Title: Disobedient Action Research MethodsDisobedient Action Research Methods
The indeterminate diagram above represents this project's disobedient methodology as it aims to (dis)orient the standardized and prescribed methods of configuration. Each time you visit this page, and every time you click on the diagram, it creates a different composition of actions, sense makings and wiggling of room that this disobedient crip methodology entices. Visually it forms loops and cycles of the icons and terms of this research connected into indeterminate compositions. Each iteration has a generated Alt-text containing the syntax for the diagram, and which can be interpreted in a similarly playful way. The Alt-text is attached to the <div> with the .mermaid class.
This code is an edit of another work/performance called Pad2Party that Sunni Liao, Yewen Jin and I made as part or RealBodies 2.1 with In-grid collective.
For this project I have taken on a Disobedient Action Research Methodology. As the above texture and indeterminate diagram tries to highlight, this methodology disobediently refuses to be generalized or normalized into set operations. Instead this project's Trans*methods make wiggle room for bodyminds to access, be in touch with and shape the sociotechnical infrastructures and matters they are impacted by and misfit within.
To build up my projects Disobedient Action Research methodology I work with the debugging methods of TiTIPi (Pritchard et al., 2021) and build it up with misfitting methods of Carla Rice et al. (2024) to ask what room can collective embodied inquiries make within infrastructuring. With this methodology I make room to be intimate with and build up collective expertise that question what affirmative infrastructures, practices and relations are within reach socially and technically through independent action. Through this disobedient methodology I re-frame what actions can be taken within academic research, moving to make-sense of what lives are livable beyond assimilation norms of access, organization and infrastructures on institutional terms.
Through my Trans*methodology my research is shaped through collective practices, debugging, terminal consoles, bank interfaces, parties, workshops, messaging stickers, VPN's and soft cushions. Coalescing together these many surfaces, textures and tables of research collaborators and I made sense of how our technical practices could be shaped by our backgrounds, expertise and feelings. Through this methodology collectively figuring out what our affirmative community infrastructures are through unfolding actions of access making.
These protocols offer up some of the ways my disobedient methods have unfolded within this research project. These protocols themselves are loose mappings of what happened in this research and offers up how these methods are improvisable, situated, and shaped by their actions.
Practicing Protocols shares how these methods unfolded into a set of accessible workshops that questioned the configurations of network infrastructures. These workshops made wiggle room for people to make sense of and shape network infrastructures through their embodied expertise and situated practices.
This protocol unfolded from the Collective Infrastructures combined panel, and at the Serving In-grid workshop. These workshop inquiries made wiggle room for us to unfold collective expertise around our misfitting within the normalized network configurations we have inherited. From misfitting moving to form counter figures, relations and imaginaries for the affirming network infrastructures we desire now.
This mapping above gives shape to how this protocol took action. It moves from accessible technical documentation that helped us make sense of our embodied misfitting within these configurations. From this misfitting forming our own situated figures and terms for how we want to practice this infrastructure locally.
Improvising Floss Protocols shares how these methods unfolded around making access within FLOSS technologies throughout this research. This protocol offers up how collaborators and I wiggled room between the misfitting of FLOSS and our access knowledges to improvise our own access technologies. Through these practices of access making, making sense of the limits and capacities of access within FLOSS.
This protocol unfolded from the the Configure-Able Infrastructures Workshop I organised with NEoN digital, making the Cozy-ish and Cozy Night and Day themes, as well as manifesting the Cozy-Intentions and Serving Cozy install. This protocol unfolded from the wiggled room made within FLOSS technologies for them to be shaped by and affirm our access knowledges, practices and desires.
This mapping above gives shape to how this protocol made sense of how FLOSS technologies we had in reach misfitted with the access knowledges and practices of the group. From this misfitting moving to wiggle room, improvise and shape the imaginaries and capacities of FLOSS through collective practices of access making.
(Dis)orienting Protocols shares how these methods unfolded when being in touch with and disobediently trying to shape institutional configurations and organization processes. This protocol offers up how collaborators and I made wiggle room around inflexible institutional norms to (dis)orient them towards our backgrounds, politics and desires for the future.
This protocol unfolded from collaborating on In-grid's organizational practices that are shared in the In-fra Processing entry. The protocol was also shaped by the Disobedient Access Requests that I made towards the Tate's configurations and within En-crip-ing Time's refusal of the configurations of network time and intimacies.
This mapping above gives shape to how this protocol (dis)oriented configurations by making wiggle room to feel out our frictions with the sedimented norms of institutions and their organization. From this wiggle room starting to unfold and form our own organizational practices, desires and imaginaries for how we want to orient and improvise them locally.