User:Artemis gryllaki/Project Proposal 3

PROJECT PROPOSAL_3

What do you want to make

I want to develop a series of workshops to explore and discuss the suggestions and potentials of feminist tech initiatives. In parallel, I will explore tools and methods to document and publish these collective sessions, which carry stories, experiences, memories, conversations, and technical skills.

I am interested in making public and creating a public for issues around the social exclusions created by a stereotypical male, geek culture in tech-based environments; and the need for feminist groups to form tech communities that encourage collective knowledge production and Do-It-Together practices in inclusive and diverse environments.

Workshops:
I will get involved in existing feminist tech initiatives that push the boundaries of technological circles, in order to include gender-diverse people, amateurs, or others who have experienced low or high levels of exclusion. I also intend to organise gatherings for discussion and cooperation, inviting people who are already involved or are interested in being involved in technology and the processes of shaping it. I believe in physical space meetings towards creating temporary, or long-term communities and creating bonds of trust among the participants. Furthermore, I regard these meetings as starting points for exploring and developing skills in information technologies in the context of free/libre and open-source software (F/LOSS) and open-design movements. Why F/LOSS and open-design? Because only if we have open access to technological knowledge and practices we could be able to explore personal and collective freedoms. F/LOSS and open-design movements are suggesting and practicing the engagement with technology, supporting the right of everybody to use, study, share and improve it.

During the workshops, I want to experiment with practices such as DIY and DIT fanzine making, free software tutorials, collective reading and annotating, storytelling, Wikipedia editing, role-playing, sound recording, gaming, etc. I will propose a variety of collective activities as methods to open up discussions, share personal and collective challenges, learn from each other and amplify vulnerable voices.

Documenting, archiving and publishing:
Another part of my project is to research how the collective knowledge and memories produced in physical space gatherings can continue to “live”, so that they can be revisited in the future, encourage other relevant projects, become an inspiration to others, and remain open for doubt or debate. I want to try different digital or analog tools and techniques to document, archive, curate, and distribute material from the workshops. Why are multiple access levels (from fully public to fully private) to different kinds of information are useful or necessary? How can parts of the gathered material be curated in order to create publications? How difficult is to maintain this knowledge protected in our unstable and fragile community networks? In my thesis I will try to raise these questions and look at the methods and tools used by existing feminist tech initiatives such as /ETC which face these challenges.

How do you plan to make it

Since the beginning of my research, I have started drafting various ideas for activities and workshops in the context of the already mentioned topics. The next step is to design the structure of the gatherings and work on a "Hackpact" to test tools and methods that I can use during the collective sessions.

Prototypes:
In October I travelled to Athens to participate in the "Eclectic Tech Carnival" (/ETC), a feminist tech international annual event, which was the trigger to activate me in researching this subject. Together with Angeliki, my fellow XPUB colleague, we conducted a story-sharing workshop, inviting women and trans, non-binary, intersex persons, active in the tech world, to share and discuss their experiences of exclusion. We wrote collective notes on the stories in Etherpad and used them as content to create a small DIT fanzine with free software tools.

Apart from organising the session "xperiences", I also participated in several other workshops, got inspired, met and talked to people, trying to become aware of the difficulties feminist collectives face while organising such an event. All my memories from this event are an inspiration for my next steps in this project.

Through trying out different possibilities and prototypes, I can improve my drafts and workshop ideas. Later on, when workshop sessions are more defined, I would like to perform them in various community spaces and contexts, to produce a variety of outcomes and get more feedback.

During my project, I am also going to interview women, who are initiators or participants in feminist hackerspaces or tech gatherings. I am interested in understanding and reflecting on the reasons why feminists feel the need to create and safeguard their own spaces in order to talk about technology while practicing it. The material from the workshops, meetings, and interviews hopefully will expand through time, to include experiences, stories, and skills of diverse groups of people. I plan to experiment with publishing my findings in various ways to create a playful diverse archive that speaks about matters relevant to my research.

Timeline

Sep-Oct: Define the subject of my thesis, articulate the project proposal and draft rapid prototypes that can help my research; participate in Eclectic Tech Carnival (/ETC) in Athens, organise a discussion session there with Angeliki, gather material from other workshops and discussions; start documenting and experimenting with it as a study case.

Nov-Dec: Finalise thesis outline and project proposal; read and write texts, relevant to the topics I have suggested in my thesis outline. Continue prototypes; interview people from feminist tech communities and work on publishing methods. Communicate with individuals or groups of people in Athens who are interested in organising there a local feminist tech weekend. Draft Py.rate.chnic workshop for January.

Jan-Feb: Perform Py.rate.chnic workshop; plan other workshops and experiments (a possible space for that would be Varia in Rotterdam).

Mar-April: Keep organising workshops; wrap up them up in a final project; decide on what is the best way to present my research process in the grad show.

May-June: Finalise project; prepare final presentation.

Why do you want to make it

My interest in researching issues related to gender and technology came as a natural continuation of my personal experiences. Since my early adult years, I got involved in activist movements in Athens, as a response to the social disruptions brought from the financial crisis of 2007-2008. The groups I was part of, focused on revealing and propagating social exclusions, according to race, ethnicity, social class, and gender. They had a tradition in using political practices of resistance that didn't change much from the '60s and '70s. They had highly skeptical approaches to new technologies and their use for surveillance, control, and oppression by power institutions.

