It collects various essays that take up aspects of the cultural and artistic projects our research was based on, and brings them into conversation with different fields ranging from cultural, political and feminist theory, philosophy, curatorial studies, and art education.

What do a feminist server, an art space located in a public park in North London, a ‘pirate’ library of high cultural value yet dubious legal status, and an art school that emphasizes collectivity have in common? They all demonstrate that art can play an important role in imagining and producing a real quite different from what is currently hegemonic; that art has the possibility to not only envision or proclaim ideas in theory, but also to realize them materially.

Aesthetics of the Commons examines a series of artistic and cultural projects – drawn from what can loosely be called the (post)digital—that take up this challenge in different ways. What unites them, however, is that they all have a ‘double character.’ They are art in the sense that they place themselves in relation to (Western) cultural and art systems, developing discursive and aesthetic positions, but, at the same time, they are ‘operational’ in that they create recursive environments and freely available resources whose uses exceed these systems. The first aspect raises questions about the kind of aesthetics that are being embodied, the second creates a relation to the larger concept of the ‘commons.’ In Aesthetics of the Commons, the commons are understood not as a fixed set of principles that need to be adhered to in order to fit a definition, but instead as a ‘thinking tool’ – in other words, the book’s interest lies in what can be made visible by applying the framework of the commons as a heuristic device.

With contributions by Olga Goriunova, Jeremy Gilbert, Judith Siegmund, Daphne Dragona, Magdalena Tyzlik-Carver, Gary Hall, Ines Kleesattel, Sophie Toupin, Rahel Puffert, and Christoph Brunner.

Sollfrank, Cornelia, Felix Stalder, und Shusha Niederberger (eds.) 2021. Aesthetics of the Commons, Zurich: Diaphanes

Softcover, 276 pages
Open Access PDF, 276 pages
https://www.diaphanes.com/titel/aesthetics-of-the-commons-6419

Reviews & Interviews:

Gerald Raunig. Kommunisierung der Kunst, 03.2021 transversal.at/blog/

Agnieszka Wodzińska. Imagining Possible Worlds with “Aesthetics of the Commons”, March 5, networkcultures.org/blog

Jens Kastner. Buchsprechung, springerin. Hefte für Gegenwartskunst, Wien. Heft 2/2021, S. 73.

n.a. Book Review, neural.it 8/21

 “Aesthetics, Commons and the Production of the Subject: An Interview with Cornelia Sollfrank and Felix Stalder”, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 16(1). p.74-81. doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.920

Two of the editors of the volume Aesthetics of the Commons (Diaphenes 2021) Cornelia Sollfrank and Felix Stalder discuss with WPCC journal the potential and meanings of the digital commons in creating new subjectivities and new imaginaries on and off the internet. Within this they question whether the focus on the aesthetics of the commons is useful for understanding phenomena such as ‘artistic shadow libraries’, pointing towards the need to build institutions for which ‘practices of commoning are central’. Also considered are the modern art system, copyright, and the corrosive individualism of Western modernity in the artistic sphere. Against these factors they note instead that, ‘the commons are structured through different relations, and care expresses that difference’. New economic approaches are needed in the arts supported by political actors which might include the ‘re-envisioning [of] public institutions, such as public broadcasting, as part of a commons’.

Keywords: commons, aesthetics, copyright, platform capitalism, shadow libraries, care, art system, decolonisation

Editorial Board W., (2021) “Aesthetics, Commons and the Production of the Subject: An Interview with Cornelia Sollfrank and Felix Stalder”, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 16(1). p.74-81. doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.920

Full Article as PDF download

First published in German as “What can we learn from the (digital) Commons? Ästhetische Praxen des Lernens und Verlernens” in springerin 4/2019

Educational formats and projects in the art field have become part of everyday practice – at least since the “educational turn”[1]. Art institutions offer workshops or provide resources for diverse formats: Colleges, academies, free schools.[2] In this way, they create learning situations in which speculation, reflection, updating, and production can take place – independent of prescribed necessities and according to self-determined exigencies. Extensively theorized and problematized as part of curatorial practice, these activities stand for a “shift from exhibition-making to the production of knowledge”[3] and have snatched the formerly rather neglected questions of education as a (partial) task of art from the realm of classical mediation and endowed them with the symbolic power of new discursive power. Art mediation reacted to this with its own shift, an “educational turn in education”[4] that consists of adopting and further developing increasingly radical and critical approaches to education – and shaping them into a critical practice of mediation.

