Library in Rotterdam West
-Who: XPUB peers, tutors, friends, alumni
Description: During the first public moment at -Leeszaal, I decided to embody and enact the traditional role of a -bureaucrat in a graphic and possibly absurd way performing a small -“theatrical play”. I prepared a 3-page and a 1-page document -incorporating bureaucratic-form aesthetics and requesting applicants’ -fake data and their answers for questions related to educational -bureaucracy. People receiving an applicant number at the entrance of -Leeszaal, queuing to collect their documents from the administration -“office”, filling forms, waiting, receiving stamps, giving fingerprints -and signing, waiting again were the main components of this act.
-Reflections-Thoughts: Beyond the information -gathered through my bureaucratic-like questionnaires, the most crucial -element of this experiment was the understanding and highlighting of the -hidden performative elements that entrench these “rituals”. It was -amazing seeing the audience becoming instantly actors of the play -enacting willingly a administrative ritualistic scene. The provided -context of this “play” was a social library hosting a masters course -public event on graduation projects. I am wondering whether this -asymphony between the repetitive bureaucratic acts within the space of -Leeszaal, where such acts are not expected to be performed, evoked -contradictory feelings or thoughts. Over-identifying with a role was -being instrumentalized as an “interrogation” of one’s own involvement in -the reproduction of social discourses, power, authority, hegemony.
-Title: “Passport Reading Session”
-When: January 2024
-Where: XML – XPUB studio
-Who: Ada, Aglaia, Stephen, Joseph
Description: This prototype is a collective passport -reading session. I asked my classmates to bring their passports or IDs -and sitting in a circular set up we attempted to “scan” our documents. -Every contributor took some time to browse, annotate verbally, -interpret, understand, analyze, vocalize their thoughts on these -artifacts, approaching them from various perspectives. The three -passports and one ID card were all coming from European countries.
-Reflections-Thoughts: For the first time I observed -this object so closely. The documentation medium was a recording device, -Ada’s mobile phone. The recording was transcribed by voskVosk is an offline open-source speech recognition -toolkit. and myself and a small booklet of our passport -readings was created.
---“So the object here is like not by random it comes from the history -of nation-states and how nation-states and nationalities created like a -form of identity. So nation-state is actually a recent invention that -came into existence over the last two hundred fifty years in the form as -we know it nowadays, in the form of democratic capitalism, before like -monarchies and so on and each citizen of such a nation-state got also -kind of a particular identity”,
-
-Joseph says about his ID card.
We read the embedded signs, symbols, categories, texts, magical -numbers in our passports that construct our profiles. Seeing someone’s -passport, ID cards, visas, travel documents might mean that you are able -to understand how easy or not is for them to move, what are their travel -paths, how departure or arrival is smooth or cruel. Are there emotions -along the way? For some people these are documents “that embody power — -minimal or no waiting, peaceful departure, warm and confident arrival” -(Khosravi, 2021).
-Title: “Postal Address Application Scenario”
-When: February 2024
-Where: Room in Wijnhaven Building, 4th floor
-Who: XPUB 1,2,3, tutors, Leslie
Description: This scenario is the first part of a -series of small episodes that construct a bureaucratic story unfolding -the processes of my communication with the government. The body of the -text of the “theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents -as well as recordings of the conversation I had with the municipality -throughout this process. I preserved the sequence of the given sentences -and by discarding the graphic design of the initial form, I structured -and repurposed the text into a scenario. The main actors were two -bureaucrats vocalizing the questions addressed in the form, in turns and -sometimes speaking simultaneously like a choir, three applicants -answering the questions similarly while a narrator mainly provided the -audience with the context and the storyline constructing the scenery of -the different scenes.
-The first and the last moment of the performance was during a -semi-public tryout moment where XPUB peers performed the distributed -scenario in a white room on the 4th floor of the Winjhaven building. -They were seated having as a border a black long-table. A border -furniture between the bureaucrats and the applicants. The narrator was -standing still behind them while they were surrounded by the audience. -The main documentation media of the act were a camera on a tripod, a -recorder in the middle of the table and myself reconstructing the memory -of the re-enactement at that present - 6 days later.
-Reflections-Thoughts: Vocalizing and embodying the -bureaucratic questions was quite useful in acknowledging the -government’s voice and presence as something tangible rather than a -floating, arbitrary entity. It was interesting observing the bureaucrats -performing their role with confidence and entitlement, contrasting with -the applicants who appeared to be more stressed to respond convincingly -and promptly. There is a notable distinction between performativity and -performance. Performing consciously and theatrically amplifying real -bureaucratic texts by occupying roles and overidentifying with them can -constitute a diffractive moment, a tool itself. From bureaucratic text -to performative text scenarios to speech. The embedded (but rather -unconscious) performativity of “real” bureaucratic rituals establishes -and empowers (bureaucratic) institutions through repetitive acts. These -theatrical moments attempt to highlight the shrouded performative -elements of these processes.
-I expanded the “play” by incorporating additional “scenes” sourced -again from the documents accompanying the ongoing “conversation with the -government”. Two weeks after submitting my application for a short-term -postal address [16/02/2024], I received a letter from the municipality -stating their rejection of my request and warning me of potential fines -if I fail to declare a valid address and provide a rental contract. -After extensive communication with the municipality, I decided to -respond to this decision by writing and sending an objection letter -[19/02/2024]. The objections committee received my letter [21/02/2024], -and after some days, they issued a confirmation letter outlining the -following steps of the objection process which involves hearings with -municipality lawyers and further investigation of my case. The textual -components collaged for the next “episodes” are sourced from the -transcribed recordings of my actual conversations with the municipality -clerks, my objection letter, the confirmation documents including the -steps I am required to take.
-My case has finished by this time. I withdrew my objection -[7/03/2024] and I de-registered [11/03/2024] after a good amount of -stress and precarity. My bureaucratic literature is meant to be read and -voiced collectively. People’s bureaucratic literatures should be read -and voiced collectively.
-My intention is to facilitate a series of collective performative -readings of bureaucratic scenarios or other portable paperwork stories -as a way of publishing and inspecting bureaucratic bordering -infrastructures. The marginal voices of potential applicants are -embodying and performing a role. “The speech does not only describe but -brings things into existence” (Austin, 1975). I would like to stretch -the limits of dramaturgical speech through vocalizing a document in -public with others and turn an individual administrative case into a -public one. How do the inscribed words in the documents are not -descriptive but on the contrary “are instrumentalized in getting things -done” (Butler, 1997). Words as active agents. I am inviting past and -future applicants, traumatized students, injured bearers, bureaucratic -border crossers, stressed expired document holders or just curious -people to share, vocalize, talk through, read out loud, amplify, -(un)name, unplace, dismantle the injurious words of these artifacts.
-As I sit in the waiting area at the gate B7 in the airport preparing -to come back to the Netherlands, I am writing the last lines of this -text. I am thinking of all these borders and gates that my body was able -to pass through smoothly, carrying my magical object through which I -embody power- at least within this context. However, I yearn for a -reality where we stop looking at those bodies that cross the -multifaceted borders and get crossed and entrenched by them, but on the -contrary we start interrogating and shouting at the contexts and the -frameworks that construct them and render them invisible, natural and -powerful.
-Agamben, G. (2000) Means without end: Notes on politics. Minneapolis, -MN: University of Minnesota Press.
-Anzaldua, G. (1987) Borderlands - la Frontera: The new mestiza. 2nd -ed. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.
-Austin, J. L. (1975) “lECTURE VII”, in How to do things with words. -Oxford University Press, pp.83-93.
-Barthes, R. (1983) Fashion system. Translated by M. Ward and R. -Howard. Hill & Wang.
-Border controls (2017) Defensie.nl. Available at: -https://english.defensie.nl/topics/border-controls
-Borelli, C., Poy, A., and Rué, A. (2023). “Governing Asylum without -‘Being There’: Ghost Bureaucracy, Outsourcing, and the Unreachability of -the State.” Social Sciences, 12(3), 169. [DOI: -https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12030169]
-Butler, J. (1997) Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. -London, England: Routledge.
-Cretton, V., Geoffrion, K. (2021). “Bureaucratic Routes to Migration: -Migrants’ Lived Experience of Paperwork, Clerks and Other Immigration -Intermediaries”, University of Victoria
-Cunningham, J. (2017), “Rhetorical Tension in Bureaucratic -University”, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
-Graeber, D. (2015) The utopia of rules: On technology, stupidity, and -the secret joys of bureaucracy. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House -Publishing
-Hayles, N. K. (2002) Writing Machines. London, England: MIT -Press.
-Introduction days (2021) Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. -Available at: -https://www.rotterdamuas.com/study-information/practical-information/international-introduction-days/Tuberculosis-test/ -(Accessed: April 8, 2024).
-Keshavarz, M. (2016) Design-Politics: An Inquiry into Passports, -Camps and Borders. Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society.
-Khosravi, S. (2010) “illegal” traveller: An auto-ethnography of -borders. 2010th ed. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
-Khosravi, S. (ed.) (2021) Waiting - A Project in Conversation. -transcript Verlag.
-M’charek, A. (2020) “Harraga: Burning borders, navigating -colonialism,” The sociological review, 68(2), pp. 418–434. doi: -10.1177/0038026120905491.
-Malichudis, S. (2020) How the Aegean islands became a warehouse of -souls, Solomon. Available at: -https://wearesolomon.com/mag/focus-area/migration/how-the-aegean-islands-became-a-warehouse-of-souls/ -(Accessed: April 7, 2024).
-McKittrick, K. (2021) Dear science and other stories. Durham, NC: -Duke University Press.
-Mouffe, C. (2008) ‘Art and Democracy: Art as an Agonistic -Internvention’. Open:14 Art as a Public Issue, No.14 (2008), p.4
-Pater, R. (2021) Caps lock: How capitalism took hold of graphic -design, and how to escape from it. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Valiz.
-Picozza, F. (2021). The coloniality of asylum : mobility, autonomy -and solidarity in the wake of Europe’s refugee crisis. London: Rowman -& Littlefield Publishers.
-This project appeared as a need to explore potential bureaucratic -dramaturgies within the educational institution I was part as a student. -I was curious about educational bureaucratic mechanisms being driven by -smaller-scale paperwork struggles and peers’ narratives, stories and -experiences. However, unexpected emergencies - due to my eviction on the -31st of January 2024 - placed centrally my personal struggles unfolded -in parallel with the making period. I ended up conducting accidentally -auto-ethnography as the project was dynamically being reshaped due to -the material constraints of the bureaucratic timeline.
-Talking Documents are performative bureaucratic text inspections that -intend to create temporal public interventions through performative -readings. I utilized the paperwork interface of my smaller-scale story -in order to unravel and foreground questions related to the role of -bureaucracy as less material border and as a regulatory mechanism -reflecting narratives, ideologies, policies.
-Central element of this project is a seven-act scenario that -construct my personal paperwork story, unraveling the actual struggles -of my communication with the government. The body of the text of the -“theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents, email -threads as well as recordings of the conversations with the municipality -of Rotterdam I documented and archived throughout this period. I -preserved the sequence of the given sentences and by discarding the -graphic design of the initial forms, I structured and repurposed the -text into a playable scenario.
--
--
I perceive the document as a unit and as the fundamental symbolic -interface of the bureaucratic network. The transformation of the -materiality of a document into a scenario to be enacted collectively in -public aims to examine these artifacts and highlight the shrouded -performative elements of these processes.
