School
for
Poetic
Computation
Consensual Hacking is a collective thought experiment and a guided, participatory workshop focused on digital and social consent. Through conversation, writing, and hands-on computer access, students will explore what it means to give, withhold, or request consent in digital and sexual spaces. Students may choose to engage in a consensual process of hacking into each other’s personal computers—a practice that raises questions around control, vulnerability, and care. What is social and digital consent and how are they interwoven? What does it mean to responsibly give and take access and control to our most intimate digital spaces? Is there pleasure to be found in a bounded exchange of trust and vulnerability? Together, we’ll navigate secure networking protocols and basic uses of the terminal, while also co-creating sociotechnical contracts that express our boundaries and desires towards a loving, secure, and mutual transgression of digital space.
Images courtesy of teachers.
Workshop Day 1:
Workshop Day 2:
We require everyone to wear a mask while at the event to help keep the space safe for all—especially our disabled and immuno-compromised community members. If you’re feeling under the weather, we kindly ask that you sit this one out.
Secret Riso Club, the venue where the event takes place, is wheelchair accessible at the main level. Restrooms are gender neutral and ADA compliant. Please note: there are stairs leading to the basement, which is not wheelchair accessible.
This is a collective thought experiment. Participation is flexible; everyone can engage meaningfully regardless of technical involvement. Consent, care, and your own wellbeing come first.
No prior technical experience required. The focus is more on emotional and ethical aspects of hacking, though basic familiarity with computers is helpful.
Content warning: This workshop includes discussions of consent, boundaries, and vulnerability that may surface personal experiences or associations with consent violations. Topics may touch on themes related to bodily autonomy, sexual violence, surveillance, or control.
This class may be for you if you:
This class may NOT be for you if you:
Secret Riso Club is an artist-run space that fosters a creative practice at the intersection of art, design, learning, publishing, printing, activism and community building. In our practice, we work to build a platform that serves as a collaborative space for developing ideas and new projects. SRC is run in collaboration between Gonzalo Guerrero and Tara Ridgedell. Read more about them on their website.
Melanie Hoff is an artist, organizer, and educator. At School for Poetic Computation and Hex House, they strive to cultivate spaces of learning and feeling that encourage honesty, poetry, and reconciliation for the ways we are shaped by intersecting systems of classification and power. Melanie engages hacking and performance to express the absurdities of these systems while revealing the encoded ways in which they influence how we choose to live and what choices have been made for us. They teach about sex, technology, and social cybernetics at the School for Poetic Computation, Yale University, New York University, and have shown work at the New Museum, the Queens Museum, and elsewhere.
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· website
· twitter
· instagram
Applications are not required for weekend intensives. Signups will remain open as long as seats remain. A limited number of scholarship tickets will be released via the SFPC email list two weeks before the date of the intensive.
For classes, it costs $1000 + processing fees, for a one-time payment. We also offer payment plans. Participants can schedule monthly payments of the same amount. First and last payments must be made before the start and end of class. *Processing fees apply for each payment.
SFPC processes all payments via Withfriends and Stripe. Please email admissions@sfpc.study if these payment options don't work for you.
For more information about what we look for in applicants, scholarships, and other frequently asked questions, please visit our applicant FAQ.
Interested in more learning opportunities at the School for Poetic Computation? Join our newsletter to stay up to date on future sessions and events, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Support our programming through scholarships. Get in touch over email.