Questions that accompany these developments both in the curatorial field and in the field of mediation are questions about one’s own relationship to the institution for which one works or within which one works. It is not uncommon for direct relations with institutional power to produce contradictions with one’s declared critical practice – and such contradictions cannot always be made positive or productive through reflection alone. This may be one of the reasons why artists* and cultural producers* are working to create their own places and spaces for dealing with knowledge. The creation of self-determined situations for learning – and unlearning – promises to escape institutionally established boundaries and thus not only to be able to act more freely in terms of content but also to test new methods of producing and imparting knowledge in practice by fundamentally questioning traditional knowledge practices.

Taking our work in the research project Creating Commons, in which aesthetic practices committed to the production or preservation of digital commons are investigated[5], as a starting point, I would like to reflect here on a few selected projects in which educational aspects also play an important role. These are different formats, most of which are located outside of traditional institutions. In these projects, what Philip Agre has called “Critical Technical Practice”[6] is intertwined with self-organization in an expanded artistic environment using emancipatory pedagogical approaches.

The Public School

Meanwhile, The Public School has become a classic.[7] Founded in 2008 in L.A. by the US-American artist Sean Dockray, it evolved from reading together in Reading Groups, with the self-organized art space in which these groups met also being an important element. It is a school without a curriculum, composed of a group of interested people, a space where they can meet, and a website where the seminars are coordinated. The principle is that individuals offer what they can teach or what they would like to work for, and others make specific wishes. This means that the contents of the seminars are not curated, but develop exclusively according to the needs and competencies of the participants. The process of negotiation takes place online on the project’s website, which not only allows all decision-making to be followed transparently but is also open to all interested parties. This makes it the organizational heart of the project. For the programmers* of the website, the political claim of the project is most strongly reflected in the software: “Every programming decision influences what the users* see and how they can act.”[8] In order to realize the claim of greatest possible inclusiveness, the website is continually adapted and further developed in consultation with its users*. This means that the tool that enables new knowledge-production situations is itself part of the “commoning” process. Not only do form and content meet to open up a new space of possibilities; digitally networked infrastructure also meets with a local community. Due to its universal structure, the project was able to spread to about a dozen other cities.

Mz* Baltazar’s Lab

One project that, in contrast to AAAARG, for example, is gaining considerable momentum through its local positioning and the formation of a community is the Vienna-based Mz* Baltazar’s Lab[9] – a hacklab, in existence since 2008, which is run by a trans*feminist collective. The core of this project is the space in which workshops, meetings, lectures, and exhibitions take place. According to Stefanie Wuschitz, one of the co-founders, the physical space as a common resource represents an important moment to bring together diverse users* and to create collective practices.[10] Collectivity means common knowledge production, but also care and solidarity.[11] The ethnologist Sophie Toupin locates Mz* Baltazar’s Lab in the worldwide scene of feminist hackspaces, which by creating their own spaces promote feminist resistance practices and expand the conventional understanding of hacking with gender-related and feminist aspects.[12] Intersectionality is another important working principle, and the associated preoccupation with inequality, oppression, and violence brings entirely new dynamics to the strongly masculine and white field of technology. Accordingly, the activities of the hackspace develop along the principles of feminist hacking,[13] whose basic assumption is that both technology and gender are coded and thus also codable – i.e., changeable – systems. Feminist hackspaces are places where a coexistence is cultivated that clearly differs from the traditional hacker scene and its merciless meritocracy, so that as many people as possible can train themselves in an emancipatory engagement with technology.