-I see the collective readings of these scenarios as a way of instant -publishing and as a communal tool of inspecting bureaucratic bordering -infrastructures. How can these re-enactments be situated in different -institutional contexts and examine their structures? I organized a -series of performative readings of my own bureaucratic literature in -different spaces and contexts, pubic and semi-public WDKA, Art Meets -Radical Openness Festival in Linz, the City Hall of Rotterdam where I -invited people to perform the play together, like a tiny theater.
-The marginal voices of potential applicants are embodying and -enacting a role. “The speech does not only describe but brings things -into existence”(Austin, 1975). My intention was to stretch the limits of -dramaturgical speech through vocalizing a document and turn individual -administrative cases into public ones. How do the inscribed words in the -documents are not descriptive but on the contrary “are instrumentalized -in getting things done”(Butler,1997). Words as active agents. Bodies as -low-tech “human microphones”. A group of people performs the -bureaucratic scenario in chorus, out loud, in the corridor of the -school’s building, in the main hall, at the square right across, outside -of the municipality building.
-I documented and recorded these public acts and I re-created the -collectively voiced scenario. This audio piece is a constellation of -different recordings and soundscapes of these public moments, a vocal -archive, published in the graduation exhibition of XPUB in 2024.
-I would like to clarify and introduce some terms for you in order to -read this text in the desired way. For a while, we will stay in the -bight of this journey as we move into forming loops, theories and ideas -on how interactive picture books can be used to foster curiosity for -reading and creativity for children. I am building a web platform called -Wink that aims to contain a children’s story I wrote and am making into -an interactive experience, in relation to my research. Through -this bight of the thesis, I feel the necessity to clarify my intention -of using knots as a “thinking and writing object” throughout my research -journey. Although knots are physical objects and technically crucial in -many fields of labor and life, they are also objects of thought and are -open for wide minds’ appreciation. Throughout history, knots have been -used to connect, stop, secure, bind, protect, decorate, record data, -punish, contain, fly and many other purposes. So if the invention of -flying -which required a wing that was supported using certain types of -knots was initiated with the knowledge of how to use strings to make -things, why wouldn’t a research paper make use of this wonderful art as -an inspiration for writing and interactive reading?
-There is a delicate complexity of thinking of and with knots, which -ignites layers of simultaneous connections to one’s specific experience; -where one person may associate the knots with struggles they face, -another may think of connecting or thriving times. In a workshop in -Rotterdam, I asked participants to write three words that comes to mind -when they think of knots. There were some words in common like strong, -chaotic, confusing and anxious. On the other hand, there were variations -of connection, binding, bridge and support. Keeping these answers in -mind or by coming up with your words on knots and embodying them in the -practice of reading would make a difference in how you understand the -same text.
- - -Seeing how these words, interpretations of a physical object were so -different to each other was transcendental. In this thesis, I am excited -to share my understanding of knots with you. My three words for knots -are resistance, imagination and infinity. Keeping these in mind, I -experimented with certain reading modes as you will see later on.
-Knots are known to be used 15 to 17 thousand years ago for multiple -purposes. These purposes were often opposing each other. For example, it -could be used to let something loose or to restrain it; for pleasure or -pain; for going high above or down below… I believe this diversity of -uses can also be seen in how people approach knots as an idea or a -metaphor. One can think it represents chaos where someone else might see -it as a helpful mark. Essentially, this diversity is what got me -interested in knots years ago and since then, I have found ways to -implement this “loop of thought” in my daily life and research methods. -There are two main reasons to why I chose to write this essay in a -“knotted” format. One is that I would like to share my process and -progress of research on this project and this involves “thinking with an -object”, in this case types of knots. In Evocative Objects, Sherry -Turkle, who is a sociologist and the founder of MIT initiative of -technology and self, refers to the object in the exercise of thinking as -emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain -relationships and provoke new ideas. I completely agree with this -statement through personal experience. The second reason is that I see -this as an opportunity to experiment if I can use knots as an -interactive (which is not in knots’ nature since they are mainly -practiced in solo) and playful element in writing. This is also why I -would like to take a moment to mention what happens to the interplay of -processes in which we call thought when we think with knots in -specific.
-For Turkle and Seymour Papert, who is a mathematician, computer -scientist and educator that did remarkable research on constructivism, -being able to make a reading experience tangible, or even physically -representable makes the process of thought more concrete. Concrete -thinking in this sense is a way of thinking that I adapted to in the -past years, where you think with the object and imagine it vividly -during the process and address meanings to it as you read or write -along. This way it’s easier to compartmentalize or attribute certain -parts of a text to an imagined or real physical item which makes the -mind at ease with complex chains of thought.
-Imagine you are reading a story… What if you think of the string -itself as the journey and the slip knot (which is a type of stopper -knot) as a representation of an antagonist because of its specific use -in hunting, would this change your approach to reading this story? I -believe so…
-Slipknot is widely -used for catching small animals like rabbits and snares. It is also -commonly used to tie packages.What if instead of a slip -knot a bowline was on the string, would that represent something else in -the story because of its usage in practice. A Bowline is commonly used -to form a fixed loop at the end of a string; it’s strong but easy to -tie, untie. Due to these qualities, we can imagine the bowlineBowline is known to -be used since 1627. Some believe it was used in Ancient Egypt because a -knot resembling it was discovered in the tomb of pharaoh Cheops. Even -after it’s used and very tight, bowline is still easy to untie, which -makes it commonly used. to represent the conclusion in a -story. What if we have a Square Knot, how would that change the course -of a narrative? Square knot is used to bundle objects and make the two -ends of the same string connect. From just this, we can use it to -represent the connection between the beginning and end of a story. My -point is, there are limitless implementations on how to use knots in -literature because of their versatile purposes and the narrative -vocabulary they create. Topologists are still trying to identify -seemingly infinite numbers of combinations which we simply call “knots” -and I see this as an inspiration to keep writing.
-One example of the wondrous versatility and potential of knots is how -they are used to archive and encrypt information. Incan people from the -Andes region recorded information on Quipus, dating back to 700 CE -Quipus are textile devices consisting of several rows of cotton and/or -camelid string that would be knotted in a specific way to record, store -and transmit information ranging from accounting and census data to -communicate complex mathematical and narrative information (Medrano, -Urton, 2018). Another example is the Yakima Time Ball, which was used by -North-American Yakama people to show life events and family -affairs.Square knot is one of -the oldest knots. Romans knew it as Hercules knot. A roman scholar -claimed that it speeds up healing when used to secure a bandage. It is -often used to tie belts and shoe laces.
-This is why I humbly decided to document my research process with a -Quipu of my own. I am trying to symbolize the twists, decisions and -practices throughout this year with knots of my choosing. I was inspired -by Nayeli Vega’s question, “What can a knot become and what can become a -knot?”
-This thesis expects participation from its reader. You have the -Broken -knots are knots that aren’t tied well, done with a wrong material or was -under more pressure than it could take.option to have a -mode of reading, where you will be guided by strings to This thesis -expects participation from its reader. You have the option to have a -mode of reading, where you will be guided by strings to start reading -from a certain section according to the type of reader you are and read -the loops one by one until the end, weaving through the text. To -determine the string or mode of reading, there are some simple questions -to answer. Bends are joining -knots. They attach two strings together. The bend above is a sheet bend -and it works well when koining two different strings and can take -stress.
-The three modes of reading are combine, slide, build. After you -discover the starting point with the yes or no map in the upcoming -pages, you will continue the reading journey through the strings of -different colors that will get you through the text. This way, the -linear text will become in a way, non-linear by your personal -experience.
-Bear in mind that you can choose to read this thesis from beginning -to end as a single string too if you wish so.
-Combine mode of reading is for readers who are more interested in the -journey and the connections between process and result. Slide mode of -reading is for more laid back readers who aren’t looking to connect -ideas but are more focused on the motivation and purpose of the project. -Build readers are detail oriented and academic readers who would prefer -a “traditional” lead to reading. Hitches are used to -tie strings to a standing solid object. Alongside the -different strings to follow the text, there will be little drawings in -the margins as seen above, which will have different representations -like in a Quipu. Certain knots represent the experiences that raise -interesting opportunities for research and distinct events I went -through while making the project and underneath the drawing you can find -the relation to the knot itself explained. For example if I couldn’t -manage to do something I planned to do, this will be represented with a -broken knot. Bend knots which are used to connect two strings, will be -representing the relation between theories and my own -experiences/motivations. Hitches which are knots that are formed around -a solid object, such as a spar, post, or ring will be representing the -evidence or data I have collected on the subject. We move on now with -the working end and make some loops!
-1 1 -1
-My desire to write a children’s book about grief and memory ignited -when I was studying in college and doing an internship in a publishing -house in Ankara. I was struggling to process a loss I experienced at the -time and to find something to cling to on a daily basis. Then one day I -started hearing a buzzing sound in my bedroom at my family’s house. I -searched everywhere but couldn’t find the source for this noise. I asked -my father and he started searching too. A couple of days passed and the -buzzing was still there.
-One day I found a bee on the floor in my bedroom and realized that -the bees nested on the roof and were coming inside my room through a gap -in the lamp. I was terrified because I have an allergy to bees and -thought they might sting me in my sleep. This moment was when I realized -I was so determined to find this buzzing sound for some time that I -forgot about dealing with the loss I was experiencing. This made me feel -very guilty and I remember thinking I betrayed the person I lost.
-As funny as it may appear, I felt like I was sabotaged by these bees -that I thought were here to hurt me but in the end they made me -understand that its ok to let things go and every being does what it has -to do to find its way of survival. The little habitat that they chose to -create in my room seemed like a calling or a sign that I can aff ect -another living being significantly without being aware of it. This goes -for everything, no matter if some people leave us in this world, they -have living matter in us that keeps pulsing. So then I started -researching bees and their ecosystems. I read Alan Watts, Alan Lightman, -Emily Dickinson, Maurice Sendak, Meghan O’Rourke, Oliver Sacks, Joanna -Macy, Rilke, Montaigne and theories on order in chaos, correlative -vision, harmony of contained conflicts and the mortality paradox. I -wrote a lot and erased a lot and fairly figured out the wisdom of not -knowing things.
-Years passed and I wrote and deleted and rewrote the story that I am -working on to make interactive today so many times and was waiting on it -because it always felt incomplete. In a way it will always be incomplete -because of the natural ambiguity the topic carries. Years later, grief -was back in my life with the loss of my grandfather. So therefore, the -story I wrote and abandoned changed again as I attempted to rewrite it -as a diff erent version of myself with a diff erent understanding of -death. And this went on… The story remained hidden and I forgot why it -ever existed in the first place. I wrote and deleted -and rewrote the story 3 times already. Last year when two -earthquakes hit Syria and Turkey, I was drowned like everyone I know, by -a collective trauma and grief. Then this horrible feeling flared up by -neglect and desperation. It was and still is impossible to mourn so many -strangers at the same time. I lost two dear friends, I was furious, away -from home, mostly alone and remembered vividly my failed attempt to -understand or place grief in one of the piles in my mind.
-Previous months, I was working on this story (yes, again) but didn’t -know how to tackle the text because it was so diff erent to what I was -experiencing now, when compared to the last time I rewrote it. A tutor -asked me why I wrote this story in the first place and I couldn’t -remember. I kept tracing back to 2016 and step by step, remembered why, -as told above. The consciousness that this story is actually a personal -history of how I went through grief in diff erent stages of my life, -made me realise that it doesn’t have to be or even can be a perfect -story.
-In the end with the experience I had with loss, I believe the story -turned out to be an ode to remembering or might I say an ode to not -being able to forget or an ode to the fear of forgetting. 11 7 -4
-The effect of storytelling knowledge on kids’ development and -creativity. What can we learn from open ended and multiple ending -stories?
