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<divclass="opening-quote">
<p>
@ -72,9 +75,11 @@
A friend just sent a message in the group chat — Soupboat{1} has now legs. And then: — 4x faster now. <br>
I can't stop laughing.
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<imgsrc="/img/soupboat.jpg"alt="soupboat">
<p>
Back in September 2021, when at the beginning of my masters I had the very first experience of setting up a web server on a raspberry pi 4, which then became "the Soupboat", I admit I could barely understand how digital networks worked in practice. I could only see in front of me a small single board computer attached to the network of the school via an Ethernet cable. The setup was accompanied by a so-called "infra-tour" that mapped the technological infrastructure to which Soupboat was connected. This included another much bigger server located in a datacenter in Rotterdam, which also hosted a Wiki, a Jitsi{2} , Etherpad{3}, Gitea{4} and the VPN (Virtual Private Network) through which our local web server could be visible from the rest of the internet, bypassing the protected network of the school. I've been told not to worry if all of that wouldn't make sense on the spot. What was essential to understand in that moment was that the little palm-sized printed circuit board was in fact a shared computer which we (my classmates and I) could make use of collectively, that it could be fragile and that it would need to be taken care of by us as a group.
Later on, by learning and practicing some basics of programming, it gradually became clear to me that the answer to the question “what is a server?”, would actually call into question the subject-object relation that the use of a server entails, generating more and more questions, tongue twists, and brain teasers like “what is the server for and who decides it?”, “who creates the services inside the server and which other services the server relies on in turn?”, “who can be served?”, and “who makes sure that the server keeps serving?”. In relation to such questions the ideas of “collective use”, “fragility”, and “need of care” began to assume concrete weight and meaning beyond the material dimension of a web infrastructure made of motherboards, cables and fragile electric switches. I slowly recognized how both self-hosting and the use of FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source) software in education, and in the cultural field in general, are also a political choice encompassing the continuous negotiation of collaboration, freedoms and power dynamics. Take for example the massive use in education of proprietary and commercial software like Microsoft and Adobe. Meant to be used in business-oriented working environments or creative industries, they shape a type of learning calibrated on values like optimization, competition, and hyper specialization among others. It should be well known how these huge trans global companies transform schools into markets where "Software as a Service" (SaaS)5 can be sold as necessary productive tools, going far beyond the scope of pedagogy and learning. Providing totalizing quick solutions to its users, GMAFIA{6} legitimate their products as the best competing innovation. Saas is a model which prevents its users from articulating a systemic and more critical perspective on its digital infrastructure, much less imagining how the latter could be collectively inhabited without having to compromise on the security, the surveillance and the commodification of the users' flow of data.
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"We are trained to expect smooth and seamless on-line experiences that require the kind of deep pockets, longevity and vision that politics chose not to engage with and public institutions fail to provide. It has become near impossible to imagine a different type of life with digital tools, let alone to dream of solidary digital infrastructures that can be collectively owned, maintained and used [...] Infrastructural solidarity only starts with [...][developing] relationships with technology that acknowledge vulnerability, mutual dependency and care-taking." (2019, p, 45-47)
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<imgsrc="img/8.jpg"alt="lurk-infra">
<p>
Zooming out from the Soupboat's infrastructure a series of other cultural initiatives appear on the map through their web servers. Running and maintaining independent internet infrastructure in the cultural field is certainly a niche practice, nonetheless there are numerous cultural initiatives who decided to engage in such activity. Their genealogy is the result of different histories from FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source) software to hack labs, from artist-run autonomous spaces to Cyber feminist groups, to name a few; they constitute such a rich and extremely heterogeneous constellation, that grouping them under a commonly accepted umbrella term would be already a great endeavor. Some of the recurring terms used to refer to them are: community network, collective infrastructure, feminist servers, art server, cultural datacenter or even community software. These may be inhabited by figures like activists, programmers, artists, designers, teachers, learners, amateurs, enthusiasts and other cultural workers who try to self-organize in solidarity around the "delicate balance, between becoming a service provider and providing much needed space for other experiences with technology." (Snelting, 2021). Among these initiatives, for example, several Feminist Server Manifestos8 have been published with the idea of articulating a series of fundamental principles calling in for the creation of safer, situated, and more sustainable digital spaces, like "A feminist server [… T]ries hard not to apologize when she is sometimes not available". (2015)