École de recherche graphique (e.r.g.)

The projects mentioned above could be supplemented by a number of other examples since almost all of the projects examined by Creating Commons also have educational aspects. These range from workshops within the framework of public institutions[14] to the creation of one’s own infrastructure[15] and self-organized schools.[16] The example of the École de recherche graphique (e.r.g.) in Brussels shows how a radically critical pedagogical approach within an institution can sound out and even expand its boundaries. The publicly funded school, which follows the tradition of experimental universities of the 1970s, has been undergoing an institutional transformation since 2016 under its current director Laurence Rassel. The principles of free software are combined in Rassel’s management concept with feminism and the “institutional psychotherapy” developed in France in connection with reform psychiatry.[17] For Rassel, the focus here is on setting in motion what is stuck in an institution – the instituted – through a process of re-establishment.[18] Here, the central concern is not the construction of non-institutional contexts, but the transformation of an existing structure with the aim of involving all participants in the process of transformation and thus practicing a form of collectivization.

Educational Commoning

For all educational approaches in the field of digital commons, the principles of free software are an essential inspiration.[19] They not only configure the collaborative and open-source creation of software but also stand in their social dimension for a reorientation of power relations in relation to the creation, dissemination, and authorization of knowledge in the age of the Internet. With values such as collectivity, transparency, new forms of self-organization and radical free access[20], they provide essential impulses for emancipatory knowledge practice in general.

However, these values are not simply present, but are the subject of an ongoing process of negotiation, reflection, and development, i.e., “commoning.” Educational formats in this context are nothing other than the creation of situations in which this process can take place. Not only is given knowledge imparted, but it is also shown how knowledge is recognized and legitimized and how a diverse set of knowledge can be created or disseminated. Joint learning – and unlearning – is thus one of the essential resources of digital commons.

[1] See Irit Rogoff, “Turning,” in Curating and the Educational Turn, Paul O’Neill & Mick Wilson (Eds.) (Amsterdam: Open Editions, de Appel, 2010).

[2] Some examples: Community College, Nachbarschaftsakademie, metroZones Schule für städtisches Handeln, A.C.A.D.E.M.Y, Free University, etc.

[3] Jaschke and Sternfeld, p. 14.

[4] Ibid., p. 17.

[5] https://www.zhdk.ch/forschungsprojekt/544343.

[6] Philip Agre, “Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI,” in Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work: Beyond the Great Divide, ed. Geoffrey Bowker et al. (London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997).

[7] https://thepublicschool.org. The technical infrastructure is presently being restructured and reprogramed.

[8] An interview with Sean Dockray, Expanded Appropriation, https://vimeo.com/60889535

[9] https://www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org/

[10] Feminist Hackspace, Interview with Patricia Reis and Stefanie Wuschitz (2018), https://vimeo.com/319823285

[11] See also spideralex, “Creating New Worlds – with cyberfeminist Ideas and Practices,” in The beautiful warriors: Technofeminist Praxis in the 21st Century, ed. Cornelia Sollfrank (minor compositions, 2019).

[12] See Sophie Toupin, “Hackerspaces: The Synthesis of Feminist and HackerCultures,” Journal of Peer Production 5 (2014).

[13] See Sophie Toupin, “Feminist Hacking: Resistance through Spaciality,” in The beautiful warriors, ed. Sollfrank.

[14] For instance, Public Library, an exhibition at the Württembergischen Kunstverein in Stuttgart (2014): https://www.wkv-stuttgart.de/en/program/2014/events/public-library/.

[15] For example, Furtherfield, https://www.furtherfield.org/.