After moving to the Netherlands and in parallel with my studies in XPUB, I also started working as a junior developer in an IT company. As a female and amateur developer, coming from an artistic background, I struggle a lot to prove myself among my male colleagues who constitute 90% of the employees. I find it hard to fit in their talks, as cultural or social issues seem to be "irrelevant". What matters is the ever-developing code, which produces more efficient, faster, impressive programs.

Technology and progress are often presented as neutral processes, however, the reality is much more complex. In my perspective, technology production needs people who care about who is being served, for what purpose, and at what -social, economic and environmental- cost. These questions are actually relevant and crucial to discuss. If we don't care about them, it is unlikely to be able to understand how the technologies we use everyday work, what impact do they have on our lives and behaviors, or if there is any possibility to change the current conditions. Shall we continue not having an opinion, as "ignorants, non-experts, or not geek enough"?

When I got familiar with the free-software movement and its suggestions, I got inspired by its proactive attitude. For me it offered a potential in the direction of changing the processes of developing technology, that's why I felt the need to dive more into it and possibly, become a contributor. Following discussions in forums where floss communities meet, conferences and meetups around free-software development, I was surprised to see how few women are present in these circles. I am curious to understand why this happens, what is the history behind it and if we can reverse this situation. Throughout my research, I would like to interact with people with similar thoughts and questions, learn from them and participate in communities that work on relevant projects. I want to contribute to feminist tech initiatives, which are opposed to the "alfa-geek-hacker" attitude, a stereotypical role model of the high-tech world.

Who can help you and how

XPUB tutors by giving feedback on my ideas, provide referencies for relevant projects and help with my prototypes XPUB peers by participating in small activities I organise and discuss the development of my project Manetta Berends has participated in workshops that are relevant to the topics I research and has useful referencies and experiences to share Lidia Pereira is helping me with editing texts I write and giving feedback on my proposals Angeliki Diakrousi with who I will develop some workshops together. ETC crew would be a great resource for information, inspiration and interviews.

Relation to previous practice

During my previous studies, I researched the concept of the commons from an autonomous Marxist perspective, looking at the reasons why people meet and form communities in order to produce, protect and share their commons; in the material world, such as urban commons, or in the immaterial world, such as knowledge commons. As a contributor in political groups in Athens, it would be a fortunate possibility for me, to get the chance to enrich greek activist communities with the skills and knowledge that I acquire during my research about feminist hack practices.

My first try to develop a workshop was at the third Trimester of the first XPUB year. With my fellow students, we structured the workshop "Marginal Conversations" (2019), exploring the potential of collective reading, annotating texts and performing our annotations. After being involved in the special issue "the Library is Open", and other workshops during the Urgent Publishing conference, I concluded that organising and participating in workshops is a very interesting and vivid way to acquire, share knowledge and initiate conversations.

Relation to a larger context

Sharing knowledge and skills within communities, debating in order to raise awareness on contemporary political issues, production and protection of the commons are the main fields I'm genuinely interested in. I chose to research a topic around technology and software since it is a big part of my everyday life; not only as an amateur software developer, with a non-tech background but also as a millennial woman, living her everyday life in the post-digital era.

Inspired by the ethics and ways of thinking, collaborating and doing that the F/LOSS movement proposes, I aspire to understand its more complex processes and the problems which appear. I think that learning and producing knowledge collectively form a highly social and political action towards making knowledge common, against individualistic, career-making, efficient, ever-development tech production. I believe that strengthening the commons, teach each other, and documenting our common processes, hopefully, can become an inspiration, a solidarity paradigm for other communities.

References

Needs update!!! 1. Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology by Ellen Ullman 2. When Computers Were Women by Jennifer S. Light 3. TechnoFeminism by Judy Wajcman 4. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking by Gabriella Coleman 5. Feminist Server Manifesto, a collective outcome of the Constant december meeting in Brussels (December 2013) 6. The Free Software Definition by Richard Stallman 7. Close to the machine: technophilia and its discontents by Ellen Ullman 8. When Computers Were Human by David Alan Grier 9. Zeros and Ones by Sadie Plant 10. The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics by Sadie Plant 11. Xenofeminist manifesto by Laboria Cuboniks

Projects

1. Anarcha Server https://anarchaserver.org/ 2. Eclectic Tech Carnival https://eclectictechcarnival.org/ 3. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology https://adanewmedia.org/ 4. Internet-in-a-box http://internet-in-a-box.org/ 5. Communitism WLAN http://www.alexzakkas.me/portfolio/communitism-wlan/ 6. PirateBox https://piratebox.cc 7. Are You Being Served? https://areyoubeingserved.constantvzw.org/Documenting.xhtml 8. Ethertoff http://osp.kitchen/tools/ethertoff.js/ 9. Tactical Tech Gender and Technology Institute https://en.gendersec.train.tacticaltech.org 10. Just for the record http://justfortherecord.space/#about

Example reference projects:
https://eclectictechcarnival.org/, https://www.genderchangers.org/, https://anarchaserver.org/, http://justfortherecord.space/, https://en.gendersec.train.tacticaltech.org/, http://www.grrrlzines.net/, https://obn.org/inhalt_index.html, https://transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/