After the block provided by the midterm report I am restarting to function. Today is the day before the last one of Glocal Camp in Modena. This time it was good to reconnect with people I know but in general it took too much of my time and no new direction for new collaboration is clear in general. Only I could run a session to develop the +the architect in the network article. It was not well-structured but maybe I can open it up and force people to participate with their ideas. Second good thing I was trying to infiltrate in to World Social Forum of Transformative Economies and Domenico told me they had already connected him and I am trying to convince Alfonso to come with me to Barcelona at the beginning of April for the convergence meeting.
17 December 2018
We met with Caroline Newton, she has done a critical comment on the chapters. I have already been mixing the digital infrastructure necessary for the website with governance. She distinguished them. Now actually I have the content(what is in, what is out), form(governance) and tool(technology). Or that trilogy need a new naming. Second important thing she proposed me to make a table of contents and timeline which will be of course subject to change. And here is a list of things to read especially on the governance and love thing I want to write:
Patricia Hill Collins - Matrix of Domination / Kathleen Peleman - Power and Territoriality: A Study of Moroccan Women in Antwerp / Matthew Gandy - Queer Ecology: Nature, Sexuality, and Heterotopic Alliances / bell hooks / Dona Haraway / Chandra Talpade Mohanty -“Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles / Jeremy Till - Architecture Depends
11 December
We met with Lieven de Cauter, it was a 1,5 hour session. We roamed from the“love” article I want to write into methodology and so on. In the end, there are the following steps I can take:
making a manual for my steps through methodology
the love article maybe focusing more on comradeship & mutuality(dardot&laval)
a chapter on digital commons(where I talk about the global theory and my experiences)
mapping european commons architectures(building 10 principles based on the +What is Commons Architecture? article, and grading these architectures accordingly)
I am more in favor of the last one. And also we have been talking with Burak about the appropriation of Wikitribune and he said it would take 6 clicks to do that. So the mapping and the site building can go hand in hand.
2 December
I got accepted to P2P Left Facebook group. They have a very detailed code of conduct. It is interesting to see even behaving in a Facebook group needs that much detailed guiding.
30 November
In the morning we did a hangout session with Pepo Ospina of Collective One. He presented us their collaboration platform and talked about why he wants to keep the project open, but not open-source. It reminded me of this article by Stallman, still not finished reading it all. Pepo’s platform works like a network, I am thinking of using its structure and writing my phd on that platform.
I presented my paper at Macba Auditorium, it was sad to see again only the people who participated in the event were there, since you had to get tickets of 15 Euros per day, or 25 for the whole event. But two good things happened. First, Marco Deseriis-the keynote speaker I really enjoyed to see his work- asked a question on Guattari’s dissensus post-media. He said it is coming from 1990 and we are now in a post-truth era where a huge dissensus is happening around truth. I gave the example of Wikitribune and struggles in that process and mentioned the dissensus was produced by powerful authorities and now it is starting to be built up as a bottom-up process. Second, Metahaven tweeted my talk with a pic from the presentation, again from the Guattari part. This resulted in 10 new followers on Twitter, one of them being Nick Axel, the deputy editor of e-flux. He has also checked my pad +What is Commons Architecture? All in all this Interface Politics Conference was a good experience, to see how people reflect upon the issue of post-truth from many different angles. Also Daniel van der Velden of Metahaven-the last keynote speaker- said something like he feels good to be among people who are trying to challenge the system. I felt the same.
29 November
Spent half of the day revisioning the mid-term report and half attending the Interface Politics conference. In general the speakers and the audience are a group I am not familiar with, yet could not classify them. However it was really interesting to see the keynote by Marco Deseriis. He has surfaced a new area of interest that I had not thought about before. What if all the users, or in my case contributors of the community are anonymous? Does it contribute higher or lower to the main goal we are after that is a grounded criticism of commons architecture practices. Extremely excited to reflect on that more! And once more feminism is always brought out in discussions by women, and men just reply in a defensive mode. It is sad to see how less they know about feminism and feel so unskilled to respond in a logical/rational way even though they are apparently smart.
ps: BAU School of Design was an amazing place, if Sint-Lucas wants to know how to renovate their campuses a field trip is a must.
28 November
Everyone is confused by my multiple activities apparently. I do not feel lost though. On the plane from Brussels to Barcelona(the second flight as the first emergency landed back to Brussels and we took a second plane) I made the graph below.
I replied back saying the necessary tool to bind all my practices is methodology, it is missing and is our next step. Caroline asked for an intro and we have not heard from Stavros still. Tomorrow I am going to Barcelona and had just wished to finish all this before I leave, but may be as Filip(Mattens) said I have sent in advance, it is not my problem not getting feedback sooner. I really want to start to write the article on Gilet Jaunes, but still reluctant. And worried I might not have enough time for this first line of communication. Anyway I prepared the post-truth presentation.
26 November
13 days after I shared my mid-term report, I got some feedback from Lieven, he feels dizzy since I am doing too many things, some are vaguely-he thinks- related to my research. It is good to see he has gone through all the materials, yet some in a quick way like the post-truth article. We need to find a way to work together, keeping distance does not seem to contribute our communication.
24 November
I saw Bruno Latour’s lecture/performance in Kaai. Being inside and yet not realising that we are part of the ecological crisis was his main point. It was really interesting how he went to geosciences as the term anthropocene came out from them. I could not understand the concept of critical zone but eager to learn. Livestream of the lecture is here and the q&a session. During the q&a he was asked about Gilet Jaunes, and he said that he considered the movement important as it connects the ecological issues with social justice. I really want to start an article on Wikitribune about this. But I still could not concentrate to do it. Rather than working on this I have to worry about my mid-term report’s deadline.
23 November
Today was extremely unproductive. As I had stayed out till 1 am and drank over an empty stomach the morning was lost. And also I had decided to buy a new coat and wanted to do it today as it is Black Friday, so 50% discount on my coat. It was a strange experience, since I just saw this coat, liked it, tried on, decided to buy. Not to be so quick I also tried one size bigger, but the first was the winner. Anyway when I got in line I already knew it would take more than half an hour to get to cashier. While waiting, an emergency alarm went off and I did not consider leaving the line as I had been waiting for more than 20 minutes. Then I realised how easy it is to be absorbed by consumerism. First you think you need some stuff, then decide to wait for the discount time to come and then not leave the premises until you get it. Amazing.
22 November
I have thought about what Burak had said briefly yesterday on making a“practice based phd”. I need to dig into it and find a way that it does not end up being self-promotional. I need to generate a way to be critical about my work and still leave space for other criticalities. I know of some figures who are self-critical but in an extreme way that broadcasts the message of“only I can criticize myself”. This is another trap to be aware of and avoid. What I like about the idea of practice based phd is its potential of hacking the academia since all my work is based on collaborations, all these will be represented in that individual-by-design research. I went to Bas Princen’s conference at Bozar. There were some magical moments(like him showing the below photo of the site of Potteries Think Belt by Cedric Price) but after a while it felt like it was going on for ages and my eyes got too tired to consume any more visual material. Also I thought that noone shall talk about themselves or their work more than half an hour, I asked Aslı and Filip to warn me if I do so at any moment in my life.
9 March 2019
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21 November 2018