[16] Relearn: Variable Summerschool: https://constantvzw.org/site/Relearn-Variable-Summerschool.html

[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_psychotherapy

[18] See Gerald Raunig, Instituent Practices. Fleeing, Instituting, Transforming (Vienna: transversal texts, 2006): https://eipcp.net/transversal/0106/raunig/en.html

[19] See Free Software Foundation Europe: https://fsfe.org/about/basics/freesoftware.de.html and Christopher Kelty, Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).

[20] See the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto by Aaron Swartz: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerilla_Open_Access_Manifest.

Originally published in German, as “Furtherfield: Mit Nachahmung fangen Commonistinnen wenig an” in springerin 4/2019

The connection to a place has a material-productive and a strategic-symbolic function, particularly for a concrete utopia that does not simply paint the image but examines real practices as germ forms. The example of the London project-space Furtherfield can serve to describe an ethics of place, which means networking local activists and hackers with one another and thus interweaving eco-social cooperation with progressiveness, localization with decentralization. The project, initiated by artists in 1996, is a self-proclaimed “(de-)centre for art and technology” in London’s Finsbury Park. Collaborative practices and “DIWO” (Doing It With Others) are just as constitutive here as the development of a digital and local culture of the Commons. Furtherfield can thus be understood as a “commonistic” germ form – commonism understood less as ideology (1) than as an “inclusion society” which is to be permanently further developed. According to Simon Sutterlütti and Stefan Meretz (2), this is based on a different structure of cooperation, as well as on material and social preconditions that allow people to create their own living conditions. Inclusion is thus not merely an ethical-moral attitude, but the condition for action can be shaped collectively by all commonists.

For commonists, helping to shape an ethic of the place means neither unilaterally announcing a re-rooting of those uprooted by modernity – that would be the neo-traditional gesture – nor rejecting the connectivity of digital nomads – that used to be the New Economy spirit – but robbing both entities of their exclusive peaks. It means cultivating “response-ability” (Donna Haraway). The concern for a commonistic place and the maintenance of a platform require the voluntary activity of commonists who, beyond the rules of abstract property, take care of the general availability of goods, resources, digital technologies, codes, etc.

The concern for the place is the concern for all commoners who can assert their needs in that place or on that platform and contribute according to their individual abilities. Exploitation and competition, property and profit, containment and exclusivity can be unlearned here by initiating and prospective commonists together. Commercial providers of the same goods, resources, codes, etc. are “out-cooperated” (Sutterlütti/Meretz) by countering their enclosures with “dis-enclosures”, as I would like to call these forms of collectivization of formerly privately-held resources. Dis-enclosures are dependent on the permanence and resilience of the Commonists if they do not want to be one-off projects. Dis-enclosures can counteract privatizations and employ a community concept that makes it possible to overcome the fetishes of growth and competition. Political state-transformation theories cannot think of this constituting process.

Commonists rarely begin with imitation as a repetition of dichotomies proven in capitalist modernity – such as individuality vs. collectivity, private enterprise vs. nationalization. They are interested in setting their own rules, designing their own stories, rituals, and exercise systems with speculative, dis-enclosing, and pre-mitative activities that contribute to preservation – and expansion! – of the commons are interested. With the concept of pre-mitation, I propose to regard the initiating moment of Furtherfield also as aesthetic moment.

Furtherfield interweaves digital communities with non-digital ones in a way that corridors emerge; corridors that connect places and between which decentralization prevails.

