Individual Project

As a member of collective Hackers & Designers (H&D), Anja Groten co-organizes the Hackers & Designers Summer Academy 2021.

Join the 7th edition of the Hackers & Designers Summer Academy, – this year comprised of a one week distributed workshop program taking place in Amsterdam, Harare, Pittsburgh, and Vienna. As participant of the HDSA2021 you will be able to join one of the locations (nodes). All nodes will facilitate – in their own ways – the same workshop program. There will be moments in which all nodes will connect and there will be times where we follow workshops asynchronously. This edition is an experiment in decentralized organization and strives to connect the different nodes, while leveraging the different local contexts.

'HDSA2021: Hello World?' will be dedicated to exploring open-source tools, infrastructures and collaborative principles that cater to collective decentralized organization, such as document writing, content-management, building and maintaining infrastructures, messaging, collaborative spreadsheet making, streaming and broadcasting. We are interested in an artistic, programmatic and designerly exploration of alternative tools — and challenge them in terms of their durability, accessibility, openness, and creative output. We are specifically interested in the possibilities for unintentional use and the level of agency and ownership granted to the user.

Let's revisit and rethink the tools we use and build through open processes and collaboration. By connecting to other self-organized communities we want to exchange insights on the different peculiar tool ecologies, their creative potentials, and explore the context-specific social codes and practices involved in collective organizing.

We invite creative practitioners whose interest lie in critically and practically engaging with technology, to join us in reflecting and reimagining distributed organizing practices. Whether it be designers, artists, coders, system administrators, or disobedient 'users' of technology—we invite the H&D community and the wider public to learn together about technical infrastructuring in experimental and hands-on ways. How does the distributed HDSA work?

The 1-week workshop program (HDSA) will take place in different locations (nodes): Hackers & Designers and Varia in Amsterdam, Bongani Ricky Masuku in Harare, Prototype PGH in Pittsburgh, Mz* Baltazar's Lab in Vienna Each node has capacity to facilitate a group of 10-15 participants The different nodes will take care of a safe learning environment that is considerate of different levels of knowledge as well as the current COVID restrictions in their respective locations. During the HDSA there will be moments you will be working with your node and other moments where all nodes connect, exchange and synch The HDSA workshop program is comprised of 5 'workshop scripts' – workshops prepared by the different HDSA nodes. You will be able to follow all workshops in the different locations synchronously and asynchronously. All workshops are considerate of different skill levels and different backgrounds. Additional support will be provided by the respective nodes Participation is free of charge. Donations to the different nodes will be welcomed. Additional material costs, daily lunches will have to be covered by the participants.

Find the program here