We had a new wave of data-center conversations to be developed and collectively explored some tool-based proposals for resistance. There were some pin machines present.
https://constantvzw.org/site/ConfusingCodingClub-p-2-Open-work-time.html?lang=en
We watched Ancestral Clouds, Ancestral Claims, a film that lingers with inheritance—not just genetic, but atmospheric, historical, and extractive.
Alongside the screening, Tunde Adefioyé guided us through Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Unpayable Debt, a book that reorients how we understand what is owed, what is carried, and what cannot be counted.
Lucía hosted a hands on workshop to map out the semi-conductivity of the garden.
We etched maps into printed circuit boards, that served as oracles.During our divination ritual we walked around the garden and, pouring earth, water and various plants from the garden on our map/circuit board, we entered in dialogue with the elements. We let the garden speak to us as lights and sounds emerging from the resulting electrical connections.
Steven Jouwersma guided us through a meditation to a hyperscaler.
Hyperscalers are large and very adaptable data centres that scale their capacity to the ever changing flow of data. In the Hyperion cantos (1989) of science fiction writer Simmons, an AI called Ummon* appears. It is shaped like a blob, a non-form. This "blob" of shifting appearance is how we can understand a hyperobject like AI. It has no centre, although it seems to come together at places. The hyperscaler is such a place.
This installation in the window of Constant invites to you to inhabit the universe of cilia*. What can they look like? What will they do? The experimental shapes will transform (sound)waves. Their speculative outlines defying proportions will invite you to fantasize and play. Research in progress by Wendy Van Wynsberghe*, the window will change in tune with it, over time.
https://constantvzw.org/site/Constant_V-Cilia.html?lang=en
https://constantvzw.org/site/-Otherwordly-Communications,249-.html
This was the launch of Constant yearly Zine 2024!
In 2024 accessibility was central to our program. This Zine gives an impression of different perspectives and reflections on accessibility that were developed during our activities.
The Zine was compiled during a three day sprint by Constant’s team, graphically guided by Sarah Garcin, and printed at Chez Rosi in Brussels.
During the event at iMAL, we had live contributions by artists Kamo ( Francesco Luzzana ) and Gülce Padem, as well as a remote insert by Sarah Garcin.
https://constantvzw.org/site/Zine-launch-A-Cane-Sticky-notes-Another-Body.html
A study day of the "Physarum polycephalum", a slime mold, or myxomycete, popularly known as the Blob, in the context of the yearly trajectory called Otherworldly communications.
Otherworldly communications is framed by researching interspecies cohabitation and communication which, we hope, will tell us about ways of relating to and engaging with technological regimes and apparatus different from those that are damaging worlds.
This study day is meant to critically engage with different conceptions of the ’other’ (as in: other than human, otherworldly and otherings) and their myriad of entanglements as conditions for life. We have invited contributors committed to practices and theories which will help us thinking about/ with the blob through resistance/refusal, queerness, solidarity and opacity.
A study day on waste and toxicity in the context of the yearly trajectory called Otherworldly communications.
Otherworldly communications is framed by researching interspecies cohabitation and communication which, we hope, will tell us about modes of relating to and engaging with technological regimes and apparatus different from those that are damaging worlds.
This day is meant to study the different ways that human-induced toxicity permeates soils, matter, bodies and relations across multiple space-time realities. If toxicity tends to seem invisible to us, it is nonetheless a force forging spaces, more-than-human capacities, coexistences and futurities.
https://constantvzw.org/site/%CB%9A%E2%8A%B1-Waste-is-the-space-%E2%8A%B0%CB%9A-study-day.html
In the context of the thematic year A cane, sticky notes, another body we looked at various perspectives on time, and invited Al Versieux to work on a weft*.
During 2024 Constant’s research focuses on the problems of accessibility of physical and virtual spaces. For the first worksession of the year, Constant gathered with two of its partner organisations, Kaaitheater and Dr. Guislain Museum, and some invited guests, to examine the different crossings and overlaps in our understanding and efforts around access. https://constantvzw.org/site/A-cane-sticky-notes-another-body-internal-worksession-with-Kaaitheater-and-Dr.html