Furtherfield is also experimenting with blockchains with which the gathering groups of people can make life and business more democratic, more transparent and less hierarchical. In this way, blockchains can help to design trustworthy paths or corridors in the midst of the total exploitation desert called Big Data, but they are neither immune to (e.g. company-internal) hierarchies, nor do they represent applications far removed from the market. The question also remains as to who programs the so-called consensus algorithm and organizes trust in complex, knotted relationship networks. But commonists who have renounced cultural pessimism can live with the fundamental susceptibility of technology (here: blockchain) or cultural technology (here: self-organisation) to abuse of power. The possible self-organization of networked communities as basic units that reject bureaucratic centralism seems important to them. Corridors are important when left-liberal zeitgeist prefers the nomadic to the identitarian, but right-wing populist reaction time turns the need for rootedness into an absolute. Here, Furtherfield works with two strategies in one and the same place: Finsbury Park as an important public recreation site for its residents, which includes migrants from a great many countries, has its own cultural practices; these encounter the dis-enclosing strategies of the digital commonists – in the Community Media Lab Furtherfield Commons, in an exhibition space in the middle of the park, in an online magazine, and on a mailing list – and continue to develop cooperatively. The communities are permeable and enrich each other. The germ form of the other society becomes noticeable precisely in the penetration of the various practices that take place in one place. Each format creates an assemblage of people, technology and environment that benefits commoning as a whole. What is decisive is sustainable practice.

Furtherfield, as can be asserted with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Deborah Danowski (3) thus constructs a “locally functioning folk machine” that slowly but effectively undermines established forms of rule and replaces them with a better practice in the sense of a network of peers. These (pre-)figurations of the future are recognizable and applicable from the outside as pre-mitative practices. For an aesthetic of commoning, this means the following: The mimetic capacity leaves imitation; the emulation of the old becomes obsolete, de-learning and re-learning intertwine, pre-mitation is created and makes transformational processes visible, so that from now on imitation would also be possible again: as imitation of the new. And so commoning does not only mean the self-administration of the resource or the platform, which, whether “rival” or “not rival”, is open for use by as many people as possible and does not exclude anyone through an abstract concept of property (or license). What is also decisive is the symbolic, performative and aesthetic quality of the gathering bodies in one place, including those that are not (yet) present, those that are still excluded, but for which corridors are created: Access authorization, residence permit, work that secures their livelihood and, last but not least, care community.

The initiators of Furtherfield, Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, refer historically to Marx’s concept of “original accumulation” and the enclosures it entails. Their reference back to the “levellers” is decidedly directed against these enclosures, which to this day take place worldwide and are constantly imitated by neoliberal governments and transnational corporations, whether shock-like or reformist. Furtherfield creates here a place of counter-movement. The practice of permaculture, for example, is no less relevant here than the insight into global value-labour chains and areas of use of drones, the cultivation of corresponding peer-to-peer practices, and the self-understanding of peers beyond discipline or field of activity. For Furtherfield, digital commons help to hack social reality, while the regularity of the commons (à la Elinor Ostrom) can also help to protect open access through reciprocity from being commercially enclosed. Uncompensated cultural practices can thus be made usable again, and digital practices do not disappear somewhere in cyberspace, but link as relevant empirical values back to social practices and the possibility of resistance against hegemonic exploitation systems. The site and the platform Furtherfield succeeds through stability and resonance in outgrowing the utopian precondition and in manifesting itself as embodied or within the assemblies of physical bodies.

1 Vgl. Nico Dockx/Pascal Gielen (Hg.), Commonism. A New Aesthetics of the Real. Amsterdam 2018.
2 Vgl. Simon Sutterlütti/Stefan Meretz, Kapitalismus aufheben. Eine Einladung, über Utopie und Transformation neu nachzudenken. Hamburg 2018.
3 Vgl. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro/Deborah Danowski, In welcher Welt leben? Ein Versuch über die Angst vor dem Ende. Berlin 2019.

Shusha Niederberger

Originally published in German as Feminist Server – Sichtbarkeit und Funktionalität. Digitale Infrastruktur als gemeinschaftliches Projekt, in Springerin 4/2019.

The discourse around digital commons focuses mainly on circulating resources and the communities forming around them. In specific artistic practices investigated in this text, another layer comes into focus: what began as an artistic project sometimes becomes infrastructure, and with that come new roles, dependencies, commitment and a lot of service work. Shusha Niederberger explores the often invisible layers of infrastructure in artistic and activist practices on feminist technologies.

