In this installation and workshop series Anja Groten from Hackers & Designers opens up her practice-based research with a special attention to the ‘workshop’ as a format for self-organized learning and publishing.
Manifold contexts shape articulations around workshops, different workshop meanings, materializations, practices, and legacies. The ‘workshop’ – an ambiguous yet popular format for time-boxed collaboration is co-opted frequently, crossing boundaries between art and activism, between different disciplines and institutions, between commercial and educational contexts. As a flexible format, the workshop seems to fulfil momentary needs and supposedly can be adapted to ‘any’ context, tackling ‘any’ issue. However, the workshop, in its temporary, semi-committed, ad-hoc utterances, needs to be considered also as a consequence of uncertain times, contingent and fragmented work and social relations.
Drawing from the workshop-based practice of the Hackers & Designers collective this installation and workshop series focuses on the relation of workshops, collective practices and self-publishing, posing the question how collective practices can negotiate their socio-material conditions in critical, creative and conscious ways, and develop subtle but effective tactics to ‘stay in touch’ with each other and with the different environments they interact with.
The installation (built with the fanfare display system) and workshop series are part of the artistic research project of Anja Groten at PhDArts (Academy for Creative and Performing Arts Leiden) and the Making Matters project. It is the first of a series of activities – a distributed, iterative publishing cycle that will materialize as an on and offline publication.
Workshop program:
Wednesday 1 June, 13.00-18.00 — ‘Workshop Chatter’ with Chattypub (Walk-in, no RSVP required)
Check out the installation by Hackers & Designers at Page Not Found and stop by for cookies, coffee, tea and a chat about workshops! Share your workshop anecdotes, unexpected insights, mundane observations, awkward interaction, and get introduced to Chattypub – a chat application, a design and publishing tool, a workshop, a collective practice.
Thursday 2 June, 10:00-13:00 — ‘Workshop / Werkstatt / Werkplaats: Workshop site and situation’ (On-site workshop, RSVP required)
An on-site workshop in collaboration with Fabulous Future (Naomi Credé) and fanfare.
What is physical publishing? How do we imagine a workshop space? How can a display activate space?
With the installation at Page Not Found, you are invited to collectively imagine and construct the modular system as a workshop space. The workshop and structure will be built with the playful modular fanfare display system, which assists in modifying, activating and claiming space. During the workshop, fanfare, Fabulous Future and Hackers & Designers will join forces to challenge/expand/enhance/continue the display system together with the workshop participants.
Friday 3 June, 10:00-12:00 — ‘Forkshop’ (hybrid workshop on- and offline, RSVP required)
The unspecificity of the workshop format makes it difficult to describe and critique. This ‘Forkshop’ is an invitation to regard the workshop itself as a medium, something that can be externalized, iterated, opened up to others.
This workshop starts at 10:00 for those joining in person and at 10:30 for those joining online.
Please specify whether you join in person or online when you RSVP.
Friday 3 June, 19:00-20.30 — ‘Workshop scripts’, talk by Anja Groten (Walk-in, no RSVP required)
This talk by Anja Groten contextualizes the ‘workshop’ in relation to the collective practice of Hackers & Designers. An important question to raise when addressing workshops ‘as such’ is: How to self-organize temporary collective learning environments, while also developing relationships that are committed and long-term, thus, counterbalance flexibilization and fragmentation of our work and lives (which the pervasiveness of workshops may be a manifestation of)?
Over the years, the H&D collective developed social and technical conduct that could be compared to workshop instructors who learn to take care of their workshop space and their tools, establishing some house-rules and practices of hospitality. The workshops H&D organize seem instantaneous but there are aspects of continuity and long-term commitments that evolve alongside.
In this talk Anja will introduce aspects of H&D experimental publishing practice, specifically looking at the format of the ‘workshop script’ as an attempt to explicate, iterate and distribute collective workshop-based practices.
Saturday 4 June, 14:00-18:00 — ‘Workshop scripts’ (On-site workshop, RSVP required)
This on-site workshop will pay attention to narrative and the discursive potentials of pedagogical documents such as workshop scripts, instruction and install manuals, readme’s, scores, how-tos, gameplay, exercises, and prompts.
Sunday 5 June, 13:00-16:00 — ‘Solarpunk Kids (Bring Your Own Grown-up)’ (On-site workshop, RSVP required)
Find more information about this workshop in the separate event description on the bottom of this page.
RSVP information:
To participate, please RSVP via email to anja@hackersanddesigners.nl by 31 May, with subject ‘H&D RSVP’, your name, and mention of the activities of your choice. You will receive a confirmation and more detailed information by June 1st. You can also stop by Page Not Found on 1st of June and sign up in person.
All workshops are free of charge.
Disclaimers:
Each workshop will have a different focus and takes a different approach (thus attending more than one will not be boring!)
The workshops will depart from and take into consideration the experiences and interests of the group of workshop participants. Upon sign-up you will receive a confirmation email with more details and what to bring or prepare (preparation will not take more than 10 minutes of your time)
Please read the H&D Code of Conduct before joining the activities.
The space is mostly wheelchair accessible with the exception of the rest room. Please let us know if you have any access needs that we should take into consideration.
About Hackers & Designers / Anja Groten
Hackers & Designers is a non-profit initiative organizing workshops at the intersection of technology, design and art. By creating shared moments of hands-on learning H&D stimulates collaboration across disciplines, technological literacy, and different levels of expertise. Since 2015 H&D organizes the annual H&D Summer Academy in Amsterdam, an experiment in non-hierarchical learning and making. Tutors become participants, participants become workshop tutors—everyone is taken on the collective venture of shared responsibility, bringing in their own expertise, urgency and experience.
Current members of the H&D collective are Loes Bogers, André Fincato, Selby Gildemacher, Anja Groten, Heerko van der Kooij, Juliette Lizotte, Karl Moubarak, Christine Kappé, and Pernilla Manjula Philip.
Anja Groten (1983, DE) is a designer, organizer and educator based in Amsterdam. Investigating collectivity-in-practice, her work revolves around the cross-section of digital and physical media, design and art education and her involvement in different interdisciplinary groups. In 2013 she co-founded the initiative Hackers & Designers, attempting to break down the barriers between the different fields and practices by enforcing a common vocabulary through education, hacks and collaboration.
Anja is a PhD candidate at PhD Arts, and the consortium Bridging Art, Design and Technology through Critical Making, and since 2019 the course director of the design department at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam, Master of the Rietveld Academie.