Open Call for Collaboration: Connecting Otherwise

Open Call for Collaboration: Connecting Otherwise
Name	Open Call for Collaboration: Connecting Otherwise
Location	[[]]
Date	2022/03/13
Time	[[]]
PeopleOrganisations	Hackers & Designers
Type	HDSA2022
Web	Yes
Print	No

Image: HDSA2019: 'Coded Bodies'

We are thrilled to share with you our open call for collaboration!

The 8th edition of the H&D Summer Academy (HDSA) will be organized in a distributed manner. This year, we will invite three initiatives to work with us on organizing a summer academy and developing an exciting workshop program together on four different locations! More specifically, we are looking for inter/cross/undisciplinary groups working at the intersection of art, design, technology and education. H&D seeks to connect to, and stimulate exchange between communities such as art and design collectives, hacktivists, political groups, citizen scientists, radical librarians, social justice groups, cyber feminists, privacy advocates, critical entrepreneurs, and investigative journalists to collaborate with us on this year's theme of Connecting Otherwise.

Do you want to embark with us on this collective connective endeavour, and become one nodes of the distributed H&D Summer Academy 2022?

About H&D

Hackers & Designers is a non-profit workshop initiative organizing activities at the intersection of technology, design and art. By creating shared moments of hands-on learning H&D stimulates collaboration across disciplines, technological literacy, and different levels of expertise. H&D organizes activities from the idea of a flattened hierarchy. 'Teachers' become participants, participants become workshop leaders – everyone is taken on the collective venture of shared responsibility – bringing in their own expertise, urgencies and experiences.

More about H&D: https://hackersanddesigners.nl/p/About

Theme: Connecting Otherwise

Living in a global pandemic for the last two years made visible how our internet use impacts our cohabitiation with each other – and other species – on a social, material and psychological level. Creative practitioners in the cultural field had to reinvent their work patterns and ways of sharing, collaborating and researching. In doing so, it highlighted our need for alternative, affective, and sustainable ways of coexisting and connecting online. Moreover, our intensified reliance on the internet – extensive streaming, online shopping, conference calling – calls for attention to the tremendous environmental impacts on how we work and live together. Many countries have witnessed a 20% increase in internet use since March 2020. While global emissions decreased, arguably due to limited travel movements, our increasingly hyper-networked virtual lifestyles should not be overlooked:

In this year's summer academy, Hackers & Designers wants to address questions about conscious yet response-able ways of working, creating, and co-existing online. How do we negotiate the fact that seeing someone during an online meeting helps us feel connected, while knowing that turning off one’s video stream can reduce your environmental footprint by 96 percent?

In the last two years H&D developed ways of working and hosting events, including formats for synchronous and asynchronous online workshop activities. These formats attempt to accommodate on-site as well as remote participation. By trying to facilitate more flexible forms of participation, we started questioning our assumptions around available facilities, such as all-day electricity and internet connectivity, as well as the suitability of our workshop formats for every body, or everybody’s rhythms and everyday responsibilities, abilities and priorities.

This led to us formulating this year's theme of Connecting Otherwise: exploring the intersections of accessibility and sustainability of hybrid cultural work and techno-social life—the cultural, economical, ecological, and geographical implications of our increasingly complex entanglements with technology.

By placing the emphasis on processes instead of particular products or services, H&D aims to create a wider scope for investigating how our tools intersect with cultural codes, and consider alternatives by artistically and playfully appropriating unlikely tools for these purposes.

H&D invites collectives around the world to become collaborating nodes and join us in developing, hosting and participating in a one-week workshop program that investigates the topics of 'connecting otherwise' in hands-on practical and collaborative manner.

Distributed Format

By organizing the program in a distributed format, members of different communities are invited to engage with each other's collective practices through making and doing things together, organizing workshops together and experiment.

We ask selected collaborating nodes to commit/agree to:

• Participate in three collective preparatory meetings with the collaborating nodes
• Develop and host a 1-day hands-on workshop to take place in a distributed manner during the H&D Summer Academy 2022 which takes place from 16-23 July 2022. The workshop should entail elaborate documentation (a.k.a. a workshop script), which includes introduction to the workshop theme, steps and exercises, installation manuals, required materials and equipment, anything that allows participants elsewhere to facilitate and follow the workshop at a distance in an asynchronous manner. (We want to avoid video calls)
• Co-host one of the meetup (see important dates below). Participation in the other meetups is highly appreciated.
• Publish workshop documentation on the H&D website and Github (decision about open license will be made collectively).
• Host/facilitate the full Summer Academy week at respective location.
• Share announcements and open calls for participation in your community
• Read and respect the H&D Code of Conduct.

Compensation

There is a budget available of 5000,00 per organizing node. More information about the allocation of the budget towards the organization and realization of meetups and HDSA will be shared in a first meeting after selection.

Apply!

Send your application to info@hackersanddesigners.nl, before March 13 2022, describing why your collective would like to become a hosting node in the temporary conglomerate of H&D Summer Academy, and what you would like to contribute to the HDSA.

Please include the following information:

• Names of collective
• Names of the people involved in the collective
• Email address and phone number of main contact person
• Location from which you would be hosting the HDSA
• Any relevant references or links
• Motivational statement (250 words max)
• Initial idea for a workshop on the subject "Connecting Otherwise" (250 words max)
• Availabilities on the proposed meetup dates

Important dates

• Deadline for submissions: 13 March 2022
• Preparatory meetings: [dates tbd]
• Suggested dates for H&D Meetups:
  • 21 or 28 April
  • 12 or 19 May
  • 16 or 23 June
• H&D Summer Academy: 16-23 July 2022

Please note

• This is the open call for co-organizers, The call for participants will open at a later date. Stay tuned and sign up on our mailing list by sending an email to: news+subscribe@lists.hackersanddesigners.nl
• H&D meetups are open for anyone with an interest in technical and artistic explorations of open-source tools and infrastructures. We will use the meetups as an occasion to meet and exchange with the collaborating nodes, and open up research processes and explorations leading up to the HDSA to a wider audience. The meetups are informal and social events with a duration of 1.5 - 3 hours, and take place in the early evening (CET).

Hackers & Designers' activities are made possible with the kind support of Stimuleringsfonds