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Solidarity Infrastructures

Teachers
Meghna Mahadevan, Olivia McKayla Ross, Max Fowler
Date
Section 1: January 13, 2025 to March 27, 2025
Section 2: January 25, 2024 to March 28, 2024

(10 classes)
Time
Section 1: Mondays, 12:30 - 3:30pm ET Section 2: Thursdays, 6:30-9:30pm ET
Location
Online (Zoom)
Cost
$1200 Scholarships available learn more...
Deadline
Applications closed on November 17, 2024

Apply Now

Description

How do we cultivate infrastructures of solidarity with each other, especially under conditions of crisis, protest, and systemic inequity? Beyond corporate data clouds and monopolistic service providers, this class offers a critical space to reframe technology from a grassroots perspective in relation to other components of day-to-day societal infrastructure. We will explore concepts like the slow web, organic Internet, right-to-repair, data sovereignty, minimal computing and anti-computing, within the context of the Just Transition movement. Learn how community tech and cultural organizing go hand-in-hand through real-world case studies. Explore creative applications and underlying ideologies of various open source tools and network topologies. Tune into signals of radical communication beyond colonialist legibility. Challenge the techno-capitalist worldview and break the dichotomy of "high" and "low" tech in favor of a needs-based approach that centers collectivist values and the earth. In this class, participants will develop technical skills for running a situated server practice and learn from the experiences of their peers. Each participant is encouraged to apply the idea of "computing in place" to their own locale through a creative project which may range from a small poetic experiment, to archiving personal and familial stories, to collaborating with the neighborhood library, community garden, elderly home, or mutual aid coalition. As creative practitioners, we will direct our imaginative power toward experimenting with refusal, repair, responsibility, and reconnection in order to dream into practice the relational infrastructures we need.

Outcomes

Course of Study

  • Week 1: Reclaim our technological imagination through developing embodied relationships to technology; understanding big tech's systems of harm; and learning about (s)low and folk tech
  • Week 2: Internet basics, networking & stack
  • Week 3: Community tech & cooperative infrastructure building
  • Week 4: Libre software, Raspberry Pi; SSH; web hosting & more
  • Week 5: How network topologies shape our social fabric & vice versa
  • Week 6: Offline-first, analog networks & perma-computing
  • Week 7: Technological resistance through anti-surveillance, internet access & care
  • Week 8: Labor, maintenance & longevity
  • Week 9: Materiality of computing, life cycle analysis & technological grief
  • Week 10: Radical signals, rogue frequencies & speculative possibilities for liberatory communication

Expectations

Participants can expect to spend two hours outside of class each week on readings and assignments. Each participant is invited to develop a situated infrastructural intervention of choice over the course of the class, with the option to apply technical skills for server hosting that we will learn together. Developing this intervention will vary on outside class time depending on the size and complexity of the endeavor. This requires being proactive with researching the needs of a community that is specific to you, and establishing or deepening relations with collaborators.

Technical Experience

All levels of technical experience welcome. Beginners are encouraged to plan time for office hours for extra support. Prior experience in programming or system administration is not required, but these skills can be used in class projects and are also welcome.

Learning Outcomes

Together we will develop:

  • Critical perspectives on digital and societal infrastructures based on transfeminist, decolonial, and ecocentric theorists and practitioners.
  • Practical experience working with a community of your choice to initiate and steward a context-specific infrastructure project, intervention or experiment.
  • Technical skills for running a situated server practice, including the basics of the command line, system administration, and libre-software.
  • Knowledge about software frameworks and tools made with the purpose of building and maintaining community infrastructure (such as yunohost, coop-cloud, and servers.coop).
  • Knowledge about basic networking and the layers of the internet stack (such as IP addresses, DNS, ISPs and mesh networks).
  • An expansive view across communication mediums (such as radio, LoRa, echolocation, and pigeon networks).
  • Knowledge about the material and energy costs of computing.
  • Ongoing supportive relationships with fellow community tech practitioners.

Is this class for me?

This class is for you if you:

  • Are curious about what a grassroots approach to technology might look like
  • See yourself as a weaver, maintainer, or network poet
  • Are curious about mycelium
  • Have a feeling there's more to decentralization than blockchain
  • Want to be part of co-creating infrastructure greater than yourself
  • Want to develop or deepen relations with your community of practice
  • Want to host a server on local hardware
  • Like to trace where everything comes from and where it goes

This class may NOT be for you if you:

  • Are not interested in a collaborative or community-centered creative practice
  • Have never wondered why or how your computer works
  • Are looking for the one-size-fits-all technological solution
  • Would rather not be the one to help clean up after dinner

Meet the Teachers

teacher

Meghna Mahadevan

Rooted in Kerala, Inspired by Oakland, Born, Raised, and Residing in Atlanta, GA, Meghna Mahadevan is a community technologist, in the terms of technology as a range of tools for human progress. They experiment with building programs, initiatives, relationships, and creations as a way to make meaning of the world around them and as a practice of hope for the future. Meghna’s projects range from organizing for larger movements of technology justice, multimedia storytelling via sound and photography, gathering people together, collective building, djing QTBIPOC+ parties in the South, and investigating autonomous technology infrastructure outside the US. Meghna has co-founded two collectives, intent on relational based methods to organizing, synthesizing, and visioning. Their work has been featured in protocol, NPR, Balamii Radio, Lower Grand Radio, LA Times, and more. Meghna has a degree in industrial engineering from georgia tech with a focus on computer science. They enjoy spending time with friends, exploring hinduism through a queer abolitionist lens, and dancing at all times of the day and night.

they/them · twitter · instagram

teacher

Olivia McKayla Ross



teacher

Max Fowler

Max Fowler is an artist and programmer working with offline-first software, mycology and community infrastructure. They are a contributor to PeachCloud, software that makes hosting peer to peer software on local low-power hardware more accessible. They are also a co-founder of KiezPilz (kiezpilz.de), a communal fungi cultivation group based in Berlin. They were a student at the School For Poetic Computation in 2016, and later a TA. They are one of the admins of sunbeam.city, and are interested in foraging, flip-phones, rust and html.

they/them · website · twitter

How do I apply?

Apply Now

Applications open until Applications closed on November 17, 2024.

You can expect to hear back from us about the status of your application on December 2, 2024. Please email us at admissions@sfpc.study with any questions you have.

How much does it cost to attend?

For 10 classes, it costs $1200 + processing fees, for a one-time payment. We also offer payment plans. Participants can schedule weekly or 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.

Applicant FAQ

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.