Community servers
Servers
- Past and present
AT
servus.at, Linz, since 1996
virtual and physical access for artists and cultural producers
mur.at - initiative netzkultur, Graz
Lo-res.org, since Apr 1998
Subnet, http://www.subnet.at/
(Public) Netbase, 1994-2006, http://t0.or.at
Silver Server, http://sil.at, Vienna
Now commercial services only
Sonance.artistic.network, http://enter.sonance.net/vhosts.html. Vienna
BE
Okno, okno.all2all.org, Brussels
Hosted: okno.be, so-on.be, lahaag.org
CZ
node9.org, independent media storage and streaming server, http://node9.org
Services: web hosting, streaming, audio and video archive
Hosted: lemurie.cz, visions.cz, culturetransfer.org, 33-3.org, michalrataj.com, srnka.cz, lostpostservice.net, skupina.net, auvid.net, oknea.net, obmea.net, jlbjlt.net, and others
Admin: Michal Klodner
DE
Kein.org, *1997 [1]. "KEIN.ORG has a strong commitment to the open source content management system drupal which we started to install for the first time in early 2003. By now we serve more than 150 installations in several independent farms. Among the most popular sites are Dictionary of War, Makeworld, the multi-user blog ROUNDTABLE of the Research Architecture Institute at Goldsmiths College, the peer-to-peer video syndication network V2V, the internet platform D-A-S-H, and most lately the Nettime-l mailinglist. As of 2008, KEIN.ORG ran eleven servers situated at various locations in Europe and beyond, hosting more than 500 websites, about 200 content management systems and countless mailinglists from 5 to 5000 subscribers, as well as numerous email-accounts." [2]
D-A-S-H, 2001-2005. KEIN.ORG has served as a laboratory for the development of D-A-S-H, a large scale hosting project on european level. After the end of the funding period for D-A-S-H in summer 2005 KEIN.ORG has resumed the entire service and support program with hosting of the websites of hundreds of antiracist and antifascist activist groups all across Europe. [3]
Internationale Stadt Berlin, icf.de, Berlin. Closed down.
Ecobytes, ecobytes.net, *Jun 2006, Berlin
"Internet hosting for activists, artists, individuals and small businesses supporting our idea."
NL
Desk.org, desk.org, *1995
PT
Virose, *1997
SK
Sanchez, Bratislava/Prague, *2008
Smecnet, smecnet.itchybit.org, Bratislava
Hosted: itchybit.org, indymedia slovakia
ChangeNet, Bratislava
provided hosting for NGO websites
Skosi
for NGOs, software developers, open source projects
Xena, xena.media7.sk, Bratislava
Hosts: buryzone.sk, buryzone.info, citylab.sk, c2c.cz, scart.cz, idealnypartner.sk, and others
Hosted until 2008: multiplace.sk, burundi.sk
Admin: Martin Baranec
2600, ns.2600.sk
Hosts: kyberia.sk
Kyblik, kyblik.pieskovisko.sk, Bratislava, until 2008
Hosted: 34.sk, atrakt-art.sk, nextfestival.sk, a4.sk
Admin: Frankie
Ephex, ephex.factory.sk - went down in 2003(?), most domains transferred to Xena, Bratislava
Hosted: koridor.sk and many others
Admin: Wired (not a magazine with same name:)
SL
Ljudmila, http://ljudmila.org, *1994, Ljubljana
ES
Anarchaserver, a feminist server
UK
Openmute, London
Hosted: metamute.org and many others
Bitnik, http://www.bitnik.org/en/#on
SPC, spc.org
US
The Thing, *1995, New York City
RiseUp, Seattle, http://www.riseup.net/
int
GreenNet, commercial, http://www.gn.apc.org/services/web-hosting
Events, projects, collaboration, resources
- Art Servers Unlimited (ASU), ICA New Media Centre and Backspace, London, 1-4 July 1998. "Conference and net.radio event by and about initiatives and organisations in Europe, which focus on supporting the artistic use of the internet. ... The conference was structured into four parts: the preperatory mailing list [u]-unlimited, working meetings at backspace, the conference at the Institute for Contemporary Arts London and the net.radio party 'UNLIMITED' at its New Media Centre."
- ASU2, KUC Lamparna, Labin, Croatia, 8-15 September 2001. ASU2 = [.art +.alt +.act] + [servers+streamers+spaces] + UNLIMITED. A meeting/festival with hands-on workshops, demos, trainings, presentations, discussions, public performances, webcasts of non-profit cultural organisations/projects/initiatives from the fields of net.art, alternative technologies and activist media. Organised by Z. Blace and LABinary, with Joanne Richardson and support of Nina Czegledy, in collaboration with mama, Ljudmila and pro.ba. Over 70 participants attended.
- (De)centralized Practice, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, 19 Mar 2013. Seminar with Diana McCarty, Reni Hofmüller, Seda Gürses, and Femke Snelting. [4] [5]
- Are You Being Served?, meeting days, Constant and multiple locations in Brussels, 12-15 December 2013. "The fourteenth edition of the meeting days Verbindingen/Jonctions was dedicated to a Feminist review of mesh, cloud, autonomous, and DIY servers. ... How do we keep a sharp eye on the politics and ethics of hosting technologies when all so often (paraphrasing the Free Software Foundation), software is sold as service? ... We questioned what is seemingly commonly understood by terms such as server, service and hosting and were curious to investigate what could make current networking technologies into hospitable habitats for critique, as space for artists and solidarity, teaching and learning."
- Feminist Server Summit, 14 December 2013. [6] [7]
- Technologies of Autonomy, conference stream, Autonomy (im)possible!, Art Meets Radical Openness (AMRO) festival, Linz, 29 May 2014. "The time of ridiculing those who were not taken seriously as “paranoid geeks” seems to have passed at the moment, as the surveillance scandals have reached the mainstream. There is a newly awakened discussion of decentralizing infrastructure and alternative possibilities outside the realm of the large monopolists that determine access to information and tools and cooperate with secret services. Do these new insights actually result in a chance for alternatives, and who really needs them? Why is digital self-defense left up to the users?" Unitary Networking, [8]. [9] [10] [11] [12]
- TransHACKfeminist! camp, Calafou, Barcelona, 4-11 August 2014. Co-organised with Eclectic Tech Carnival.
VIDEO. Report. Report (ES). [13]. [14]
- Ministry of Hacking, esc, Graz, 27 September-28 November 2014. Exhibition. [15]
- Second TransHackFeminist-México Meet-up (THFMx2015), Puebla, Mexico, 25-31 July 2015. "We are joyfull to summon feminist, queer and trans* bodies and collectives who are hacking the patriarchal–capitalist system. ... We believe that our dissident bodies and identities can, as well as changing their own spaces, generate technologies and tools for liberation. The tradition of free software enables us, today, to amplify hardware and software to hack bodies, gender, academia, gynecology, maternity and child-rearing as well as operating systems, distributed networks, autonomous servers, “pirating”, open media, electronic devices." Program. CfP, (es). [16]
- Autonomous Infrastructures stream, THF! 2016 Third TransHackFeminist- Meet-up, Studio xx, (Tio’tia:ke a.k.a Montreal), unceeded Kanien’keha:ka* (Mohawk) territory, 18-22 August 2016. "While we recognise that no infrastructure can be fully autonomous, since autonomy is relative and as they depend, for instance, on already existing communication networks and technologies designed by mainstream companies (such as computers, servers, undersea cables, and access devices), what does it mean for us to conceive and use autonomous infrastructures?" CfP, (fr), (es).
- Relearn 2017, Poortgebouw, Rotterdam, 29 August-2 September 2017. Documentation (2019).
- Welcome to the Federation, Varia, Rotterdam, June-December 2018.