Zooming out from the Soupboat's infrastructure a series of other cultural initiatives appear on the map through their web servers. Running and maintaining independent internet infrastructure in the cultural field is certainly a niche practice, nonetheless there are numerous cultural initiatives who decided to engage in such activity. Their genealogy is the result of different histories from FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source) software to hack labs, from artist-run autonomous spaces to Cyber feminist groups, to name a few; they constitute such a rich and extremely heterogeneous constellation, that grouping them under a commonly accepted umbrella term would be already a great endeavor. Some of the recurring terms used to refer to them are: community network, collective infrastructure, feminist servers, art server, cultural datacenter or even community software. These may be inhabited by figures like activists, programmers, artists, designers, teachers, learners, amateurs, enthusiasts and other cultural workers who try to self-organize in solidarity around the "delicate balance, between becoming a service provider and providing much needed space for other experiences with technology." (Snelting, 2021). Among these initiatives, for example, several Feminist Server Manifestos8 have been published with the idea of articulating a series of fundamental principles calling in for the creation of safer, situated, and more sustainable digital spaces, like "A feminist server [… T]ries hard not to apologize when she is sometimes not available". (2015)
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<p>
Yet the effective implementation of these principles more than often conflicts with the actual possibility of being implemented. In practice, it seems really hard to introduce vulnerability, mutual dependency and care-taking as fundamental values for a working environment that is self-organized in the cultural field. These initiatives are embedded into a larger socio-political and economical context characterized by a general rise of the costs of life and by precarious working conditions. Within such reality, the livelihood of solidary digital infrastructure altogether is deeply affected by tighter and gradually more unsustainable relations with cultural funds promoting the financiarization of not-for-profit cultural projects, on top of a huge amount of affective and voluntary labor coming from their already overworked community. Nonetheless, the Feminist Server Manifestos inspired several cultural organization to gather in order to problematize the issues of maintenance and administration, and share practical knowledge around how to self-organize in solidarity without perishing.
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<p>
Servus's digital infrastructure starts from a so called "cultural datacenter" grafted onto the first floor of the Stadtwerkstatt (STWST)1, also known as "The House", and growing through the whole building where a radio station, a club and a cafè are hosted as well, interconnecting a whole ecosystem of singular users (120), other associations (70), FLOSS software and services developed over time since 1996 (27 years!). Given the circumstances, and the role of my generous interlocutor, this first pilot of the boiler inspection takes the format of a drawing. I ask D to map Servus's technological infrastructure, and to situate the figure of the admin in relation to it, in order to visualize and understand how the “boiler” functions in the first place.
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<imgsrc="img/servus boiler.jpg"alt="">
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While drawing, D comments on how the numbers mentioned above are actually quite impressive for a small independent datacenter — and scary at the same time — especially considering that there are only two sys-admins2 taking care of the whole digital infrastrucure. But it is also important to mention that, in parallel to the core team and the Board 3, a series of temporary guests circulating in and out of the building in guise of technicians, residents, collaborators and/or simply friends, are also playing an important role when it comes to determining Servus's actual capacity and workforce. And indeed the map seems to explode in all directions, as if to express the dynamic overcrowding of the datacenter, indicated by a tiny box with the abbreviation "DC".
Varia is a collective space in the south of Rotterdam that is self-run by a group of artists, designers and programmers dealing with "everyday technology", someone once said, and it is closely connected to the master Experimental Publishing through many of past and present students and tutors of the course. This morning several members of the collective and other friends joined me for a public version of the boiler inspection and now eight people are crumped together inside the small kitchen of Varia, looking at the small storage space where the real boiler is located. We all try to fill up a form without a comfortable surface. The form addresses Varia's socio-technical infrastructure as "the boiler" — wait, which boiler? — which creates a series of funny misunderstandings between the metaphorical and literal meaning of the word every time it is pronounced. A yellow vacuum cleaner is also looking astonished at the whole situation, with its eyes made of paper, as if it would have never expected the presence of other human beings in such a committed proximity to that one square meter, which is normally used to rest in the dark together with other boxes, shopping bags and fermentation jars.
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<imgsrc="img/2.jpg"alt="boiler-room">
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After a brief introduction, the inspection starts with an initial indexing of the facilities and infrastructural elements in Varia, which allows external people to get acquainted with the space and the kind of activities the collective is involved in.
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“[a]cross the many scales and dimensions of this problem, we are never far from three enduring truths: (1) Maintainers require care; (2) caregiving requires maintenance; and (3) the distinctions between these practices are shaped by race, gender, class, and other political, economic, and cultural forces. Who gets to organize the maintenance of infrastructure, and who then executes the work?" (2018)
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<imgsrc="img/6.jpg"alt="group_inspection">
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Interestingly enough, the word maintenance originally means "holding with hands" (from Latin "manu tenere"), support and preserving, recalling an infinitely intimate and caring dimension of touch connecting one's hands to another body. Despite such image, nowadays maintenance rather signifies "holding with handcuffs", enslaved within the gears of technology, efficiency, and security. Along with that, it is necessary to acknowledge that behind the word care resides a long history2 of misuses and abuses too, through which our ability to care and being cared in our own terms has been gradually disenfranchised. In line with the Care Manifesto, I would like to reconsider the meaning of maintenance oriented within a dimension of care as
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In summary, from a caregiving perspective maintenance must be recognized as a form of care and affective labor. Maintenance as caregiving is the training of sensitivity towards the collective struggles that tend to exclude well-being as priority, even within a more emotional and psychological account of the working experience. It is the attention to the boundaries and the qualities of all the relations at stake: when do relations of friendship become working relations? When do relations of care become relations of control, or even of exploitation? And ultimately, it is the support of intentional choices about what needs to be cared, what needs to be repaired and how.
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As of today maintaining as a caregiver remains one of the most difficult tasks that self-organised cultural initiatives have to face, and the very work of caring is still a source of burnout.
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Eventually, the whole bustle of planned meetings resolves into a serendipitous combination of encounters, in which the interests and the purposes of those present this morning are exchanged within a chaotic, yet pleasurable, dynamic. The experience of these moments certainly enables a feeling of commonality that is perhaps a fundamental aspect for the livelihood of self-run cultural organization like Varia. The simple fact of "being" in the same place at the same time creates already unintentional assemblages of stories, intentions, and values which juxtapose organically, creating unique conditions for participating to a shared reality. Without being rehearsed, that shared reality just manifested itself as the most natural unfolding of a series of events in sync with each other: M has met her guest during the research group's presentation, which was about the setup of a local server, same object of interest of the artist who came to meet L. and D., with whom I'm finally having a conversation about Autonomic, while eating a collectively cooked soup.
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<p>
Now, I would like to bring the attention back on Autonomic as a cooperative model. While talking with L., we go through the same questionnaire used for the previous boiler inspection with Varia, and some of the main points of discussion are the pros and cons of working with others according to a series of principles that put at the center the freedom of cooperating, the well-being and the autonomy of the group. He explains how central is defending the cooperative's own financial and infrastructural autonomy from technology industry. However, maintaining such freedom is not always so easy. In Autonomic, they need to be flexible in order to capture the so called "apply wind" of opportunities, calls and funds, which makes them vulnerable to precarity too. However, it seems that by pushing forward their values through their webpages, and with their statement "We Are More Important Than The Work, Autonomic managed to be surrounded by "nice™ people". Their handbook and their statement "We Are More Important Than The Work", take the next step in constituting an entry point for an unapologetic negotiation of their desired working conditions. It is indeed vital for them to recognize how refreshing it could be to chose their own collaborators, and to work on projects that they find meaningful, even if this implies a chaotic and at times overwhelming process.