Anthropologist Brian Larkin defines infrastructures as „matter that enable the movement of other matter“ (Larkin 2013) and it is just as true for water supply as it is for a web server. This stratification of infrastructure and circulation is visible in many of the projects studied in our research: shadow libraries, for example, enable the circulation of texts and other cultural resources. Circulating resources are in the center of the discourse about digital commons, extending from digital resources to the communities that have been forming around them, while practices associated with the infrastructure this circulation is based on remaining mostly unaddressed. And still, infrastructure is a crucial element in many of the projects we studied. What started as an artistic project became infrastructure, and with that come new roles, dependencies, obligations and a lot of service work.

The function of invisibility

Why is the infrastructural level invisible, even in commons discourse? The pioneer of Infrastructure Research, Susan Leigh Star, argued that a characteristic of infrastructure is its disappearance behind its own functionality (Star 1999). And yes, it is not necessary to understand how the water supply works in order to be able to fill a glass of water. Only in the failure or collapse of infrastructure does become visible what infrastructure is: a whole network of things, practices of maintenance, relationships that regulate its creation and access, and also relationships among people connected to all these levels.

In our research, the question of infrastructure has been raised by projects with a feminist background, especially in the work of Constant, an artist-run organization in Brussels. In 2013, Constant hosted a workshop called “Are you being served?” to which artists and activists were invited to reflect on servers and services and the relationships to technology articulated through them (Constant 2015). During that workshop, participants formulated the Feminist Server Manifesto, stating an alternative mode of relating to servers and services. The manifesto declares, among other things: A Feminist Server is “a situated technology. It has a sense of context and sees itself as part of an ecology of practices “[1]. Feminist servers – and this can easily be extended to digital infrastructure in general – are defined here as fundamentally relational, embedded in social structures, practices and relationships.

However, infrastructure is not only embedded in social structures but also serves as a structuring mechanism in itself (Wilson 2016). The invisibility of the relational nature of infrastructure supports its normative function. This point is key part of feminist epistemology, which emphasizes that invisibilities are constitutive for power relations (Harding 1987). And this means, that in order to challenge power relations embedded in infrastructures, invisibilities must be named. Star has used this methodological approach in anthropological infrastructure research, and she proposed to identify “the master voice of infrastructure” (Star 1999). And one of the master voices of digital infrastructure is the narrative (and expectation) of self-evident functionality. So, to be able to rely on infrastructure means its disappearance behind the functionality it provides. And it is important to point out again, that the invisibility of infrastructure does not primarily refer to its material dimensions, but includes all practices associated with its maintenance, as well as the relationships established with these practices.

Feminist Server

The manifesto addresses Feminist Servers as a “thinking tool” (Sollfrank: 2018), allowing us to think about our relationship to infrastructure, and offering a feminist critique of technology. Feminist activism has taken this critique into action, implementing specific Feminist Server as running servers for communities around the world. Feminist Servers emerged from the specific needs of women, non-binary persons and LGBTI people, who have, again and again, experienced that the Internet is not a safe space for them, that the large platforms dominating the Internet since the early 2000s do not protect their content, their concerns and needs – neither from attacks by other internet users nor from access by repressive states. Feminist Servers aim at implementing servers as “safer spaces”. And in doing so, Feminist Servers go further than other activist initiatives for alternative digital infrastructures, that primarily aim at independence from commercial interests: Feminist Servers take into account the ideological dimension of infrastructure.

Currently, there exist diverse Feminist Servers, especially in Europe and Latin America (Spideralex 2020). They are operated and maintained by their users themselves, however seamless functionality is not their declared goal. As another point in the manifesto declares: “Feminist Servers avoids efficiency, ease of use, scalability and immediacy, as these can be traps.” Instead of walking through the door of seamless functionality into the trap of normative invisibility of infrastructure again, the Feminist Server activists want to make their servers a place that can be inhabited, that is: a place of shared practice.

