Grgr thesis outline

link to the pad

In the transition between an educational environment and the establishment of a creative (publishing) practice in the "realistically depressing" world (Berlant, 2011), a lot of questions arise around how much of the so far carefully constructed values of sustainability, care, collective learning, and autonomy around collaborative work would actually survive, and at which cost. 

The main key issues I'm particularly concerned with and that I would like to address through my thesis are:  1) How to problematize the clash between human, affective, and plural dimension and the stupid, violent realm of individualizing structural bureaucratic relations (Graeber, 2015)?   2)And how do bureaucratic infrastructures of collective work actually influence collaboration?  3) To what degrees these bureaucratic relations are necessary inside collaborative publishing practices ?

The intention of my thesis is to unpack and describe the terms of collaborative work in the context of publishing, intended in its broader meaning of making things public. This includes, in my understanding, a critical reflection on the tools and methods used to publish something, but also on the ways publics are addressed and invited into different phases of the publishing process. In parallel, since I've been growing curiosity around the often hidden and forgotten realm of bureaucratic administration, I'd like to dedicate special attention to it by looking at both publishing and collective work from this obscure corner. Without necessarily talking about how to collaborate nor publish, practically speaking I would like my research to attempt to elaborate a series of criteria able to assess the bureaucratic infrastructures used by cultural organizations, studios, collectives and spaces.  By bureaucratic infrastructure, I mean the plethora of softwares, tools and methods used to communicate, organize, planning budget, and doing taxes (f.e. zulip, slack, wecan, nextcloud, calendar.... etc), but also the physical technological infrustructure in which these softwares and methods live. (One example is the xpub infra-tour)

by Aymeric, modified to include xpub 2021-2023's server named Soupboat

Evaluating the components and functions of bureaucratic infrastructure would provide a starting point to further engage with bigger questions as: what does such bureaucratic infrastructure tell about the internal and external relations of [cultural] production (Berlant, 2011) of a cultural organization? Which kind of ideologies does it speak about?

In other words, what is the shape, the instensity, and the distribution of collaboration (or non-collaboration) inside a cultural organization, and according to which infrastructural or (ideological) criteria?

To start small, I intend to initate my research by addressing self-organized cultural initiatives, collectives, and organizations that are close to my experience and surroundings. To connect to my initial key issues, I would like to discuss with them how they organize collaborative work, how their bureaucratic infrastructure would support, limit or shape their work, what are the frustrations, and how do they choose or build their own bureaucratic tools, and so on and so forth.

In this initial phase of the research, I also imagine to elaborate together with these organizations a series of criteria to evaluate bureaucratic infrastructures for collaborative work. In a second moment, I'd like to verify, modify or add those criteria by gradually snowballing towards more distant and bigger cultural organizations and institutions. While this last part delimits an ongoing circular process, I realistically imagine my thesis to be located in between the first phase and the beginning of the second phase. 

I would like to organize and elaborate my thesis research through a System Requirement Specification*.  Because I'd like to expose the content of the research to open modifications, revisions, and collaborative negotiation, using the format of a SRS would allow me to render the criteria elaborated to assess bureaucratic infrastructures of collective work, and at the same time provide a structure in which discussion can happen through requests for change. 

The thesis and the graduation project will be closely connected and sometimes overlap, I imagine them to be interweaved as follows:

• The SRS is part of the graduation project. Its written body text will also be part of the main body text of my thesis and constitute its mode of address as well. 

• The SRS will be complemented by an introduction that would explain what is a SRS, and the reasons behind this formal choice

• A conclusive little essay will express the observations and the reflections gathered through the research.

*About the SRS as mode of address:

• The System (or Software) Requirement Specification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements_specification

• SRS explored as literary genre: it has a fictional taste, but also the seriousness of a standard. 

• A collection of structured information that rigidly and thoroughly describes the how-to and why-to. 

• And therefore, the perfect place where instances of care, amatorial clumsiness, and underdog softer approaches/methods for collaborative work can be smuggled into disguised as formalised rigorous requirements and use cases.

• As starting point to problematize the contradictions of bureaucracy encompassing collective work

• It stands in conversation with dehumanized protocols and requirements that enable software systems to function, and that would otherwise make them crash or not work at all.

• It's more than a code of conduct, less than a law. 

• Not a passive delimitation of a spectrum of actions, but a request of (re)adaptation for an appropriate participation. 

outline:

• intro
• the System Requirement Specification
  • bureaucratic infrastructures of collective work
  • the approach
  • the criteria
  • use cases
• conclusion