From August 2022 to April 2023, Varia Library and Rotterdam Electronica Depot hold Read & Repair events. We invite you to visit our space, make yourself comfortable, read or repair some things together, and share thoughts and ideas. For this event a vegetarian lunch prepared by Sara Hamadeh will be served in the hour between workshops.
For this month, we will be exploring the theme Innards of Technology with eeefff and Danny Tirthdas van der Kleij
READ
Date: Saturday, 8th April 2023
Time: 11:00-13:00 CET
Location: Varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam)
LUNCH
13:00 - 14:00 we share a free, catered lunch. Please email us if you have any dietary restrictions at readandrepair@varia.zone.
REPAIR
Date: Saturday, 8th April 2023
Time: 14:00-16:00 CET
Location: Varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam)
READ
The Read will be guided by eeefff.
TRANSACTION:
My assumption is that there are many ways to automatize community. And many ways that are completely different from “investment-obsessed games” with prototyping of some sort of products. Indeed does it make any sense to prototype uprising and push it as a product? hahaha
(from “Economic orangery 2021”, eeefff)
eeefff are proposing the experimental reading of their recent manual “Economic orangery 2021”. The manual exists as a printed matter and an interactive website that you can go through exercising on gymnastic balls. “Economic orangery 2021” was originally done as an economic science-fiction of the present-day, a network and a live action role play game that serves as a place to gather and preserve the speculative knowledge about nowadays algorithmic-driven economies – and speculate on future histories of resource distribution. The experience aims to provide a critical view on the cultural, tech and start-up sphere and to rethink the emancipatory potential of cyborgized collectivity by experimenting with its inner logic, and to suspend the – apparent – neutrality and progressiveness of automated financial technologies. With the help of an interactive website, we will navigate through algorithmic abstractions and bodily experiences weaving together.
Background story of “Economic orangery 2021”
What used to be called “blockchains” have stopped to be a part of everyday life long ago, but turned into the fossils of the economies of the past. Algorithmically mediated relations of the societies of the past are accessible for the audience in the specific places called "orangeries". To look after these orangeries is a communal duty. Each "orangery" is dedicated for social relations localised in space and time — one of them is dedicated to Belarusian neighbourhood yards economies in revolutionary 2020-2021 years. Orangery keepers live through and test on themselves economic relations of the past to provide better experience for the visitors — to those who want to dive into fossils of politeconomies. A group of orangery keepers spend their time in evening procedures and cybernetic gymnastics, and at night they dream as if they were the inners of 2021 algorithmic technologies.
eeefff (Minsk-Berlin) are artistic cooperation / made-up institution / cybernetic political brigade / poetic computations / hacking unit / queer time. It is neither one of these, nor all together. active from 2013. eeefff make software-based projects, publications, networks, and platforms that critically explore digital labour, value extraction, and community formation in Eastern Europe. methods include: public actions, online interventions, performative seminars, software and hardware hacking, framing environments and choreographing social situations. more info can be found here: https://eeefff.org/
REPAIR
The Repair will be guided by Danny Tirthdas van der Kleij.
A very practical and hands-on repair session, going back to the literal meaning of the word repair. During this repair session we will be inspecting circuit boards and components while learning some basic techniques for repairing electronics. The Rotterdam Electronics Depot, a sparingly used feature of Varia, will take centre stage as we discuss its uses, limitations and potential. In this Repair we will investigate the concept of computational de-growth through the lens of its physical and material aspects while we discuss the feasibility of a truly recyclable and circular economy of computers.
Optional: Bring you own broken computers, laptops, tablets and maybe even phones.
Danny Tirthdas-van der Kleij (1984, NL) is a software developer, varia member, (radio) DJ and (digital) hoarder. His practice combines alternative and situational software and amateur electronic engineering. Currently this revolves around topics of computational frugality, divisions of (non)meticulous labour and the practicality ignored within politics of repairability.
Our August 2022 to April 2023 programme is funded by Gemeente Rotterdam.