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#Reimagining Our Digital Interactions – slowing down and claiming time

Donna Holford-Lovell (NEoN Digital Arts (SCIO)

Short abstract: By slowing down and claiming time for collective action informed by trans*feminist theory, NEoN Digital Arts is exploring alternatives to neoliberal models that are fast-paced and metric-oriented, aiming to implement new strategies that emphasise collaborative, collective, and communal approaches.

Long abstract:

NEoN believes the arts can be a powerful platform for social change, and strives to include a multitude of voices and perspectives in its programming and operations. Bringing together like-minded emerging artists and well-established artists, we aim to influence and reshape the genre with an organisation founded on trans*feminist values.

In 2022, NEoN hosted a gathering aimed to address the desire among participants to reduce reliance on commercial cloud services. Participants included cultural actors from NEoN, Varia from Rotterdam, In-grid from London, and the Transnational Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI). Together, they explored the evolution of NEoN from a festival-based organisation to one capable of addressing ongoing demands in the realms of technology, environment, economics, and social dynamics.

The aim is for NEoN to collectively define our position on digital infrastructure for ourselves and others, to become a reference for other grassroots organisations, and to initiate conversations with other arts organisations and community groups on forming the choices they make in relation to tactical digital ethics.

As NEoN transitions towards becoming an organisation focused on research and encounter, with a specific emphasis on trans*feminist exploration of digital technology, the gathering aimed to foster dialogue and collaboration. The goal is to reimagine NEoN's computational infrastructure to better support programming and prioritise care in digital interactions. This involves learning from slow feminist and queer server practices, encompassing areas such as storage, videoconferencing, collaborative tools, low-power graphics, and other relevant practices within the digital arts and community organising spheres.

This is yet another example of the ongoing uncertainty in the creative sector in the UK, which is why I need to find new ways of thriving rather than surviving. (NOTE: I wrote this with the intention to publish it as a blog on our website however, my board didn't think it was a good idea).

Scotlands Multi-year Arts Funding

Back in July/August 2023, NEoN, along with many others in the arts sector in Scotland, submitted its “Intention to Apply” to the new Multi-year funding from Creative Scotland.

After many sleepless nights, we chose not to apply.

On Monday 25th March, I received an email asking me to complete a survey from Creative Scotland:

“We noticed that you began the process of applying for our Multi Year Funding programme by submitting an Intention to Apply, but did not complete the Stage 1 application.” They want to know why. I have found it difficult to reply, but here it is.

Question: “Finally, in terms of why you made an Intention to Apply but did not go on to submit a full application for the fund, can you tell us your reasons for this?”

My answer: The pressure to perform under such circumstances crushes ones sense of self – if you don’t succeed you lose your job, your staff lose their job and the organisation you care so much for ceases to exist. The constant struggle for funding, coupled with the looming threat of closures and job losses, creates an overwhelming sense of anxiety and despair. Tears have been shed.

It's so challenging to muster the motivation to seek funding on such a large scale as this, especially when the government fails to commit to a coherent funding strategy for the arts. The ongoing uncertainty threatens widespread closures and job losses within the sector and facing the prospect of mass redundancies in a field one is passionate about is deeply disheartening and fundamentally unjust. The perpetual back-and-forth over funding decisions only serves to demoralise, while the constant need to justify one's existence is exhausting. (See news articles below)

The stark reality of a £50 million deficit juxtaposed with a multi-year funding request of £113 million from across Scotland’s art sector, only to be met with a fund of £33 million, underscores the enormity of the challenge. The competition is enormous and the weight of that is felt by every muscle. If time were devoted to completing the application, it would necessitate halting our programme, rendering us unable to pursue other essential funding opportunities to sustain our operations. Compounded by the ongoing crisis in arts funding, we are already working reduced hours.

We find ourselves unable to meet the relentless demands of catering to audiences and supporting workers amidst the current technological, environmental, economic, and social landscape. The push for high productivity within unrealistic timeframes has led to isolation among employees and work conditions so taxing that burnout has become commonplace, inevitably impacting audiences as well.

While we are immensely grateful to Creative Scotland for their support and for getting us where we are today, particularly from our portfolio manager, we cannot continue to operate within a funding framework that feels exploitative, unjust, and indifferent to the wellbeing of those it purportedly supports.

In addition to the concerns expressed, it's essential to consider how the current funding structure may inadvertently exacerbate inequalities within the arts sector. Often, smaller organisations and those serving marginalised communities face greater barriers to accessing funding, perpetuating disparities in representation and access to cultural resources. The bureaucratic hurdles and administrative burden associated with funding applications of this magnitude disproportionately affect smaller organisations with limited resources, diverting valuable time and energy away from creative pursuits and community engagement.

The government's failure to heed the concerns and needs of the arts sector is deeply troubling. Despite repeated appeals and demonstrations of the importance of robust and sustainable funding for the arts, it seems that these pleas are falling on deaf ears. This lack of responsiveness not only undermines the vitality of the arts but also demonstrates a disregard for the cultural enrichment and economic contributions that the sector provides to society as a whole.

The government's inaction perpetuates a cycle of instability and uncertainty within the arts community, making it increasingly difficult for organisations to plan and thrive. Without meaningful engagement and dialogue between policymakers and stakeholders in the arts, the disconnect between government priorities and the realities of the sector will only continue to widen. It is imperative that the government recognises the integral role of the arts in our society and takes proactive steps to address the systemic issues facing the sector. This includes not only providing adequate funding and support but also actively listening to the voices of those who are directly impacted by government policies and decisions.