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<p>
The morning spent at Varia, and the Boiler Inspection with L. make me reflect on a more generous and expandend image of maintenance as a “collective endeavour” (Mattern, 2018), in which self-organization is able to activate a "process [...] of joint action, of creating things together, of cooperating to meet shared goals", which scholars and activists David Bollier and Silke Helfrich described as commoning (2015). In parallel, Silvia Federici defines the production of commons as “the creation of social relations and spaces built in solidarity, the communal sharing of wealth, and cooperative work and decision-making” (2019, p. 183). When it comes to digital networks, the practices related to the maintenance of socio-technical infrastructure could surely be candidates for a model of commoning, but in fact they often struggle to fully accomplish their project due to their entanglement with a as larger as suffocating socio-economic reality, dominated by the logics of efficiency, competition and extraction. While productivity and profit are normalized expectations, the difference between “working-with” and “working-for” remains obfuscated, threatening to turn these practices into a huge dead-end endeavor. In other words, "Commoning involves so much idiosyncratic creativity, improvisation, situational choices, and dynamic evolution that it can only be understood as aliveness." (Bollier, Helfrich, ), yet it would be naive to believe in such aliveness as an automatic result of commoning. Helfrich picks up from the work of the political economist Elinor Ostrom, emphasizing how "[h]er question was not whether people want to cooperate, but rather how to help them do so" (Helfrich, 2015) ". It is indeed important to be wary of the full package this commoning comes with. As observed in previous boiler inspections, in self-organized cultural initiatives aliveness is often wrapped into so many layers of inter-personal frustration, financial instability and dependency on other institutions that it might eventually suffocate in its own box before the delivery time.
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<p>
Here, I would like to suggest a more positive idea of maintenance, that is, yes, rooted in the discourse of commoning practices but also in the tradition of hacking practices as well. The hope is that of bringing back joy and playfulness as fundamental values into the issue of what needs to be maintained and how.
Now, I would like to bring the attention back on Autonomic as a cooperative model. While talking with L., we go through the same questionnaire used for the previous boiler inspection with Varia, and some of the main points of discussion are the pros and cons of working with others according to a series of principles that put at the center the freedom of cooperating, the well-being and the autonomy of the group. He explains how central is defending the cooperative's own financial and infrastructural autonomy from technology industry. However, maintaining such freedom is not always so easy. In Autonomic, they need to be flexible in order to capture the so called "apply wind" of leads, open calls and funds, which makes them vulnerable to precarity too. However, it seems that by pushing forward their values through their webpages, and with their statement "We Are More Important Than The Work, Autonomic managed to be surrounded by "nice™ people". Their handbook and their statement "We Are More Important Than The Work", take the next step in constituting an entry point for an unapologetic negotiation of their desired working conditions. It is indeed vital for them to recognize how refreshing it could be to chose their own collaborators, and to work on projects that they find meaningful, even if this implies a chaotic and at times overwhelming process.
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<imgsrc="img/3.jpg"alt="we are more important than the work">
<p>
Gabriella Coleman extensively wrote about how hackers have built a practice of pragmatic and technical production that would playfully and experimentally turn a system against itself (Coleman, 2013, p.98-99). Similarly, the internet activist Jèrèmie Zimmerman proposes, in collaboration with Emily King and the collective Hacking with Care, a definition of hacking that reflects Coleman’s writings:
Here, I would like to suggest a more optimistic idea of maintenance, that is rooted in the discourse of commoning practices, but also in the tradition of hacking practices as well. The hope is that of bringing back joy and playfulness as fundamental values into the issue of what needs to be maintained and how. Gabriella Coleman extensively wrote about how hackers have built a practice of pragmatic and technical production that would playfully and experimentally turn a system against itself (Coleman, 2013, p.98-99). Similarly, the internet activist Jèrèmie Zimmerman proposes, in collaboration with Emily King and the collective Hacking with Care, a definition of hacking that reflects Coleman’s writings:
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<pclass="quote">
"[Hacking is an] emancipatory practice of humans versus systems or tools. It is a systemic approach where you have to understand the whole box in order to be able to think outside of it [...] It is a set of ethical values; it is the free flow of information; the free sharing of knowledge; and it's about enabling others to participate"(2016)
grgr
1 year ago