-ability to form basic stories or to express their emotions through -fictional characters or events. Children are not born with a wide -vocabulary of emotions and expressions. They learn how to read, mimic -and express their feelings over time. The more children read, write and -are exposed to social environments, the more they widen their sense and -ability of expressing themselves. The language gained as kids comes in -many forms and storytelling plays a crucial role in this development. -The exposure to stories prepares the kids to the era of reading and -writing. Children come to understand and value feelings through -conversation (Dettore, 2002). When children are offered to read or share -stories, they also learn to understand people around them better and -gain emotional literacy.
-Storytelling has been a means of communicating with others for many -centuries. It is not only a way to discuss important events, but also a -way to entertain one another (Lawrence & Paige, 2013). Stories have -been told orally, in writing or with drawings for thousands of years and -some of these stories are still alive. This is because language is a -living thing that travels through time and still remains brand new. When -necessary, it just adapts form, evolves and blends in with the changing -world. Children comprehend the idea that they have a story to tell by -hearing other stories and this ignites the imagination. We tend to -forget many things but almost everyone remembers one small story they -heard or read when they were a kid, this moment we remember is the -moment a certain story sparked for us.
-Nowadays storytelling takes many forms. For example, some readers’ -story might even begin from here although it isn’t the beginning. -Interactivity is one of the storytelling forms that can signifi- cantly -improve children’s creativity. This is mainly because children as -readers or listeners get to contribute and aff ect the story. This of -course requires and improves creative and active thinking. Getting the -chance to choose a path for a fictional character gives the child the -freedom and confi dence of constructing a world, a character or an -adventure. Although this is essentially “writing” as we know it, -children think of this as a game, yet to discover they are actually -becoming writers. What kind of reward can we expect from active -participation in a story? Narrative pleasure can be generally described -in terms of immersions (spatial, temporal, emotional, epistemic) in a -fictional world (Ryan, 2009). When we are set to create or co-create a -world, the narrative has effects on us such as curiosity, suspense and -surprise. At this point, we start creatively producing ideas to keep -these three emotions. Multiliteracy -theory helped me ground my passion of using multimedia for children’s -literature. Interactive storytelling reminds everyone but -especially children that there are limitless endings to a story that is -solely up to the maker’s creation. Learning to think this way instead of -knowing or assuming an end to a story, I think influences the children’s -decision making abilities and sense of responsibility towards their -creations. It is basically the same in theatre where if an actor chooses -to create an imaginary suitcase on stage, they can’t simply leave this -object they created on stage and exit the scene because the audience -will wonder why the actor didn’t take the imaginary suitcase as they -left. In this case, when kids decide to choose a path or item or any -attribute for a character in a story, they feel responsible and curious -to see it through to the end or decide what to do with it. This -interactivity therefore creates a unique bond between the reader/writer -and the text.
-There are many theories on how to approach interactive literature for -children. Multi-literacy theory and digital literacies are some of the -theories which I find relevant to my aim with Wink. Multiliteracy theory -in a nutshell is an education oriented framework that aims to expand -traditional reading and writing skills. This theory was developed by the -New London Group. They were a collective of scholars and educators who -addressed the changing nature of literacy in an increasingly globalized, -digital world. The theory explores multiple modes of communication -consisting The sense of storytelling settles for kids, starting from age -three. By this time, children have the of multimodal communication, -cultural and social contexts, critical inquiry, socio-cultural learning -theory and pedagogical implications. Multimodal communication focuses on -the variety of communication techniques. This was groundbreaking in the -90s because of its acknowledgment of a diverse range of literacies and -its departure from traditional approaches to literary texts. This theory -includes new media and communication studies such as visual, digital, -special and gestural literacies.
-I kept this theory in mind as I chose the interactivity elements to -use in the picture book. I think the usage of multiple media such as -sound, image and games is a good way to start and diff erentiate from a -regular interactive e-book. The fact that this theory has an educational -perspective and is taking the rapidly changing qualities of literature -seriously, made me consider it as a guide in designing the -prototype.
-Looking through the perspective of multiliteracies, questions come up -for me that lead to the rest of this thesis: What is an interactive -picture book? Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it an exercise?
-What is it defined as? How can we design an interactive reading -environment without confusing children?
-8 9 -5
-Differences and similarities between interactive e-books and -storytelling games.
-Storytelling games and interactive e-books have many things in -common. To begin with, they both centralize the narrative to engage the -audience. While both of these formats are storytelling tools, e-books -tend to stay more in a linear narrative and format when compared to -storytelling games where the audience is commonly the main character. -Reading experiences are also a way to be in the shoes of the narrator or -the character but in a storytelling game, you embody the mission and the -experience overrules the story most of the time. In the specific example -of a child, storytelling games are complicated and puzzle driven where -the player has missions to complete. Whereas in an interactive e-book, -the missions are solely based on the interactive elements implemented in -the text and images.
-Another difference is that the visual world in an interactive e-book -is less cinematic and has limited movement. The imagery plays a massive -role in a storytelling game where the world created is offered to the -player. In an interactive e-book, the text itself is designed to be -playful and ready for readers to discover.
-The main difference in my opinion that separates these two methods of -storytelling is the reward. In a game, we expect to be rewarded by a -victory, passing a level or unlocking something throughout the -experience. In an interactive e-book, we work with the story and in -return we expect a good experience and there is no reward other than -that. But, the whole design of interactivity involves aspects of a game -where the reader –not the player- is captured by surprise effects or -elements that come up on the pages. This ignites curiosity but not -ambition, which is a good start to foster the love for reading. -5 4 -11
-Ways of using interactivity in digital platforms
-CASA theory, also known as the Cognitive-Aff ective-Social Theory of -Learning and Development, is a framework used in educational psychology -to understand how learning occurs within the context of cognitive, aff -ective, and social factors. Research on cognitive learning with keeping -in mind the limited attention span and memory factors. For children in -specific, I think these are very important factors to keep in mind when -trying to design an interactive experience. This is because children get -bored very easily and can be disengaged because of failure of -solving/understanding something in a story. This is something I kept in -mind as I wrote for children and chose the interactive elements in the -story. CASA framework -helped me understand the key elements in designing for -children.
-Finding the balance between making the interactive element surprising -and making it easy to interact with is the key to designing for kids in -this scenario. We don’t want to make them struggle and use the limited -attention span in a non-engaging way but we want to keep the reading -interesting enough so they want to continue.
-Digging deeper into how to do this, I found Children Computer -Interaction (CCI) study very useful. This study examines how children of -different ages and developmental stages interact with digital devices -and how these interactions can support their growth. This made me think -about digital gestures; how they change through generations and how to -use these to design a platform where children can navigate easily and -freely. CCI suggests that when introducing a new media to children its -better to start easy and clear when they try it. Through this I think -the best easy interaction is the tap or click for children. It is easy -to do, instinctive and common. So I decided to base the interactive -elements on click animations. CCI was a theory -that helped me decide on the interactive elements. There -are multiple ways to use digital gestures in storytelling to make the -experience more intriguing. These are usually elements such as sound, -animations, voice-overs that are ignited with a click or tap by the -reader. For children younger than 5, its usually just tapping over the -page and experiencing an action-reaction. For older kids between the -ages 6-8, I made some workshops to figure out which types of interactive -elements are most useful in engaging them in the reading process.
-It is true that sound and animations are very inclusive and it is -engaging for kids to find out which part of a page is interactive by -clicking on images. Another thing I found out is that kids enjoy being a -part of the story. For the prototype of Bee Within (the story I am using -to test interactivity also can be read in the appendix) I will focus on -color, sound and click based animations according to the results of my -research. 4 3 -2
-What is the target age group for the designated prototype and -why?
-It is tricky when it comes to choosing the right age spectrum for -children’s interactive literature. Children between the ages 3-5, -referred to as preschoolers have more developed social skills and day by -day increasing interest in play. They can take on roles in imaginative -play scenarios. They can also share and take turns more, listen and -think about rules of a game. They can form friendships and connections -easily.
-This -data about school age children was a starting point to choose the age -group to have the workshops with.
-School age children are between the ages 6-12, which is Wink’s chosen -age group is a little different. These kids can form more rooted -friendships and engage in more complex narratives. They learn to -negotiate and compromise around this time as well. This age group is -desired for Wink because kids this age are open to creative problem -solving, connecting events and comprehending slightly more complex -narratives. Moreover, this age group would benefit the most from the -interactive stories and the reading process because of the developmental -phase they are in.
-The average amount of time children between these ages use on a daily -basis is depending on their parents and circumstances. But to be fair, -it is often not less than 2 hours. If a child isn’t very interested in -spending these hours reading a book, why not ask them: “Would you like -to be a part of a story?”
-Today, kids from age 3 can use digital gestures successfully and -experience these as simple as flipping the page of a book. This is why -it is fairly easy to create an interactive picture book which kids can -navigate themselves and be able to browse through with or without their -parents. But for Wink, I chose to design for older kids because I want -to experiment on multi-leveled narratives and I want to avoid the risk -of confusing children. 3 10 -7
-Limits of interactivity in narratives for children and why do we have -less modes of reading and writing for children?
-Although there are many upsides of creating digital environments for -children due to their advanced skills in technology from early ages, -there are also risks involved in this where the kid can be overwhelmed -and confused due to the autonomy they receive. Reading a story is -supposed to be effortless and a good free time activity but with -interactive picture books, it is slightly more than that and more -complicated as an experience. This is the elbow of -our strings. Elbows are created when an additional twist is added to a -loop. In this case, it represents the counter argument in the -string.
-First of all, with the story at hand, called Bee Within, there are -two other stories in one. Although the main story is about a little -girl’s journey, kids get the chance to hear the Queen Bee’s story and -the tree’s story as well. This is not a must but if they interact with -certain pictures on the page, they will be led to the bee’s perspective -or the trees. This is where the storyline can get a little bit -complicated for younger kids. The child reader at this point should be -able to follow the main storyline after visiting the side quests or -stories presented in the interactive book. To create this balance I -tried to limit the interactive elements I used in the main story. I -tried to keep the picture animations limited and focused more on the -storylines.
-Another aspect I am concerned about after the workshop I did with the -kids, is the risk of confusion due to an undefined and multimodal design -for a “book”. Kids tend to be confused when they can’t define things or -are asked to improvise without knowing the purpose.They know what a book -is and that it is similar to what they encounter on the screen. But the -method of reading and interacting with Bee Within is different than what -they are used to. This concerns me because they might prefer to just -read a book or play a game instead of discovering a new thing, which -they are exposed to daily because they are always in a process of active -learning. So one more thing to learn might come as exhausting. -Therefore, in designing, I want to make interactions as clear as -possible for them. 9 11 -8
-Interactive reading and writing examples and surveys done with -kids.
-As an improvisation theater enthusiast myself, I tried to engage the -kids with the story through some exercises and games during the -workshops. My aim was to see how involved they want to be in -storytelling. Improvisation has a certain way of storytelling and -interaction where there are either too many options or none. You need to -have good empathy and harmony with the person you are acting with and -you are designated to be creative in your own way. I tried to use -several improv games and warmups to involve the kids in the story more -and see how they see certain characters from the picture book.
