Clouds to Commons: Kick-off Program
| Clouds to Commons: Kick-off Program/nl | |
|---|---|
| Name | Clouds to Commons: Kick-off Program |
| Location | NDSM Theatre |
| Date | 2026/07/13 |
| Time | 20:00-23:00 |
| PeopleOrganisations | Marloes de Valk, Sondi, Marcell Mars |
| Type | HDSC2026 |
| Web | Yes |
| No | |
- Koop je ticket! regulier €8 / student €5
- Als je graag wilt deelnemen maar het niet kunt betalen, neem dan contact met ons op via juliette@hackersanddesigners.nl
- Het NDSM Theater Scheepsbouwkade 4-6, 1033 WM bevindt zich op de begane grond. Helaas is er geen rolstoeltoegankelijk toilet en bevindt de bar zich op de eerste verdieping.
- Het programma is in het Engels.
- Het evenement wordt uitgezonden op onze online radiozender Summer Camp!
“Cloud computing” has become the key component of today’s digital landscape. "The Cloud" suggests something immaterial, light, abstract, and placeless: data floating through the air. But this image overshadows the material reality of our digital habits: deep-sea internet cables, resource guzzling server farms, precious metals mined to produce chips and more “stuff” to make up what we now call “the cloud”. The tangible “stuff” that connects computing to everyday reality is largely owned, governed and designed by corporate big tech companies that make their decisions based on profit maximisation.
How can we bring sustainability, social equity, and democracy to the center of how these everyday infrastructures are built, developed, and maintained? Can we make self-hosting more accessible? Can we imagine alternative internet structures? Can we bring "the Cloud" back down to earth?
These questions are at the heart of the HDSC2026 Public Program: Clouds to Commons!
The H&D Summer Camp 2026 will kick off with a night of talks and performance to dive into the topic of Clouds to Commons. Let's get inspired, curious, critical and build a fertile grounds for the next 10 days of the Summer camp with a talk by Marloes de Valk, a performance by Sondi and a talk by Marcell Mars who will join us remotely.
Timetable:
- 19:30 doors open
- 20:00 Introduction
- 20:10 Ecomodern slop lords: myth-making the cloud, a talk by Marloes de Valk
- 20:40 Q&A
- 20:50 short break
- 21:00 Taking The Risk, a talk by Marcell Mars (remote)
- 21:30 Q&A
- 21:45 short break
- 22:00 Non-User-Friendly, a performance by Sondi
- 22:30 Q&A
- 23:00 end
Ecomodern slop lords: myth-making the cloud, a talk by Marloes de Valk
Ecomodern slop lords: myth-making the cloud places the history of the Internet and that of environmentalism side by side with the myth-making and lore of the early days of computing. What can we learn from these intertwined stories about alternatives to the toxic and energy hungry kill cloud? What initiatives already exist that provide paths and visions that bust the obfuscating myths of Big Tech and listen to environmental and community needs rather than those of share holders?
Marloes de Valk (NL) is a software artist and writer in the post-despair stage of coping with the threat of global warming and being spied on by the devices surrounding her. Surprised by the obsessive dedication with which we, even post-Snowden, share intimate details about ourselves to an often not too clearly defined group of others, astounded by the deafening noise we generate while socializing with the technology around us, she is looking to better understand why.
De Valk is a thesis supervisor at the master Experimental Publishing at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. She completed a PhD at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University, in collaboration with The Photographer's Gallery, looking into how communities of practice are redefining technology on a damaged Earth.
Non-User-Friendly by Sondi
Non-User-Friendly (2026) is a speculative audiovisual performance exploring the ecological, political, and cultural realities of artificial intelligence. Through a shifting dialogue between human and machine, it confronts the ghosts inherited in our technologies: the hidden infrastructures, extractive logics, and encoded biases beneath the surface of so-called “intelligence.” Combining live narration, sound, video, and interactive elements, the piece troubles the aesthetics of neutrality and challenges the audience to reconsider their complicity in technological systems they cannot see but continuously feed. Set within a speculative interface, the work investigates the violence of systems that ask us to “prove” our humanity. Drawing from Sylvia Wynter’s formulation of “the human as praxis” and inspired by the invasive absurdity of CAPTCHA logic, this performance reclaims the moment of verification as a site of rupture:
→ What kind of humanity do these systems want us to prove? → And what kind of humanity do we choose to embody?
Non-User-Friendly has been developed in collaboration with the Sonic Acts curatorial team as part of their SPRINGS talent development programme.
Sondi (she/her) is an artist and researcher from Germany, born in Cameroon and based in the Netherlands. Her practice explores the invisible architectures of virtual worlds and technological systems, tracing the biases and power structures encoded within them, whilst creating worlds that foreground alternative ways of being and relating. Her body of work spans a wide range of media, including interactive installations, game design, audiovisual performance, theatre, film, and education.
Taking The Risk, a talk by Marcell Mars (remote)
Living in a society of equals has become harder to imagine, while the reactionary backlash resets whatever past struggles achieved, and the same fights must be fought again. However the resistance vectors remain unchanged: wealth redistribution or, short of that, disturbing the flow of capital and contesting the regime of private property. When they say it is hard to imagine the end of capitalism, it often means it is hard to imagine the end of private property.
For the past seven years, Marcell Mars has been involved with a project called Pirate Care together with Valeria Graziano and Tomislav Medak, which documented practices that pointed toward a better society on the horizon, with people getting into trouble for trying to make it real: captains arrested for saving lives in the Mediterranean, a researcher facing decades in prison for downloading scientific articles, people prosecuted for distributing contraceptives, food, water, and shelter.
Cloud computing and AI infrastructures were mostly absent from the Pirate Care book.
We believe autonomous infrastructures and federations are possible.
With technology, it is hard to convince ourselves that we know that we know. But also when we don't know that we don't know. It's complicated. Still, the same obstacles carry on: private property and the flow of capital. The flood of slop hasn't made any of this less complicated.
Marcell Mars is an advanced internet user.
This event is kindly supported by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts'