Community servers

A Feminist Server Manifesto 0.01, 2014–

Trans*feminist servers..., 2022–

International Trans★Feminist Digital Depletion Strike, 2023

For independent, feminist, trans*feminist, free/libre, self-hosted, autonomous, collective, community and art servers

Servers

• Anarchaserver, "a feminist server which contributes to the maintenance of autonomous infrastructure on the Internet for feminists projects. It is an open project, even though moderated where we privilege trust, consensus, autonomy and feminist collaboration for deciding our next adventures in inhabiting this feminist infrastructure, in synchronicity with other feminist servers initiatives. AnarchaServer has some kind of presence in different locations around the world such as calafou, belgium, france, germany, greece, iceland, the netherlands, mexico, sweden, uruguay ..." Website. Wiki. List.

• Data.coop "is an association and a cooperative. The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web." Est. 2014/2016 in Denmark. Mastodon instance. Mastodon. Matrix. Git.

• Desk Org is "dedicated to free arts, speech and software and reports on recent developments of net based arts and it's on-line community. Desk.org is managed by its artists, authors and their audience. This site is part of a network of independent art servers world-wide and gives support to art projects, artists on-line and access to global resources." Est. 1995 in the Netherlands.

• Ljudmila. Est. 1994 in Ljubljana.

• LURK, "we host, facilitate and archive discussions around net- and computational culture and politics, proto- and post-free culture practices, (experimental) (sound) (new media) (software) art, and things like that…" Est. 2014. Close to Varia, Rotterdam. Website. Lists. Mastodon instance. Mastodon.

• Minadoraserver (მინადორა სერვერი) "is a feminist server. We aspire to fire up emancipatory artistic tools and platforms in Georgia, and establish critical connections along the way." Based in Tbilisi. Mastodon instance. List. Zine. Glossary.

• Multiplace / Sanchez, "an independent infrastructure for artistic, cultural and social initiatives in central Europe and elsewhere. The server provides web hosting, internet services and consulting since its launch on the celebration of Art's Birthday on 17 January 2008." Run by Multiplace. Est. in Bratislava, based in Prague. Website.

• Mur.at, "a virtual, growing platform of art and culture professionals from different fields for the development and promotion of net culture." Based in Graz, est. 1998. Website. Mastodon. Websites hosted. Lists.

• Node9.org, "independent open culture media storage and streaming server." Hometown: Prague. Website. Websites hosted.

• NoLog, "a collective supporting free-thinking individuals and organizations in their efforts to change the world for the better. We offer everyone free alternatives to services for which users otherwise pay dearly with their personal data. We can provide individual support and tools to organizations with whom we share common values." Based in Prague. Nitter. Mastodon instances: witter.cz, lgbtcz.social. Cryptpad. Etherpad. Peertube.

• RiseUp "provides online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change. Riseup creates democratic alternatives and practices self-determination by controlling our own secure means of communications." Based in Seattle, est. 1999. Website. Lists. Etherpad. Radical servers.

• Servus.at, "a net culture initiative in Linz, operating an independent cultural data center. Our members include artists and cultural practitioners, alternative educational institutions, independent radio stations, university institutions, NGOs. We provide our members with free open source software tools and trustworthy basic services." Est. 1996. Website. Lists. Etherpad. EtherCalc. Cryptpad. Mastodon instance. Mastodon. Book of Servus. AMRO festival.

• SPC, London. Est. 1990s at Backspace.

• Systemli, "a left-wing network and technics-collective that was founded in 2003. Its aim is to provide safe and trustworthy communication services. The project is primarily aimed at left-wing political activists and people who have a particular need to protect their data." Website. Mastodon instance. Etherpad. Jitsi. Friends.

• Systerserver "offers services to its network of feminist, queer and antipatriarchal folks. The syster server is run by feminists, using FOSS. It acts as a place to learn system administration skills, host services and inspire others to do the same." Website. Lists. Mastodon instance. Mastodon. Peertube.

• The Thing. "Since its inception THE THING has provided a flexible and supportive venue for developing, presenting and distributing innovative forms of on-line activism, media art and cultural criticism." Founded 1991 in New York. Website. Blogs.

• Virose, Portugal. Est. 1997.

• ...