-My first attempt was to make a survey at the end of workshops with -kids to whether they liked it or not, but when I researched further, -surveying with kids has very different methods and complications. -There is a -broken knot here because I ended up not doing a survey with children at -the workshops. Most kids either really like or really -dislike things. Finding the in between emotions with a survey, ends up -being vague. Most surveys done with kids use emoticons as representation -of a good or bad or average time. Instead, I chose to observe the -environment and understand how much empathy kids can offer in an -interactive reading or playing environment. 6 2 -6
-What does the joy of destruction and the awe effect have to do with -interactivity? Indeed, why did we ever start playing games? The most -important aspect of a game for me is that it surprises you and leaves -you in awe towards something you weren’t expecting happened. I feel like -every reaction I give when I’m surprised, is a mirror of what I felt -when I was playing freeze and had to stop moving at any given time or -when I found the last friend hiding somewhere in hide and seek. This -feeling of appreciation and unexpectedness is why most people remember -certain games, movies from their childhoods very vividly. Its an -introduction to a feeling we experience maybe for the first time because -we don’t necessarily learn from books how and when to feel surprised, -that is why it’s a surprise; we live it, experience it and it leaves and -impression with us.
-In my opinion, what drives everyone as a common denominator is -amazement; because it takes us to our childhoods or distant memories -where we first felt that feeling of awe. This is the main purpose behind -any kind of interactive design and I think books can be an amazing -medium to experiment this with. Specifically because this ancient device -can take us to numerous worlds. For me as a millennial, books give me -enough amazement as it is. But as I worked in publishing through the -years and observed, I think kids today need something more to ignite -their interest. There are so many factors in a picture book such as the -image, the text and sound which can be played with to create an -experience that is more surprising. This is the main purpose behind my -research and protoype. Today’s world being visually stimulating and -serving very short attention spans with social media, it is a tough task -to insert a story or reading experience that requires full attention and -patience. There are examples of Tiktok stories, Instagram reels, audio -books and games that try to tell stories worth listening with attention. -Wink is also an attempt to do this and I believe the key is to make an -already engaging story enriched with interactive elements that appear to -you through a click if you choose to. I think this is also the key to -nourishing a new way of storytelling. 7 5 -3
-Interactivity in reading and writing in history. What changed?
-Interactivity has always been an experimental area in literature from -inscriptions to narrative games then to playable stories and artificial -intelligence. I will expand some of these examples from the rich history -of interactive fiction. When I dig a little bit into the media -archaeology there are three still relevant aspects that strike me and -change/improve my approach to Wink. The first is the need to connect -that remains untouched through centuries of human communication, the -second is how there were multiple projects concerning interactive media -especially for kids that later turned into narrative games or remained -as prototypes and lastly how the integration of media and literature has -been such a grand topic even before information and technology era. Some -examples to this is music, masks, puppets, props used in -storytelling.
-Ancient texts with annotations such as The Odyssey, The Mahabharata -are maybe the earliest written interactive experiences in a historical -context. They are published with notes and explanations, clarifications -which make the text inhabit different opinions and approaches in an -engaging way where the reader can choose to hop on and off from the -annotation and margin texts.
-From the 70s to the present there have been many examples but I will -be focusing on a few here. One of them is, Choose your own adventure -books which allowed the reader to participate in the plot. These still -exist as picture books where you are directed to certain pages according -to the choices you make throughout the story. Along with this were also -board games and cards that required interactive inputs. Some examples to -this is exploding kittens or cards against humanity where the player has -the autonomy to be creative and fill in the blanks to win the game. -Simultaneously, text-based adventure games such as Zork and Adventure -were popular. Early days of computing offered a wide space for exploring -virtual worlds. In the early 80s, hypertext fiction contributed to -electronic literature. Hyperlinks were used as a tool to navigate a text -and choose paths of reading. This inspired me to write this thesis with -different modes of reading as well. After the 80’s, Interactive fiction -gained popularity as a genre of interacting with text based input. -Dynabook by Alan Kay was prototyped during this time as a promising -reading and writing device designed for children.
-The 21st century offers a combination of text and illustrations in -augmented reality books that have animations, sound and external -interactions. These are followed by digital storytelling platforms like -Wattpad and Storybird and interactive e-book apps such as Pibocco, Bookr -and Tiny Minies. Most of these apps are dedicated to education however -and not solely to creativity. Their aim is to use creative elements to -foster education for kids.
-With Wink, I want to use a mainly educational tool (a book) to foster -creativity and expression. So I believe it is the opposite purpose as to -these examples in certain ways. I am trying to combine the delicacy of a -narrative where you can only be a reader and the excitement of -autonomous writing and experiencing.
-This is because I think the understanding and usage of media changed -in the last years. Some tools that created the awe effect for users -faded and left their place to more compact designs. Although audio books -were very welcome at some point, younger users nowadays prefer book -summary apps or podcasts to them. Of course they are still used and not -outdated but there is certainly a visible change to where media is -heading. 10 8 -10
-Experimentation of creative exercises to be used in WINK. Exercises -of storytelling with words, images, drawing, sound and gestures.
-Before I completed the prototype of Wink, I reached out to an -international school in Rotterdam to make a 20 minute workshop with kids -between ages 6-8. The aim here was to grasp the interactive elements in -the picture book to implement in the digital framework. I wanted to see -which parts of the story the children found exiting and which ones are -not so thrilling for them. It also helped me draw the pictures for the -book accordingly and edit the text with their reactions in mind. Due to -a privacy agreement, I couldn’t record or use any data from the workshop -but I made some helpful observations from my time there. This loop is all about -the observations I made during the workshops and the decisions I made, -according to the results.
-The first workshop I planned consisted of two main parts that made up -20 minutes. The first 10 minutes we read Bee Within (attached in the -appendix) together in a circle and the last 10 minutes we played little -improvisation games, focused on the three main characters in the story -(the bee, the kid and the tree). I made three groups and gave these -groups the three characters. I asked them to embody a character -throughout the workshop and be loyal to it. Each group of three had 1 -minute on the stage to silently improvise their characters. They were to -use one sentence if they wanted to speak.
-During the first part, I couldn’t observe as I was busy reading but -their teacher kindly took notes during this time, regarding the -children’ reactions to parts of the story. I inserted the bees and trees -narrative to the reading by tossing the paper I had in my hand and -picking up a new one as I kept reading the bees and trees story. This -was crucial because I wanted to see if this multiple stories in one -concept would be confusing for kids. The teacher told me that they were -excited about my gesture of juggling papers as I seemingly read one -story. They were intrigued and confused at first but they did keep up -with the storyline and understood all. Her notes basically said they -were very focused and less interested in the kids journey. They really -liked the bee and were a bit confused with the tree.
-There were 12 international kids and 3 of them didn’t want to join -the workshop, they wanted to observe. I told them that they could paint -and draw what they see. The drawings they made were of their classmates -acting as trees or bees. They drew their classmate with a stinger and -the other was of a classmate as a tree with his hands wide open as he -was performing.
-What struck me most on the second part of the workshop was how these -kids used the room so freely and in relation to their characters. -Because we read the story before the improvisation games, some of their -characters were influenced by how it is in the story we read. Next -workshop, I am planning to not tell the story but to talk about it -before and give context. This is because I want to see how their -understanding changes without a limitation of a story.
-Bees in the classroom that day were all very active and they used -chairs, tables and windows to position themselves in a higher -perspective. Children who played the kid were usually standing closer to -the trees and looked very calm. Trees were all very different. One of -the kids used postits as leaves. Some of them didn’t have leaves because -it is winter. Trees didn’t move at all and the bees were buzzing all -around. “The kid” usually sat near the tree, on the tree (as in the -other performers’ lap or hugged them).
-Overall only 2 groups used the option to say a sentence which were,
-“I want to go on an adventure”
-“I don’t wanna leave Gray(the tree)”
This was a good feedback for me because I realized they are very -perceptive of actions and facial expressions rather than words. The -workshop we did in the studio with XPUB 2 students was harder than the -session with the kids because everyone felt so restricted to obligations -and were not comfortable to let go of bodily control. No one actually -attempted in using objects from the room which is a huge difference with -the kids because they drew on their faces, used plastic bags as wings -for the bee and made sounds with their mouths as trees.
-The next workshop was to discover how improv would work without -reading the story first. This workshop was fruitful because it helped me -realize how much information or guidance I have to offer for children in -order for them to be comfortable to participate and interact without -confusion. We made a circle and I summarized the story to the kids, -acting in the middle of the circle. This broke the ice completely -because I was a part of the workshop and they thought I was funny. For -the next part, I divided the group in three and assigned a character to -them. After this, I asked them to decide on an attitude, pop in the -middle and tell or act out their character. I went first and they -followed easily. They were not under the influence of the story so the -performances were different but they still got influenced by each other, -which in my opinion is inevitable. Some of the kids were buzzing/running -around, the “kids” were walking around, acting like they are playing -which I found very interesting. Some trees were small some were mighty -and old. It was helpful to see the different attributions they gave to -the characters.
-After the circle session, they separated in three groups: the kids, -the bees and the trees. I asked each group to come up, walk around -randomly, embodying the character they chose. Then as I rang the bell, I -asked them to change the character. I asked them to be a busy, tired, -injured, happy and scared bee one by one. They kept walking randomly and -acted these feelings out. For the “kids”, I asked them to be angry, sad, -scared, and curious. For the trees I asked them to be wise, mad, funny -and happy. The results were amazing. They adapted very quickly to the -changing of emotions which showed me that this age gap was good to work -with. The trees stopped walking as I changed the emotions and this was -an affirmation to not animate the tree with movement but more with -changing of color and tiny animations. They mostly used arms and face -expressions to show the emotions, some of them ducked or made sounds. As -I said mad, one of the kids ran and put her red jacket on. This made me -think about using color to show emotions for the tree. It was good to -see that they weren’t scared or discouraged by negative emotions as -well. We ended the workshop by drawing our characters. It was nice to -see them own their imaginary characters enough to draw them with joy. -There is a -broken knot here because I changed my mind about adding motional -elements to the tree character. Kids seemed to see the tree as -stationary.
-The last workshop was dedicated to discovering the sound aspect. The -tree in the story speaks in verses so I chose one verse and -read/performed it in a circle to begin with. Then I gave them some -instruments: a drum, a bell, aluminum folio, a balloon and a bubble -wrap. I asked for a few volunteers and they made sound effects as I read -the verse very slowly. This went good and I saw that they like to -dramatize the sounds and make them funny or unexpected. They used the -bubble wrap to make sounds for snowing or aluminum folio for the -volcano. They had great fun but I think I made a mistake by making a few -kids do foley at the same time because they didn’t know how to take -turns and were hesitant at first. Then quite impressively, they made -their own system where they took turns to make effects for each -sentence.
-Then I made four groups of three. 3 kids as actors and 3 kids as -foley actors. They buddied up and made short scenes where one group made -sounds effects to the others acting on stage. This was the best part of -this workshop because they could lead the actors with the sounds they -made or vice versa. This I think is very important because it shows that -they like to be a part of or be effective to the story itself. They were -very creative in using the objects in the room and turning them into a -tool for sound. They enjoyed to foley the bee and the other characters -not so much. Which showed me that I should focus on the sound of the bee -in the prototype.
-Overall, the workshops were very helpful for me to understand where -to focus on as I develop. I realized that some of the sound, color and -movement animations I planned were too complicated and I decided to make -them more simplistic. I decided to animate the tree with only color -because I was effected by this one participant who took the red jacket -to represent the tree was mad. For the bee I decided to focus on sound -more. For the kid I decided to use more visual animations to make it -more interesting.
-One other thing the workshops helped me with is the multiple stories -I am planning to tell in one narrative. The book I have has two side -quest/stories so it nice to see that kids weren’t confused with these -narratives. I decided to make the story of the tree as a click game -where the lines appear by clicking and the bee’s story through a text -based game. I wanted to use click game with the tree because it seemed -like they needed more stimulation to be interested in that story and I -though a ‘reveal the story’ click game could keep them interested. For -the bee, knowing they like the character, I wanted to make it more like -a game to give the kids a chance and autonomy to be a part of the story -itself. 2 6 -9
-The differences of these exercises in WINK than the already existing -interactive e-book platforms The interactive e-book apps existing today, -made especially for children, are quite similar in both format and -purpose. If we take a look at Bookr, Piboco, and Kotobee, we can see -they seek a new way to tell a story but have one mode of reading. The -stories are linear and can be read once, without side quests. This is -the main difference with what I am trying to design. Wink acts as a tool -to play with and choose paths. The story isn’t linear in the traditional -way where you interact with the pictures and finish the book but there -are side stories to the main story that they can discover or choose not -to. I think this is a solid difference. This makes it a playable -narrative, different from a book.
-This prototype is a good start to see how far I can get with the -interactive elements and side stories without confusing or discouraging -the children. There are many other aspects that can be implemented to -this design such as writing elements and drawing but for the meantime, -also in correspondence with the workshops, I choose to test the sound -and image along with one main and two small narratives.
-For future prototypes, I envision space to draw and write as a -contribution to the story and maybe turning Wink into a hybrid format -with more autonomous features. For me, at this point, it’s valuable and -essential to see if my technique of combining narratives is working or -not.
-12 12 -12 After many loops of -thought, we are here at the standing end of the thesis. There is room -for more loops and knots in the future to secure this string of thought -but for now, we have come to the dock and rest ashore.
-Reading this thesis with a string, using concrete thinking as a -technique to go through a research and text was a helpful exercise for -me and helped me mark my thoughts and ideas. The overarching theme of -knots and experimental approach to modes of reading was valuable for me -to share and try as an enthusiastic young writer. I like that I asked -the reader to interact with the thesis and follow paths accordingly.
-It was enlightening to see the results of working with kids and be -able to see from their point of view and alter everything according to -these encounters. Using CCI and Multiliteracy theory as a guide to -approach the design and prototype was helpful in understanding how to -approach and tackle the desire of making something for children.
-Now from where I stand, I feel more rooted and have a clearer idea of -what works and doesn’t work. Some features that I think would work very -well like the choice of writing didn’t go as planned because multiple -narratives is already too much. I realized I underestimated the effect -of introducing a new media to children. This is why I decided to take it -step by step with the interactivity.
-Taking a step to make Wink and using the story I wrote and feel is -important in my personal history as a prototype was a breakthrough. I -feel like my interest and desire to discover new ways of writing, -reading and experiencing literature is ongoing and it was a beautiful -journey so far. I am looking forward to making more knots on this long -and mysterious string at hand.
-Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2009) ‘“multiliteracies”: New Literacies, -new learning’, Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3), pp. 164–195. -doi:10.1080/15544800903076044.
-Dettore, E. (2002) “Children’s emotional GrowthAdults’ role as -emotional archaeologists,” Childhood education, 78(5), pp. 278–281. doi: -10.1080/00094056.2002.10522741.
-Ingold, T. (2015) The life of lines.London, England: Routledge.
-Lawrence, R. L. and Paige, D. S. (2016) “What our ancestors knew: -Teaching and learning through storytelling:What our ancestors knew: -Teaching and learning through storytelling,” New directions for adult -and continuing education, 2016(149), pp. 63–72. doi: -10.1002/ace.20177.
-Papert, S. and Papert, S. A. (2020) Mindstorms (revised): Children, -computers, and powerful ideas. London, England: Basic Books.
-Ryan, M.-L. (2009) “From narrative games to playable stories: Toward -a poetics of interactive narrative,” StoryWorlds A Journal of Narrative -Studies, 1(1), pp. 43–59. doi: 10.1353/stw.0.0003.
-Smeets, D. and Bus, A. (2013) “Picture Storybooks Go Digital: Pros -and Cons,” in Quality Reading Instruction in the Age of Common Core -Standards. International Reading Association, pp. 176–189.
-Strohecker, C. (ed.) (1978) Why knot? MIT.
-The Effect of Multimodality in Increasing Motivation and -Collaboration among 4th CSE EFL Students (no date).
-Turkle, S. (ed.) (2014) Evocative objects: Things we think with. MIT -Press.
-Urton, M. M. &. (2018) The khipu code: the knotty mystery of the -Inkas’ 3D records, aeon. Available at: https:// -aeon.co/ideas/the-khipu-code-the-knotty-mystery-of-the-inkas-3d-records.
-Vega, N. (2022) Codes in Knots. Sensing Digital Memories, The Whole -Life. Available at: https://wholelife.hkw.de/ -codes-in-knots-sensing-digital-memories/.
-Thank you Marloes de Valk, for your enlightening feedbacks and ideas. -Thank you Michael Murtaugh, Manetta Berends, Joseph Knierzinger, Leslie -Robbins and Steve Rushton for sharing your time and knowledge with me -throughout these years.
-Thank you XPUB friends for funny, hectic and memorable moments we -made together.
-Thanks to my family and especially Kemal, my brother, who supported -me in my studies and encouraged me to do better, always…
-So long and thanks for all the fish!
-Wink is a prototype for an interactive picture book platform. This -platform aims to make reading into a mindfull and thought provoking -process by using interactive and playful elements, multiple stories -within one narrative and sound elements. Especially today where -consumerism and low attention span is a rising issue especially amongst -young readers, this was an important task to tackle. The thought of Wink -emerged to find a more sustainable and creative way of reading for -elementary school children.
- -Working as a children’s literature editor for years, I came to a -realisation that picture books were turning into another object that -kids read and consume on daily basis.
- -Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new books -constantly or were tired of rereading the same book.
- - - - -As a young person in the publishing sector, I believe there should be -more options for children as there is for adults; such as ebooks, -audiobooks etc. But moreover a “book” that can be redefined, reread or -be interacted with… So I revisited an old story I wrote, translated to -English and called it, “Bee Within”.
-Bee Within, is a story about grief/memory and it is based on my -experiences throughout the years. I erased it, rewrote it, edited it, -destroyed it multiple times over the past years; simultaneously with new -experiences of loss. In the end, I believe the story turned out to be an -ode to remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or -an ode to the fear of forgetting which I now think is a great and sweet -battle between death and life. I think it is an important subject to -touch upon, especially for children dealing with trauma in many parts of -the world.
- - - -Over the past two years, experimenting with storytelling techniques, -interactivity options and workshops with children and adults, around -reading and doing various exercises on Bee Within, I improved the story -to be a more playful and interactive one which can be re-read, re-played -and eventually re-formed non digitally to be reachable for all -children.
- - - - - - -Stephen Kerr
-⊞
-Thesis submitted to the Department of Experimental Publishing, Piet -Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, in partial fulfilment of the -requirements for the final examination for the degree of Master of Arts -in Fine Art & ⊞: Experimental Publishing.
-Adviser: Marloes de Valk
-Second Reader: Joseph Knierzinger
-Word count: 7828 words
This symbol represents design in this writing in an attempt to avoid -the assumed meaning of the word and examine it as something unknown, to -mystify it, to examine its structure. The label ⊞ is a functional part -of a belief system involving order, structure, and rationality and I -want to break it. Removing the label is part of loosening the object, -making it avilable to transition (Berlant, 2022).
- - - - - - - - -This document is a collection of fragments exploring beliefs about -labour in the creative industries, in particular graphic ⊞. Each -fragment focusses on the social, cultural, political, spiritual or -religious aspects of these beliefs through an ethnographic lens. They -record, celebrate and question the meaning that ⊞ers give to their -actions and how those meanings affect the world they live in. And it’s -about how ⊞ers feel when we live with these beliefs: we feel a bit funny -and I want to talk about it.
-I use various modes of address and different lenses to further -fragment the definition of ⊞. The origin of the word thesis is to set or -to put, but I am trying to show you something liquid that can’t be -placed but shimmers and disappears through the sand. I document some ⊞ -activities, in my own work and the work and writings of others who -identify with the label of ⊞er. The writing dissolves and reintegrates -definitions of ⊞ from different voices to show the multiplicity of -beliefs from practitioners, and to explore what it means to acknowledge -these beliefs beside eachother: the tensions and harmonies, some -lineages and some breaks. What is going on here in this thing we call -⊞?
-This is a collection of stories about living life with particular -working conditions, located at certain points in social, economic and -cultural webs. In my practice-based research I gather and tell these -stories through (auto)ethnographic methods: documenting how ⊞er’s work, -conducting interviews, improvising communal performances and exploratory -tool-making. This document collates and reflects on this research.
-The precarity of working in the creative industries, in particular as -a freelancer or within a small studio, induces anxiety. There is a -belief that the ⊞er as freelancer is empowered by their autonomy, but in -fact the ⊞er as worker is trapped by it. ⊞ is work and this work is -believed to be inherently good. Work in our society is understood as “an -individual moral practice and collective ethical obligation” which -shapes the worker’s identity in positive ways (Weeks, 2011). The ⊞er -believes they are a skilled or talented worker, someone who possesses -spatial awareness, time management skills, and the capacity to carry out -work effectively and efficiently.
-⊞ers are entangled in the Protestant religious underpinnings of the -European work ethic (Pater, 2022). ⊞ is seen as a vocation which -expresses and creates the ⊞er’s identity, and the process or its results -make a valuable contribution to society. People understand the world and -interact with it smoothly, thanks to the work of ⊞ers. ⊞ers pick the -right materials to save the planet and increase efficiency and whatever -else it is people find important. But the ⊞er becomes anxious despite -meeting these goals and becoming this person. In reality, the ⊞er is a -bot, the ⊞er is software. Value is extracted from their time, creativity -and expertise which makes them stressed. ⊞ers are a creative cloud, a -service to be tapped into, a cpu being run too hot. There is something -to be learnt from the revelation that being replaced by machines proves -we were being treated as machines all along.
-There was a belief that ⊞ could be a crystal goblet (Warde, 1913), -something unbiased, clear and, in more recent versions of the theory, -serving the context it fits within. But the foundations of this belief -in functionality and rationality dont seem to come themselves from -something functional or rational.
-De Stijl members, such as Piet Mondriaan and Theo van Doesburg -(Figure 6), in their 1917 manifesto described a “new consciousness of -the age […] directed towards the universal”. There was a drive towards -universal standardisation or pureness of culture from the rich white -men. Purity is a concept that turns up a lot in Mondriaan’s writings, eg -Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art (1917). They claimed a shared -spirit was driving this universalisation. A later paragraph of the -manifesto is translated into english as:
-In this translation it appears the authors believed in an emerging -consciousness of the age, something collective which would bring an -international unity. The members of De Stijl were neither aligning -themselves with the capitalists or socialists but believed in an inner -connection between those who were joined in the spiritual body of the -new world (De Stijl, Manifesto III, 1921). The word intellectual, or -geestelijk in the original Dutch, can also be translated as “spiritual, -mental, ecclesiastical, clerical, sacred, ghostly, pneumatic”. The -choice to translate as intellectual seems to be the most rational -interpretation of this sentence, an effort to make the theories of De -Stijl appear more materialist without the spiritual element. Compare -with this translation:
-In this translation it is clearer that the members of De Stijl saw a -link between the effects of what they made materially and their attempts -to be fighting spiritually against the domination of individualism. I -care about this story because of how it contextualises contemporary ⊞ -practice. Is contemporary ⊞ practice still involved in this spiritual -battle? Did the new consciousness of 1917 survive the past century, did -it procreate? Can aesthetics have generational trauma? William Morris, -Constructivism, De Stijl, Bauhaus, International Style, International -Typographic Style, Swiss Style, then what happened. Modernist artists -had spiritual beliefs, and again I care about these people from a -hundred years ago because of the effect they have on the present.
