Serving In-grid
This second iteration of the Practising Protocols workshop was run in-ternally with In-grid members. In this session we set up our Virtual Private Server (VPS) that is hosted with Servus. This aims to be an experimental server for us to test and make sense of our network infrastructuring practices. In the workshop we made room to figure out how we wanted to imagine and enact our infrastructure as we configured it. In this process both aiming to make the VPS and its technical practices accessible to members of In-grid, but in doing so making room to (dis)orient and care for the misfitting of these technical practices by bringing them in touch with our collective background and embodied expertise.
From this workshop, In-grid manifested our experimental VPS to be encoded through our own counter figures. These ranged from refusing the role of Users to instead be carers, maintainers, players, personas and collaborators. It also made room for us to come into contact with and make sense of the many layers of network security these technologies are kept "safe" through. In response to this sense-making of misfitting forming our own dialogues around how we imagine networks becoming safe through trust, care and intimacy. From manifesting our configure-able VPS infrastructure, we also turned to form our own manifesto for it, called the Femfester (In-grid et al., 2024), and which was published with Servus in the first edition of their Artists Running Datacentres journal.
Entries
Serving In-grid workshop steps
This entry shares the guide for the technical processes undertaken in the workshop. Theses are a few fairly accessible steps with ample Wiggle Room made around them to make-sense of our misfitting within them, and to imagine them otherwise.
Workshop Pad
This entry shares the collective notes from a shared pad used during the workshop. This shares peoples different thoughts from and inputs to the workshop.
Femfester Manifesto
This entry shares the notes from collectively writing the Femfester server manifesto. These were written by In-grid members both in person at the end of the workshop and asynchronously online for the week following it.
The images is the icon of the workshop and is a kaomoji (a face made out of ASCI letters), which depicts a person with their hand in the air tilted down, symbolizing serving.
An image take from the workshop shows members of In-grid in person. We are sat comfortably on a sofa and some chairs in a kitchen/living room, with our backs to the camera.