Events, projects, workshops, collaboration, resources

1990s, 2000s

• 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." Organised by C3 Center, Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, Media Research Foundation, ministry:of:x-periment, Pararadio, E-lab, Redundant Technology Initiative, Silverserver, Public Netbase/t0, ICA New Media Centre, Yourserver, Backspace, irational, ProteinTV, Channel, Kirklees Media Centre, Lovebytes, Head-Space, Outcast.nl, dBONANZAh!, Pleine Peau, Hypermedia Research Centre, a.o. Publication. Website.

• 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. Website.

• Les Academies du Samedi (The Saturday Academies), Interface3 and elsewhere, Brussels, November 2006-2012. Femmes et Logiciels Libres, a group of women maintaining their own server; the meetings took place every five weeks. See also Moerlooze, Mertens & Snelting 2009/2015 and Snelting 2015.

2010s

• (De)centralized Practice, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, 19 March 2013. Seminar with Diana McCarty, Reni Hofmüller, Seda Gürses, and Femke Snelting. [1] [2]

• 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. A "meeting between various DIY and independent server projects. We were interested in discussing the potential of a feminist server practice, and curious about possible approaches to it. We mixed live interventions with pre-recorded interviews and e-mail correspondence so that we could hear from as many server-related projects as we could." Interventions: Mur.at (Jogi Hofmüller), Samedies (Juliane De Moerloze), all2all (Frédéric Jadoul), Domaine Public (Frederic Peeters), Camp (Sanjay Banghar), Guifi (Gabriel), Calafou (Spideralex), !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Irational (Kate Rich), Autistici (Martino), Bibliotecha (PZI), Kein.org (Jan Gerber), Réseau Citoyen (Olivier Meunier), Neutrinet (Laurent Peuch), FaiMaison (Kheops), servus.at (Uschi Reiter). [3] [4]

• 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, [5]. [6] [7] [8] [9]

• TransHACKfeminist! camp, Calafou, Barcelona, 4-11 August 2014. "The TransH@ckFeminist (THF!) convergence, organised in collaboration with Calafou & /etc (eclectic tech carnival), is a gathering of intersectional feminists, queer and trans people of all genders interested in better understanding, using and ultimately developing free and liberating technologies for social dissent, as an alternative to the corporatisation of technologies and the digital world. We understand technologies in their broadest sense including computer systems, (distributed) networks, “pirate”, community and/or independent radio/ tv, guerilla knitting and gardening, looming, hardware hacking as well as gender hacking." VIDEO. Report. Report (ES). [10]. [11]

• Ministry of Hacking, exhibition, esc, Graz, 27 September-28 November 2014. "The concept of connectivity is one possible counter position that focuses on practices of freedom in the net, and combines social and technical networks. In order to provide a visible forum for the concept of connectivity, the esc media art laboratory in Graz has been transformed into the subversive headquarters of a MINISTRY OF HACKING, with internationally connected "Departments": "Department of Trust", "Department of Shadows and Waves", "Department of Care and Wonder", "Department of Anonymity", "Department of Difference", "Department of Tactical Feminism". The networked Departments conceptualize guidelines and lines of flight that act as manifestos and spatial embodiments of connectivity." [12]

• Second TransHackFeminist-México Meet-up (THFMx2015), Puebla, Mexico, 25-31 July 2015. Organised by Centro Comunitario ADA - Accion Directa Autogestiva. "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). Report (es). [13]

• 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?" Website. CfP, (fr), (es). [14]

• Relearn 2017, Poortgebouw, Rotterdam, 29 August-2 September 2017. "This year's Relearn general focus is to reconsider forms of self-organising in regard to both machinic systems and social formations. We started to use the term 'co-autonomies' to refer to these ideas. We hope to make use of the proposed tracks as a looking glass to reconstruct notions of agency and consider ways of maintaining them. Particularly within the current political and economic vortex, we would like to discover ways in which co-autonomies can be re-explored, re-shared and re-created from many different angles." Documentation (2019).

• BAFIF Meeting, Valencia, 4 March 2018.

• Open Days Femservers: Servidores Feministas, Calafou, Barcelona, 10-13 March 2018. Documentation.

• Welcome to the Federation, series of gatherings, Varia, Rotterdam, June-December 2018. A project by Roel Roscam Abbing in collaboration with Manetta Berends. WttF "explores alternative federated ecosystems for online services such as social media and chat. It will focus in particular on those software projects whose activities have stimulated new interest for their underlying protocols, such as XMPP or ActivityPub, in part by their focusing on design, language and user experience (UX). The WttF question is to explore how arts and design communities can play a supportive role in these processes by contributing skills, knowledge, time and exposure."

• 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."

2020s

• 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 (Artyčok).

• 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.

• TransHackFeminist Convergence 2022: Feminist Infrastructure, Calafou, Barcelona, 1-8 August 2022. "From below and from the sides, sometimes precarious, sometimes not very visible or invisible. What is our feminist infrastructure? The one that gives us a mattress, a den, a space of peace, fresh water and shade when we are on fire. The one that shares with us a little piece of land from which we can see the stars and imagine possibilities." Zine. [15]

• 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." Convened by Anarchaserver, Constant, esc, Varia, Systerserver, TITiPI, a.o. Events. Mastodon. List. [16] [17]

Publications

Art Servers Unlimited, 1998, PDF.

• Art Servers Unlimited: Conference, Meeting, Party, eds. Manu Luksch and Armin Medosch, London, 1998, 67+[10] pp, HTML. Part I: The ASU Website. Part II: The ASU Booklet. Part III: The ASU Video. Event.

• "A feminist server ....", May 2014 ff; rev. as "A Feminist Server Manifesto 0.01", in Are You Being Served? (Notebooks): "Feminist Server Summit afterlife", Brussels: Constant, May 2014; reposted as "(version 0.1) A feminist server ....", THF! transhackfeminist!, June 2014. See also Snelting 2015, "Trans*feminist servers...". [18]

• Are You Being Served? (Notebooks), eds. Anne Laforet, Marloes de Valk, Madeleine Aktypi, An Mertens, Femke Snelting, Michaela Lakova, and Reni Hofmüller, Brussels: Constant, 2014, 182 pp, PDF.

• 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.

• Servidoras feministas, Anarchaserver, 2018, 34 pp. Documentation from Open Days Femservers, Calafou. (Spanish)

• 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.

• Cómo montar una servidora feminista con una conexión casera [How to set up a feminist server with a home connection], Madriz: la_bekka, Oct 2019. Zine. [19] (Spanish)

• 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. [20]

• "Digital Solidarity Networks", Varia, March 2020 ff.

• "Feminist Infrastructure", Anarchaserver, March 2020 ff.

• Jara Rocha, A Catalogue of Formats for Digital Discomfort, eds. Seda Gürses and Jara Rocha, February 2021, PDF. [21]

• Infrables, Brussels: The Institute for Technology In the Public Interest, May 2022, 30 pp, PDF, PDF.

• "Trans*feminist servers...", June 2022 ff; rev. as "A Wishlist for Trans*feminist Servers", Prospections: "Digital Discomfort", eds. Cell for Digital Discomfort, Utrecht: BAK, December 2022. Extends A Feminist Server Manifesto 0.01. Circulated at the 2022 edition of AMRO.

• Infrastructural Interactions: Survival, Resistance and Radical Care, eds. Helen V Pritchard, and Femke Snelting, Brussels: The Institute for Technology In the Public Interest, November 2022, 83 pp, PDF, PDF. Workbook wiki. Toot.

• Counter Cloud Action Plan, Brussels: The Institute for Technology In the Public Interest, November 2022, 35 pp, PDF, PDF. Toot.

• Prospections: "Digital Discomfort", eds. Cell for Digital Discomfort (Cristina Cochior, Karl Moubarak, and Jara Rocha), Utrecht: BAK, December 2022 ff.

• Mara Karagianni, ooooo, Nate Wessalowski, vo ezn, "Feminists Federating", A Peer-reviewed Newspaper 12(1): "Toward a Minor Tech", Aarhus: Digital Aesthetics Research Center, Aarhus University, February 2023, p 4.

• Shusha Niederberger, "Minor User: Subjectivity of Small Technology", A Peer-reviewed Newspaper 12(1): "Toward a Minor Tech", Aarhus: Digital Aesthetics Research Center, Aarhus University, February 2023, p 4. Toot.

See also

Federated networks, Technofeminism, Internet activism, Community radio, Community television