- Networks with an Attitude, worksession, various locations in Antwerp, 7-13 April 2019. Developed by Constant in collaboration with ooooo, Varia and amongst others Samenschool, City harbour, Wireless Antwerp. "The internet is dead, long live the internets! In 2025, the internet will consist of either gated communities or decentralised independent instances. For those who want to be connected while choosing their own dependencies, there is no other option than to draw up new networks and experiment with both historical and innovative protocols. During this intensive week we stretched the imagination of what a network is, and what it can be."
- Relearn 2019, Varia, Rotterdam, 7-9 June 2019; Hacktiris, Brussels, 21-22 June 2019; La Générale, Paris, 6-8 September 2019. Facilitated by Varia, OSP, Anne Laforet and Quentin Juhel. "For the Rotterdam control point on the Relearn curve, we propose to together attend to a subject zone (*) where different digital network practices intersect. This subject zone can morph into multiple directions throughout the session. Our specific interest is in how publishing formats (**) operate with/on/through this zone. ... You are invited to come and experiment with the local Relearn server that travels between each session of the curve."
- De-platformization, Ethics and Alternative Social Media, symposium, workshop, Display, Prague, and online, 25-26 September 2020. "We seek to open a discussion, which will not only critically discuss platforms and commercial social media, but explore possibilities of the commons through a number of practical and theoretical positions, public discussion and hands on workshop. We know and repeatedly analyze a host of issues with commercial social media and digital labour, but little attention is paid to efforts at building alternatives, such as community-run social media and other forms of de-platformization."
VIDEO
- A Transversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS), series of events in six chapters, Varia, Rotterdam; HYPHA, Bucharest; LURK, online; ESC, Graz; Feminist Hack Meetings, Athens; Constant, Brussels, March-October 2022. A collaborative project "formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers. Understanding servers as computers that host space and services for communities around them, this project exists inside, and in between, roaming servers and different networks. Its decentralized programme was developed in 6 chapters hosted in 5 different locations." ATNOFS website. Radio broadcast.
- International Trans★Feminist Digital Depletion Strike, multiple locations. "On 8th of March 2023, we call for a Counter Cloud Action Day. On this day, we will try to withhold from using, feeding, or caring for The Big Tech Cloud. The strike calls for a hyperscaledown of extractive digital services, and for an abundance of collective organising. We join the long historical tail of international feminist strikes, because we understand this fight to be about labour, care, anti-racism, queer life and trans★feminist techno-politics." Events. Mastodon. List. [17] [18]
Publications
- Manu Luksch, Armin Medosch (eds.), Art Servers Unlimited: Conference, Meeting, Party, London, 1998, 67+[10] pp. Booklet.
- Feminist Server Summit, "A Feminist Server Manifesto 0.01", 29 May 2014. [19] [20] [21]
- Anne Laforet, Marloes de Valk, Madeleine Aktypi, An Mertens, Femke Snelting, Michaela Lakova, Reni Höfmuller (eds.), Are You Being Served? (Notebooks), Brussels: Constant, 2014.
- Relearn, "A Feminist Net/work How-to", in Portable Relearn Archive, Jul 2014. Material from the 2014 edition of Relearn, held at Variable, a collectively run F/LOSS Arts Lab in Brussels.
- Networks of Ones Own 1: "Etherbox", eds. Michael Murtaugh, An Mertens, Roel Roscam Abbing, and Femke Snelting, Brussels: Constant, Sep 2018. Collaboration between Constant, Relearn, Varia and XPUB.
- Greta Byrum, "Building the People’s Internet", Urban Omnibus, New York: Architectural League of New York, Oct 2019.
- Networks of Ones Own 2: "Three Takes on Taking Care", Rotterdam: Varia, Oct 2019, PDF.
- Telecommunications Reclaimed: A Hands-On Guide to Networking Communities, eds. Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay and Félix Tréguer, Internet Society, Dec 2019, 255 pp, PDF. [22]
See also
Federated networks, Technofeminism, Internet activism