Feminist Servers are therefore fragile, being transparent in regard to the conditions of production of running services. “A server is a service. This implies work and care, and it is illusory to think that it can always be free or that it can always be there for you, if you know the conditions necessary for a service to work,” says Spideralex in the interview with Claire Richard (Richard 2019). That the refusal to reproduce the invisibility of infrastructure goes at the expense of functionality, is, from a feminist perspective, not coincidence but intention. It allows the Feminist Servers to not become invisible again as infrastructure, but to remain a decidedly communal project.

The activists are aware of this tension. The last point in the manifesto says: “She tries very hard not to apologize when she is sometimes unavailable” [The Feminist Server is deliberately gendered as female in the manifesto, author’s note]. Spideralex speaks of this tension as an exchange: “You lose, and you gain other dimensions. And everything depends […] on the needs of the people who inhabit the respective server.” (Sollfrank 2018) What is lost is the self-evident functionality and efficiency of infrastructure together with its normative function, but in exchange, gained is a self-determined relationship to technology, a space to inhabit.

Commoning

The circulation of digital goods is based on a digital infrastructure that is not self-preserving or self-reproducing. The feminist approach to technology of the Feminist Server Manifesto and also Feminist Server activism makes this invisible level accessible, hitherto neglected by the commons discourse.[2] By naming the connections, practices and relationships hidden by functionality, they can be addressed as part of commoning practices. And by questioning the primacy of functionality and efficiency, alternative relationships to technology communities may choose to become visible. “Feminist technology is incomplete if one does not go through all the layers”, as Spideralex said (Sollfrank: 2018). In other words, a feminist perspective allows not only to extend the commons discourse about digital technology, by putting the different practices connected by digital technologies into relationships, but it also allows these relationships to be changed.

References:

Constant. Are You Being Served? (notebooks), edited by Anne Laforet, Marloes de Valk, Madeleine Aktypi, An Mertens, Femke Snelting, Michaela Lakova, Reni Höfmuller, Brussels: Constant, 2015. https://areyoubeingserved.constantvzw.org/

Federici, Silvia. ‘Feminism and the Politics of the Commons’. In Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States, edited by Hughes/Peace/Van Meter, Oakland, California: AK Press, 2010.

Harding, Sandra. ‘Introduction. Is There a Feminist Methodology?’. In Feminism & Methodology, edited by Sandra Harding, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Larkin, Brian. Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure, Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, 2013, pp. 327-43.

Richard, Claire. Pas d’Internet féministe sans serveurs féministes. Entretien avec Spideralex, Panthère Premiere, 4/2019.

Spideralex. ‘Creating New Worlds – With Cyberfeminist Ideas and Practices’. In: The Beautiful Warriors. Technofeminist Praxis in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Cornelia Sollfrank, Colchester / New York / Port Watson: Minor Compositions, 2020, p. 52.

Sollfrank, Cornelia. Forms of Ongoingness, Cornelia Sollfrank in conversation with Femke Snelting and Spideralex, 2018, https://creatingcommons.zhdk.ch/forms-of-ongoingness/.

Star, Susan Leigh. The Ethnography of Infrastructure, The American Behavioral Scientist, 1999, Vol. 43 (3), pp. 377-391.

transhackfeminist!. ‘[version 0.1] A feminist server …. constantvzw’. Accessed December 3, 2019. https://transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/post/2014/06/03/version-0-1-a-feminist-server-constantvzw/

Wilson, Ara. The Infrastructure of Intimacy. Signs, 2016, Vol. 41 (2), p. 247-280.

[1] different perspective on the history of Feminist Servers offer https://alexandria.anarchaserver.org/index.php/History_of_Anarchaserver_and_Feminists_Servers_visit_this_section and Femke Snelting; https://www.newcriticals.com/exquisite-corpse/page-8.

[2] This has also been the critique of Silvia Federici, with which she – unlike the Feminist Server activists – fundamentally rejects the possibilities of digital technology for the commons alltogether (Federici 2010).