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Figuring Things Out Together: On the Relationship between Design and Collective Practice

Introduction

Context

I make websites. I teach. I design platforms. I host workshops. I write. I organize events. I build tools. I make books. I am involved in an array of activities at various organizations, institutions, and in the context of self-organized groups. It can be disorienting and difficult to speak about my work in a way that is easily packageable. All of the activities that constitute what I do and the contexts I do them in, come with their own specific vocabularies, manners and expectations.

There are many of us who work this way --- people who blend practices rather than choosing one specialization or one fixed definition of their practice. Sometimes we form collectives; conglomerates of ambiguous practitioners who come from domains that may seem ostensibly separate. By coming together in this manner, we diffuse disciplinary boundaries. We challenge the divisions between user and maker, product and process, friendships and work relations, student and teacher.

For nine years, I have been working closely with the collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). Due to my close involvement with this collective, it has become central to my practice-based inquiry into the relationship between design and collective practice. H&D started as a workshop-based meetup series in Amsterdam in 2013.^[1] Since then, we have been organizing workshops, sometimes self-organized, sometimes by invitation.^[2] H&D workshops are informal get-togethers and usually follow a hands-on practical approach. Attendees mostly work at the intersection of technology, design, art, and education. Along with organizing workshops people involved with H&D produce on and offline publications and build open source tools and platforms.

Collective practices, as I understand and discuss them in this thesis, lean into the complexity of issues while resisting the impulse to solve anything. Moving through a variety of contexts (from institutional to grassroots informal) collective practices are responsive to changing conditions. They are mutable and at times fragile structures that, notwithstanding, manage to hold together fragmented practices, multiple places, schedules and economies. Collectives are constantly in-the-making, and along the way, they develop "terms of transition"^[3] -- socio-material conducts that help them navigate, and 'stay in touch' in uncertain times.

Open source spreadsheets and notepads become administrative tools for decentralized collective organization, subject or site for a workshop, and design and publishing tools. Shared anecdotes, distributed documentation practices, asynchronous writing of workshop scripts, unstable technical infrastructure are all part of what holds collectives together. Such relational utterances cannot be considered products or examples of collectivity in the sense that an example could be a blueprint. Collective practices are site, context, and time specific, and so are their expressions.

Research Question

This research investigates the relationship between design and collectivity. I argue that this relationship is one of mutual entanglement and therefore requires perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of the design process. The central question that I will return to throughout this dissertation is: How to design for and with collectivity? I propose the notion of 'designing with' (rather than through or by means of) to open up design approaches and perspectives towards processes of designing with others (other people, other things, other environments) that are non-successive and contingent as they are constantly emerging.

Problem

Collective practices are difficult to align with conceptual, material and organizational confinements currently upheld in the field of design and formal design education. I found that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of expressing and accounting for collectivities\' resistance to fixation and stabilization. In existing design discourses much attention has been paid to modes of designing together. Yet, in my view, these accounts fall short of addressing the nature and meaning of collective practice. For instance, there is a difference between collectivity and collaboration or teamwork. Collectivity is not a design method, or an antidote to an individualistic design approach. I argue that collectivity should be considered a condition that is intertwined with certain issues and their material consequences such as fragmentation and flexibilization of cultural work, in addition to the economization of art and design education.

Contribution to design discourse

Design approaches such as 'participatory design', 'cooperative design', and 'co-creation', have been discussed at length,^[4] in urban planning, industrial design, and human-computer interaction design.^[5] Participatory Design (PD) derived from the 1970s Scandinavian labor movement, and shifted attention from top-down design approaches to the "politics and ethics of 'workplace democracy'".^[6] PD introduced methods of joint decision-making regarding the implementation of new tools, technologies and organization models in the workplace. These decision-making processes involved those most affected; the workers in a factory for instance. The workers were to use the newly introduced technologies in their daily work routines. The PD approach brought into focus how collaborative processes, across different positions, organizational hierarchies, and diverging skills, can be considered an essential part of the design process. It also introduced social questions into the design process, actively involving different perspectives in order to improve design objects and their implementation.

PD has been critiqued by design theorists^[7] for only inviting some to participate in the process while excluding others. Furthermore, it is argued that PD builds upon consensus models for decision-making, which can be implemented in ways that affirm established power relations,^[8] while maintaining the appearance of an inclusive process. Design theorists such as Ramia Mazé, Mahmoud Keshavarz, Carl DiSalvo and Tad Hirsch, have problematized PD, building upon the work of political philosophers such as Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière, and have advocated for design approaches that privilege difference over consensus. Like PD, their propositions for adversarial,^[9]dissenting^[10] and contestational^[11] design pays attention to design processes rather than products, and the politics inherent in such processes. Yet they emphasize the importance of sustaining the possibility for different positions, including potential friction and conflict as part or even an aim of the design process.

Furthermore, Mazé and Keshavarz offered useful tactics for resisting generalization around tropes of collaboration in design by challenging the presupposition that positions, identities and preferences are pre-constituted and well-defined. Drawing on Rancière's concept of 'dissensus', as "a process concerned with the potential emergence of new political formations,"^[12] Mazé and Keshavarz argue "for increased criticality -- and dissensus -- in contemporary practices of design and design research."^[13] Other design theorists have put forward design philosophies such as Ontological Design or Xeno Design, which displaces the human/designer as the apex of the design process in an attempt to fundamentally question the complexity of designed worlds and design's implications for social, economic, and ecological issues. Design theorists such as Anne-Marie Willis, Johanna Schmeer, Danah Abdullah, and Tony Fry further complicate the pluralistic design approach of being and working together 'in difference', by appealing to a multilayered design perspective that transgresses boundaries between disciplines, timelines, geographies, scales, human and non-human entities. Such theories call for "new imaginaries and design approaches that question human-centrism, and open up paths towards alternatives."^[14]

All these critical design accounts have contributed to greater self-reflexivity in design perspectives and articulations, and as such, have also been important orientation guides for my research trajectory. Yet, these design theories -- perhaps because they evolve within and respond to the established design discourse -- are in my view still too attached to, and therefore insufficiently question, the notion of a 'purposeful' relation between design and collectivity.

As I will discuss in my first chapter 'Design and Collectivity', it is often during moments of crisis, for example increasingly porous disciplinary boundaries and specialization in design, that collectivity becomes an alternative proposition, or a potential resolution to the issue at stake. The tropes of design and collectivity, in their various interpretations and meanings, tend to uphold each other.

Approach

Throughout the different chapters I will make the thresholds of collective practice legible. I will do this by discussing the ways collectivity weaves together a range of places, legacies, objects and people across practices and disciplines, and timelines. Drawing from personal experiences and my involvement in collectivity-in-action, I will analyze different formats, utterances and social-technical conduct, in order to critically question how collective practices negotiate their relationships with the material conditions of everyday life.

Chapter 1: 'Design & Collectivity'

> The chapter 'Design & Collectivity' sets the scene by locating my > personal affinities with collective practice. I trace the ways in > which my understanding of collectivity has changed over time, and is > intertwined with personal experiences and frustrations with the > established design field. I will contextualize the main research > question of this thesis (How to design *for* and *with* collectivity?) > by approaching collective practice not as a result of successive or > comprehensible processes, but as resulting from and implied in > particular socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and > shape collectives, often in unforeseen ways. Collective practices > therefore require articulation that does not presume collectivity to > be a resolution to a problem.

In the following chapters, I will discuss three concepts: "Workshop", "Tool" and "Platform", dedicating a chapter to each. They are all ubiquitous and hazy terms that travel through a manifold of contexts with ease. They are also implied in the ways the H&D collective has been (mis)understood and actualized. All these terms -- workshop/tool/platform -- have been overused and so these chapters seek to clarify their meaning specifically in the context of collectivity.

Chapter 2: 'Workshop production'

> The chapter 'Workshop production' interrogates the pervasiveness of > the 'workshop' as a concept and format within a vast range of fields > and raises the question: "Why and how are workshops valued and > practiced?" > As a format for time-boxed collaboration, as well as temporary and > dynamic learning environments, 'workshops' cross many boundaries, > for instance between art and activism, between different disciplines > and institutions, between commercial and educational contexts. > Supposedly, workshops can be applied to any context. In this chapter I > will discuss the different perspectives on workshops including the > workshop as a site for specialized material production, in addition to > its meaning as a format for bringing together groups of like-minded > people; to meet, spend time together, work on a specific topic, or > explore new techniques or tools. Furthermore, I will address the > tension between, on the one hand understanding and practicing > workshops as egalitarian learning formats, and on the other hand > workshops' role in reinforcing neoliberal conditions. I will argue > that the workshop is a format that is implied in the economization of > education and the learning economy, and perpetuates a culture in which > self-employment, self-improvement, and self-reliance is normalized. > Drawing on different workshop situations I will exemplify how > possibilities and pitfalls of the workshop as a format for cultural > production are being dealt with within collective practice. Central to > this chapter's inquiry is the question; can workshops can be > organized responsibly? Can they resist this neoliberal impulse?

Chapter 3: 'Tool building'

> In this chapter I will discuss the question: Are > other-than-utilitarian relationships to tools possible? If they are, > how can such relationships be articulated? H&D hands-on workshops feed > off and nurture communities of tool users and makers who consider it > relevant to 'open up' tools and tool-building processes, to learn > about the ways tools are constructed in hands-on practical and often > playful ways. The practical and experimental approach to > conceptualizing and building tools *differently* allows for imagining > and testing out other scenarios for tool-designer relationships and > interaction. The chapter 'Tool building' analyzes different > understandings and functionings of 'tools'. More specifically, I > will discuss an ongoing / non-conclusive process of collectively > imagining, building, and modifying a set of digital tools entitled > 'Feminist Search Tools', that yields a growing repository of > prototypes, workshops, documentation, and recordings of conversations. > In this chapter I argue that the articulation and actualization of > 'tools' within the context of the Feminist Search Tools project, is > driven by a certain resistance towards tools as merely practical and > discrete objects.

Chapter 4: 'Platform-design issues'

> The starting point for the chapter 'Platform-design issues' is the > question "Do you want to design our platform?". This request, as it > has been recurrently posed to the H&D collective, extrapolates the > complicated relationship between design and collectivity. That is, the > way platforms are discussed in this chapter, puts into focus the > manner in which technical objects and context-specific social conducts > are composed together and are therefore deeply intertwined with a > collective's characteristics and functioning. These self-made > platforms involve and converge content management systems, chat > applications, collaborative writing tools, online spreadsheets and > file sharing systems. They are actualized on-the-go and in a manner > that caters to the particular needs, curiosities, and abilities of the > collective, which makes it difficult to separate them as technical > objects from that context. The question that will be discussed is: If > such platforms-in-the-making are inseparable from a collective's > functioning, including their characteristic of constant emergence, > spontaneity, and unreliability---can such platforms be designed at > all?

The title of the dissertation "Figuring things out together" evokes the collective effort of working through the complexities of our times, as well the effort required in disentangling and disambiguating certain metaphors and tropes that occur in the context of collective practices. Living and working conditions are increasingly complex, fragmented, and precarious. Can collective practices like H&D develop, uphold and support critical, ethical, and sustainable ways of working and being together?

Each chapter will take a different approach in order to ascertain what binds us together in collective practices. While these chapters appear in a linear order, they are also intertwined with each other. For instance, I will discuss workshops that took place on experimental platforms and I will discuss platforms and tools that took shape in and through workshop situations. The structure of the thesis resists a linear narrative of collectivity (forward-moving, progressing, improving, innovating) and invites the reader to remain alert, and on the look-out for *other,* multiple, and parallel collective utterances.

Bibliography

> Abdullah, Dana. \"Disciplinary Disobedience: A Border-Thinking Approach to Design." In: *Design Struggles* edited by Claudia Mareis, Nina Paim, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021. > > Berlant, Lauren. \"The commons: Infrastructures for troubling > times\*.\" *Environment and planning. D, Society & space* Volume 34, > no. 3 (June, 2016): 393-419. London: SAGE Publications. > > Bj gvinsson, Erling; Ehn, Pelle and Per-Anders Hillgren. \"Design > Things and Design Thinking: Contemporary Participatory Design > Challenges.\" *Design Issues* Volume 28. No. 3 (Summer 2012). > > Bødker, Susanne, Grønbæk, Kaj and Morten Kyng. \"Cooperative Design: > Techniques and Experiences From the Scandinavian Scene.\" > *Participatory Design: Principles and Practices* edited by Aki Namioka > and Doug Schuler. New Jersey, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1995). > > Dockx, Nico and Pascal Gielen (ed.). *Mobile Autonomy. Exercises in > Artist\' Self-organization*. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2015. > > Fry, Tony. *Becoming Human by Design*. London, New York: Berg, 2012. > > Hirsch, Tad. \"Contestational Design: Innovation for Political > Activism.\" PhD diss., MIT, 2008. > > Keshavarz, Mahmoud and Ramia Mazé. \"Design and Dissensus: Framing and > Staging Participation in Design Research.\" *Design Philosophy Papers* > Volume 11, Issue 1 (May 2013): 7-30. > > DiSalvo, Carl. *Adversarial Design*. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT > Press, 2012.\ > DiSalvo, Carl. \"Critical Making as Materializing the Politics of > Design.\" *The Information Society* Volume 30, Number 2 (2014): > 96--105. > > DiSalvo, Carl. \"Community and Conflict.\" *Interactions* Volume 18, > Issue 6 (November-December 2011): 24--26. > > Miessen, Markus. *The Nightmare of Participation.* Berlin: Sternberg > Press, 2011. > > Mouffe, Chantal. \"Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?\" > *Social Research* Volume 66. No 3 (Fall 1999). > > Mouffe, Chantal. "Democracy and Pluralism - A Critique of the > Rationalist Approach." Toronto: Faculty of Law, University of Toronto > (1995).\ > Mouffe, Chantal. \"The radical center. A politics without adversary.\" > *Soundings,* Issue 9 (Summer 1998). > > Rancière, Jacques. *Dissensus: on politics and aesthetics*. London and > New York: Continuum, 2010. > > Raqs Media Collective. \"Nautonomat Operating Manual. A Draft Design > for A Collective Space of \'Nautonomy\' for Artists and their > Friends.\" *Mobile Autonomy. Exercises in Artists\' Self-organization* > edited by Nico Dockx & Pascal Gielen. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2015. > > Schmeer, Johanna. \"Xenodesign --- Towards Transversal Engagement in > Design,\" PhD diss., Royal College of Art London, 2016-2020. > > Willis, Anne-Marie. \"Ontological Designing --- laying the ground.\" > *Design Philosophy Papers* Volume 4, Issue 2 (2006): 69--92.

Design and Collectivity

Summary

Within the contemporary design landscape much attention has been paid to modes of designing together, emphasizing process over outcomes, and inviting *others* (other human and non-human perspectives) into the process. Yet, even though such perspectives have contributed to a critical design discourse, they remain attached to, and therefore insufficiently question, the notion of a \'purposeful\' relation between design and collectivity.

This chapter discusses aspects of collective practice that designerly articulations fall short of addressing; that is, the implications of a reciprocal entanglement of collective practice with unstable working and living conditions

Introduction

My affinity for collective practice has evolved along with my practice as a designer, educator and organizer. This affinity has shaped particular affiliations and commitments, as well as a design approach and aesthetics. I have been interested in involving *others* in design processes: other people, other tools, other conditions, other materials. Involving others, as I see it, is not a method or a goal in itself---as opposed to participatory design, where the design process follows a certain goal by involving others, i.e. to improve design processes or outcomes. More so, designing with others can be an \'excuse\' to imagine being and doing things together differently from how it might have been conventionally done. The desire to design with *others* *differently* derives from frustrations with how design is taught in schools and practiced in the professional design field. Collective practices offer possibilities to temporarily imagine and test out alternative forms of organizing life and work. Designing as part of collective practice is not about designing better or designing faster, but relates to what Lauren Berlant described as \"an imaginary for managing the meanwhile within damaged life\'s perdurance, a meanwhile that is less an end \[but\] allows for ambivalence, distraction, antagonism and inattention not to destroy collective existence.\"[^1]

It is difficult to articulate collective aspects of design practice in a manner that does justice to its relational and contingent tendencies. Collectivity, as I understand it and discuss it in this thesis, challenges notions of individual authorship, differentiations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. \'Things\' that evolve with collectivity---i.e. publications, tools, technical infrastructure as well as social conduct---require unconventional design criteria to determine their purpose, or lack thereof. Such criteria are context-specific. They are imagined and articulated spontaneously, unexpectedly and may be abandoned instantly. Thus, it is difficult to speak about such collective aspects in general terms. Collectivity-in-action seems to constantly challenge and erode boundaries, organizational hierarchies, boundaries between formal planning and spontaneous impulse, between friendship and work relationships.

It has always been challenging for me to design *for* collectives, especially those that I was involved with closely. How to express and account for collective practices---environments that are described entirely differently depending on who you ask? Collectivity is in constant flux and so are those who it (temporarily) binds together. How to design for and along with collectivity; that is, how to negotiate collective dynamics, their resistance to confinement, their reciprocal, as well as vulnerable tendencies?

Collectivity is often confused with other notions of working together. However, collectivity is not equal or approximate to collaboration or teamwork.[^2] Collectivity deviates from concepts such as \'collectivism\', the \'commons\', or \'cooperation\' that focus on norms and values of social groups, deliberate organizational formats for living, working or being together. The artist collective Ruangrupa's description of itself as an "organism without fixed structure"[^3] aligns more with my experience of working with collectives. This description indicates that there may be contingencies at play in collective practices. In her text \"Art is Going Underground\", Janneke Wesseling also refers Ruangrupa and describes a tendency in contemporary collective art practices toward the \"ephemeral, changing, and processual: it is open and indefinite, more an open-ended assemblage than a definable object.\"[^4]

Collective design practice, as it is discussed in this dissertation, is a result of processes that are not successive nor fully comprehensible. Collectives are also a result of particular socio-economic, socio-technical conditions and intersections that pervade and shape working conditions, often in unforeseen and perhaps undesirable ways. Therefore, collective design practices require utterances that do not presume them to be the resolution to a problem.

Some artists/designers have found means of articulating \'feral\'[^5] aspects of collectivity, embracing the incompatibilities of working collectively within prevailing systems of arts and culture. They move between the spheres of economics and art, logistics, ecosystems and technical infrastructure, friendship and business. The \'trade artist\' and \'feral economist\', Kate Rich established an \"artist-run grocery business and underground freight network, trading coffee, olive oil, dried bamboo shoots and other vital goods outside official channels since 2003.\"[^6] Goods are traded in \"spare baggage space of friends, colleagues and passing acquaintances, while museums, offices, hotel reception desks, and other quasi-public places act as trans-shipment points and depots\"[^7]. The project \"Light Logistics\" by the collective Display Distribute is another example of an \'inefficient\' global courier system for artist publications described as \"a free but not-in-time service.\"[^8]

Such collective utterances cannot be pinned to one location, product or artist. They play with unreliability, and embrace a complex of issues, while resisting the impulse to offer a solution to these complexities. Along the way, they develop relational articulations that cannot really be considered examples of collectivity in a sense that an example is akin to a stencil. An example can be reproduced. Yet the unreliability of collectivity resists cookie cutter ideas about what constitutes such collectivity. Collective practices are situated. They are site, context, and time-specific, and so are their various expressions. They weave together a range of places, legacies, objects and people across practices, disciplines, and timelines.

This chapter defines collectivity in relative rather than absolute terms. As opposed to speaking from the position of a generalized \'we,\' I will take a personal approach and draw connections between my experiences of collectivity-in-action on the one hand, and, on the other, draw from various legacies, writings and practices that have inspired and challenged me, and have inevitably informed this research which grapples with the complicated relationship between collectivity and design.

Beginning with the section \'Collective beginnings\', I will trace my attraction to collectivity in order to explicate how my understanding and problematization of collectivity has changed over time, and is intertwined with personal, subjective experiences, i.e. frustrations about a lack of possible outlooks or points of orientation within the established field of design.

In the section *\'*(Un)disciplinarity\', I continue to address how collectivity tends to be conceptualized in moments of disorientation, taking as an example the discussion around eroding disciplinary boundaries and specializations in design. \'The collective\', or \'collective approaches\' tend to be put forward as a possible resolution to issues at stake. What is set aside, in assuming collectivity as a solution to \'de-disciplining\', is that collectivity may be not a tool to resolve the issues of disorientation but may also be a symptom of the crisis of design disciplines.

In the section \'Self-organized\' I will connect the ways in which collective articulation is enmeshed with unstable, unreliable conditions. Vocabularies that tend to evolve from collective practice, phrases of empowerment and self-determination, such as \"self-organization\" to some degree reinforce precarious working, learning and living conditions.

The following passage \'Specialized amateurs\' discusses the manner in which socio-technical relationships evolve along with collective design practice to create *other* kinds of relationships, affinities, and affiliations, that seem to be \'looser\' than the relation between an \'expert\' designer and their specialized tools. Collective sites and situations bring together people who approach tools, methods and conditions for the first time, and test out tool-designer relationships that have not yet established dependencies, expectations of purposefulness or efficiency.

The manner in which collective design processes are actualized cannot be traced in linear ways, or analyzed from a single vantage point. A collective designing requires articulations that shift the focus away from the *who* or *what* of a design process towards *how* and *why*. In the final section \'Approaching the \'we\' in collective practice\', I will introduce and contextualize the method of writing and designing

with* collectivity as a way of approaching and accounting for design

practices that are distributed across different people, technical objects, timelines, fields of knowledge and socio-economic realities.

Collective beginnings

> [Loose commitments]{.underline} > > I remember sitting in a park with my friends, in the summer of 2007. > We were all students in design and talked about starting *something* > together, a collective. We wanted to do \'self-initiated\' *projects*, > rather than design *products*. Projects that mattered, with people we > cared about. After our meeting we created email addresses --- a first > step towards our collective endeavor. Each of our emails would start > with the word \"sagmal\"[^9]: > > [[sagmal@jeannetteweber.com]{.underline}](mailto:sagmal@jeannetteweber.com) > > [[sagmal@thomasrustemeyer.com]{.underline}](mailto:sagmal@thomasrustemeyer.com) > > [[sagmal@anjagroten.com]{.underline}](mailto:sagmal@anjagroten.com) > > Adding this prompt to our email addresses allowed us to sustain our > individual web domains while being able to share the pun at the > beginning --- a loose commitment towards our imagined collective > future. > > We never started \'the collective\' Yet, I still use the email address > [[sagmal@anjagroten.com]{.underline}](mailto:sagmal@anjagroten.com) > almost every day --- a remnant of that short energizing moment in the > park, of imagining a future practice together.

Self-organized collectives often emerge during moments of uncertainty, frustration or (dis)orientation. The Dutch artist researcher Ruchama Noorda described collectives as \"\[e\]xperiments in communal living \[that are\] building around a rejection of individualism and private property, and \[are\] based on principles running directly counter to the laws and norms of capitalist societies.\"[^10] Yet, in my experience, while often driven by a certain frustration with the status quo, collectives do not necessarily set themselves apart from prevailing societal, political, ecological, disciplinary developments, but rather try to relate and interact differently with such conditions. Collective practices do not stand in opposition to, but are intertwined with and are affected by multiple realities, economies and timelines. Collectives seem to be in constant flux, taking turns and merging into one another, and therefore cannot be easily located, anticipated or explained in terms of absolute beginnings or endings, or as an antidote to existing systems. As I illustrated using the anecdote of a group of friends sitting in a park imagining starting a \'design collective\', collectives seem to be not plannable in that way. The prompt \"Let\'s start a collective!\" may set into motion a process of imagining *other* affiliations, other than those commonly known and accepted within the field of design. Collective imaginaries seem to fill gaps temporarily and accommodate moments of (dis)orientation, in our case the moment between study and our future professional lives. In such moments, the meaning of collectivity, the perception of their importance or perhaps even their redundancy is shaped and carried by shared excitement or lack thereof.

Contingency and imagination seem significant to the manner in which collectives are actualized. To take H&D as an example, the formation of H&D was not decided upon or planned in a causal manner. Yet, there are conditions in place allowing for H&D to evolve. There is a certain ecosystem of self-employed practitioners who work at the intersection of art, design, computer programming and education, and attend H&D events. They often do so at moments of (re)orientation, when they feel the need to expand their networks, acquaint themselves with new skills or to meet new friends. As a collective, H&D\'s evolves along with the interests of its individual members and the larger community around it. Many of the people who are involved with H&D are also involved with other collectives and projects simultaneously, and intersect socio-technical conducts, software repositories, peculiar terminologies, organizing principles, learning methods from various contexts.

It is therefore rather difficult to determine or define collectives in terms of absolute beginnings or endings. Yet, there are moments of shared memories that seem to create a stable picture of \'the collective\'. For example, a commonly told story at the beginning of the H&D collective---the moment when \'we\' organized our first workshop-based event in 2013 under the title \"Hackers & Designers\". The constellation of people involved with H&D at the time has changed significantly since this first event. The organizers grew from three to nine members and not everyone who was involved in 2013 still participates.[^11] Yet, such narratives of collective beginnings are reproduced over and over again until they solidify and are accepted as a shared conception of a beginning, of a turning point, or an end point.

To recap: A collective beginning may be determined only in retrospect, and *begins* to solidify within the progression of a collective narrative, along with evolving collective vocabularies and socio-technical conducts. While initially not perceived or planned as such, the evolving narrative of the \'collective beginning\' binds a collective together. An email address materializes an imagined and yet deferred collective beginning. Articulating collective beginnings in relative / relational / contingent terms recalibrates the perception of \'a collective\' from being deliberate and purposeful, towards collectivity as something that may *design itself* to some extent, that responds to and results from specific and multiple contexts.

In an attempt to locate my own personal collective beginning, my motivation for my involvement with H&D, I may need to go as far as trying to understand my attraction towards collectivity as such. I reflect on my experiences as a design student and on working as an emerging designer in the design field in Germany and the Netherlands between 2003 and 2011. In the next section, I will attend to the ways in which my conception of collectivity and my interest in it, are intertwined with the experience of (dis)orientation within the field of design, including certain frustrations with design as a discipline (an established field), practice (something I am involved in shaping, and reproducing) and concept (a system of thought).[^12]

(Un)disciplinarity

When I studied communication design from 2003 to 2008 in Germany, I did not encounter many examples of collective practices within the field of design. \'Best design practices\' were usually represented by individuals---charismatic designers who led design studios and creative agencies. The tale of the iconic designer included predominantly white and male, either European or North-American individuals. Their design studios were named after their personal names (Studio Borsche, Bureau Mario Lombardo, Stefan Sagmeister, Eikes Grafischer Hort). The name branding also extended into the courses they taught in design schools (Klasse Hickmann, Klasse Hesse, Klasse Uwe Lösch). These predominant figures were recurrently featured in design symposia, design blogs, magazines and books.\ In comparison to Dutch art and design education, in Germany individual \'masters\', seems to be pronounced more explicitly, in the way curricula are designed. Yet, design discourses' preoccupation with individualized design icons is not a uniquely German phenomenon. In her paper \"Is there a canon of graphic design history\" Martha Scotford took a close look at what and who was represented most frequently in the historical literature on graphic design (in the European and North-American context). She posited that there is a graphic design \'canon\', which she critiqued as creating \" heroes, superstars, and iconographies.\"[^13] However, according to Scotford \"\[i\]n singling out individual designers and works, we may lose sight of the range of communication, expression, concepts, techniques, and formats that make up the wealth of graphic design history.\"[^14] Recalling my experience as a design student at the time, these icons of graphic design spurred the realization that most of them seemed to represent what I was *not* or did not want to be: Loud, provocative, competitive. I was seeking forms and manners that allowed for ambivalence and being disoriented together, formats for trying things out in the classroom---in the presence of others, leaving things unresolved, picking up where someone else left off.

In *Glossary of Undisciplined Design* (2021) the editors Anja Kaiser and Rebecca Stephany, themselves both graphic designers and design educators, write:

> *\"Where there is discipline, there is a master--as design schools > continue to be the official sites of \"learning design,\" they remain > hubs for the introduction, transmission and normalization of > connections for \"good design.\" Implied in the very texture of any > design study program is the legitimization of certain conceptual and > aesthetic tools and ideas, substantiated by a corresponding canon and > the role models -- through naming of courses, through the appointment > of teachers, through their respective internalized convictions, to the > belief system behind a foundation course.\"*[^15]

I experienced study as a time of orientation, a process of making sense of the design field and trying to find a way to relate to it. Yet, what left me rather disoriented was the perception of the design discipline as somewhat immutable, i.e. through certain prefigured conceptions of expertise, skills, and \'best design practices\', rather than something I could actively participate in shaping. Today design practices are typified by fluidity, "that regularly traverse, transcend and transfigure historical disciplinary and conceptual boundaries."[^16] New adjectives are frequently added to design lexicons, such as service design,[^17] social design,[^18] open design,[^19] critical design, speculative design,[^20] design thinking.[^21] Paul A. Rodgers and Craig Bremner wrote extensively about the dilution of solid historic disciplinary boundaries in design into indeterminable pieces. According to Rodgers and Bremner "fluid patterns of employment within and between traditional design disciplines,\"[^22] have become commonplace. "The fragmentation of distinct disciplines has shifted creative practice from being discipline-based to issue or project-based,"[^23] which may be the cause of recurring existential crises when asked the all too familiar question: "What do you do?", "I'm a designer." "What kind? Graphic? Fashion? Furniture? Interior?."[^24]

Following Eleni Kalantidiou and Tony Fry\'s concept of border-thinking,[^25] designer and researcher Danah Abdullah calls for an erosion of borders between different specializations within design altogether, rather than expanding design into other fields and developing yet another form of disciplinarity. Instead, Abdullah proposes, design should move towards more collective approaches.[^26] She does not define what is precisely meant by \'collective approaches\' here but, in my reading, Abdullah\'s appeal to collective approaches, conveys a belief in collectivity's ability to renegotiate boundaries between affiliation, expertise and dominating knowledge systems.

I can relate to the anxiety of not being able to explain or defend what I am doing as a design practitioner on the one hand. On the other hand, I resist fitting into pre-established disciplinary categories. It is perhaps precisely that unfulfilled desire for other forms of affiliation that binds me to the collectives I am involved in. However, I have also come to understand that collectives do not function as antidotes to disciplinarity but are implied in different ways in a certain crisis of design disciplines. This involves the fragmentation and dissolving of established boundaries between design fields. The people I am involved with in collective work are usually freelancers, working in and in-between many fields and institutions, and not entirely recognized by any. Collective practices, and those who they bring together, negotiate many different, at times precarious realities at the same time, which also determines what can and cannot be done and how much one can rely on them.

The desire for belonging is perpetuated every time I use the word \'we\', and when I refer to H&D. Yet it is perhaps impossible to \'belong\' to a collective, in the possessive, or stable sense of the term 'belonging'. Collectives do not fix or replace the insufficiency of established domains, disciplines, institutions. Collectives are unreliable and difficult to discipline---they are not a recipe, not an entity, not a site, or a method---yet they may involve all of these things. By challenging fixed definitions, I do not intend to \"throw everything into the same pot, to efface the distinct features of the various parts within the collective.\"[^27] Design and collectivity develop relationships but they cannot be presupposed as relationships of utility and therefore require context-specific nuances when articulating and practicing collectivity. Working *with* or being involved *with* collectives, rather than \"*at* H&D we do...\" , or \"I am working at H&D\" is an important difference. In my view, such nuances differentiate collectivity and collectives from other modes of working together.

To recap: In this section I discussed how collectivity tends to be conceptualized in moments of disorientation, taking as an example the crises of disciplines in the field of design. The call for a \'collective approach\' presumes collective design practice to act as a potential resolution to conditions which have brought about disorientation. What is disregarded in articulating collectivity as a suitable response to \'de-disciplining\' is the possibility that collectivity may also be a repercussion and/or be perpetuating unstable conditions. Yet, thinking with Sara Ahmed\'s queer phenomenology,[^28] I came to wonder if a state of disorientation could also become the starting point for moving towards other understandings and articulations of affiliation that may be more reflective of their entanglements with the environments they find themselves involved in.

Self-organized

The notion of \'self-organization\' often occurs along with collectivity. The term is often used interchangeably with \'self-initiated\' or \'artist-run\'. \"Taking things into one\'s own hands\" is often connoted with empowerment and self-determination. H&D did not intend to become \'an\' organization. It seemed to grow and mature by itself. As a self-organized collective, H&D could also be understood as an accidental collision of people and conditions---as if it has organized itself. There was no prefigured plan or distinct moment where organizational principles were explicitly decided upon and then followed through. Following up on the previous section in which I hinted at the ways articulations of collectivity tend to be used to temporarily fill gaps, I will now move to a discussion of my time at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. This institution has close connections to my practice as a designer and educator, in addition to my activities as a member of the H&D collective. Many of H&D\'s members studied art and design at Sandberg Instituut too. I will reflect upon my experience of this educational environment as a design student and then as an educator, with particular attention paid to the ways tropes of collectivity as supposed forms of empowerment, articulated through principles of 'self-organization', are perpetuated within such an institution.

At the time I commenced the Master course in Design at the Sandberg Instituut in 2009, disciplinary boundaries or affiliations were not really of concern. I was motivated to apply by what I knew about the educational culture at this department, a self-determined approach to studying and designing. I recall that during talks with classmates and tutors at the design department, the notion of \'collectivity\' recurred frequently and alongside \'self-initiation\' or \'self-organization\'. I remember the former department head, Annelys de Vet, telling us students upon our arrival in the first week: \"This is a space in which you can self-organize. That also means, if you just sit on your chair and wait, nothing is going to happen.\" I perceived this statement as an invitation to us students to become actively involved in shaping the curriculum and the learning environment. To me, it was an expression of trust in our abilities to take things into our own hands.

In the book *Self-organisation/Counter-Economic Strategies* (2006), the Superflex collective wrote in their introduction that the concept of self-organization is often \"used in relation to certain kinds of social groups or networks; in this context, the term does not have a strict definition, but broadly speaking it refers to groups that are independent of institutional or corporate structures, are non-hierarchical open and operate participatory decision-making processes.\"[^29] When I think back to my arrival at the Design Department and how we were prompted to self-organize from the get-go, I also have to think about how it had actually been a struggle to get myself organized in the first year of my Master studies at the Sandberg Instituut. Nothing in this environment was as I knew it from my German design education. In addition to there being no seminars, grades or assignments, the difference between art and design did not seem to matter to the department. The manner in which the Design Department of the Sandberg Instituut sustained a certain openness and flexibility towards students\' changing needs and interests, is reminiscent of the ways in which curricula, criteria and social conduct were developed \'on the go\' at the Haagse Vrije Academie (HVA), which opened its doors in 1947 in The Hague (and closed in 2015). As part of her PhD dissertation, art historian Saskia Gras researched the history of the HVA and the ways in which the pedagogical approaches were perceived by the students.[^30] At the HVA the notion of expertise and disciplinarity and what commonly qualified as art and design, was fundamentally challenged.

The artist Livinus van de Bundt was inspired by Parisian académies libres, \'Progressive education\' (Montessori education) and founded the HVA on the basis of the idea that an art school should be open to anyone who has the ambition to study but perhaps lacks the financial means or academic qualification. The KABK (Royal College of Art The Hague), which was at the time the other---more established---art academy in The Haque, was perceived by educators and students at HVA as a normative and authoritative form of art education, and pushed students to work towards predetermined artistic goals. At HVA there were no fixed goals or criteria for assessing students\' work. The notion of freedom was understood in a way that the students themselves should define their own criteria for \'good\' and \'bad\' art and design. The personal growth of a student was more important than the outcomes they produced or the time it took them to accomplish their studies.

Gras also points out that the manner in which the HVA was (dis)organized[^31] seemed intertwined with the ways students affiliated strongly with the learning environment. Students were involved in decision-making, thus they took part in shaping the learning environment. Gras writes about the emphasis on connecting artistic exploration to social and political questions---however, not from an intangible distance, but from *within* the organization and the sociality of the learning environment itself. The notion of the social was constituted by the ways people came together to organize, learn and produce art and design, which in turn influenced the very structure and mentality of the learning environment, and the ways students developed as makers.

I came to wonder about the implication of chaos as an organizing principle within learning institutions today, about potential issues arising from asking students to self-organize, that is, when self-organization is not a mode of self-actualization but a prerequisite to sustain continuity for education. In her essay \"The Tyranny of Structurelessness\" (2019), Jo Freeman critiqued the prevailing structureless organizing principles of social justice movements, more specifically the US women's liberation movement in the 1970s. According to Freeman striving for \'structurelessness\' in organizations is as useful as it is deceptive:

> *\"*The idea of \'structurelessness,\' however, has moved from a > healthy counter to these tendencies to become a goddess in its own > right \[...\] People would try to use the \'structureless\' group and > the informal conference for purposes for which they were unsuitable > out of a blind belief that no other means could possibly be anything > but oppressive*.\"*[^32]

Today, the students at the Design Department of the Sandberg Instituut, the same institution where I studied 12 years ago, tell me stories about their experiences studying at the department that are similar to my own. When social ties and affiliations within a group have not been established, the task of self-organizing can actually become a lonely struggle. When everything is mutable and responsive to change, an environment can become rather difficult to navigate. While the idea of self-organization and self-determinacy is charismatic and attractive, cited by many students as reasons for wanting to study at the Design Department, they also experience recurrent disorientation and ask for more structure. It is challenging to respond to these changing needs within a structure that builds upon principles of structurelessness. Under neoliberal conditions that are also very apparent inside learning institutions (for example, tutors at the Sandberg Instituut are hired as freelancers with short-term hourly agreements), prevailing fragmentation and flexibilization of work conditions, study and life, the relationship between self-organization and precarization are closely interlinked, and continue for students after their studies are concluded, and for tutors after they leave the classroom. The H&D collective may be a continuation of such unstable conditions that already evolved when we were still in art school.

> [Ahead of ourselves]{.underline}\ > We were on a bike ride from the last H&D Summer Academy in 2018 > towards the location where we would celebrate, dance and eat together. > Juliette and I euphorically reflected on the experiences we just had, > while negotiating the Amsterdam traffic and a group of twenty summer > academy participants trying to follow us on their bikes.\ > We felt energized and forged plans for possible next iterations of > this annual intensive workshop program and were eager to share our > ideas with the rest of the group -- all the while feeling a slight > guilt about forestalling a more equitable process of proposing and > discussing ideas between all members of the collective.

At a distance H&D may be perceived as \'an organization\', a cohesive whole. From within, the experience of self-organizing can be more blurred, as \'one thing leading to another\', which can make it difficult to uphold the conception of self-organization as an emancipatory act, or an empowering process. The \'self-\' of a collective is not easy to discern in terms of *who* or *what* takes part. There is a definition of self-organization that may be more suitable to understand collectivity-in-action. Deriving from the natural sciences, self-organization describes how particular systems \"have a tendency to develop, and take new and more complex forms, in a seemingly unplanned fashion without the influence of an external or central authority.\"[^33] In this estimation, self-organization is then not about **in**dependence but **inter**dependence, about coming-into-being as a process of mutual entanglements.

Being involved in self-organization in the context of the H&D collective, I experience it as an inventive praxis that requires constant (self-)reflexivity and reconsideration of organizing principles, in relation to emerging conditions, other collective configurations, other contexts, other people, other tools, other challenges and needs.

In their text \"Nautonomat Operating Manual\'\', the Raqs Media collective invented a helpful term---\'nautonomy\'. It \"re-articulates and re-founds the \'self-organizing\' principle inherent in what is generally understood as autonomy, while recognizing that the entity mistakenly called \'self\' is actually more precisely an unbounded constellation of persons, organism and energies that is defined by its capacity to be a voyager in contact with a moving world.\"[^34]

The concept of *nautonomy* is to some degree illustrated in my anecdote of the bike ride, where we cycled metaphorically and literally from one H&D Summer Academy to the next, all the while negotiating (imaginary) boundaries of unspoken organizational principles. I relate these indeterminable moments of forging plans, to what Bruno Latour described as an organizational script. Organizational scripts, according to Latour, \"circulate through a set of actors that are either assigned some tasks or are in a momentary state of crisis to re-instruct the scripts with new instructions for themselves or others.\"[^35] Oftentimes, it is in unplanned and short-lived moments in which organizational scripts are re-instructed, spontaneously emerging epiphanies of looking back and forward, that become transitional. As such moments switch timelines, people and contexts, and inventive offshoot ideas evolve into plans for the future.

To recap, in this section I have tried to critically inquire into whether articulations and actualization of collectivity, of which \'self-organization\' was my example, may also be manifestation of the failure to achieve what it seems to promise---for example to create \'community\', or to function as a form of empowerment. I propose considering self-organization as critical self-reflexive practice, intertwined with the unstable conditions we find ourselves in---as a way of questioning our collective ties. Why and how do we associate with one another? Our involvement in self-organized collectives may indicate the manner in which they/we are continuously configured anew and never fully achieved. In their potential to be inventive, collectives resist stability. Therefore, in my view, collectivity cannot and should not be taken as a model or prerequisite for formal organization, that is, to patch up institutions\' omissions.

Specialized amateurs

Self-organized collectives, such as H&D, necessitate ongoing (re)articulation of what it is we do, how we do it, why we do it and how we speak about it. That is, our activities blend people, tools, and technical infrastructure together, blurring disciplinary boundaries, distinctions between user and maker, friendships and work relations. Therefore, collective conditions require a certain self-awareness about what one is familiar with most likely deviates from what other people are familiar with (in terms of discipline-specific jargon, daily work routines, tools and methods, and educational formats). In fragmented and fast-paced collective organizing, short encounters are the main mode of operation. H&D workshops bring together people (including the members of the collective) to do activities we would not usually do in our individual daily work lives. We experiment with other formats, tools and methods. Often, it is the state of *not-knowing* that people have in common in such environments. In the following section, I will interrogate the different meanings and functions of the \'unfamiliar\' in relation to design and collective practice.

- Approaching new tools**

In *Blind maps and blue dots* (2021),[^36] Joost Grootens\' proposes an alternative graphic design history, by focusing on tools, rather than people or products of graphic design. By shifting the focus, the graphic designer (a map-maker using expert tools) moves away from the center of attention. Instead, amateur practices of map-making move to the fore, and into the realm of graphic design. While Grootens does not explicitly focus on collective practices, there are a number of aspects from his proposition for a tool-based history of graphic design that resonate with my particular inquiry into collective practice and its relation to design. His reorientation from iconic figures in design (individual people and objects) to processes and tools, enables other possible perspectives and graphic design practices. For Grootens, this shift in focus from individuals towards tools led to considering practices that may not be recognized as legitimate, but also do not depend on disciplinary approval or expert tools.

Educated as a graphic designer myself, there was a moment when my everyday tools, media design software such as Adobe InDesign and Photoshop, became harder to \'hack\'. That is, it became more difficult to find pirate copies that I did not have to pay for. Renting software felt like entering an expensive membership-only club. At the same time it became increasingly difficult to imagine other tool ecosystems. Everyone and everything surrounding me seemed to have established fundamental dependencies on Adobe Creative Suite/Cloud; collaborating designers, photographers, illustrators, post-production firms, printing presses.

Design students are not offered many options when it comes to deciding which design tools they would prefer to work with (invest in, establish skills in, develop long term relationships with and come to depend on). While offered at cheaper rates, or for free, or pirated in art schools, Adobe software is often posited as the only option and is increasingly hard to avoid. Once a student graduates, it turns into a costly service---unaffordable for small scale businesses and independent designers. These discrepancies reinstate arbitrary borders between \'professional\' and \'amateur\' software use. More than once, I resolved to break ties with Adobe and to switch instead to free and open source alternatives entirely (replace Photoshop with Gimp, Illustrator with Inkscape, InDesign with Scribus). So far, I've only succeeded sporadically. The moment of complete software make-over is yet to arrive. I came to understand that it is not solely my individual choice that determines what tools I work with. Rather, a whole net of socio-technical relationships have evolved around certain ways of learning and working in graphic design, which has inevitably solidified my ties with certain tools, making outright refusal seem inconceivable. Transformation within socio-technical relationships and practices cannot be done individually. Rather, such a transformation necessitates a systemic shift in design practices and software usage.

In the context of H&D\'s, we experiment with publishing tools. These are self-made, appropriated or repurposed design software that allow us to create page layouts in an unusual manner. These processes may remind of generative design principles, where the influence or control of the designer is limited to predefined variables and the outcome retains a kind of surprise effect.[^37] At other times, the design process is rather inefficient and convoluted and requires an extraordinary amount of manual labor. Such methods and tools break with design habits, the usual ways to design a page layout,---for instance how it would be done using layout programs such as InDesign. Furthermore, the process of developing experimental tools and publications tends to be distributed across different workshop situations, different people, different technical infrastructures, and is driven by spontaneous curiosities as much as by a commitment to capture and share the otherwise ephemeral and fragmented formats and practices of H&D with others.

Grootens used the term 'amateur' to refer to map-makers who may go unrecognized as designers by established design disciplines. Such \'amateur map-makers\' seem to establish other kinds of relationships to their tools. According to Grootens, the maps they produce are more truthful in the sense that they display more openly the very process that brings them into being. By shifting the focus away from \'professional\' designers and their expert tools, the process of amateur map-making becomes increasingly visible.[^38] Such amateur maps are outcomes of a specific kind of tool-designer relationship that is perhaps not yet marked by discipline-related dependencies. Therefore, these maps exhibit more about their coming-into-being than a finalized design object and are thus more discursive. Similarly, the convoluted, distributed, inefficient manner in which H&D designs publications, may also function as a tactic to circumnavigate design conventions, but also to create a community of toolmakers and tool users, and a potential discourse around *other* possible tool-designer relationships.

> [Small gestures]{.underline} > > I participated in a workshop facilitated by An Mertens and Michael > Murtaugh (\'Constant Association of Art and Media\') during the first > edition of the H&D Summer Academy in 2015.[^39] I remember one moment > particularly: An ran a Python script in the command line of her > computer. I was not familiar with using the command line or Python. I > followed her actions on a projection on the wall. She typed something > into the command line and hit enter. An error message appeared. > > An\'s response (surprised yet somewhat delighted): \"Interesting!\" I > remember that I was puzzled by her comfort, as the error message > somehow seemed threatening to me. An used the occasion to explain how > error messages can actually be quite generous in the way they expose > information about how a program functions. The moment taught me > several things. The importance of not giving up with every occurring > error, but also how the exposure of unexpected errors can become an > occasion to work or think through something *together* -- in the > presence of *others*, how to approach the condition of \'not knowing\' > not as a weakness but as an opening for others to enter into a > dialogue.

- Contextualizing amateurism**

The meaning and approach of the \'amateur\' resonated within the context of H&D (I have literally heard members of the H&D collective proclaiming \"We are just a bunch of amateurs!\"). However, as I will point out in the following section, dichotomies such as the amateur and specialized practitioner need to be considered with caution.