-Imagine I could trace this thought from Mondriaan all the way to -myself, wow, cool thesis. Swiss style became corporate identity ⊞ and -encouraged minimalism in ⊞. 21st century Flat ⊞, such as Metro ⊞ -language from Microsoft and Material ⊞ (Google, 2014), claim direct -descendance from the International Typographic Style and that pretty -much brings us up to date. I wonder about the use of the word Material -in Google’s ⊞ strategy, I wonder about the ghostly absence of the -geestelijk fight of De Stijl. Is Google’s choice of name another -example, as with the subtle change in the translation above, that the -spiritual element is no longer as important a part of the ⊞er’s -worldview as it was a hundred years ago?
-Conor Clarke is a Director of ⊞ Factory, independent Irish ⊞ -agency based in Dublin. His work has featured in international -publications such as Who’s Who in Graphic ⊞, Graphis, Novum -Gebrauchsgrafik, and the New York Art Directors Club Annual. He was the -recipient of the Catherine Donnelly Lifetime Achievement Award for his -contribution to ⊞ in Ireland and is the Course Director of ⊞ West, an -international summer ⊞ school located in the beautiful village of -Letterfrack on the West Coast of Ireland. (⊞west.eu, 2023)
-Why not choose a spiral or a circle if you dream of ⊞ers as shamans?
-Why the grid of squares? There are strong links beween ⊞ and
-mathematics, Josef Muller-Brockmann’s Grid Systems (Figure 2)
-for example or Karl Gerstner’s ⊞ing Programmes (1964). I read
-these ⊞ theorists as you might comparatively read religious texts. What
-were or are the beliefs of the authors and their audiences?
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
These texts present a worldview where ⊞ can be mathematical, -objective or problem-solving. In Muller-Brockman’s text the focus is on -the formal qualities of the ⊞ in particular the use of grids and -typographic systems. Gerstner’s focus is more on the effect of the ⊞, -and the ability of ⊞ to solve a problem. Rationality and creativity are -presented as proportional to eachother. He makes space for the -intellectual by pushing aside feelings.
-The graphic ⊞er is presented as a functional actor in society who -makes the world better. Gerstner seems to be implying that creative ⊞ -comes from following the intellect and some rational cause and effect -process. I find it interesting that ⊞ claims this rational basis in the -same historical period when science and mathematics, its supposed -foundations, became much less rational and predictable, for example in -chaos theory. It makes me think that the rationality serves some other -purpose.
-Why do ⊞ers believe in using a grid to present the written word, and -where did this belief come from and how did it develop? It can be -materially traced back to Guthenberg and metal type but that’s boring. -Magic squares have been used in astrology books and grimoires throughout -history (Figure 3). French poet Stéphane Mallarmé is sometimes quoted as -a precursor to modernist typography (Muller-Brockmann, 1981). Why did -Steve McCaffrey include the manifesto of De Stijl with CARNIVAL -(1973)? De Stijl is best known for its painters and architects, and -theories from both of these fields affected later ⊞ theories. But they -also were poets and had literary theories similar to the german -expressionists. Man’s attempt to find oneness with the whole of creation -through a cosmic hybris.
-The developments of the written word and its relationship to form in -the 20th century is very much a part of the history of ⊞. I care about -this story because it affects contemporary practitioners. I believe -there is something magical in graphic composition and the layout of -typography, something that can’t be grasped in the words alone. They’re -non-canonical for ⊞ers but how have people who put words on pages like -Mallarmé and McCaffrey influenced my beliefs about the written word? -What makes one thing fit in the category of art, another ⊞ and yet -another concrete poetry?
-This autoethnographic annotation attempts to really miss as many -cultural and technical cues as possible. It’s watching the ⊞er, me, and -being totally mystified by their behaviour.
-I wasn’t trying to generate longing, I was trying to make an annual -report. It was a corporate job I was working on, a nice one to have -because it’s fairly well paid and not too complicated. A bit boring and -kinda repetitive, but you can just put your headphones on and get stuck -into it. I was pretty happy with the results in the end, but for sure -not the type of work you’re supposed to be proud of as a ⊞er.
-And of course Piet Zwart’s (Figure 8) famous electrical cable -catalogues. ⊞ is just work, chill. Is a ⊞er a user or a server? Maybe ⊞ -is an example of our general belief in this dichotomy not quite making -sense or fitting reality. The ⊞er is working for whom? Themselves? Their -clients?
-This quote relates to freelancing generally in some way, and -deconstructing the work or worker. Are workers things? Yeah, kinda. ⊞ers -don’t have super powers, contrary to some beliefs within the industry. -For example on what⊞cando.com it is suggested that we should “re⊞ -everything!”. Let’s actually not do that. ⊞ers are mostly just humans -working on computers like so many other bots. ⊞ers try to create -clarity, to assign meaning and understand: “Confusion and clutter are -failures of ⊞, not attributes of information” (Tufte, 1990, p.53). What -if the sounds of my fingers and my keyboard are not noise but music: we -are quasi-robots and maybe its good to listen to our little Taylorist -finger tappings and see what else is being said.
-Distinctive Repetition is an award-winning graphic ⊞ studio based in -Dublin, Ireland. Principal ⊞er and Institute of Creative Advertising and -⊞ past-president, Rossi McAuley, is joined in this interview by ⊞ers -Jenny Leahy and Ben Nagle. This interview was carried out around a table -with the interviewer in the bottom right corner (◲) and the three -members of the studio in the other three seats.
-Before meeting them in person, I mailed a small booklet to the
-interviewees entitled Enthusiasm to give context to the
-conversation. The word enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or
-possession by a god. The booklet recounted three mystical dreams René
-Descartes had which he credited as a moment of inspiration or enthusiasm
-that influenced his later work on rationalism, and related to his work
-on geometry and grids (Figure 4). As well as the content of the dreams,
-the booklet described their relevance:
-
Descartes felt that interpreting his dreams was an appropriate method -to develop a rational theory of skepticism, which led to some of the -philosophical foundations of modern scientific and mathematical -theories. The booklet also drew parallels with Martin Luther’s -scrupulous doubt, “Only God and certain madmen have no doubts!”. Like -Descartes, Luther’s new theories helped to give the basis for the -structure of thought for the following centuries. These stories were -presented together to direct the focus of the conversation towards -belief, rationalism and grids. The fact that rationalism is a belief -system, as pervasive as it may be, and suggestively hinting through its -relationship with grids that there -is a relationship with ⊞.
-They seem so sad it hurts to hear them talk about the oozing. Are you -supposed to put jelly in the fridge, it just needs time to settle right? -My nana used to put the jelly in the freezer. There’s an instability in -how they talk in the interview for sure, or more a desire for stability. -Was it ever stable? Do you really want it to be? Its gooey and not the -way it should be but its still jelly and thats fun and its probably -delicious. Their hands are there as something that is for grasping and -jelly is there as something that can’t be grasped. Is it terrifying, are -they resigned to it?
-I can’t explain the angst they are feeling but I can describe it -because I’ve felt it too. It feels like I’m having a heart attack. It -feels like I’m about to black out. It got to a stage where I couldn’t -talk to other people without being completely frozen jelly. It is the -feeling of lists and lists and lists. It’s the feeling of never -resolved, all the time. We believe we are busy and under pressure and -struggling to survive. That makes us anxious and stressed.
-The grids are not being used, the grids are useless. Drawers full of -them, all useless. Whats the point of sitting here in this studio. They -dont fit, they dont make sense, they’re trying to order something that -can’t be ordered. Or possibly shouldnt be ordered, the ordering is -misplaced and there is a human urge to stop, just stop.
-Adolf Loos was a modernist architect whose writings such as -Ornament and Crime in 1910 influenced modernist ideals of -functionalism and minimalism. He rejected ornament and favoured the use -of good materials which showed “God’s own wonder”. I wonder what is the -relation of Loos’ ideas to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the -Spirit of Capitalism (Weber, 1905) that was published five years -earlier. Work as a duty which benefits the individual and society as a -whole, do ⊞ers still believe this today? I like taking Loos’ quote out -of context here, instead in the context of the feelings of the -interviewees, revolting the supposedly modern cause they are working -with.
-But also Loos was found guilty of pedophelia and it feels kind of -aggressive to include his voice here at all. This is part of the point -of what I’m getting at: there’s this tradition of ⊞ and so many parts of -it make me uncomfortable or really disgusted and I don’t know what to do -with all that. I just wanted to go to art school and draw circles and -maybe thats the problem and sure simple materials are pretty, but yeah -jelly is exactly what it feels like, you’re right.
-Graphic ⊞ is often performed by paid professionals in what is known -as the creative industry: as a profession and an activity, ⊞ is -considered to be creative. There are some positive preconceptions about -the creative industry and what it does, but I see it as an assimilation -of cultural activity into a neoliberal economic framework. Creativity in -this context is used to reproduce the status quo and and grow capital -(Mould, 2018). But maybe we can profit from examining the margins -created by this terminology: ⊞ is less functional than it seems. People -in creative jobs are stressed and this is reflected in their dreams. -Workers have rights and those rights are systemically undermined. Being -self employed or part of an independent studio brings anxiety and -challenges. Some ⊞ers try to structure the world around them and like -things to be neat and tidy, which makes us uncomfortable existing in -precarious work conditions.
-The Roman grid was a land measurement method used in the Roman -colonies for example in the Po Valley (Figure 7). With a surveying tool -called the groma, the colonisers would divide the land from north to -south and east to west, resulting in a square grid of roads and land. At -Orange, France, a cadaster has been found which shows the division of -land in a geometric way, helping the colonisers to privatise the land -and allocate it to roman veterans (Figure 1). The name groma, as well as -referring to the surveying tool, describes the central point of the -grid, the origin. Is making grids just a way to control and colonise? Do -all grids have origins? In Descartes’ use of the grid there was also an -attempt to order and structure chaos:
-A part of the belief systems of ⊞ers is that the world is chaotic and -their role is to order it or even simplify it. This belief may be -inherited from a wider cultural belief of the same general drive: to -order and simplify. Humans try to make sense of the world. ⊞ers make -sense of ⊞ briefs and structure them into something understandable to an -audience or target market.
-Is there an answer to this question, do they know the answer to this -question? I get the impression they have a gut feeling about the answer -but are afraid of it.
-When reviewing the AIGA Next conference in Denver Colorado, 2008, ⊞ -critic Adrian Shaughnessy tells a joke:
-This joke is funny because in the setup where it is easy to tell them -apart, the reader should assume the beer fans are drunk and therefore -raucous, misbehaving or maybe just having a lot of fun. But then he -unexpectedly suggests that they were in fact more serious than the ⊞ers. -This gives the reader a problem to address: is he claiming the ⊞ers were -even more outrageous than what we assumed of the beer fans, or the beer -fans were in fact taking their own conference seriously? As both seem -unbelievable the true funniness of the joke hits home in it’s implied -meaning: ⊞ers are boring as fuck.
-⊞ers interact with the computer through keyboard and mouse usage. -Compared to other computer users, my interaction involves lots of -pressing of function keys, something common with other technical -computer users and not so much with other creative workers. What is -creative in the repetitive and low level operation of a computer? Is a -pianist creative? What’s the difference, I think they are being creative -in different ways. ⊞ers and other specialists like video editors or -photo colourists are using a computer as a tool, the musician is -performing on an instrument. Maybe this distinction doesn’t have to be -so clear though. I am questioning this here because I think there is -some fairly complicated belief system about artists and their tools that -has had an effect on ⊞ers. ⊞ gives itself a history of conflict and -harmony between artisans and industrialisation, for example in Bauhaus -founder Walter Gropius claiming William Morris as a precursor (Bayer, -1975).
