On the Friday the 16th and Saturday the 17th of September 2022, we are hosting the Plaintext Protocol Partyline, in which we will explore and experience plaintext protocols as a communication medium.

On Friday, the 22th of July, Varia will once again host an evening of music. This time with KRAMP (who will present his new release on Bergpolder Records) and Bloedneus & De Snuitkever. It's been a while!

On April 4, 2022, after 32 years of existence, the Rotterdam Walk of Fame came to an end. The last sixty tiles of this well-known star sidewalk near the Metroplein and Ahoy were dismantled. Since then, Rotterdam has been missing one of its most noticeable landmarks. Fortunately, we managed to retrieve one of these special tiles. On July 8, at the start of the summer holidays, the tile of none other than Shrek will be reinstalled on the corner of Gouwstraat and Wolphaertstraat. Everyone is welcome at the green unveiling at 7 p.m. sharp. There will be snacks, drinks and music.

Calibre remains to be popular among amateur librarians and digital libraries. Over time, the software was supplemented by many new features and plugins. Now, we want to revisit the digital library as an extensible space, and step back into the imagination of the library as a generative and social environment.

We're delighted to invite you to our LIMITS-hub, an open and informal gathering moment taking place during the Eighth Workshop on Computing within Limits this June 21st/22nd. As this year's LIMITS will be taking place online, we are setting up a hub, to have a physical space to meet. Come along to watch the conference together!

As you may already know, a number of Rotterdam-based artists & hackers are busy working on projects related to documenta 15. These projects are happening in collaboration with ruangrupa, the artist collective from Jakarta Indonesia who are running the artistic direction of documenta this year. As documenta 15 approaches, we'd like to have a moment to eat together, share what we're up to and discuss over some drinks. It can also be a moment to focus on our local ekosistem.

Join us for an open and free workshop on Sunday, May 29th 11am–4pm, at Varia and learn more about the Digital Archive of Artists' Publishing and how you can start using this resource, too!

This evening, Angeliki Diakrousi will present the Hunting Mosquitos, a research in progress on 'The Mosquito', a technology used in hangouts in Rotterdam, that emits high-frequencies to deter the youth from loitering in public space.

You are warmly invited to the launch of the Infraschool, an experimental peer-to-peer learning project that aims to explore local community infrastructure, co-operative organisation and digital tools.

Streaming With Infrafem is a moment of exchange of communal strategies, infrastructural knowledge, and design choices starting by redefining the notion of streaming. We will explore ways of "streaming" to each other by listening, waiting and responding, both through text (for example via collaborative editors), through audio (for example via the streaming audio/video servers), and other means.

A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) is a collaborative project of Varia, LURK, Constant, HYPHA, Feminist Hack Meetings and ESC formed around intersectional feminist, ecological servers. In the first session at Varia during the weekend of March 26 and 27, we will focus on tools and methods to make space for understanding what feminist publishing infrastructures could be.

XPUB and Varia are delighted to invite you to this double launch of the publications Learning How to Walk While Catwalking and Vernaculars come to matter on Friday the 17th of December.

Experienced users might be surprised: nowadays it is totally possible to use a computer device and have no clue whatsoever about files and folders. While the file/folder paradigm is still foundational within computers, it is increasingly buried under layers of smart interfaces: search boxes, automatically curated collection, phone manager …