In the context of design practice, the counterpart of the figure of the amateur is the expert -- a person who is experienced and knowledgeable, someone who obtained control over a specific skill, or holds authority in a specific field of knowledge. In *The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation* (1987) Jacques Rancière recounts the story of a school teacher, Joseph Jacotot, who developed teaching methods for illiterate parents to teach their children how to read.[^40] Rancière proposes that the teacher can inhabit the position of a non-expert. The non-expert empowers the student in ways that the 'master explicator' cannot. An authoritative teacher figure will always remind the student of what they do not know, that they will never be able to know as much as their teacher. Philosopher and educator, Paulo Freire, referred to this transactional relation between the teacher (the one who transmits knowledge) and the student (the one who receives knowledge and who did not possess this knowledge before), as a \'banking model' of education, which \"transforms students into receiving objects. The \'banking model' of education is an \"approach to learning that is rooted in the notion that all students need to do is consume information fed to them by a professor and be able to memorize and store it.\"[^41]

The figure of the \'amateur\', as it is sometimes appears in the context of H&D, inhabits modes of teaching and learning at once. Yet, I started to question if sustaining assumed dichotomies between \'specialist\' and \'amateur\', particularly in articulating the role and functioning of experienced self-organized collectives such as H&D, might risk downplaying socio-economic implications. The notion of the \'amateur\' has a problematic history of appropriation in the context of graphic design. Designer and researcher Ruben Pater wrote in his book *CAPS LOCK* (2021) about \"how professional standards came into being and how they led to some people being paid and finding recognition for their graphic design work and some not.\"[^42] The tendency of so-called professional graphic designers to turn towards \'amateur\', \'vernacular\' or \'anti\' design is indicative of a certain extractivist tendency in designers to \' turn towards what is \'low-brow.\' Pater, therefore, prefers to refer to such practices as unpaid design practices rather than amateur practices.

The expert-amateur dichotomy and its relation to the divide between paid and unpaid labor also relates to the way in which work tends to be implicitly \'devalued\' in the context of the H&D collective, by placing what we do into the scope of fun \'not-too-serious\' experimentation. Simultaneously, H&D takes part in the Dutch cultural landscape. H&D's activities are funded by the Dutch Creative Industry Funds. Furthermore, H&D is frequently invited to host workshops at art and design schools, academic symposia and art, design and technology festivals. Thus H&D participates in shaping a certain learning economy that leverages short-term learning formats. The relationships between those involved in H&D are loose. There are no presupposed obligations or dependencies. Whether it be the co-workshoppers we meet, the tools, technologies and methods we learn about, minor commitments and \'not-too-serious\' experimentation are a fuel for collective practices such as H&D. By organizing, hosting and attending many of the short-lived, self-organized activities---including designing ad hoc publications, embracing chaotic organization styles---ignorance (to use Ranciére's term) becomes a \'professional\' collective skill that is practiced (and funded).

- Unknown outcomes**

In *The Experimenters Chance and Design at Black Mountain College* (2015),[^43] the art historian Eva Días discusses how the concept of contingency or letting go of control in a design process, was perceived, practiced and taught at the Black Mountain College. Black Mountain College (BMC) was an art and design school that existed from 1933 until 1957 in North Carolina, and was known for its interdisciplinary and experimental approach to art and design education. BMC built upon John Dewey\'s principles of experience-based education. At BMC they practiced holistic, non-hierarchical methodologies that attempted to decrease distances between students and educators, but also the distance between daily life and the production of design and art. Students were required to participate in farming work, construction projects, had kitchen duties and were involved in decision-making at various levels of the institution. BMC was about learning to design from *within* rather than

for* a social context.

The interest in contingency as part of design and art production at BMC was described by Días as arising from the desire to break with routines, setting into motion a process of defamiliarization with what one has become used to, such as one\'s ways of looking at things, one's skills, or thinking patterns. At BMC John Cage staged unrehearsed performances and initiated improvisation workshops to break with the expected (Chance Protocol). In Días\' account on the different approaches and motivation for turning toward the unexpected at BMC, they all had rather distinct ideas and expectations regarding the topic of the unforeseen, yet they shared \"the impulse to change and control future conditions, moving toward unforeseen experiences as quest toward new, more adequate, and politically progressive and inclusive understanding of the world.\"[^44]

The protagonists in Eva Días\' book,[^45] apparently argued over degrees of contingency during their time at BMC. However, according to Días, they shared the belief that experimentation in art and design education, welcoming chance and the unexpected, would be \"a means to think about social stakes of form in a collaborative, interdisciplinary fashion, and to rework outmoded, routinized production that led to repetition and stagnation.\"[^46]

As designers, we set conditions, protocols, we leave parts of the process up to chance in order to be surprised by the outcome and learn to embrace the unexpected as part of a design process. Contingency can be achieved through a variety of strategies that involve including

others* in the design process---other people, other tools, other

materials, and other conditions. In collective practices, there are subtle and yet significant differences in the meaning and expression of the unknown that seem to be intertwined. On the one hand, the activity of playful experimentation enables turning towards the unexpected with curiosity, a certain openness towards the possibility of failure. On the other hand, this openness also reflects a more general condition, that is, a form of not-knowing that derives from uncertainty and instability of working and living conditions.

The concept of contingency in the context of BMC (through Días\' analysis), the interest in working with the unknown as a design principle, was also related to a larger (social, economic, political) context that necessitated breaking with routine perspectives and practices. The motive for embracing chance was related to an urgent need to reimagine and exercise other modes of living and working together. The introduction of contingency as a design principle exceeded its purpose which was to establish a method for producing design products differently. It was part of articulating and exercising other collective imaginaries for working and living together.

H&D is sometimes approached as if it were a design agency, or web development office, which is to some degree understandable as some projects that evolve from H&D look closely at what a design studio may produce. Yet there is a difference, which has to do with a certain level of unpredictability that exceeds the general acceptance of what can be left up to chance. When people approach us with invitations to design books or websites, they seem to be drawn to the experimental character of what we do. Yet I noticed there is a threshold to what is generally accepted as \'experimental\'. In introducing the requirement for somewhat concrete outcomes, in the finite/final understanding of the word \'outcome\', collaborators can (unknowingly) introduce other forms of responsibility and attachment, than the collective is attuned to.

To recap: In this section I paid attention to subtle yet significant differences in the meanings and functions of what is *not* familiar, in relation to design and collectivity. Self-organized workshops offer occasions for experimenting with different tools, in a different context, with different people and may bring about other collective imaginaries around design practice---possibilities for rethinking the manner in which designers affiliate with certain tools and build communities around other kinds of tool-building and use. The \'amateur\' approach in such contexts may offer the opportunity to escape pressures and the confines of specialized design work. However, differentiating such short-lived socio-material experiments as \'not-too-serious\' and \'not professional\', risks obscuring the implications of such collective practices in relation to the environments and conditions they are working within.

Approaching the \'we\' in collective practice

In previous sections the question arose, how can collective conditions be negotiated when principles of unresolvedness, inefficiency, and chaos move from being just spontaneous occurrences to becoming stabilized modes of operation? Collectives also take part in shaping the socio-material conducts of the environments they interact with, while moving through different spheres of knowledge, disciplines, informal as well as institutional learning environments. Taking the aforementioned example of building experimental publishing tools and making experimental publications in the context of H&D, the collective aspect of such a practice cannot be explained solely through a designed object---the publication itself. To articulate the meaning of such an object, one has to shift the focus towards the manifold of people, things, environments and practices this object has assembled throughout the process of its making. The question that arises is how to approach and account for the \'we\' in collective practice, if it is in a constant state of change.

The struggle I experience with designing *for* collectives is similar to the challenge of writing *about* collectives. At the beginning of my research trajectory, I tried to write without really knowing who I was writing for and from which perspective I was writing. In retrospect, I recognize there were various hesitations at play, which I have not necessarily resolved but I have found ways to make sense of and negotiate. Considering that my research involves many actors and \'actants\', with whom I have had both personal and professional relationships, one of my concerns was that I would speak on behalf of others. That is, claiming a position that is not mine, that I can only partially understand and run the risk of misrepresenting. How to account for and make visible the many voices and perspectives that have informed this research project?

As collectivity is never inert, but rather in constant process, it is difficult to document its characteristics in ways that translate meaningfully across contexts. I am usually suspicious of enthusiastic narratives and photo slideshows of workshop situations, which tend to convey only one message: \"We had a great time. You had to be there!\" However interesting collectivity looks in these pictures, the actual experience is often quite different. I have therefore been on the look-out for *other* forms and formats of articulating collectivity that are not necessarily more truthful but perhaps more useful. I relate this to Lauren Berlant who wrote: \"Form is not only a wish for a refuge, a cushion, it is also social, an exposure, a mediation, and a launching pad in relation to which beings can find each other to figure out how to live in a movement that takes energy from the term "movements" political resonance\".[^47]

I have been trying to work through these concerns by considering an approach to designing and writing *with* collectivity, which starts by paying attention to what is already there---the unresolved and unpolished yet expressive materials and gestures, ephemeral how-tos and readmes, workshop scripts, code snippets, spreadsheets and note taking pads. I have been writing \'case stories\'---combinations of personal anecdotes of everyday collective experiences interwoven with theoretical analysis, which recalibrated my perspective on what is significant to pay attention to. Writing anecdotes helped me to 'see' mundane aspects of collectivity that turned out to be influential turning points. Such everyday tales are often rendered invisible within existing frameworks of analysis as defined by design\'s disciplinary imperatives. The case stories became my approach to articulating collectivity and design in a situated manner, from a perspective that I can account for to a certain extent and that acknowledges the perspective from which I am writing as necessarily partial. Due to its subjectivity and the attempt to locate that subjectivity, these case stories offer a specific perspective as opposed to a generic one.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I set the scene for the following chapters by contextualizing my understanding, appreciation and frustration with collective practice in relation to my education and work as a designer and design educator. By considering various angles, I have argued that collective design practice needs to be understood and articulated beyond terms of purposefulness and togetherness. Self-organized collectives bring people, tools, and technical infrastructure together and blur disciplinary boundaries, distinctions between user and maker, friendships and work relations. They therefore necessitate ongoing (re)articulation of what it is we do and who we implicate in what we do.

Absolute definitions of collective design practices, depicting collectives as antidotes to individualized design practice or alternatives to design disciplines, obscure the manner in which collectives are intertwined with multiple realities, economies and timelines. Characteristics of collectives may be articulated only in retrospect, and begin to solidify in the progression of collective narratives, along with evolving collective vocabularies and socio-technical conducts. While initially not perceived or planned as such, evolving narratives of \'the collective\' may become what binds a collective together. H&D is a group that became invested in exploring alternative tools and other ways of learning and working together while experimenting with unusual publishing methods. Simultaneously H&D is a fragile ecosystem of self-employed practitioners who, due to their unstable and diverging socio-material conditions, resort to short-lived, semi-committed, chaotic ways of working together.

Collective imaginaries often occur in moments of uncertainty, frustration or (dis)orientation. Yet, collectivity is not, and should not be, proposed as a solution to the issues at stake. Rather, such practices are symptomatic of unstable, unreliable social, technical, and economic conditions. It is this double-bind of collectivity that requires other perspectives and articulations that move beyond general, positive and contained definitions. It is necessary to work against stable pictures of collectivity, by paying critical attention to inefficient and convoluted ways of designing / organizing / programming, which, in my view, can also be subtle forms of resistance to the acceptance and normalization of such unstable conditions.

I propose \'designing and writing *with* collectivity\', a mode of reflection and practice which, throughout this dissertation, allows me to critically approach articulations and materializations of collective practice and to open up design perspectives and vocabulary toward the relational, subtle, but consequential interplay of design and collective practice. In the following chapters, I will continue to explore collectivity-in-action. That is, the thresholds of fixation and contingency in collective design practices, through weaving together different formats, articulations, and visual gestures, and by switching registers and timelines.

> Bibliography > > Abdullah, Dana. \"Disciplinary Disobedience: A Border-Thinking > Approach to Design." *Design Struggles*, edited by Claudia Mareis, > Nina Paim, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021. > > Boelen, Jan, Kaethler, Michael (ed.) *Social matter, social design.* > Amsterdam: Valiz, 2020. > > Abel, Bas van, Klaassen, Roel, Evers, Lucas and Peter Troxler (eds.). > *Open Design Now. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers, 2011.* > > Ahmed, Sara. *Queer Phenomenology Orientations, Objects, Others*. > Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. > > Ahmed, Sara and Fortier, Anne-Marie. \"Re-imagining communities.\" > *International* *journal of cultural studies* 6, no. 3 (2003): > 251--259. SAGE Publications. > > Berghuis, Thomas J. \"Ruangrupa New Outlooks on Artist Collectives in > Contemporary Art.\" *Mix & Stir. New Outlooks on Contemporary Art from > Global Perspectives,* edited by Helen Westgeest, Kitty Zijlmans, > 81--87. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021. > > Berlant, Lauren. \"The commons: Infrastructures for troubling > times\*.\" *Environment and planning. D, Society & space* 34, no 3 > (June, 2016): 393--419. London, England: SAGE Publications. > > Bradley, Will, Hannula, Mika and Cristina Ricupero, > *Self-organisation/Counter-Economic Strategies*. Berlin: Sternberg > Press, 2006. > > Cramer, Florian and Elaine W. Ho. \"Collective Organization.\" *Making > Matters. A Vocabulary of Collective Arts* edited by Florian Cramer, > Janneke Wesseling, 67-75. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022. > > Cramer, Florian and Elaine W. Ho. \"Distribution.\" *Making Matters. A > Vocabulary of Collective Arts* edited by Florian Cramer, Janneke > Wesseling, 213--223, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022. > > Dewey, John. *Democracy and Education: an introduction to the > philosophy of education.* New York: Macmillan, 1916. > > Días, Eva, *The Experimenters. Chance and Design at Black Mountain > College\'*. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. > > Freeman, Jo. \"The Tyranny of Structurelessness.\" *WSQ: Women\'s > Studies Quarterly* 41, no. 3 (2013): 231--246. > > Gras, Saskia. \"Vrijplaats voor de kunsten: de Haagse Vrije Academie > 1947-1982.\" PhD diss., Leiden University, The Hague, 2017. > > Grootens, Joost. \"Blind Maps and Blue Dots. The Blurring of the > Producer-User Divide in the Production of Visual Information.\" PhD > diss., Leiden University, 2021. > > Groten, Anja. \"Towards critical collaborative practice.\" *Design > Dedication* edited by Annelys de Vet. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2020. > > Herbert, Stine (ed.). *Self-Organised.* London: Open Editions, 2013. > > hooks, bell. \"Engaged Pedagogy.\" *Teaching to Transgress.* New York, > London: Routledge, 1994. > > Kaiser, Anja and Rebecca Stephany. *Glossary for Undisciplined > Design,* Leipzig: Spector Books, 2021. > > Kalantidou, Eleni and Tony Fry. *Design in the Borderlands.* London, > New York: Routledge, 2014. > > Krish, Sivam \"A practical generative design method.\" *Computer-Aided > Design* 43, issue 1 (January, 2011): 88--100. > > Latour, Bruno. \"A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans: Following > Daedalus\'s Labyrinth.\" *Pandora\'s hope: essays on the reality of > science studies*, 174--215*.* Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard > University Press, 1999. > > Latour, Bruno. \"\'What's the Story?\' Organising as a mode of > existence.\" *Agency without Actors? New Approaches to Collective > Action* edited by Jan-Hendrik Passoth, Birgit Peuker and Michael > Schillmeier, 164--177. London: Routlegde, 2012. > > Noorda, Ruchama. \"℞eForm.\" PhD diss., Leiden University, 2015. > > Pater, Pater. *CAPS LOCK,* Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021. > > Rancière, Jacques. *The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in > Intellectual Emancipation*. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University > Press, 1991. > > Raqs Media Collective. \"Nautonomat Operating Manual. A Draft Design > for a Collective Space of \'Nautonomy\' for Artists and their > Friends.\" *Mobile Autonomy. Exercises in Artist\' Self-organization* > edited by Nico Dockx and Pascal Gielen. Amsterdam: Valiz: 2015. > > Rich, Kate. \"Feral.\" *Making Matters. A Vocabulary of Collective > Arts* edited by Janneke Wesseling, Florian Cramer, 273--277. > Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022. > > Rodgers, Paul A, \"The Concept of the Design Discipline.\" *Dialectic* > I, issue 1 (2017). > > Scotford, Martha (1991) \"Is There a Canon of Graphic Design > History?\" *Graphic Design: History in the Writing (1983--2011)* > edited by De Bondt, S. and de Smet, C. London: Occasional Papers, > 2012. > > Tsoukas, Haridimos \"Organization as Chaosmos.\" *Organization and > Organizing: Materiality, Agency, and Discourse* edited by Daniel > Robichaud and François Cooren, New York: Routledge, 2013. > > Wesseling, Janneke. \"Art is Going Underground.\" *Mix & Stir. New > Outlooks on Contemporary Art from Global Perspectives* edited by Helen > Westgeest, Kitty Zijlmans, 89--95. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021. > > Willis, Anne-Marie. \"Ontological Designing --- laying the ground.\" > *Design Philosophy Papers* 4, issue 2 (2006): 69--92.