-I think it is important to show that ⊞ers are workers with tools, -their repetitive tasks are a form of labour as are their creative -processes. In the annotation opposite my aim is to mystify the manual -and digital labour, rather than demystify the creative ideation -part.
-Following this annotation I made a digital tool to record all -keystrokes on my computer. Then I printed them out with a pen plotter to -celebrate the labour that had taken place. It took several hours to plot -the keylogging data from just a few minutes of the ⊞er’s labour.
-Like many other ⊞ers, I was trained to only use Adobe products. I try -to switch to open source alternatives because I believe in using -software developed and maintained by a community rather than a private -company, and as a worker believe I should be in control of my tools. In -this annotation, I was trying to ⊞ and export a single page document in -LibreOffice, an open source desktop publishing software. The -documentation reflects on my frustrations and struggles to switch to a -workflow that relies less on proprietary software for print ⊞.
-Proprietary software from big mean tech corporations is based on a -model of society and economy where a few people own things and everybody -else has a hard time. I believe the internet gives an opportunity for -knowledge (including software code) to be shared. I like the idea of -modifying my tools, this is easier technically and legally with open -source software. I would prefer my tools to be developed by me and my -peers. These are some of my beliefs as a ⊞er about my work and my tools. -They’re a bit idealistic but also optimistic in a good way.
-Transitioning to open source software sucks. I spent years learning -other tools and its like starting all over again. There is a dual -commitment in my beliefs about how my tools should be built and my -desire to get things done in a reasonable amount of time. My action of -fumbling with open source programs reflects my belief that they are -worthwhile, and my action of still using Adobe Acrobat Pro reflects my -belief that there are better things to do with my time than restarting -software when it crashes again. Some parts of graphic ⊞ have become so -entangled in capitalist ways of working, it can be immobilising to try -to act without engaging with the icky parts. Our dependencies on -ecosystems of tools and workflows are not enforced, but it can be -difficult to exist outside them, or more specifically, beside them.
-It’s so obviously not true. The conflict of wanting to change my
-workflow with wanting to complete my work tasks efficiently doesn’t keep
-me up at night, but it is important to me and other ⊞ers. Open source ⊞
-software is unreliable and unstandardised, it takes longer to do things
-and then when they are nearly done the program crashes and I’ve lost all
-my work. The standards of open source software have not been widely
-embraced by the ⊞ community. To fit into a workflow with peers you have
-to use Adobe products. Even web ⊞ers who engage with open standards can
-find the need to work with proprietary software, because these tools are
-deeply integrated into the workflows of their peers. Can you send me
-that in a normal file format please, I can’t open it.
-
Similarly to the software changes, this documentation of my practice -sees me choosing open source fonts. I’m really ambivalent about this. I -do like the idea of being able to modify a font when needed, but I have -done so regardless of whether the font licence allows it. I’m more -comfortable ethically with a font being open source. Buying fonts is -expensive for freelancers and small studios, and open source fonts are -more commonly free of charge. Many ⊞ers pirate fonts rather than buy -them, or are locked into a font subscription. In Adobe software, Adobe -subscription fonts don’t load unless a connection to the creative cloud -is verified.
-For my work, fonts are also a tool, one that I need to practice with
-and one that needs to be suitable for the job. So changing font is a
-little like a ceramicist changing clay. Work Sans is good for online use
-because Google Fonts serves it as a web font for free, the open source
-font I want to use is served most reliably by a large corporation I have
-issues with. This balancing act of practical considerations and
-idealistic beliefs is kind of ironic and reminds me again that my values
-can be inconsistent and to me a bit funny.
-
-The use of fonts as tools is full of tensions from ⊞ers’ belief systems.
-Like many ⊞ers, I want to use open source fonts. I also want to use
-fonts that will load quickly from a content delivery network for web
-projects. I also want fonts to be cheap and well made and I am
-interested in fonts that are free. The internet is full of illegal and
-pirated copies of fonts that are not supposed to be free of charge. I
-sometimes receive or am asked to send font files outside of their
-licence. I dont have a huge amount of respect for some of these
-licences. But at the same time font ⊞ers are my friends and colleagues,
-I have ⊞ed fonts. What does a ⊞er’s actual use of fonts say about their
-beliefs around copyright? Do ⊞ers believe in intellectual property? What
-value do ⊞ers, specifically typographers, see in their work and that of
-their close peers, the font ⊞ers, and how does copyright relate to these
-values?
Hey Conor, hope you’re keeping well these days? I’ve been going -through the interview from back in December and was wondering if you -would mind me including this piece in my thesis:
-I guess the thesis has become a lot about ⊞ers and the beliefs they -have about their work, and its effect on the world around them. I was -really interested in your answer to this question because I think it -shows something a lot of other ⊞ers including me feel too; some desire -to structure the world around us, to have things be resolved, organised, -fitting together. And not just a desire but maybe even a belief that -this is really what our job is for? Maybe I’m reading too much into it, -but to me this maybe hints at part of the reason we’re am drawn to a -field like graphic ⊞? Curious to know what you think.
-And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im -totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.
-Thanks,
-Stephen
Yo ◱, hope all’s good with you these days?
-I’ve been piecing together the interviews from December and I’d love -to include this section about your dream if that’s alright with you? It -seems to get at something I feel as well: this system that we’ve built -up and these drawers full of grids, sometimes there’s an angst or -unresolved feeling that they’re not going to work, they dont fit as an -answer to the problem.
-For me I think it might be something to do with order and chaos if -that doesn’t seem too much of a stretch, I’ve this need to structure -things and fit them in a form, and the dream seems to get at that fear -that it’s not going to work. The grid is solid but reality turns out to -be jelly at best, but very often custard and little bits of tinned -strawberry and soggy sponge.
-I assumed the dream is about the pressure or anxiety of running a -studio? I wonder for you, do you see it more relating to the work itself -or the management around that, or are these things that you consider -separate from eachother? I’m curious to know if you think of it the same -way, or maybe it’s something else to you and I’m projecting :)
-And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im -totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.
-Thanks,
-Stephen
Hey ◳, hope youre good!
-I’m thinking of putting this section of the interview we did back in -december in my thesis. Is that ok with you? I want to include it because -I think it really captures some emotions that ⊞ers feel quite often, -some stress or anxiety or an attempt to grab onto something more stable. -But I also find it really interesting that you were talking about jelly -slipping through your hands, any idea why you didn’t say sand or mud or -gold but jelly? To me it seems like a fun and cute material to pick, -even though its a bit lumpy and maybe even kinda gross sometimes.
-I’ve been really interested in foods made of gelatin recently and -there’s something so mesmerising about them even though they’re never -the most appetising, and for sure unnatural or over-processed. Maybe you -just said it off hand, but it makes sense to me as well about being a -⊞er in some way? Something enjoyable and lovable about the jelly despite -its weird unnatural wiggliness. Really interested to know if you have -any thoughts or maybe you meant something completely different.
-And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im -totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.
-Thanks,
-Stephen
The title of this document, ⊞, was borrowed from the mathematical -theory of free probability where it symbolises free additive -convolution, a way of relating terms that is more nuanced than -traditional ideas of cause and effect. In the fragmented look at ⊞ in -this document, which we’ve reached the end of now, I hope to have done -something similar: a convoluted addition, freely placing things together -to be held for a moment.
-⊞ involves a wide range of activities; typing, drawing grids, -communicating with other specialists, quoting, drinking coffee, working -out of office hours, having panic attacks, arguing, building myths, -personal expression, keyboard shortcuts, dreaming, rubbing paper and -exhaling, tilting your head and looking at the screen. We have examined -when and how these actions happen, and more importantly, why they do, -according to the ⊞ers carrying them out.
-These stories were gathered through various modes of describing, -listening and understanding. It is important that these are different -from conventional ways to frame the discipline, as I think a shift in -viewpoint is needed. So not “⊞er as Author” (Rock, 1996), “⊞er as -salesperson” (Pater, 2021) but instead ⊞er “sitting at the machine, -thinking” (Brodine, 1990) or “⊞er without qualities” (Lorusso, 2023). -The fragments have been situated and subjective rather than objective, -they have been outside of categories because the categories are broken -anyway.
-Last night I dreamt I was standing on a hill in the Swiss Alps and -you were there and all of our friends and the hill was covered in little -fields but not like a grid like lots of different shapes and sizes and -the sky opened in two and a ring of light so bright it nearly blinded me -came out of my chest and yours and they all merged into eachother and -everyone opened their mouths to sing and the air was filled with so many -sounds and one ⊞er walked up to me and smiled and said
-“I dunno, I’m more confused than ever”
and they said
and then you said
“a funny feeling its a bit weird”
“I’m just trying to touch it gently and acknowledge it”
“live the gap between where you are and where you could -be”
and then I was them and you were me and we laughed and fell over and -the hill turned into a bright pink jelly ocean the whole sky was this -sort of green-blue and we all surfed wobbly waves and some people’s -surfboards were Quiksilver and some they had built themselves from a git -repository but the sun was a walnut and it was definitely moving but I -couldnt tell was it rising or setting but it didn’t matter to us the -surf was great and everything smelled like magnolias.
-Thanks to Ada, Aglaia, Ben, Chae, Conor, Irmak, Jenny, Joseph, kamo, -Leslie, Manetta, Marloes, Michael, Rossi.
-Bayer, H. et al. (1975) Bauhaus, 1919-1928. New -York: Museum of Modern Art.
-Berlant, L. (2022) On the Inconvenience of Other People, -Durham: Duke University Press.
-Brodine, K. (1990) Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking: -Poems. Seattle: Red Letter Press.
-creativechair (2018) ‘Michael Bierut’ [Interview], Creative -Chair. Available at: creativechair.org/michael-bierut (Accessed: 15 -April 2024).
-Design West (2024) Design West. Available at: -designwest.eu (Accessed: 16 April 2024).
-Driessen, C. P. G. (2020). Descartes was here; In Search of the
-Origin of Cartesian Space’. In R. Koolhaas (Ed.), Countryside, A
-Report (pp. 274-297)
-
-Gates, B (2004) Remarks by Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software
-Architect, Microsoft Corporation [speech transcript] University of
-Illinois Urbana-Champaign February 24, 2004 Available at:
-web.archive.org/web/
-20040607040830/https://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2004/02-24UnivIllinois.asp
-(Accessed: 13 April 2024)
Gerstner, K. and Keller, D. (1964) Designing Programmes. -Teufen (AR): Niggli.
-Google (2014) Introduction, Material Design. -Available at: m1.material.io (Accessed: 16 April 2024).
-Hu, T.-H. (2024) Digital Lethargy: Dispatches from an age of -disconnection. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
-The Idea of the Book (2024) CARNIVAL: the first panel
-1967–70 [book description] Available at: theideaofthe
-book.com/pages/books/529/steve-mccaffery/carnival-the-first-panel-1967-70
-(Accessed: 13 April 2024)
Loos, A. (2019) Ornament and Crime. London: Penguin.
-Lorusso, S. (2023) What Design Can’t Do: Essays on design and -disillusion. Eindhoven: Set Margins.
-Mondriaan , P. et al., (1917) ‘Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art’, -De Stijl, Nov.
-Mould, O. (2018) Against Creativity. London: Verso.
-Müller-Brockmann, J. (1981) Grid systems in graphic ⊞. -Stuttgart: Hatje.
