Arquivos táticos em processos
We envision a critical Brazillian network of tech feminists initiatives across generations, that can share resources and knowledge of their process, to discuss methodologies of archive and maintenance of digital production, and looking on tools that help to enable a shift in power relations within digital society.
We have been facing a difficult situation in which the digital records and documents of past actions used to be hosted, ceased to be paid and the nexus of their combined ideas and concepts was lost, at least in their chronological order. Although in terms of history we must also think outside the chronological order, their record in such order is important for future study and research.
During the production of Tactical Archives (Arquivos Táticos) a dedicated host was created as an independent service working for our projects to ensure internet infrastructure and shared website maintenance which helped us to keep our sites alive, making digital resources available, and providing security to guarantee the future of the small production of critical digital knowledge. Over the past couple years, we are facing the challenge of the Internet business model based on applications, mobile devices, economic concentration, and exploration of personal data.
For a change in this scenario, it would be necessary to develop a collaborative pedagogy that can offer digital space and tools, looking at the Internet in more participatory action, more cultural and inquisitive, and less alien to the ‘user’. Different realities and contexts are a challenge to overcome, so our strategy is to address them by promoting pre-sessions, a series of online and offline meetings, mainly engaging women that already work on local autonomous initiatives.
Thus, this fund will be used to support the commitment of these women to participate in a collaborative framework of cartography and to cross over methods of digital archiving. The resources will be distributed for expenses in meetings and gatherings; for technological infrastructure needed to improve our hosting space and to maintain domain names; with translations, editorial work, and a print-based toolkit of our practices to share on digital and printed form.
- ALL: Please share some ideas or activities that you aim to carry out in the next year. This is only to give a picture of your ideas/strategies above, and doesn’t have to be comprehensive or a DEFINITE plan
{* Answer here, bullet points encouraged, max 250 words}
- Online regular meetings draw upon a collective look at the histories of these two decades of the internet in Brazil;
- Online gatherings with invited collaborators to share their practices, histories, and enhance methodologies of archiving;
- Immersion tech camp for one week in Serra da Capivara, working in an inland laboratory of storytelling, cartography, systematizing methodologies, and planning of future actions. It is also a reunion of initiatives as such Midia Tatica Brasil and Tecnoxaminismo celebrating 2 decades of festivals;
- Editorial selection for online publications;
- Improvement of our web infrastructure to increase hosting capacity, diagnosis of specific needs and technical support adjustments for the websites;
- Recovery and maintenance of virtual material (emails, emails list archives, images, photos, videos etc). Organization of such material in a visual format online, interconnecting or not other database;
- Writing and translations of the documentation processes.
- ALL: Please share briefly, what does change look like for you and your communities in relation to the issues you identified, and how do you think this grant can contribute to this change?
{* Answer here, max 150 words}
Change for us means not having to improvise in having to find ways to sustain our forms of dispersed and effective collaboration. In a context of spread precarity, lack of public funding, working with new and experimental media resources and non-profit tools makes us, even more, uncertain about the continuation of our practices.
Change would mean also having the capacity to multiplicate our values and tools, as we see technology and collaborative work being totally swollen into individual and competitive forms. The immersion in a research process of our own practices and the systematization of a tool kit, for example, sustain a more collaborative idea and practice of the internet, by its critical media production.
- If you’re applying for GROW & SUSTAIN: Can you share some highlights of the work you have done in the past few years, especially those that contributed to the evolution of your current ideas and strategies. Please provide links to them. If your work is partially or wholly anonymous for security, please send us a link to a private folder to grants@numun.org, or email to let us know your preferred way of sharing such information securely.
{* Answer here, max 200 words, bullet points and URL links encouraged}
We have been using cartography as a method of research, to activate the personal experiences of the participants and the perception of their life trajectory in relation to the political moment that Brazil was living and is living right now.Our research runs through our lives building a safe space to discuss our practices, as producers, developers, non-artists, artists, and archivists, engaged in digital production networks, the internet, tactical media, and free knowledge.
Visual cartography gives us landmarks from which to see many techno-politics layers affecting the production of our larger networks and this is made visible by the signalization of books, events, conferences, etc. Our collective visualization/immersion/production signalizes documents, and publications organized by period, creating a small library of community crossovers and experiences. We have experienced these practices in many projects activated by us or in collaboration with partners:
Njira (2019): https://njira.tech/
Arquivos Taticos (2018): https://midiatatica.desarquivo.org/
Tecnoxamanismo (2014): https://tecnoxamanismo.wordpress.com/
Vocabulário Político (2014) https://vocabpol.cristinaribas.org/
Por uma Cartografia Critica da Amazonia (2011-2012): https://oyah.github.io/remixtexturas/
Desarquivo.org (2011): https://desarquivo.org/
Laboratório de Cartografias Insurgentes (2011): https://imotiro.org/cartografia/laboratorio-de-cartografias-insurgentes/
Mídia Tática Brasil (2000s): https://midiatatica.info/
- If you’re applying for GROW & SUSTAIN: Can you share with us 1 or 2 key insights and learnings from the work that you have done engaging with technology so far?
{* Answer here, max 250 words}
Understanding the transformation of political interests and views on the internet, we will have a critical cultural production that is less present on the web. The constant threats to freedom of expression, the precariousness, and lack of support for these activities are increasingly constraining the possibilities of survival of independent projects on the web. The importance of creating organizational and autonomous models in common infrastructure for hosting ensures service and sustainable space for a sensitive community within this ecosystem.
Since the application layer of the Internet has changed and moved from websites to mobile applications and social networks, the presence of artistic, political and cultural perspectives has also relocated. What at one time appeared as curiosity, technical knowledge and social initiatives to guarantee the independence and autonomy of project infrastructures has become content within monopolized commercial networks.
Nowadays, with the widespread crisis due to the pandemic, the risks to online security and privacy and the growth of intolerant policies, of silencing and neglecting culture and the arts, the need to civil society groups to have knowledge of their communications and to exercise their right to freedom of expression appear as urgent. Added to this is the restriction on mechanisms for promoting arts and culture, and the eventual violations committed by platforms, which can be seen as a form of censorship and deterrence of cultural manifestations in the digital world.
- If you’re applying for:
8.1. GROW: Please briefly share how are you defining “growth” for your organisation/work/activism and what are some of the needs, concerns and/or opportunities that you have considered? {* Answer here, max 250 words}
As a feminist network, we understand growth as the capacity to recognise our size and project the continuation of our aims, activities and ethical perspective. More literally, growth for us means the development of tools that are able to shelter other projects and platforms besides ours (such as activist women in need of safe networks and servers, be them from environmental organisations or from public health, such as pro-abortion movements), as well as being able to sustain relationships to young groups of women and lgbtqia+ communities, guaranteeing an intergenerational continuation of our practices. Growth for us means being able to create stable tools and platforms, and sharing our values and knowledge.
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Livretos Tricknology FEM TACTICAL ARCHIVES BRZL Antes, agora, por vir
Festivais/ Imersões Tecnoxamanismo MTB 20 anos Digitofagia Arquivos Táticos (Numun)