[^1]: Lauren Berlant, \"The commons: Infrastructures for troubling

   times\*,\" in: *Environment and Planning D: Society and Space* 34,
   no 3, (2016): 393--419.

[^2]: According to Dictionary.com teamwork describes the \"cooperative

   or coordinated effort on the part of a group of persons acting
   together as a team or in the interests of a common cause\".\
   Merriam Webster defines teamwork as \"work done by several
   associates with each doing a part but all subordinating personal
   prominence to the efficiency of the whole\".

[^3]: Thomas J. Berghuis, \"Ruangrupa New Outlooks on Artist Collectives

   in Contemporary Art\" in *Mix & Stir. New Outlooks on Contemporary
   Art from Global Perspectives,* ed. Helen Westgeest, Kitty Zijlmans
   (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021): 81-87.

[^4]: Janneke Wesseling, \"Art is Going Underground\", in *Mix & Stir.

   New Outlooks on Contemporary Art from Global Perspectives,* ed.
   Helen Westgeest, Kitty Zijlmans (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021): 89-95.

[^5]: Feral Atlas

   [[1]{.underline}](https://feralatlas.org/),
   Feral Trade
   [[2]{.underline}](https://feraltrade.org/),
   last accessed January 2022.

[^6]: Kate Rich, \"Feral,\" in *Making Matters. A Vocabulary of

   Collective Arts\'*, ed. Florian Cramer, Janneke Wesseling
   (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022): 273-277.

[^7]: ibid.

[^8]: Florian Cramer, Elaine W. Ho, \"Collective Organization\", in

   *Making Matters. A Vocabulary of Collective Arts*, Florian Cramer,
   Janneke Wesseling (eds.) (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022): 67-75.

   Florian Cramer, Elaine W. Ho, \"Distribution,\" in *Making Matters.
   A Vocabulary of Collective Arts*, Florian Cramer, Janneke Wesseling
   (eds.) (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022): 213-223.

[^9]: Sagmal is an expression used in German vernacular language. You

   use it before actually saying what you want to say. \"Tell me,
   \...\". It is a way to signal that the other person should get ready
   for what is about to come. Sagmal indicates determinacy and
   curiosity. What follows sagmal, is a prompt for the other person to
   respond. If someone says: \"Sagmal\...\", you know you will be
   invited to share your perspective on a matter. Another way of using
   sagmal, is without something added to it. \"Sagmal!\" can be an
   outburst -- a discreditation of what has been said or done.
   Something like: \"Pardon me?!\" Suggesting that what has been said
   maybe went a nudge too far and crossed a boundary of what is
   acceptable.

[^10]: Ruchama Noorda\'s PhD project \'℞eForm\' investigated the

   cultural, artistic and spiritual legacy of the late nineteenth- and
   early twentieth century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement.
   Ruchama, Noorda, \"℞eForm.\" (PhD diss., Leiden University, 2015):
   120-167.

[^11]: During the time span of writing between 2021 and 2022, members of

   the H&D collective were Loes Bogers, André Fincato, Selby
   Gildemacher, James Bryan Graves, Anja Groten, Heerko van der Kooij,
   Juliette Lizotte, Karl Moubarak, Christine Kappé, Margarita Osipian
   and Pernilla Manjula Philip.

[^12]: The differentiation of \'design\' into these three categories

   refers to the work of Anne-Marie Willis on \'Ontological
   Designing\'. Anne-Marie Willis, \"Ontological Designing --- laying
   the ground,\" in *Design Philosophy Papers* 4, issue 2, (2006):
   69-92.

[^13]: Martha Scotford, \"Is There a Canon of Graphic Design History?,\"

   in: *Graphic Design: History in the Writing (1983--2011)*, De Bondt,
   S. and de Smet, C. (eds) (London: Occasional Papers, 2012): 226.

[^14]: ibid.

[^15]: Anja Kaiser, Rebecca Stephany, *Glossary for Undisciplined

   Design* (Leipzig: Spector Books, 2021).

[^16]: Paul A Rodgers, *The Concept of the Design Discipline*, in

   *Dialectic* I, issue 1, Winter 2017, accessed April 2022
   https://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dialectic/14932326.0001.104?view=text;rgn=main

[^17]: KISD (Cologne International School of design) was the first

   university to establish 'Service Design' as a field in design
   education. "Systemic and holistic thinking, interdisciplinarity,
   facilitation and inspiration of cocreation processes, development of
   mock-ups and prototypes -- these core competencies of designers are
   applied to service organizations and processes, to interactions and
   to physical evidences."
   https://kisd.de/en/kisd/areas-of-expertise/service-design-en/

[^18]: Jan Boelen, Michael Kaethler (ed.) *Social matter, social design*

   (Amsterdam, Valiz, 2020).

[^19]: 'Open Design Now' ed. Bas van Abel, Roel Klaassen, Lucas Evers,

   Peter Troxler
   [[3]{.underline}](http://opendesignnow.org/),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^20]: Also referred to as Speculative Design by Dunne Raby. Accessible

   online at: https://www.critical.design/ "The term critical design
   was popularised by product/ interaction design team Anthony Dunne
   and Fiona Raby. Its central idea is to use design to speculate about
   the social, political and cultural implications of everyday objects,
   producing design works that question and challenge the status quo
   rather than reinforcing it."
   [[4]{.underline}](https://modesofcriticism.org/critical-everything/),
   last accessed January 2022.

[^21]: Design thinking makes \"it seem as if complex problems and

   challenges were easily solvable and manageable" Dana Abdullah,
   \"Disciplinary Disobedience: A Border-Thinking Approach to Design"
   in: Claudia Mareis, Nina Paim (ed.) Design Struggles, (Amsterdam:
   Valiz, 2021): 231.

[^22]: Paul A Rodgers, *The Concept of the Design Discipline*, in:

   *Dialectic* I, issue 1, (Winter 2017).
   [[5]{.underline}](https://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dialectic/14932326.0001.104?view=text;rgn=main),
   last accessed April 2022

[^23]: ibid.

[^24]: Dana Abdullah, \"Disciplinary Disobedience: A Border-Thinking

   Approach to Design" in: Claudia Mareis, Nina Paim (ed.) *Design
   Struggles*, (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021): 228.

[^25]: Eleni Kalantidou and Tony Fry. *Design in the Borderlands,*

   (London, New York: Routledge, 2014).

[^26]: ibid.

[^27]: Bruno Latour, \"A Collective of Humans and Non-humans\" in:

   *Pandora\'s hope: essays on the reality of science studies*. 1999.
   Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

[^28]: Sara Ahmed., *Queer Phenomenology Orientations, Objects, Others.*

   (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).

[^29]: Will Bradley, Mika Hannula, Cristina Ricupero, Superflex (eds.),

   *Self-organisation/Counter-Economic Strategies*, (Berlin: Sternberg
   Press, 2006): 5.

[^30]: Saskia Gras, \"Vrijplaats voor de kunsten: de Haagse Vrije

   Academie 1947-1982,\" PhD diss., Leiden University, 2017.

[^31]: According to Gras, pursuing research about an institution that

   regarded chaos as an educational principle and that resisted
   ordering principles in its own organizational practice, created some
   difficulties. Archives and documentation were hard to retrieve.
   Saskia Gras, \"Vrijplaats voor de kunsten: de Haagse Vrije Academie
   1947-1982,\" PhD diss., Leiden University, 2017.

[^32]: Jo Freeman 'The Tyranny of Structurelessness', first published in

   1970, found in: \'Collective Conditions\', Constant Association for
   Art and Media, 2019.

[^33]: W. Bradley, M. Hannuia, C. Ricupero, Superflex (ed).

   *Self-Organisation. Counter-Economic Strategies* (Berlin: Sternberg,
   2008).

[^34]: Raqs Media Collective, \"Nautonomat Operating Manual. A Draft

   Design for a Collective Space of \'Nautonomy\' for Artists and their
   Friends,\" in: N. Dockx, P. Gielen (ed), *Mobile Autonomy. Exercises
   in Artist\' Self-organization* (Amsterdam: Valiz: 2015).

[^35]: Bruno Latour, \"\'What's the Story?\' Organising as a mode of

   existence\" in: Passoth, Jan-H., Birgit Peuker and Michael
   Schillmeier (2011) *Agency without Actors? New Approaches to
   Collective Action. (*London: Routledge, 2011).

[^36]: Joost Grootens, \"Blind Maps and Blue Dots. The Blurring of the

   Producer-User Divide in the Production of Visual Information,\" PhD
   diss., Leiden University, 2021.

[^37]: Sivam Krish, \"A practical generative design method,\" in:

   *Computer-Aided Design* 43, issue 1, (January 2011): 88-100.

[^38]: Grootens described such \'amateur maps\' as *visibilization*

   rather than *visualizations.* Joost Grootens, \"Blind Maps and Blue
   Dots. The Blurring of the Producer-User Divide in the Production of
   Visual Information,\" PhD diss., Leiden University, 2021.

[^39]: \"Code text and text-to-speech\" workshop facilitated by An

   Mertens and Michael Murtaugh,
   [[6]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2015/p/Code_text_and_text-to-speech),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^40]: Jacques Rancière, *The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in

   Intellectual Emancipation*. (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University
   Press, 1991).

[^41]: bell hooks, \"Engaged Pedagogy,\" in *Teaching to Transgress*

   (New York London: Routledge, 1994): 14.

[^42]: In his reflection on the notion of the \'amateur\' Pater draws on

   designer and researcher Sasha Costanza-Chock. Ruben Pater, *CAPS
   LOCK* (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021): 317.

[^43]: Eva Días, *The Experimenters. Chance and Design at Black Mountain

   College*, (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London, 2015).

[^44]: ibid.

[^45]: Eva Días focuses on the Black Mountain College artists Josef

   Albers, John Cage, Buckminster Fuller in: Eva Días, *The
   Experimenters. Chance and Design at Black Mountain College*, (The
   University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London, 2015).

[^46]: ibid.

[^47]: Lauren Berlant, \"The commons: Infrastructures for troubling

   times\*,\" *Environment and Planning D: Society and Space* 34, no. 3
   (2016): 393--419.

{{:Chapter 2: Workshop Production}

Tool building

Summary

This chapter discusses the ways in which tools (in the context of self-organized collective work) may or may not be perceived and actualized as purposeful objects that can be used, or are designed to be used. More specifically, I will discuss an ongoing, non-conclusive process of collectively imagining, building, and modifying a set of digital tools entitled \'Feminist Search Tools\'.

Drawing on Sara Ahmed\'s exploration of the concept of \'use\', and on the metaphysical meaning of \'tool\' and \'broken-tool\' as discussed by Karen Barad, Bruno Latour and Graham Harman, the inefficiency of a collective tool building process brings to the fore other-than-utilitarian articulations of tools. That is, the processes of collective tool building, through their distributed and fragmented character, can create conditions in which tools are not presumed as an inevitable outcome but as ongoing and discursive.

Introduction: Situating tools within the H&D collective

In the context of Hackers & Designers, \'tools\' usually refer to digital tools, software or hardware that we, as designers, artists, technologists and organizers interact with, on a daily basis. H&D tends toward free and open-source tools. In H&D workshops, the accessibility of source code offers possibilities for using, copying, studying and changing, thus learning from and with technical objects. In contrast to the restrictions of using, sharing and modifying proprietary software, free and open-source principles derive from software development practices where technical objects \"are made publicly and freely available.\"[^1] According to the Free Software Foundation, \'free\' is defined as liberty, as "free from restriction, not as \'free of charge.'"[^2] The collective aspects of free and open-source software are expressed through particular modes of licensing and the practice of documentation and publication of source code on platforms for distributed version control and source code management such as Github and Gitlab. In the context of H&D, these principles are explored in and outside of the domain of computer programming.[^3] Such principles are nurtured through a shared understanding that nothing is really made from scratch, and that the software and hardware we are working with, have been passed through many hands.

There are certain open-source tools that H&D accumulated around organizational activities, such as the web spreadsheet tool Ethercalc[^4] to create overviews for budgets and plans or the real-time collaborative note taking tool Etherpad.[^5] As free and open-source projects, these tools are used by many collectives and individuals who put them into practice across various contexts. For H&D, such tools are enmeshed with organizational routines, with other technical systems and are also connected to other communities of toolmakers and users.

Furthermore, H&D builds and works with digital tools that are situated in the realm of experimental publishing and graphic design. These include self-made publishing tools such as ChattyPub,[^6] Momentary Zine,[^7] and the Heartbeat-to-print tool.[^8] In experimenting with design and publishing tools, H&D draws inspiration from other collectives and individuals, such as the Brussels-based collective Open Source Publishing[^9] and \'Constant Association for Art & Media\',[^10] the Rotterdam-based collective Varia,[^11] the Amsterdam-based collective fanfare,[^12] the publishing practice of Vienna-based artist Eva Weinmayr,[^13] or the embodied publishing practices of Rotterdam-based designers Amy Suo Wu and Clara Balaguer.[^14] In addition, the knowledge and practices evolving from educational environments are encapsulated by the student-led interdepartmental initiative PUB at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam[^15] or the experimental publishing program XPUB at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam,[^16] as well as the digital and hybrid publishing research groups of the Institute of Network Cultures.[^17]

At H&D, such tools are often activated through workshops and are used to design small edition self-published printed matter. H&D\'s experiments with design tools have challenged my design routines, more specifically the relationships I have built with design software, the tools I have become used to since my design education. In the context of H&D, publishing tools are not replacements but function in parallel to proprietary tools. They are indicative of an attempt to envision a process of designing a publication differently than it would be conventionally done. The practical and experimental approach to conceptualizing and building design and organizational tools differently has allowed me to test out other scenarios for tool-designer relationships and interactions.

Furthermore, H&D's hands-on workshops bring together people and tools, in a temporary, focused environment. Such workshops feed off and nurture communities of tool users and makers who consider it relevant to expand the conception of tools and tool-building processes, to learn about the ways in which tools are constructed in a hands-on, practical and often playful manner. In all instances it seems to me that people involved with H&D ascribe a certain value to toolmaking. Yet, it also seems as if the shared enthusiasm for experimenting with tools cannot be located within the tool itself, nor in the products or outcomes these self-made tools produce. The appreciation for such self-made tools seems to lie in the *process* of building tools. In my experience of experimenting with tools in the context of H&D, there is a common understanding that tools are not mere instruments but that, as tool-users and makers, we are implicated in them, in ways that go beyond their immediately evident utility or the products they may produce.

In this chapter I will discuss the implications of tools in collective practice. More precisely, I will attend to the ways in which tools (in the context of self-organized collective work) may or may not be perceived and actualized as \'purposeful\' objects that can be used, or are made to be used. Through my work with H&D, I realized that the particularity of a collective environment contributes to the ways in which tools are used, produced and discussed. Conversely, tools and processes of toolmaking can also affect the ways in which a collective environment evolves. These processes influence how H&D is organized as a group, how activities and interests are pursued and how certain values are articulated and rearticulated. In my experience collective practices are constantly in flux and tend to lean into their entanglements with tools in ways that make it difficult to sustain the perception of tools as being for something. In fact, the articulation and actualization of \'tools\' within the context of H&D is driven by a certain resistance towards the conception of tools as simply practical and discrete objects.