-Pater, R. (2021) Caps Lock. Amsterdam: Valiz.
-Rock, M., (1996) The ⊞er as Author. Available at: -2x4.org/ideas/1996/⊞er-as-author (Accessed: 16 April 2024).
-Shaughnessy, A. (2005) How to Be a Graphic ⊞er, without Losing -Your Soul. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.
-Shaughnessy, A. (2013) Scratching the Surface. London: Unit -Editions.
-Tufte, E (1991) The Visual Display of Quantitative -Information. Cheshire: Graphics Press.
-Van der Velden, D., (2006) ‘Research & Destroy: A Plea for ⊞ as -Research’, Metropolis M 2, April/May 2006.
-Van Doesburg, T. et al. (1917) ‘Manifesto I’, De Stijl, -Nov.
-Van Doesburg, T. et al. (1921) -‘Manifesto III’, De Stijl, Aug.
-Warde, B. (1913) ‘Printing Should be Invisible’ The Crystal -Goblet, Sixteen Essays on Typography, London: The Sylvan Press.
-Weber, M., (1905) “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of -Capitalism”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften 20, no. 1 (1904), -pp. 1–54; 21, no. 1 (1905), pp. 1–110.
-Reading an email in a dream and you can hear the voices of every word -you read. Or the one where you’re on a computer working, frantically -typing, late, stressed, rushed. What about that dream where you had no -idea how to do your job, everyone is going to know you’re a fake. In -this project I have made spaces for us to share our dreams about labour, -and through that allow conversations about our work, our working -conditions, and the feelings we’re left with when we fall asleep each -night.
-For the past year I have spoken with designers, artists and makers -finding out how they spend their time in everyday life, what they -believe and how they feel. In our dreams we feel the weird bits the -most: hmm a bit uncomfortable, ooh that gave me a fright, aah so, so -sad. Through performances, online tools and storytelling, I want to hold -these dreams together, to unite our experiences. Online I have made tools to gather -stories and tools to tell them. I have facilitated group dream re-enactments (a few times), using felt dolls to share our night time -theatre.
-stephen kerr is a graphic designer or a musician or a very weird -and long dream.
- - - -.
- - - - - - - - - -Special Issues are publications thrice released by first-year XPUB -Master’s students. Each edition focuses on a specific theme or issue. -The themes tie to external events and collaborations. Students and staff -work together to explore these themes, rethinking what a publication can -be. Each edition culminates in a celebratory release party.The -structure, tools, and workflows are reset every trimester. This reset -allows roles to rotate among participants and fosters an adapting -learning environment. It provides a space to experiment beyond -traditional collaborative methods.
-Our inaugural Special Issue was number 19, in collaboration with -Simon Browne. Garden Leeszaal was a snapshot of Leeszaal Library through -the metaphor of gardening. During the release, we invited participants -to engage with the library’s discarded books. We pruned, gleaned, and -grafted the books using pens, pen-plotters, scissors, and glue. Then we -harvested a book of our collective work. Garden Leeszaal was an open -dialogue. It was a tool for collective writing, a group-made collage, -and an archive. For us, being a gardener meant caring for the people and -books that formed the library.
-The following Special Issue was number 20, assisted by Lìdia Pereira -and Artemis Gryllaki. Console was 20 hand-made wooden boxes. It was an -oracle and an emotional first aid kit to help you help yourself. It -invites you to delve into its contents to discover healing methods. -Console offers refuge for dreams, memories, and worries. It guides you -to face the past. You will then meet your fortune and gain a new view -through rituals and practices. It prompts everyday questions with -magical answers, asking: Are you ready to play?
-Our last special issue was number 21. TTY was guided by kubernētēs -Martino Morandi and weekly guest collaborators. We started with a Model -33 Teletype machine, the bridge between typewriters and computer -interfaces. Through guest contributions, we explored the intersection of -historical and contemporary computing. The Special Issue evolved into an -ever-changing “Exquisite Corpse Network” chasing weekly publications. -Along the way, we created gestures, concrete vinyl poetry, phone -stories, and much more.
- -Public libraries are more than just access points to knowledge. They -are social sites where readers cross over while reading together, -annotating, organising and structuring. A book could be bound at the -spine, or an electronic file gathered together with digital binding. A -library could be an accumulated stack of printed books, a modular -collection of software packages, a method of distributing e-books, a -writing machine.
-In the Special Issue 19, How do we library that? or alternatively -Garden Leeszaal, we started re-considering the word “library” as a verb; -actions that sustains the production, collection and distribution of -texts. A dive into the understanding structure of libraries as systems -of producing knowledge and unpacking classification as a process that -(un)names, distinguishes, excludes, displaces, organizes life. From the -library to the section to the shelf to the book to the page to the text. -The zooming in and zooming out process. The library as a plain text.
-Like community gardens, libraries are about tenderness and -approachability. However, does every book and each person feel welcome -in these spaces? Publications are empty leaves if there is no one to -read them. Libraries are soulless storage rooms if there is no one to -visit them. People give meaning to libraries and publications alike. -People are the reason for their existence. People tend to cultivate -plants. Audiences tend to foster content. The public tends to enrich the -context. Libraries as complex social infrastructures.
- -The release of the Special Issue 19 was a momentary snapshot of the -current state of a library seen through the metaphor of gardening; -pruning, gleaning, growing, grafting and harvesting. Garden Leeszaal is -an open conversation; a collective writing tool, a cooperative collage -and an archive. We asked everyone to think of the library as a garden. -For us, being a gardener means caring; caring for the people and books -that form this space.
-During the collective moment in Leeszaal people started diving into -recycle bins, grabbing books, tearing pages apart, drawing, pen -plotting, weaving words together, cutting words, removing words, -overwriting, printing, and scanning. It was magical having an object in -the end. A whole book was made by all of us that evening. Stations, -machines, a cloud of cards, a sleeve that warms up THE BOOK.
- - --
- --
- -Console is an oracle; an emotional first aid kit that helps you help -yourself. Console invites you to open the box and discover ways of -healing. Console provides shelter for your dreams, memories and worries. -Face the past and encounter your fortune. Console gives you a new -vantage point; a set of rituals and practices that help you cope and -care. Console asks everyday questions that give magical answers.
-Special Issue XX was co-published by xpub and Page Not Found, Den -Haag. With guest editors Lídia Pereira ♈︎ and Artemis Gryllaki ♐ we -unraveled games and rituals, mapping the common characteristics and the -differences between games and rituals in relation to ideology and -counter-hegemony. We practiced, performed and annotated rituals, -connected (or not) with our cultural backgrounds while we questioned the -magic circle. We dived into the worlds of text adventure games and -clicking games while drinking coffee. We talked about class, base, -superstructure, (counter)hegemony, ideology and materialism. We -discussed how games and rituals can function as reproductive -technologies of the culture industries. We annotated games, focusing on -the role of ideology and social reproduction. We reinterpreted bits of -the world and created stories from it (modding, fiction, narrative) -focusing on community, interaction, relationships, grief and -healing.
- - - - - -- - -
why shd it only make use of the tips of the fingers as contact points -of flowing multi directional creativity. If I invented a word placing -machine, an “expression-scriber,” if you will, then I would have a kind -of instrument into which I could step & sit or sprawl or hang & -use not only my fingers to make words express feelings but elbows, feet, -head, behind, and all the sounds I wanted, screams, grunts, taps, -itches, I’d have magnetically recorded, at the same time, & -translated into word or perhaps even the final xpressed thought/feeling -wd not be merely word or sheet, but itself, the xpression, three -dimensional-able to be touched, or tasted or felt, or entered, or heard -or carried like a speaking singing constantly communicating charm. A -typewriter is corny!!
-Amiri Baraka, Technology & Ethos, -http://www.soulsista.com/titanic/baraka.html
-This issue started from a single technical object: a Model 33 -Teletype machine. The teletype is the meeting point between typewriters -and computer interfaces, a first automated translator of letters into -bits. Equipped with a keyboard, a transmitter and a punchcard -read-writer, it is a historical link between early transmission -technology such as the telegraph and the Internet of today. Under the -administration of our kubernētēs, Martino Morandi, each week hosted a -guest contributor who joined us in unfolding the many cultural and -technical layers that we found stratified in such a machine, reading -them as questions to our contemporary involvements with computing and -with networks.
-The format of the issue consisted of on an on-going publishing -arrangement, constantly re-considered and escaping definition at every -point in spacetime, a sort of Exquisite Corpse Network. It evaded -naming, location, and explanation; the Briki, the Breadbrick, the Worm -Blob. A plan to release weekly bricks was wattled by a shared -understanding of time into something more complex in structure, less -structured in complexity.
-Initially, the week’s caretakers were responsible for collecting -materials from our guest contributions, which included lectures, -collective readings, hands-on exercises, an excursion to the Houweling -Telecom Museum, Rotterdam and another to Constant, Brussels. The -caretakers were responsible for recording audio, editing notes, -transcribing code, taking pictures, and making lunch. Meanwhile the -week’s editors were responsible for coming up with a further step in how -the publishing progressed, by adding new connections and interfaces, -creating languages, plotting strikes and cherishing memories. This mode -of publishing made us develop our own collective understandings of -inter-operation, of networked care and access, backward- and -forward-compatibility, obsolence and futurability.
-Teletypewriters ushered in a new mode of inscription of writing: if -the typewriter set up a grid of letters and voids of the same size, -turning the absence of a letter (the space) into a key itself (the -spacebar), the teletypewriter finished it by inscribing the space in the -very same material as all other letters: electrical zeros and ones, that -were to immediately leave the machine. The Teletype Model 33, one of the -most widely produced and distributed text-based terminals in the 1970s, -introduced multiple technological concretizations that are present in -the computers of today as a sort of legacy, such as the qwerty keyboard -with control keys, the ascii character encoding and the TTY terminal -capability. We have created short-circuits that allow us to remember -otherwise technical progress and computational genealogies.
-TTY was produced in april-june 2023 as special issue 21 with guest -editor Martino Morandi, and contributors Andrea di Serego Alighieri, -Femke Snelting, Isabelle Sully, Jara Rocha, Roel Roscam Abbing, and -Zoumana Meïté.
- - - - - - -vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl
-Special thanks goes to the XPUB staff for their expert help and -guidance: Manetta Berends, Simone Browne, Artemis Gryllaki, Jeanne van -Heeswijk, Joseph Knierzinger, Michael Murtaugh, Martino Morandi, Lídia -Pereira, Steve Rushton, Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, Marloes de Valk and in -particular Leslie Robbins for her years of inexplicable -exceptionalism.
-Created by: Ada, Aglaia, Stephen and Irmak Suzan (XPUB graduates year -2022–24)
-Print run: 200 copies
-Printed and bound at: Publication Station, Willem De Kooning Academy, -Rotterdam
-Paper stock: Clairefontaine Dune 80gsm, Clairefontaine Paint-On Denim -250gsm.
-Typeface: Platypi by David Sargent, licensed under the SIL Open Font -License, Version 1.1.
-Photography and illustration: Unless otherwise stated, all -photography, illustrations and other types of visualisations in this -publication are created by the same authors as the text.
-Digital tools: Writing in Etherpad. Version control in git. Design in -Inkscape. Layout in paged.js. Printing in Adobe Acrobat.
-Licensing information: This publication is free to distribute or -modify under the terms of the SIXX license as published by XPUB, either -version one of the SIXX License or any later version. See the SIXX -License for more details. A copy of the license can be found on vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/license.
-Experimental Publishiiiiiing,
Wijnhaven 61,
4th floor,
-3011 WJ Rotterdam,
The Netherlands.