SI29: Gossiping at the Intersection of Crafts and Resistances

Daily program

Everyday will follow a planning that looks like the following. This protocol will evolve and be updated by us together depending on what work and doesn't work.

hour	session
10h-10h30	🔄 feedback mood check, should we change structure, or is there important questions
10h30-11h15	👤 presentation with guest and today's topic
11h15-12h30	🗨️ gossips round of today's topic
12h30-13h	✏️ individual processing (free time to) synthesize our reflections, add gossips on your pages, or list of research questions, or reference to check
13h-14h	⏳ lunch break!
14h-16h30	🖐️ crafting and experimenting together on the topic, either all together, either in subgroup, depending on today's guest (see individual session page for more precise timeline)
16h30-17h	✳️ collective gathering sharing back to the group what was done, what caused problems or frictions, collect explanatory drawings or resources you found along the way, list what you would want to try later with this

Timeline of the SI

We can't gossip alone, the special issue welcomed various people from various context.

date	title / description / links	guest	digital technology/tools used and explored	contextual infrastructure needed	social practices performed	publishing	going further?
05/01/26	introduction & start of the SI, see the presentation at SI29 Gossips & Pedagogy, [pad here](), [mastodon gossip here]()		HTML & (a bit of) CSS	Sergio	Presenting ourselves, writing individually	HTML presentations pages	Continuing to expand our presentations pages with more gossips, links & styles
(12/01/26)	(no class: doriane away)
19/01/26	Serving Gossips (a TMUX collaborative terminal and documentation zine session)	Kaa (feminist server actinomy)	Terminal, TMUX, TMUX2Print tool by Kaa	Sergio (where TMUX and TMUX2print were installed), Student's printer cards, WDKA Printer, Tommy's phone to make hotspot to avoid using Eduroam	Making groups, Explaining command lines to each other's, Communal agreements over voice while typing together	tmux2print HTML pages on sergio, stylized PDFs in A4 stapled together	(a SVG logo was made over tmux from Brazil to Rotterdam?)
26/01/26	Gossiping in and around a Datacenter (outside of the school walk in the Van Nelle datacenter)	Marloes (permacomputing, datacenter activism in rotterdam), Anti (guide & walk, datacenter activism in marseilles)	(just drawing... no photo allowed in the DC)	Public transportations, SMARTDC building with all it's systems, Student's printer cards, WDKA Printer	Asking questions with intentions, Listening and interpreting broken Dunglish, Everyone tried to map one aspect by notetaking & drawing during the tour, collectivizing our notes & drawing with glue, scissors and discussions	A glued mapping of our collective note of the visit on pastel colored paper	Continuing to make the zine about the tour! Visit other datacenters fighting groups (tommi shared one on zulip? plz put the link)
02/02/26	open session: Physical places & Digital styles (pad) (help for HTML/CSS, organizing your event, continue crafting, etc)
09/02/26	Comp(h)osting (with) our phones	Marie (low-tech magazine, permacomputing)
16/02/26	(no class: spring break)
23/02/26	Mapping gossips	Julie (atelier cartographic)
02/03/26	Everything you've always wanted to know about the bootleg library but were too afraid to ask	Simon (OSP, Varia)
09/03/26	83 snails, a decentralized slow parcel delivery system	Chae & Kamo (DIWO)
16/03/26	free session: help for HTML/CSS, organizing your event, continue crafting, etc.
16/03/26 (from 17h to 19h)	"How can we hold space for joy in peer2peer??", A presentation and conversation by Sammy on the lessons we learnt from 30 years of peer2peer history	Sammy (developer and researcher from Willow protocol, and earthstar, but also illustrator)
23/03/26	last session: collective reflection on gossip, archiving, and feedback session

Your sessions

date	title / topic / description (link to doc: wiki or external)	by	everyday technology	social practice	place where it happened	crowd that came (who and how many)
01/02/26	laserilla.digital (website, wiki page), laser interventions	Luca	Public interventions	sharing organizational strategies, funding, interacting in public spaces	Brasília, Brasil	5-6 cultural workers (attending), 200+ streetgoers
20/02/26	Potluck files, sharing gossip through files	Kiki & Sibyl	terminal, command for counting file, the command "tree", folder and file names and structure, simple websites (HTML/CSS), iframe, file formats	award with paper crown for file counting, bringing element from all the participants creating a "collective portrait of the group", sharing intimate gossip or memories about files, naming folder, picking up the folder of someone else	China, A book store:yesterday book store
14/03/26	Our Digital Home, data ownership and cloud	Tommi, Youjung,Barbara	File storage, (the materialism of) the cloud, browsers, WiFi, images uploading.	Introducing ourselves through images and snippets of text; asking questions and somewhat giving an answer.	Cozy round of sofas and chairs in Tommi’s home.	Friends and acquaintances, we brought three people each.
14/03/26	Craft your own website, learning the basic HTML CSS through a neocities webring	valentin, Lucas (external)	we used our own laptop, to rype HTML and CSS from ZERO, i dont know if neocities count as everyday technology but the internet for sure	Sitting around a table in the local queer bar sharing experiences about using internet in different forms for different reasons, there was a yoga class happening next to us, as we were going further with the day the bar got busier and people came to us asking questions what are we doing, some people joined, one owner of the bar asked us to make another iteration. Quote from our participants: "Its nice to build websites and examine the reasons behind them because it gives purpose for making a website. By bringing in community as part of making my own website, a whole new world opened up what social media could be. :)"	De Kurk (Arnhem)	With a wide range of people outside of school context (queer?)
20/03/26	Echt nep?!, spotting ai	Daan, Lea, Ema			Leeszaal West
21/03/26	Queering our Keyboard, making a collective custom keyboard lay-out.	Robin			My studio in Rotterdam South	with small group 8-10 ppl from my circles, with no / limited experience with type / coding
19/03/26	Writing against text recognition, develop an handstyle that is readable by humans but not by algorithms	Ema			Catu - Self organised space in Rotterdam, squatted since 2024

Assignments

Webpage writing exercice

Here are the webpages made so far !

Writing is like walking toward yourself

In 30min. Create an HTML file, and write about the following questions, don't go into expert polished design mode, you can use simple tags (like <p>, <h1>, <u>, <ol>, <blockquote>, <img>) but that's it. Don't overthink it, make simple sentences like 1 or 2 per questions, you can skip questions if you don't know, it's just an exercise to present yourself in the context of this SI.

One sentence about who you are! (name, pronouns, languages stuffs like that)
Collectives you are part of (can be not art or not tech related! like sport, cooking, activism, reading, culture, ...)
Your crafts: analog or digital, what types of practice do you feel 'in your element'?
What type of online and offline folklores, scenes, crowds, or aesthetics, do you feel close to or to belong to?
Do you have any gossips or personal anecdotes about technology, that (indirectly) talk about who you are?

If you feel like you've finished writing or this can help writing or if it's needed you can add a bit of CSS, like pick a background color for the body, or some <img>, or start linking this to other project or webpage you made with <a>. When you're finished drop them to a new folder /SI29/intro with yourname.html.

Also this is NOT a portfolio of serious finished projects! This can be more or less intimate about yourself.

This webpage should be maintained and augmented between sessions.

by grabbing gossips here and there, stories a classmate told, a reference link, and rephrasing it online; some weekly writing.
by adding picture or ideas about what you can provide for the pedagogy moment: a place and what it consist of, cooking, zine, tutorials,...
by experimenting/sketching webstuff you're interested about: CSS, iframes, web2print snippet, artwork in constructions.

Planning your workshop (For the start of spring break)

Create a wiki-page for your workshop with:

introduction with one or two paragraphs (but stay very short), what is it about in the minimum amount of text and make it easily understandable for a lot of people.
place/crowds put the place it will happen at (and the crowd if you know a bit), or if you're unsure yet, a list of places. Say in one paragraph why that place, like what's your intentions by doing it there, what are you hoping for or trying to trigger.
lists which technology you'll be discussing and using (if you're taking note on etherpad, or using a camera to document to is also a technology), and lists social practices you'll be performing (doing a round of names? asking everyone how they look at an images and making them discuss two by two? drawing your first memory of something and putting them in common? taking notes of the words you don't understand and collectively looking for definitions, etc...)
a schedule from what time to what time is it going to happen. Make a list of steps, like people present themselves, we present the workshop, etc. including breaks, eating or more informal hanging out together moment (that can be nice to include). for every steps try to assign a timing and see if it fits in your schedule.
list mode of communications and list mode of documentations you'll want to use.

Scattered Tech Pedagogy & Gossips moments

Since this SI focus on gossip and intimate pedagogy, there is not public display of a result. As we are discussing decentralization and to exercise our abilities to translate from one context to another, to bring stories and collect new ones. You can group with other students (maximum 3 students) and organize a workshop-like moment.

Rules

Here are the 4 rules.

1. Everyday tech!

It need to be either critical, or reclaim autonomy, or exchange skills, on a everyday technology. Think of the quote

The more technology becomes cryptic, seamless and alienating, the more pedagogy becomes a radical skill to exercise. To slowly bridge the gaps between our feelings of empowerment or alienation toward tech. Explaining what we know in simple way, or making space for other's concerns, can be really difficult.

Everyday technology can be a very vaste family of things. But if your workshop is about a technology that is niche, or can only be used by certain artistic practices, maybe it's not an everyday technology. Or you should make it into one? But using an app on your phon, or using a printer and discussing what it can do to do zines, or browsing the web to search for informations, are everyday technology. At the end of your moment, ideally the collectivity of people feel more agency or information to deal with a technology that was/is part of their life.

2. Place!

It can't happen in a place like the school WKDA, or within the classic context of another big/medium sized institution. This is because

Context matters, by doing your workshop in a bar, a communal garden, a squat, at your place, etc. it influences what is being shared and how it is being shared. the place already gives a tone and a situatedness, it maybe already has its own rules to organize something, or it's own constraint you need to deal with. is it intimate, is it light, is it noisy, are people very focused there, are we sitting, can we do it at night?
It is a distributed exercises, by us all organizing little event in other context, some of those place will learn about Xpub and we learn about those places, maybe this becomes an opportunity to make new networks outside of a single point infrastructure that is a school.
To relearn autonomy in terms of the necessary infrastructures. we have a tendency to believe that things are out of reach, but we can take initiatives and sometimes we don't need institutions, buying cost, or subsidies, waiting for approbations and long meeting, sometimes if we feel it would be good to organize a workshop on something we can just do it.

3. Crowd!

It can't have a crowd made mostly out of art students or design students or tech amateurs and professionals. This is because

By addressing other crowds (that you may already be familiar with or not!) it becomes a exercises translations. By gossiping on technology with others it forces you to translate some knowledge or stories, maybe things you think are evident aren't for example, or by suddenly using other words to phrase your concerns and skills you'll learn from it.
Collecting new point-of-views, this is bidirectional! If you make room from it, you'll always get new stories and gossips from that improvised (or not) crowd. You can bring back those stories, how people reacted, what someone said that was surprising, etc. back to your Xpub practices. This can also become a little anthropological research on how the people in the workshop perceive, deal and navigate specific technology today.

4. Publishing!

You need to provide two type of documents around that moment you'll be organizing: communications and documentations. Communications is super important because this will decide on what will happen as much as the place & context, it can be what link your ideas with the crowd you'll be gossiping with. Documentations is super important because this is what allow the workshop to exist outside of one moment in time, it is the generous actions to make it available for others, to inspire other people or to be able to build on top of it later.

For communication

the words, styles and aesthetic you use to communicate will determine a lot. is it a fun, game-like experience, shared as a website? is it a very cryptic message to a few people they have to relay? is it a poster glued on the place where you'll do the workshop, having no idea of who will actually come? is it an online form you need to fill with some information? is it an email to a pre-existing collective that will be your crowd? communications can be more visual or more literal, it can include more or less design (a poster or flyer) or be very gossipy texts (scattered messages and mouth to ear), a more classic social network post? But the shape and word you'll use already participate to the moment itself.
you need to be able to trace back the communication, even with uncertainty. how did you communicated it? who did it bring? where you able to reach outside of your usual crowds? did you had frictions or surprise in communication with collective or places?

For documentation

You are free in terms of medium, this can be pictures, recordings, notes on an etherpad, quick explanations drawing on paper, memes. But try to be generous in what is collected and think about how can it benefit others that aren't present. Would it be cool for them to see the vibe of the place? to see how people expressed themselves? to ear the jokes or fun moment? to get a list of hyperlink of a lot of things that where shared? to ear the voices of others? Don't forget to always ask consent for documentations.
Now that you've gathered all those documents, it's good to bundle them somewhere. An easy format is a website, it can be a very small one, where you merge: the communication material, the description and resources of what happens, information about the places and the crowd, and documentations of the outcomes of the workshop. But if you want to make it a zine, or other forms of publishing that can bundle all of that you're free to do it.

Checklist of tips and tricks

In preparation

Go for simple stuff is sometimes the best! the objective is to teach & share with people and ourselves gossips and skills within today's digital ecosystems. Something as simple as installing an alternative to google maps can be full of stories, about our sense of orientations assisted by technology, habits in moving around, etc.
Don't overlook the social practices aspects. In the example of identifying AI picture, you can use softwares, but that is a technological approach. A social practice approach would be less about software that can do that and more about asking people how they look at pictures and having discussions about that (and maybe it's more interesting than only softwares). We tend to see only technological solutions to technological problems (leftist techno-solutionism), but sometimes social practices can be more empowering and emancipatory than technology.
Having something to take away with you at the end of the workshop is great! It can become a memory of that moment for the gossips and stories to stay with you in other things you're doing. It can be as small as a stickers, for the thought to "stick with you".
Think about the presence of computers. A workshop where everyone is looking at their own computer isn't the same than one where only one or two person has a computers and the other move freely. How much do you want people to look, focused, at a screen or not?
If the focus is purely technological you need to give it context. Like say 'writing a webpage' Is it about story-telling on a webpage, is it about resources-sharing on a webpage, are we doing a collective one or an individual very intimate one? What type of situated practices do you want to see? Do you want to do it with activist, with game makers, with queer communities? Why would they want to write a webpage in 2026, why is it important for them and how can you reflect that in the moment you propose.
There can be many reasons to close it to certain identities of people, or inversely to try to ensure some type of diversity. For example, if a queer context matters to you, you could close it to cis straight people (it's up to you how you'd want to phrase that of course). Or if it matters to you to have a mutli-generational moment you can ask people to send the age category to which they belong in advance and prioritize diversity there.

During

Don't overload people with references, not everything that you went through need to be shared to everyone. Keep things simple.
Keep track of time (hardcore difficulty), designate someone that needs to do that.
Designate a documentation process that you're sure will work. When you're in the moment, things happens very fast and your attention can be scattered. It can help to pick someones who will take notes or pictures in advance.
Make room for other people to express themselves. Don't underestimate what they can give to you, you shouldn't be the only teacher... you can also learn so much by trying to understand other point-of-view or experiences, and if you don't agree with them this is a good opportunity to see how to deal with that actually, to see how to adjust and grow from there.
If it's long, think about breaks and informal moments.
Ask consent for documentations! (can i use those pictures? tell where your going to post them. Or drawing, etc)

Documentation writing guidelines

you can use this if as a guideline but of course you don't have to follow it point by point. you also don't have to write something for each of the point, you do things with your own attitude and energy! this is more of a reminder, or a way to start.

for you are you documenting

for your teachers at Xpub that weren't there at your workshop and are curious, the more they know, the more they can give precise feedback and understand where you are, teaching is a both way thing.
for the participants of your workshop, maybe they want to tell a friend what they did and have a reference point to link to.
but most importantly: for yourself. in 3 years you'll be out of Xpub with a practice and you don't know what you'll be doing. so even if you think you'll never return back to those idea, writing generous documentation (including technics, feelings, details, possible improvments, etc) is something you're offering your future self.
for externals people outside of Xpub and of your workshop might find the link or zine somewhere and investigate it, maybe they want to invite you to do a second version of that workshop somewhere else (you should be paid!)

guideline for documentation

an entry point, how would you explain your workshop in like 5 lines to someone who is just passing by and won't read/explore the whole thing right now. it should be enough to be precise (not 3 words) but not too overwhelming.
the public initial plan, that is everything that was made pre-workshop and was already communicated in some ways. this is for transparency and personnal archival, not everyone will be interested by that but someone else who is also doing a workshop can learn from your methods.
- the description that was communicated to the participants (and the "everyday tech")
- the schedule
- a presentation of the place, maybe a link to their website if they have one (the "crowd" and "place")
- communication elements (poster but also other method? can be some sentence like: the particpants rsvp through this form or by message or through the place system)
the ressources materials, that is everything you used to get there, by publishing a set of references your documentation become situated in a discourse, that can be really precious for anyone to find back all of those references (for their own research, or to share with someone else).
- a reader of references, artistic, technical, poetical, political (article, essais, art project, etc)
- a technical rider, if participants used command lines, wrote HTML, downloaded software, you probably provided them some technical help. it's good to gather all of those (and be generous! think about the whole schedule of your workshop and what you did at every steps). maybe someone asked a question that wasn't part of your original technical teaching but you feel you would have to add it now.
your research, this is more a post-workshop reflection you should have and document
- your own reflexions on the topic, maybe you'd like to stitch those references and technics with your own opinions and ideas in a few paragraphs. what links are you making between those refs, how did it reflect something you wanted to do? what where the question you where asking yourself?
- pedagogy protocols: (a good moment to put pictures of the workshop if you have some!) what worked or didn't worked in your workshop. is it because of the schedule? or was it overwhelming or exhausting, why? what was "the most difficult part" about doing that thing outside of school? what was mega fun and triggered a lot of interest? what would you do differently if you would do it again? would you like to see it happened in another place with another crowd?
- what was done, (a good moment to put links of the "result" of what you did) of course it's mega important to
- participants contributions, is there new references you discovered because of someone there? or a discussion that you feel is important to respond to (by changing the structure, the references, the technics, by exploring something further?)
the gossips, ok all of the precious can sound very formal but what about the juicy gossips? (the real important part)
- something a participant said that surprised you, or was a touching story!
- a friction, or joke, or nice moment that you feel you had because of the specific place it happened in?
- where there disagrements between the person doing the workshop (between xpub students, or between participants)
- did you had some email exchange, groupchat exchange that you felt like screenshotting in the process, what would you like to say about them
- did you took a picture that doesn't really have something to do with the workshop but you took because of travel, or a detail of the place, or because of a nice interaction with a participants
- did you had some private joke with the other people around the topic of the workshop?
- did you eat something? what did you eaaat? how delicious was ittttt?
- did you gossiped your workshop with friends or other people, how did they reacted?

References

Gossiping is not just bitching, Aurianne Preud'homme
(in Witches, Witch-hunting, and Women) On the meaning of 'Gossip', Silvia Federici
Gender of sound, Anne Carlson
Getting into fight with datacenter, Anne Pasek
Infrables, a zine by TITiPI about infrastructural gossips
Pirate care, Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak
(in The Mushroom at the end of the world) Some problems with scale (p.37 - p.45) - Anna-Tsing
Artist Running Datacenter, Servus
TiTipi wiki, gossips and publications on resisting infrastructures: TiTipi wiki
Monoskop Community servers page, gossips and publications on communal servers: Monoskop Community servers page