In his book *Tool-being* (2002), the philosopher Graham Harman refuses a conceptualization of the tool as a merely pragmatic entity. Harman discusses Martin Heidegger\'s tool analysis, where the philosopher pays particular attention to tools as metaphysical objects. According to Harman, a tool is a relational thing that \"does not merely have some neutral presence that could be viewed from the outside, but actually exists in a network of forces and meanings that determine its reality.\"[^18] Following this understanding of \'tools\' they \"cannot be confined to officially sanctioned tool-items such as picks, drills and chains.\"[^19] Due to the ways in which tools take part in a network of forces and meanings, it can become rather difficult to determine where a particular tool begins and ends. This is evident in my work with H&D, where relational aspects of tools come to the fore. Tools are sometimes introduced with a certain purpose in mind, but then travel through different contexts and change their function and meaning along the way. The role and function of a tool within collective practice may change over time and influence how it is spoken about and actualized. Collaborative writing tools such as Etherpad or Ethercalc serve a certain organizational purpose, such as keeping track of budgets, plans and assemblies. However, such collaborative tools may also become the subject of a workshop or are conceptualized as a site/place/space in which workshops take place. An example is the *Temporary Riparian Zone*[^20] workshop that was hosted by two members of the Varia collective, Cristina Cochior and Angeliki Diakrousi, during the Hackers & Designers Summer Academy of 2020. Another example is the short workshop sequel *Ethercalc routines* hosted by H&D member Karl Moubarak and myself, during the Hackers & Designers Summer Academy of 2021. In both workshops, participants joined remotely and spent time navigating through timed prompts and exercises on Ethercalc and Etherpad.

At H&D we sometimes speak about how \'self-made\' tools (self-made not in the sense of made-from-scratch but rather as participants become involved in their making process) can estrange design processes, break with the routines we may have already established and instill in us a greater sense of our interdependence. When my relation to the tools I use has reached a point of routine, when a process \'goes without saying,\' so to speak, the use of the tool becomes subconscious and unquestionable. In her book *What\'s the use?* feminist writer and scholar Sara Ahmed stated, \"When mechanisms work to enable or to ease a passage they become harder to notice.\"[^21] Furthermore, Graham Harman described such \'tools-in-action\' as \"operat\[ing\] in an inconspicuous usefulness, doing their work without our noticing it.\"[^22] When a tool is not functioning in a seamless manner, it may be perceived as broken, failing or unusable. This is what Harman refers to as the \'broken tool\', which does not mean literally broken. Rather, it describes the moment in which a tool is considered directly. It comes to the fore, is rendered noticeable. There is thus, a double life in tools, *tool-in-action* and *tool-out-of-order*.

It seems a \'tool-in-action\', as Harman describes it, or a \'tool-routine\' as I would describe it, does not require explanation and therefore goes without saying. Yet I have come to question the refusal of tool-routines, particularly when it becomes inherently part of the functioning of a collective to continuously question, alter and change the meaning of tools. Can the so-called \'brokenness\' of a tool become a tool\'s purpose? Is there such a thing as a broken-tool-in-action? Or to formulate this idea more broadly, are other-than-utilitarian relationships to tools possible? If so, how could such relationships be articulated?

In the following section, I attend to these questions by drawing on a collaborative project Feminist Search Tools (FST). The FST project encompassed a set of tools-in-the-making and is an ongoing self-organized collective process crossing various collective environments and breaching different discourses and fields of knowledge. I will begin by contextualizing the project and discussing my personal involvement in it. My personal perspective and motivations form one amongst many different viewpoints and incentives that were involved and evolved as part of this toolmaking process. I pay attention to the fragmented and contingent character of the process, its interwovenness with various collective environments and timelines, as well as the significance of such a fragmented process for the ways in which the \'tool\' is conceptualized and materialized. Additionally, I will focus on the (re)articulation of a tool\'s \'usefulness\' -- when determining what is considered a useful or usable tool is not about defining a common goal for it. Instead, the question of what is a useful/usable tool may emphasize the differences of personal desires, expectations, frustrations and feelings of responsibility towards others.

I then discuss aspects of digital interface design as part of the process of imagining, articulating and making the FST. I examine interfaces\' relation to the systems they interact with, and the ways in which certain interface design conventions can be related to the concepts of \'tool-in-action\' and \'broken tool\'. I also reflect on the concept of versioning and the notion of the 1st version, in particular how it has been used to negotiate the pressure of publishing a \'functioning\' search tool on the one hand and the resistance to resolving, finishing or releasing it on the other. I will go on by contextualizing the significance of the different environments, in which the tool versions have been brought and evolved within. More precisely, I will attend to the permeability of the collective toolmaking process, and its receptiveness to context-specific terminologies, cultures and conducts. I will analyze how the context of the Amsterdam-based Digital Methods Summer School (DMI) has introduced specific divisions of roles and tasks, and specific understandings and actualization of design and visualization practices that had significant influence on the continuation of the toolmaking process.

Drawing on an example of an off-shoot tool that was also produced during DMI, I will elucidate how the particular contexts the collective toolmaking process passed through and brought together were not always in alignment. Such moments of incompatibility were occasions to express commonalities and discrepancies regarding values and ethical concerns. In the chapter\'s conclusion, I propose an approach that I call \'slow collective processing\'---an approach to collective tool-building that is reflective of the diverging socio-economic realities of a collective on the one hand and, on the other, precipitates the constant questioning of the tool-in-the-making.

The Feminist Search Tools project

\'Tool\' in the context of the FST project describes a digital search interface in different iterations that allow for textual search queries within digital catalogs of libraries and archives. There have been various focal points within this project. One focus has been the context in which the tools have been developed and conceptualized, such as library catalogs, as well as the knowledge economies that libraries as institutions represent. This includes the ways in which libraries and the knowledge they hold are made (in)accessible through search tools that build upon standardizations of search categories such as the Library of Congress subject headings.[^23]

As the title of the project suggests, the initiative is guided by feminist thinking, practices and principles. The FST project took as a starting point library search engines that are intertwined with underlying systems of categorization, which are a result of and reproduce structural discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, age, race, class, (dis)ability. The question of the purpose or usefulness of the FST closely relates to the project\'s emphasis on such discriminatory effects and on rendering them tangible or even undoing them by building new/other tools.

The group that evolved around the FST project is composed of the two collectives Read-in[^24] (Annette Krauss, Svenja Engels, Laura Pardo) and Hackers & Designers (Anja Groten, André Fincato, Heerko van der Kooij, and previous member James Bryan Graves). Members of the Varia collective (Angeliki Diakrousi and Alice Strete) and frequent collaborator Ola Hassanain are also participants. The members involved in the FST have in common that they are not experienced in designing, conceptualizing or building search engines, including working with large datasets. They are artist researchers, gender studies scholars, designers (architectural, graphic and web design), educators, (self-taught) computer programmers, librarians and archivists. Throughout the project, the group met sporadically and consulted with librarians, information specialists and other artists and researchers working with and around subjects related to libraries and librarianship.

The FST project followed different incentives, timelines and levels of intensity in terms of involvement with various collaborators. I cannot speak on behalf of all members but I will try to describe how I became part of this initiative and how my connections and appreciation for it have developed and have been challenged. When I got involved in this collaboration, I was already working with the Read-in collective in the role of a graphic designer. I designed and built Read-in\'s website, and worked on some of their publications.[^25] I became interested in their project *Bookshelf Research*[^26] for which Read-in members looked closely at different libraries, such as their own private libraries or the library of the art institution Casco in Utrecht.[^27] The group considered each library book closely and created a statistical breakdown based on self-chosen categories. Categories entailed \'gender of the author\', \'place of origin\' as well as \'material condition\' of the books. I invited Read-in to join one of the H&D meetups[^28] in 2015, during which we looked into ways of searching within the digital catalog of the public library in Amsterdam. In retrospect, this marked the beginning of the collective exploration of digital search tools and the relation of such tools to library cataloging systems.

This particular project is prescient to this dissertation as it has challenged me in its resistance to finality. It has been ongoing since 2015, and yields a manifold of documentation such as workshop outlines, code repositories, collaboratively written texts, audio recordings and transcripts of interviews and conversations, photographs and videos, collective notes and annotations of interfaces. The challenge of determining where a tool begins and ends becomes, in my view, particularly stark in this project. Karen Barad argues that \"what is needed is a method attuned to the entanglement\"[^29] of what she calls "apparatuses of production."[^30] These require \"genealogical analyses of how boundaries are produced rather than presuming sets of well-known binaries in advance.\"[^31] The purpose and meaning of the FST have been (re)articulated and actualized throughout and in a non-conclusive manner, and fostered a relational understanding of tools-in-the-making. That is, the characteristics, possibilities and limitations of the tool, and the way the members of the FST group related to it, were not known in advance but evolved through the coming-into-being of the different tool iterations within particular contexts. Collective and individual understandings of what constitutes a (useful) tool seem to have been (and still are) continuously in-the-making, as the feminist search tools are also continuously in the making (including the different understandings of feminism and intersectionality that are also continuously in the making). Materializations that evolved from this collective toolmaking process cannot be understood in terms of finality. Yet there also seems to be relationships evolving from toolmaking and tool-imagining processes, which bind those involved---people and (imagined) tools---to each other over a long period of time. The question is, what precisely motivates and connects the tool-collective, if the final destiny of the tool(s) is uncertain or perhaps not even the goal?

A challenge in discussing this particular tool project as a case study is its connection to a manifold of people, as well as various critical discourses, such as feminist and decolonial theory, critical librarianship, critical studies of web search engines and algorithmic bias. At the same time, the project\'s distributed character is indicative of its potential, as it brings tool-discussions into a variety of contexts.[^32] However, discussing the multiple implications of this project is beyond the scope of this dissertation. I will therefore relate the project more specifically to the subject matter of this chapter and focus on the evolving understandings, articulations and purposes of self-made tools (or lack thereof). In addition, I will examine the implication of such tools-in-the-making within self-organized collective practices.

By elucidating the project's composition and purpose, I explore how my perception of \'use\' or \'usefulness\' of evolving tools relates to the collective toolmaking process. For instance, the activity of organizing workshops and meetups has been significant throughout the FST project, and was precisely what allowed this \'new\' FST collective to evolve. Such short-lived gatherings energized the process and contributed to its continuation and at the same time to its non-conclusiveness. In approaching the question of what is considered a useful tool, this workshop-based approach needs to be taken into account, as it hints at both a fragmentation of the process and a fragmentation of the tool and its envisioned purpose. Reflecting back on the initial meetup with H&D and Read-in in 2015, the emphasis was on \'scraping\'[^33] datasets from the internet. We used the digital library catalog of the public library in Amsterdam as an example.[^34] The interest in datasets was not entirely connected to the project FST. In fact, the FST project, as it is referred to today (with the recurring project title and a committed group of collaborators) was not perceived as a project/tool/collective at the time of the initial meetup. Rather, it is only in retrospect that this meetup is understood as a significant moment in the FST\'s genealogy. The group evolving around the FST continued to focus on working with datasets, on trying to make sense of them and (re)organizing them, on finding other ways of searching in them. In my view, this emphasis on datasets may be partially related to this initial meetup, to the people that happened to be there, and hence my perception of it as the retrospective beginning of the FST collective.

To summarize, a collective toolmaking project such as the FST project needs to be understood as distributed and fragmented---contingent in the ways it evolved. Its unfolding journey was not always deliberate, which, as I will explore in the following section of this text, may have also affected the perception of the (im)possibility of the FST to become a useful/usable tool. Therefore, a toolmaking process such as the FST requires articulation that resists linearity and progress-based understandings of the design process.

Distributed articulation of use

Collective practices such as the FST, could also be described as continuously changing socio-technical configurations. Short-lived group gatherings, such as H&D workshops, as well as various configurations of people that continued working together for longer and shorter periods of time and across different contexts took part in the FST\'s different iterations. The process has been dispersed and contingent and, as such, puts into perspective collective conditions in which the purpose of the FST can neither be predefined nor concluded. In fact, the question of what the FST is for remains unresolved. Nevertheless, the FST materialized into several digital interfaces along the way, which were referred to as prototypes, as iterations or as versions. At first, the tool was understood as a search interface for digital catalogs of libraries and archives. Throughout the process the tool also evolved into a shadow search engine and an interactive visualization of a library catalog. To clarify, when I refer to \'tool versions\', my intention is not to suggest that one tool version is an \'improvement\' of the previous one. While the different tools relate to each other, they are also materializations of specific moments in a tool-building process that influenced perceptions and expectations of what constitutes a tool, in addition to the usability or usefulness of a tool.

The question of what the tools are or will be for remains pending. The desire for the FST to be useful has been one of its underpinnings. However, throughout its process, it became clear that the notion of usefulness and usability cannot be taken for granted. As a socio-technical object-in-the-making, the FST posed more questions than it resolved. For instance, in what context should it exist? How does it relate to existing search engines, including the people who built, maintain and use them? What and who should the tool be useful for? The definition of use or use-value depends on who you ask. In a conversation, one of the members of the FST group, Sven, articulated their personal criteria for the purpose of the tool:

> Sven: \[\...\] I do have to admit there is also a desire around > usability of the tool, which for me simply stems from, really wanting > to find queer literature. I want to be able to find that > identification in the material I am looking for and I still find it > very frustrating not being able to find that within mainstream media > outlets or libraries. So I think we should also not do away so easily > with these hopes and desires that come with the use value of a tool. > \[\...\] we need to understand where that desire is coming from -- > wanting the tool to function and being able to provide something > valuable to the person who is engaging with the tool.\ > (excerpt from \'Tool conversation\', 17 February 2021)

Sven\'s hopes for the tool-in-the-making seems to derive from a frustration with a gap in mainstream media outlets and libraries. In articulating their hope for the tool to be *for* something (*for* finding queer literature), they ascribe a personal desire towards its use, which informs their expectation of the tool (finding identification). In my interpretation, this also implicitly suggests responsibility towards someone who may be using the tool in the future. In my understanding, Sven\'s articulation of all of these aspects form their conception of a tool and its potential use-value. It seems these characteristics of a potentially useful tool are distributed across people, objects and time, which relates to Ahmed\'s concept of \'use\' as \"an intimate as well as a social sphere.\"[^35]**\

In \"A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans\" Bruno Latour (building upon Heidegger), proposes conceiving of the relationship between tools and people as constituted by what he calls a symmetry between a materialist and a sociologist perspective. With reference to the materialist perspective, he describes a tool as an autonomous entity with a \'script\'. The script determines its destiny and has a significant influence on the person who uses it. Considering the sociological perspective, he maintains that a person sustains full control over a tool\'s action, the tool plays \"the role of the passive conductor.\"[^36] By proposing a symmetry between the materialist and sociologist perspectives, Latour argues that a person changes with the tool in their hand and that the tool changes when a person holds it. This reciprocal tool-person relation, brings about a condition in which the outcome of such a relation is neither determinable by tool or person entirely. This contingent \'outcome\' could constitute an ephemeral characteristic such as an attitude towards tools. Rather than explicitly articulated, an attitude towards tools may evolve latently, through certain gestures or the use of specific vocabulary. This vocabulary may be established through repetitive use or resistance to using specific kinds of tools.

Sven\'s manner of articulating the tool-in-the-making is imaginative, reflective, but also concrete and consequential,---all attributes that resonate with what Barad referred to as \'Gedankenexperiment\'. According to Barad, \"Gedanken experiments are pedagogical devices. They are tools for isolating and bringing into focus conceptual issues.\"[^37] For Barad, while thought experiments are non-material eventualities, they do matter in material ways. \'Real\' experiments on the other hand, which incorporate real apparatuses and measurement devices, can be flawed as we cannot presume \"independently existing objects -- separate from the measuring agencies.\"[^38] According to Barad, apparatuses are entangled in ways that make them not \"passive observing instruments. On the contrary, they are productive of (and part of) phenomena. \[\...\] \[A\]n \"\'apparatus\' emerges within a specific observational practice\"[^39] and it is unclear where the apparatus \'ends\'. Barad\'s ideas on entangled, (im)material apparatuses can be related to the evolution of the FST and the difficulty of determining where the FST may \'end up\'. The FST's resistance to absolute determination, in my view, requires articulation that accounts for a tool-in-the-making*,* a tool that is imaginative as well as concrete and material, including different scenarios for future use. At the same time, its relation to past experiences and personal frustrations have also shaped expectations, hopes and desires for another kind of tool and other tool articulations.