Multi-Year Funding update. 17 Aug 2023 https://www.creativescotland.com/news-stories/latest-news/archive/2023/08/multi-year-funding-update Scottish Government Draft Budget 2024/25 https://www.creativescotland.com/news-stories/latest-news/archive/2023/12/scottish-government-draft-budget-202425

Creative Scotland warns half of all arts groups could lose funding. 12th Jan 2023 https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23246478.creative-scotland-warns-half-arts-groups-lose-funding/

Creative Scotland has £6.6m budget cut reimposed. 28 Sept 2023 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-66950426.amp

Creative Scotland warning after ‘one-off’ use of reserves to plug £6.6 million budget cut. 28 Sep 2023 https://www.insider.co.uk/news/creative-scotland-warning-after-one-31052658

Scottish Budget: Creative Scotland has cuts restored but still faces £50m funding black hole next year. 19 Dec 2023 https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/scottish-budget-creative-scotland-has-cuts-restored-but-still-faces-50m-funding-black-hole-next-year/ar-AA1lKtWk

This panel contribution is concerned with the work of In-grid, a trans* feminist artist/educator collective working through digital infrastructures. We practice infrastructuring through a method of re-figuring; learning, forming and enabling. Via this collective practice, we create new forms and imaginaries of technical skill-sharing, co-creation and documentation. During these processes, critical, political and affective positionalities are entangled with the materials with which we are engaging, carefully avoiding conflating the nuances of our individual desires and the needs of all those taking part. These methods are normally invalidated through the hegemonic terms of cloud computing and commercial technological development. To do this otherwise (Pritchard, 2018) we embrace queer, crip and feminist methods, bringing in different temporalities, rhythms, dynamics and dialogues that transform infrastructuring practices through mutual care and collective affinity (Kafer, 2013).

We're excited to share reflections on a case study of how we have been practising infrastructuring otherwise, so that others can build from our successes, failures and frictions (Davis, Angela Y., et al. 2022). To illustrate this we will focus on Servpub (servpub.net + wiki4print.servpub.net) a collaboration and co-creation of an open publishing infrastructure with other feminist servers, collectives and educational/research institutions, like Varia, Systerserver, Creative Crowds, CCI, CSNI and Shape. In the creation of this community centred autonomous server we shared skills, stories and emotions, transforming these often violent infrastructure into an affective infrastructure. We will also touch on our histories as In-grid, and speculate on how we might build on our collective archival, writing and infrastructuring practices.

Our proposal reflects on the possibilities and challenges for autonomous collective infrastructure within the University. Following examples of feminist servers created by collectives such as systerserver, in-grid, and varia (https://systerserver.net/ATNOFS/), we maintain a server within Aarhus University. As with other collectives, the creation and maintenance of this server aims to both offer alternative services for collaboration (e.g. open software libraries or annotation services), while functioning as a learning space for collective practice and care.

The autonomy of this collaboration platform is, however, negotiated with a relatively large organisation. Many universities lean towards corporate solutions for digital services offered to students and academics, whether due to security, compatibility, or standardization reasons. We observe a need for alternative, open source, and collaborative platforms that foster experimental research, and provide opportunities beyond the ones offered by big tech players. As such, the ideation and development of our server relies on external collaborations with autonomous collectives, both for technical development and critical dialogues.

We delve into the challenges brought by the “hybridity” of our collective infrastructure, simultaneously institutional and related to extended autonomous networks, and showcase how we have navigated these issues. Following the “undercommons”, we reflect on our positionality, place, and responsibility, as critical academics, refusing to be for or against the university (Harney and Moten 2013), and distinguish between the canonical work of critical thinking and observation within the university, and the action of performing criticality that these technical systems and external collaborations allow.

My research focuses on platform-based labour to understand how work, knowledge, and cooperation have been transformed by algorithmic governance. As a large and diffuse network of logistical workers is increasingly managed computationally—relentlessly matching supply with demand—spaces of contestation to the labour conditions shaped by platform companies are emerging. These experiences can be both archived and supported by the development of a “data commons”. As digital labour scholar Tiziana Terranova explains, while exploitation at factories was characterised by the wage-profit, corporations expropriate the commons and transform it into property as a way to generate value. My research explores an alternative commons of workers data together with delivery workers in the UK and International Workers of Great Britain union. A “data commons” brings together unionised and non-unionised workers, trying to experiment with the boundaries of organisational structures. For example, to determine in which restaurants it is better to take strike action, or to coordinate the disconnection from a particular platform to strike, or to assemble evidence for strategic litigation. Drawing from Italian Autonomia’s insights, where the production of knowledge is understood as the production of struggle, the concept of “data commons” seeks to reconstruct the conditions that make possible antagonism ‘within and against’ capital. It aims to counter capital’s capture of space and time, and the extractivist dynamics of platforms towards workers.

The Cloud has become the dominant model for delivering compute across a continuously growing number of industries, from financial markets and health institutions to game industries, mining, governments, agriculture and logistics. As a regime rather than just an infrastructure, it propagates expansionist, extractivist and financialised modes which deeply affect our aesthetics, how we organise, relate and care for resources. It turns all lively and creative processes into profit, including ways to resist.

Now our dependency on The Cloud regime seems intractable, and it is difficult if not impossible to imagine life without it, it is time to make space for different infrastructures in support of collective life with and without computation. Counter Cloud Imaginaries include collaborative file hosting, low-energy graphics, queer circuits and slow sustainable tech-maintenance.

This contribution comes out of the work of The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI) and builds on a collectively edited FAQ that was published in the context of the International Trans★feminist Digital Depletion Strike that takes place on March 8. It mixes articulations of what's up with the Cloud, with modest proposals from artists, activists and designers for infrastructuring otherwise. Their tentative, sometimes contradictory techno-practices radically emphasise vernacular, situated, specific technodiversity and work simultaneously at different scales against infrastructural violence. They center trans★feminist and anti-colonial server practices and organise collectively towards systemic techno-political change.