Networks and Links for Care and Repair

           WORK AND BACKGROUND 

You can find my full CV here 

Art interventions

• The Glass Room exhibitions https://theglassroom.org/exhibitions

• Resonant Signals  - a unique series of workshops at AmerikaGedenkbibliothek to co-create with sound artist Jamie Perera and  a group of library visitors, a series of three sonifications of climate data
• In/Visible  - a group intervention to make the abstract invisible processes of digital tracking and surveillance, tangible and personal - performed at major public events, such as Re:Publica and Dutch Design Week https://vimeo.com/642698342  https://in-visible.codes/
• (Re) gaining Ecological Futures - Myco-Poetics, Floating University, immersive workshop into fungi and regenerative social networks https://floating-berlin.org/programmes/re-gaining-ecological-futures/rgef2023/

Writing


I wrote extensively - but  intermittently - on the early manifestations of digital surveillance from the early 2000s, including:

• Behind the Great Wall, Mute Magazine - early internet repression in China and other states:
  https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/wsis-vol.1-behind-great-wall
• Chinese Net Clampdown, The Guardian - I believe the first western article on Chinese internet dissidents: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/dec/19/onlinesupplement
• Internet activism against the Iraq Invasion, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2003/feb/20/onlinesupplement1

In the past year I have written about degrowth and  and energy use in AI

• Indigenous degrowth? Alternative visions of what a world beyond growth could actually look like https://berlinergazette.de/indigenous-degrowth/ based on interviews with three  indigenous activists
• AI and its energy impact: https://n3xtcoder.org/ai

I am currently planning a number of writing projects:

• Developing a project with the perma-computing community - https://permacomputing.net/
• Co-writing an academic paper on design in ecological transition and techno-utopianism
• Developing an extended pamphlet on technology and climate change

Community led projects

I am one of the people up here (since demolished - hopefully in part, because of us): Didcot Power Station climate protest – YouTube

• I helped organise the shut down of an oil refinery in 2010: Crude Awakening – 16th October 2010 – YouTube
• And the delivery of a wind turbine to Tate Modern: https://youtu.be/pYFtH-o4ASU? t=387

More recently, I helped organise two climate action sailing projects on (beautiful!) large traditional sailing boats in the Baltic Sea . The boats have a crew of 28 people in a (very) confined space.

In fact I will be going to Greifswald next week to help with winter maintenance of one of those boats: www.lovis.de

Project

My initial thoughts are to research and speak to:
- Practitioners of Traditional Ecological Knowledge - the shared practice of indigenous knowledge systems in overcoming network challenges
- Researchers in bio-organic materiality, such as at Matters of Activity - a world-leading research cluster in Berlin
- The Perma-computing community - who’s principles include care for us, care for the chips
- Mycologists and other fungi experts from organisations such as SPUN - Society for the - Protection of Underground Networks
- Endo-biologists and Ecologists researching more-than-human intelligences
- Archeologists researching ancient energy and network systems
- Practitioners of somatics and other embodied disciplines

I would love to find out what we can learn from these systems of knowledge - about alternative ways to network that replenish us and not deplete us. I want to develop engaging essays, practical guides, and narrative displays with accessible tools and strategies that anyone can use online and offline.

I also want to develop imaginaries of what our network infrastructures might look like if we followed these systems of knowledge.

Creatures and Doughnuts

Two frameworks I hope to develop and apply in this project.

The Creatures Framework

This is a new set of guides and resources for applying creative practice to exploring socially and ecologically sustainable futures. The framework https://creaturesframework.org provides a robust structure based on interviews and assessments with a range of projects in the EU Creatures Project.



This framework a very recent publication, but I think it offers huge promise for creative ways to allow groups to imagine new futures. 

Doughnut Economic Model 


Created by Kate Raworth , the Doughnut Model https://doughnuteconomics.org/ is “a compass for human prosperity in the 21st century”. It has two concentric rings:

• A social foundation – to ensure that no one is left falling short on life’s essentials
• An ecological ceiling – to ensure that humanity does not collectively overshoot

Planetary Boundaries

Between these two boundaries lies a doughnut-shaped space that is both ecologically safe and socially just – a space in which humanity can thrive. The Doughnut has been applied successfully worldwide as an accessible way to explore sustainability, often by local governments.

With the Green Web Foundation, I adapted the Doughnut Model to apply it to technology in a series of workshops. We wrote about it here: https://doingthedoughnut.tech/