To recap, in the attempt to determine criteria for usefulness of a collectively made tool, the notion of a tool-in-the-making (determining its meaning and purpose through the process of making it) is intertwined with the notion of tool-imagining. With reference to Barad's proposition

Gedankenexperiments* and their significance to the material world, the

process of collective tool-imagining in the FST project distributes the task of determining and articulating criteria for usefulness of the tool across different people, objects and temporalities.

Interfaces as tool simulations

The first version of the FST[^40] \[see image 1\] was developed in the context of the Utrecht University Library, more specifically their digital library catalog. The FST group has referred to it as \'1st version\', even though there was initially no other version planned. The formulation \'1st version\' became part of a shared vocabulary and was adopted even by collaborators who joined the project after this \'1st version\' was built. This expression conveys that this \'1st attempt\' at designing a search tool should not be perceived as a final product. I would also relate the notion of the 1st version to the rushed manner in which this particular search interface was implemented, to how \'1st version\' became an apologetic phrase for publishing something that I was not convinced was, or perhaps ever would be ready for release.

The Read-in collective was invited to participate in the project \'Zero Footprint Campus\' organized by \'Department of Search\', which took place at the Utrecht University in 2016.[^41] This research project was supposed to result in new work and to be presented at the Science Park campus public areas in Utrecht, at the end of the research trajectory in June 2017.[^42] I recall a lot of our time being spent on negotiating time schedules of everyone involved, on attuning the ethos of the two collectives working together and on understanding what it is we wanted and could achieve together. Perhaps, the expression \'1st version\', suggests that the tool is still under development, that it is not completed (yet).

Nevertheless, the 1st version of the FST materialized into a web interface with a search function. The search takes place within a dataset of library records.[^43] The dataset of records we worked with were based on a number of so-called MARC21 fields, which one of our collaborators Sven carefully selected in conversation with a librarian.[^44] When conducting a search in this tool, a page opens and displays the search result in the form of a numerical breakdown of library records found under each category.

To anyone who has used a search engine before, the interface will look somewhat familiar. It is approximate to the many search interfaces we have learned to recognize due to the ubiquity of major web search engine monopolies such as Google Search, Bing or Baidu. A border around the search field suggests the possibility of clicking inside the box. If you do so, the cursor blinks and invites the user to type something. The search interface of this first tool version, could be considered

usable* as a search tool, through its recognizable aesthetic and

interactive properties.

![](media/image1.jpg){width="6.267716535433071in" height="3.513888888888889in"}

Image 1: \'1st version\' of the Feminist Search Tool.

https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Presentation_H\_D_fst.014.jpeg

Graphic User Interfaces (GUI) play a significant role in the ways digital tools are conceived. They influence the perception of usability of computers and software by adding a visual layer between its user and its code and hardware. The interface design of the 1st version of the FST to some extent relies on the recognizability of its elements such as the search input field and the search button. However, the expectation of usability may be disrupted once the tool is actually in use. The first disruption in the flow of interaction arises from the appearance of the question on top of the search field: \"Why are the authors of the books I read so white so male so eurocentric?\" The question causes confusion. Who is the \"I\"? People who encountered the tool on their own told me later that they weren\'t sure if they were supposed to use the search field to respond to the question. They assumed the tool was \'speaking\' to them. Others embodied the question, typed in a keyword, an author or book title and expected to receive some sort of answer to the question. Some people expected to receive suggestions for books \'other\' than those written by \'white, male, or eurocentric\' authors. This created another rupture in the search flow, as the search result does not show books (as some expected), but a barebone list of subject headings. Underneath each heading, library records are listed. A graphic layover functions as a legend to the subject headings and contextualizes the system of categorization.

I recently revisited the discomfort I experienced at the moment of uploading the 1st version of the FST onto its domain, the moment when it became accessible to anyone on the internet. At first, I thought I was uncomfortable with losing control over the moment of encounter between the user and the FST. Perhaps, I was discomforted by the possibility of it being misunderstood. However, I later realized I had not understood the meaning and functioning of the tool myself. The process of figuring the tool out was (and still is) ongoing. Rather than weariness about exposure and potential judgment, the issue may be that, on its own, the tool is missing the articulation work necessary to turn it from \'broken-tool\' to \'broken-tool-in-action\'. While users can interact with the tool, click buttons, open pages, read and navigate, the interactive features of the interface seem metaphorical and are missing the context they emerged from. Distilled from its collective activation moments, the tool seemed to me only half-actualized. In the way I relate to it, despite its interactive features, the 1st version is a still image of a collective process, a capture of a tool-in-the-making, a figure, like a figure of speech that, if someone does not speak the language, needs some figuring out.

In their introduction to *Reflect and Act! Introduction to the Society of the Query Reader* (2014), researchers Miriam Rasch and René König write: \"While most users feel confident with search engines (simply because they use them every day), they usually don't know much about how they actually function and how to operate them efficiently.\"[^45] This confidence seems necessary for a search tool to be perceived as operational.

The appearance of the 1st FST version, through its recognizable features caters to such confidence of a user, who is used to using search engines every day without having to deal with the ways it actually works. Yet, through producing an expectation of operationality the confidence of a user is also frustrated once actually using the FST.

Rosie Graham, lecturer in contemporary literature and digital culture, wrote that

> \"\[u\]sers do not need to know how search engines work to find out > the year Barack Obama was born, or the date he became president. When > our tools work, specific language or specialized knowledge may seem > unimportant. When our expectations, intentions, and results are in > line with one another, a deeper understanding of a technology and the > vocabulary with which to discuss it, recedes into the > background.\"[^46]

Thus, in the case of the 1st version of the FST, the functioning of the search tool could perhaps be described in the opposite manner. In my estimation, the tool \'worked\' when it was involved in figuring out specific language that springs from specific constellations of people and technical objects, collective configurations that converged different domains and experiences. Digital user interfaces (not only search engines) are usually perceived as usable if they work intuitively and if interaction works somewhat subconsciously. For digital tools to function effectively, their user interfaces need to be unquestionable. Brian Rosenblum, a librarian at the University of Kansas Libraries, warns of incontestability in the context of digital library search engines as \'affordances of ignorance\' that are reproduced through certain conventions of \'usable\' \'interfaces that may obscure their biases.

The usability of digital interfaces may be connected to an individual\'s feeling of being in control. As part of a long history of human computer interaction, interfaces were conceptualized within the context of military projects.[^47] Contemporaneously, they have evolved into universalized cultural objects that build upon specific kinds of psychologies of perception, visualization, and \'liveness on demand\'.[^48] Digital interfaces ought to give a \'user\' the feeling of \'mastery\' over their computer programs.[^49] According to Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, scholar in media studies and cultural theory, \"\[t\]he notion of interfaces as empowering is driven by a dream of individual control: of direct personal manipulation of the screen, and thus, by extension, of the system it indexes or represents.\"[^50]

Digital search engines make library catalogs (in)accessible through their interfaces, which are perceived as useful if they sustain a certain incontestability. While this version of the FST introduced some ruptures---such as questionable moments in user-tool interaction---it also reproduced a common image of what a search tool should look like and how information should be delivered (the answer being only one click away). The aesthetic choices may obscure the processes the tool is involved in and gets its \'user\' involved in.

The function of the first version of the FST is that of a collective study object that, through its evolution into what resembles a search interface, created occasions to concretely and imaginatively reflect and disentangle the ways people and tools are involved in making items (in)accessible in digital cataloging systems. Certain rhetorical tricks, such as the notion of the 1st version, are a collective attempt to articulate a tools\' unresolved issues, preparing someone for the experience of the \'broken-tool\'. However, the rushed process of designing what could be conceived as a \'functioning\' website also contributed to the FST\'s conceptualization and materialization as a digital search interface that can work \'on its own\'.\ This also led to the digital interface being actualized---to some extent in the most obvious manner. The recognizable image of a search interface may not fully satisfy the expectations it creates, but simultaneously conveys a certain ambition. If there wasn\'t the pressure to produce and present what would be regarded as a \'tangible\' end result (which we interpreted as a search interface), the notion of the \'1st version\' of the tool would perhaps have not emerged, along with the implied promise to continue and to produce a 2nd or 3rd version of the digital interface.

Contextualizing visualization

The FST collective was introduced to different cultures and conditions of working together. These included different terminology and social conduct and diverging ways of understanding and speaking about \'tools\', \'design\' and \'collectivity\'. One context, which has been significant for the continuation of the FST collective, was the \'Digital Methods Summer School\' (DMI), a two-week program organized by the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI) at the University of Amsterdam.[^51] DMI is an Internet Studies research group, directed by Richard Rogers, professor of New Media and Digital Culture since 2007. DMI's objective is to design methods and tools for doing research with internet platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Google but also with digital applications and devices. Rogers describes Digital Methods as: "redoing online methods for different purposes to those intended."[^52]

In July 2019, I signed up to participate in DMI. The program was explained as a collaborative, interdisciplinary and explorative research environment, bringing together practical and theoretical knowledge. It seemed to have common ground with the H&D approach and with the characteristics of the FST collective. Yet, DMI turned out to be a rather different work environment, in which separations between tasks, roles, subjects and approaches were quite distinct, compared to what I was familiar with. The understanding that a tool-building process could be experimental, open-ended and discursive, which were possibilities I had become used to in the context of the FST project were not applicable in the same manner within the working environment of the DMI.

It was striking how much of the terminology used in the context of DMI seemed familiar. Yet, the way in which certain terms and concepts were understood and put into practice was quite different from what I knew from the H&D Summer Academy, from H&D workshops and from working with the FST group. The notion of \'design\' seemed to be dedicated to the fields of 'user experience', 'data visualization' and 'information design' and was impersonated by a distinct group of designers from DensityLAB, based in Milan.[^53] The people from DensityLab were introduced and referred to as \'the designers\', who could be consulted and had the authority to translate the researchers\' ideas and spreadsheets into data visualizations. Furthermore, the notion of \'tool\'[^54] occurred in the context of tutorials and referred to code repositories, also described as 'scrapers', and 'crawlers', that could be used to extract data from the internet and to accommodate processing of such data for further analysis. Participants could sign up for tutorials in which they would familiarize themselves with those tools.

The DMI took place at the University of Amsterdam, during the summer break. Participants were able to receive ECTS credits. Thus, there were other incentives at play for participation than in the context of H&D, where collaborative learning environments mostly evolve outside of accredited educational institutions. Participation was possible only through full commitment to the two week long program. In addition, the participation fee was high (EUR 995,00). This financial commitment did not align with the fiscal realities of the FST collective. Fortunately, through my research position I was able to get my own participation fee reimbursed. I participated in the full program and negotiated on the part of my collaborators to join free of charge for the second part of the program. The FST group got to work together in this environment for a full week, which in comparison to previous work rhythms, was an extraordinarily commitment from the group members.\ \ I participated in tutorials in the first week of the program and sat in, with another research group, trying to grasp the dynamic and terminology of the environment. In the second week of the program, I 'pitched' the FST project with three of my peers from the FST group. A project pitch at DMI refers to a five minute presentation during which participants try to convince other participants to work on their research project for one week. Our proposition was to explore with researchers from other fields and contexts (im)possibilities of incorporating feminist approaches into discovery tool development.

During the week the group spent together, we had the chance to revisit the 1st version of the FST, which we had not considered with much attention for about one and a half years. Having to explain the tool to the other participants, we were reminded of the choices we made in terms of its interface design. We benefited from those participants who were familiar with methods of \'query design\'[^55] and helped us consider different search methods.[^56] We tested out the method of \'negative query\' to intervene with search results by consciously excluding items or categories that are usually most visible. Taking the time to actively and intensively \'use\' the 1st version of the FST as a group, while speaking about it and trying to make sense of it, created momentum in the collective process. It felt to me as if we had become more familiar with it and felt increasingly connected to the tool and to each other.

![](media/image6.jpg){width="6.267716535433071in" height="3.513888888888889in"}

Image 2: Screenshot of the \'visualization tool\' [[7]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Presentation_H_D_fst.020.jpeg)\]

One of the outcomes of DMI was another 2nd tool version. The so-called \'visualization tool\'[^57] refers to an interactive browser animation that shows little colored squares, each of which represents a book in the catalog. The squares are organized in groups within two axes. The X-axes represented gender categories as they were applied in the first version of the tool, the Y-axes listed all publishers represented in the library catalog. Thus, the books were organized \'spatially\' according to (assumed) gender of an author of a book and the publisher. This second version of the tool was supposed to \'visualize\' which publishers represent more or less female/male/transgender authors. The way the books are organized around the axes is animated in an entertaining and lively manner. I recall the moment when we first saw the animation on a screen, some of us (including me) burst out with an excited \"Ohhh\". This moment was referred to and critically reflected upon repeatedly throughout the continuation of the project:\ ![](media/image3.jpg){width="6.267716535433071in" height="3.5277777777777777in"}

DMI, 2019

> Sven: I still find it a bit funny that you are so excited about the > visualization tool Anja, since you were the one at the beginning of > this project who was cautioning us not to expect too much, or like you > put it, don\'t trust the \'magic,\' of a visualization. You said, the > visualization will only give you what you're asking for, which really > stayed with me. And yet, when we get to the visualization and > everybody gets excited. \[laughs\] > > Annette: I agree that we should not project too much on > visualizations. But for me the visualization tool has finally been the > moment that allowed us to investigate our own tool, the first > prototype of the Feminist Search Tools. > > Anja: In my view the big difference the visualization tool made, is > that we see books and not only records. \[\...\] you can click on a > square that represents the actual book and see more information about > the book. This was not possible before. It was just numbers and > records, which was an abstract idea and difficult to relate to, for > me. Being able to check and see some of the flaws of our initial tool, > by checking the actual books was an important moment for me.\ > (excerpt from \'Tool conversation\' recorded and collectively edited > conversation between the FST group, 17 February 2021)

According to Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, \"interfaces seem to concretize our relation to invisible (or barely visible) "sources" and substructures.\"[^58] Being able to \'see\' books (represented through colored squares) that were spatially organized on our screen, produced the impression of a more concrete relation to the invisible sub-structure of the library catalog and its system of categorization. In my recollection of the situation, my enthusiasm for witnessing visual squares moving around on a screen stems from not having to conceptualize a library catalog as an abstract system of categorization, or a large intangible knowledge institution. Rather, I could conceptualize and visualize the library catalog as some kind of container that holds distinct, countable items. The recognizability of \'books\' as distinct objects created a sense of comfort. The impression of seeing books represented in this way made me feel that I knew what I was looking at---books. The concept of a \'library record\', a textual representation of a system that groups, moves and fixes books based on classification standards, felt rather abstract. When I saw colored clickable squares, I *felt* as if I could finally \'see\' the books. The emphasis here is on feeling, and the excitement caused by encountering something that seemed familiar. Digital interfaces and the ways they work as simulations, rely on emotional responses. Perhaps, subconsciously, I felt as if I could \'manage\' such books. In the case of the FST, it meant that by visualizing books as squares and ordering them in certain ways, I was under the impression that I could gain a better understanding about which books are represented and which books were missing from the digital library catalog. This moment of enthusiasm also made me feel more connected to the tool and it\'s coming into being.

Returning to the aforementioned diverging culture and terminology of the DMI context, it seems significant to mention the way the visualization was presented to us. We approached the designers of DenisityLab to support our group halfway through the week by suggestion of one of the facilitators of DMI. We tried to explain to them what we were trying to do with the tool and asked them if they could think with us about ways to visualize the library cataloging system. Where the previous tool showed search results in a textual way and as a list, we were curious how a more visual approach could provide new insights. The designers left the room and worked on the visualization somewhere else before returning the next day to show us the result. The translation of a textual representation into a visualization of the search results in my expectation would bring new insights, perhaps more clarity about the functioning of the tool and its underlying system of categorization. While aiming to see rather than read search results, the process of making the visualization happened out of sight. That is, the FST group was not present during its making process.

In "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,\" (1988), Donna Haraway wrote, "Vision is always a question of power to see.\"[^59] She asked: \"How to see? Where to see from? What limits to vision? What to see for? Whom to see with? Who gets to have more than one point of view? Who gets blinded? What other sensory powers do we wish to cultivate besides vision?\"[^60] I relate this quote by Haraway to the visualization the designers produced. More precisely, I question what we saw in the visualization and our responses to it; how it created a certain comfort and also joy to look at and perhaps made me feel more connected to the tool and the collective.

The fact that the designers left the room to work somewhere else is worth noting. Their leaving the room signifies the division of labor conceptualized and put into practice in the context of DMI, and which also had implications for the way in which the FST further evolved in that particular context. When we saw the visualization for the first time, we were looking *at* it and not *with* it. There was labor implied in the visualization that was not visible to us at that moment. There was a certain distance to the making process of the visualization, which created the surprise effect. We were impressed because we had not observed the process of its production, the sweat and struggles. As I understood later from reading back through time stamps of messages sent by the designers, they worked late and long hours, material conditions that had not been visible to us.

To recap, the participation in the 2-week at DMI was significant for the way in which the FST has been conceptualized and actualized as a tool, as well as the ways in which our understanding and problematization of it as a \'useful\' tool has unfolded along the way. Through our participation concepts and questions of visualization were introduced and developed, but also made apparent how specific contexts can produce tools, tool concepts and conditions for toolmaking. The condition of an (for the FST collective) exceptionally committed working environment made it significant and distinct. It is referred to often with fondness and criticality equal measure. In my view, it contributed to people feeling enthusiastic and connected to the FST, but it also shows how permeable collective projects such as FST are; how they are receptive to the contexts in which they evolve.

Discontinuation and reorientation

The Feminist Search Assistant[^61] is a shadow search website, which was developed during the Digital Methods Summer School as a parallel project to the visualization tool. It was developed in collaboration with two DMI researchers Emile den Tex and Lonneke van der Velden. This tool version intended to provide a more gender sensitive search experience on Amazon. The Feminist Search Assistant consists of a search bar that builds on Amazon's algorithmic recommendation system, which suggests books that are oriented towards topics related to feminism and intersectionality. This tool version was built to rethink how algorithmic recommendations work, as they are known to personalize search results in an opaque manner. It addressed matters of search engine development that we had not explored before, although these questions had been raised as a concern by the librarians of the UU library. Their concerns were that people who search in a library catalog most likely have already searched on Google or Amazon search engines before. Thus, they already know what they are looking for and use library search tools for so-called \'known-item search\', rather than a \'discovery search\'. The amount of so-called discovery searches in library search engines has decreased tremendously since the invention of Google Search. The basic principles of the Feminist Search Assistant, was to provide a search bar and a set of specific interests to choose from, of which the term 'feminism' was added by default. The queries were then sent to amazon.com. This set of interests were embedded in the link sent to Amazon in the initial search page and prompted Amazon's advanced search feature to configure around those interests (called 'departments' in amazon.com). This was supposed to make it more likely to find results by feminism-filtered sources.

![](media/image11.png){width="6.267716535433071in" height="3.638888888888889in"}\ Image: Interface of the Feminist Search Assistance [[8]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Screenshot-2019-07-12-at-12.08.05.png)

I decided to include this short off-shoot project, even though it concluded with a shared agreement not to continue and not to publish it. It is a good example of how the evolving FST collective practice and its different contexts were not always in alignment. These instances of incompatibility and disagreement were important moments in which to express commonalities and discrepancies. Expression of disagreement is essential for the preservation of values and the ethical concerns around collective tool-building.[^62]

The Feminist Search Assistant included and built upon book selections, which were carefully curated by different grassroots libraries and archives such as Mapping Slavery,[^63] The Black Archives[^64] and Atria Kennisinstituut voor Emancipatie en Vrouwengeschiedenis.[^65] Similar to the 1st version of the FST, this tool version also functioned as a simulation of a search tool. It produced very specific search queries and, as expected, most of the time the search result showed \'0 found items\'. The fact that books were hard to locate with this tool seems indicative of the heteronormativity of mainstream media outlets. Yet, on its own, the tool seemed to have missed crucial reflection on the context and conditions in which the references were initially sourced. At the beginning of the FST project in 2017, when we were still working in the context of the Utrecht University Library, Annette and Sven contacted various grassroot communities and libraries with an invitation to curate book selections. We printed out covers of selected books and glued them onto bok-sized wood panels. These \'book dummies\' were placed in book-trolleys outside the Utrecht University library, \"drawing attention to silenced and marginalized voices excluded from our current knowledge economies.\"[^66] The Feminist Search Assistant was missing crucial contextualization of these book selections, which the search queries were based upon. This made the tool ignorant of the work and efforts libraries and archives did to curate the book selections to create visibility for marginalized communities who are excluded from mainstream media outlets and current knowledge economies. It seemed irresponsible to use these book selections to \'feed\' online platforms that run personalization algorithms, which we will never understand and don't trust.

The installation of bookshelf trolleys by Read-in in 2017 included another crucial gesture that was missing in this digital tool---the gesture of reciprocity. The invitation for proposing book selections was extended to visitors who could \"select books of their choice, responding to and intervening into the question: Why are the authors of the books I read, so white, so male, so Eurocentric?\"[^67] While this tool version was discontinued, the trajectory of the FST seems incomplete without mentioning it. Creating this particular tool version was significant to our continuation. It made apparent ethical aspects inherent in our work, as well as aspects of labor, time and effort. We became more aware of our own investment in the project and simultaneously more critical and selective about the contexts and collaborations we chose to engage with. We decided not to continue spending time investigating large search engines such as Amazon and Google and connect more actively to smaller initiatives such as ATRIA and IHLIA, two archives based in Amsterdam.

This short experiment was a crucial moment in the process and evolution of FST. It raised important ethical concerns but also posed new ideas for future tool versions. The possibility for a search tool and its underlying categorization system to sustain some form of mutability sparked excitement. In addition, incorporating recommendations for books and search categories which could be curated by grassroots initiatives and communities holding specialized collections was invigorating. Such grassroots libraries, of which ATRIA and IHLIA are two examples, develop specialized vocabularies according to which they organize books.

Intersecting and complexifying

Throughout the collective process of making the FST, I frequently asked myself if I (and perhaps others in the group) had fallen into the trap of a linear, progress-oriented understanding of collective toolmaking. Features were implemented at certain moments with the idea of being replaced or improved upon at a later stage, which the collective toolmaking process, due to its fragmented nature, could not live up to. I felt there were many weak spots within various implementations of the tools that were a result of rushed processes, lack of understanding in terms of computer programming and working with datasets. At times, technical terminology dominated the 'tool' narrative, which seemed to reduce important socio-political debates around feminist, queer, anti-racist, intersectional, decolonial discourses to overly utilitarian and simplistic reasoning. For the first version of the FST, Sven had looked at all MARC21 fields and made a selection of search categories that seemed most relevant to us. In conversation with the librarians of the UU library, Sven and Annette formulated a question as a guideline for this selection: How many female, non-Western authors and authors of color are represented in the library? Examples of fields that Sven selected were \'place of publication\' and \'language\'. They also inquired about the possibility of retrieving information about the gender and nationality of an author.

Yet, as we discovered through conversations with the librarians, information about authors is generally not retrievable in European library cataloging standards, while information about books is retrievable. James, who worked on the development of the tool, explored other \'tactics\' to find information about authors. James did this by linking the library dataset to Wikidata. Wikidata gender entries encompass more than the usual binary gender categories (female, male, transgender-male, transgender-female, unknown). However, these extended categories still did not represent the wide spectrum of gender identification. James also introduced other datasets as a \'fall back\'. In the case that no gender category could be found in the Wikidataset, the tool would resort to the so-called Gender API, a commercial closed source application that assigns the normative binary gender categories \'female\' and \'male\' based on names. The Gender API is usually implemented in commercial websites in order to optimize customer experiences (i.e. people identified as female get to see search results that are considered relevant for their gender category from a marketing standpoint). The Gender API does not address non-binary gender categories at all. Due to its closed source, it was also not possible to reconstruct how the program determined and applied gender categories.

Another issue that arose from trying to categorize authors according to gender, is that it does not allow for ambiguity or mutability. For example, what is not addressed when attributing gender categories (on the basis of the name) is self-narration. Mutability of gender categories and names as well as gender fluidity is particularly important when it comes to trans\* and non-binary identities. In the way gender was attributed to authors in the 1st and 2nd version of the FST stabilized such categories in ways that risk misrepresentation.

The workshop at DMI led to the realization that we had focused on one problem for too long; the problem of not being able to search by means of gender categories. In 1989 Kimberle Crenshaw[^68] stated: \"When feminism and anti-racism are non intersectional, when feminism does not contest the logic of racism, when anti-racism refuses to take up questions of patriarchy they often wind up reinforcing each other.\"[^69] By taking a rather pragmatic, and linear approach at first, taking one step at a time we, the FST group, had separated the topic of gender discrimination and prioritized it over other forms of discrimination. While it was known quite soon in the process of conceptualizing and building the FST, it would not be possible to retrieve information about the author, the process continued as if we could find out eventually. We also knew the information we retrieved through Wikidata or the GenderAPI could not be representative of the gender of authors. Yet, gender categories were applied using these approaches as \'a first step\'. Rehashing the chain of choices that led to the technical implementations of the first and second version of the FST the utilitarian approach to addressing questions of systemic discrimination is difficult to reason with. I came to wonder if the desire for a tool to \'function\', to show any result at all, attracted approaches and technologies such as the Gender API into the process. These may deliver quick results but are also unethical implementations, especially considering the subject matter of the FST project.

The 3rd version focused on implementing an intersectional approach by offering the possibility of selecting different clusters of intersecting search categories, on the bases of which books were displayed. The subject categories such as \'race\', \'gender\', \'class\', were selected by Sven and Annette and were highlighted through specific color-coding.[^70] Instead of searching for information on the identity of an author, the new method of categorization was applied based on the descriptions of books and the descriptions of authors as they were inserted by the librarians. Thus, the tool catered to searching about the content of the book rather than based upon the identity of an author.

An important moment for this version of the FST was the \'Unbound Library\' work session[^71] organized by Constant in 2020.[^72] The one-week session took place online and brought together artists, technologists and researchers who were given a space to exchange and work together on the subject of digital libraries. The starting point of the session was that "tools cannot be separated from the knowledge systems in which they have been imagined and in which they were made."[^73] For the FST group the session provided another committed environment for working together and an occasion to introduce two collaborators to the project. Alice Strete and Angeliki Diakrousi had met the Read-in collective during a studio visit by students of the experimental publishing Master XPUB at Piet Zwart Institute.[^74] As part of their studies, Alice and Angeliki had worked on a collective pirate library XPPL,[^75] which is described on their project documentation wiki as \"a space for potential pirate librarianship aimed at people who are studying the field of media culture.\"[^76] The various initiatives connected through their shared interest in rethinking the manner in which libraries and library catalogs can be made (in)accessible through tools.

![](media/image4.png){width="6.267716535433071in" height="4.0in"}

Unbound Libraries hosted on the open-source video conferencing software BigBlueButton, 31 May to 5 June 2020.

The context of the work session motivated us to reconnect to the IHLIA LGBTI Heritage collection, an archive that is located in the public library of Amsterdam and specializes in literature (and other materials) about and by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex people. Similar to the participation at DMI, this session also offered a concrete context for the otherwise fragmented working process; a context that was facilitated, committed and focused. Yet the atmosphere and collaborative conditions were entirely different to DMI. There were less participants. Most people participating were also working in various self-organized collective constellations. The session was organized bottom-up. The structure and approach were determined together, through getting to know the other participants by way of a centralized check-in meeting each morning in which plans were shared and in which a time table was composed together. A modest compensation for our participation was distributed amongst those of us who did not receive any grants for our participation. The wish to connect to smaller self-organized groups, as it evolved during DMI, was revitalized. With IHLIA as a potential collaborator, we hoped for more frequent exchanges with people who worked with library cataloging on a daily basis and who were thematically aligned with the issues the project was investigating.

In the first meeting with IHLIA, I tried to explain what we were trying to do with the FST to the head of collections and to someone who was knowledgeable about the technical aspects of the cataloging system. IHLIA provided us with access to the digital catalog of their collection. This allowed us to start developing a new version of the tool. We also started looking closer into the *Homosaurus,* a research tool and controlled vocabulary of lesbian, gay, bi, transgender and intersex index terms that are applied in IHLIA\'s cataloging system. The

Homosaurus* can also be found on IHLIA website as a search enhancement

tool that offers broader, narrower or related search terms. The

Homosaurus* also exists as a text document. We started reading this

vocabulary more closely and became interested in its structuring mechanisms.

![](media/image2.jpg){width="6.267716535433071in" height="4.694444444444445in"}

Image caption: Looking over the shoulder of the information specialist Thea in the basement of the Public Library in Amsterdam, I saw her navigating a software called Cardbox -- with care and attention. Apparently the Cardbox software only runs on this old Linux desktop computer. There were no windows in the office. Thea seemed surprised about the attention. Why would anyone be interested in this old cataloging system? The Dutch version of the *Homosaurus* was lying next to her keyboard, printed out and ring bound.

IHLIA office, cataloging [[9]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IMG_4451-768x576.jpg)\]

Homosaurus* interface on the IHLIA website:

[[10]{.underline}](https://ihlia.nl/search/index.jsp?q:search=feminisme&q:zoekterm.row1.field3=&rows=10&lang=nl)\]

Connections and relations in the *Homosaurus* vocabulary are established through a long process of labor (on the part of librarians). This involves careful and critical consideration, in addition to a general commitment and dedication to this tool. As we learned from the librarians and staff of IHLIA, it was mostly due to the personal investment of the by now retired head of collection Jack van der Wel and his collaboration with the international *Homosaurus* committee that the English version of the *Homosaurus* was updated frequently and is functioning well (in comparison to the Dutch version of the *Homosaurus* or the Vrouwenthesaurus, another similar project implemented by Atria which is less well maintained.)[^77]

The 3rd tool version of the FST converged IHLIA\'s digital catalog, the visualization tool as developed with DensityLab at DMI and the

Homosaurus*. The integration required Angeliki and Alice to restructure

the dataset that we had received from IHLIA.

> Angeliki: Having to find solutions for the axes was an interesting > process. I was wondering how the code could actually also become part > of this dialogue. \[\...\] creating \'intersectional\' axes meant that > we had to bring everything into the same place. Everything had to > become one script.\ > (excerpt from \'Tool conversation\', 17 February 2021)

![](media/image5.png){width="6.267716535433071in" height="2.8472222222222223in"}

> Image: Visualization Tool > [[11]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Screenshot-from-2020-11-02-14-53-56.png)

In conversation with IHLIA information specialist Thea Sibbels, Sven and Annette rethought the X-axes through clustering terms[^78] that derived from the Dutch *Homosaurus*. Clusters were incorporated into the design of the interface and were being sketched collectively in an open-source video calling software called Big Blue Button,[^79] which provided us with a collaborative drawing option. During the \'Unbound Library\' workshop, we started sketching on top of a screenshot of the latest version of the visualization tool and included the feedback and input from other participants who joined us for the sessions.

We had been thinking of the concept of the \'red link\', as it is also known from Wikipedia, for a while.[^80] A red link on Wikipedia/MediaWiki is the highlighting of terms that are \'missing\' and need to be added. The red link seemed an interesting concept to consider---an approach that would not only aim at correction or improvement of the tool, but also point at what can be improved in the classification system itself. Another inspiration for this approach is the project Infrastructural Maneuvers,[^81] initiated by the (self-taught) librarians at the Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, who we had crossed paths with several times during the toolmaking process. They also joined the Unbound Library sessions. Infrastructural Maneuvers built a cataloging system that allows catalog users to propose new search categories to the cataloging system. These categories can then be reviewed by the librarians who decide whether they would be implemented as part of the cataloging system.

In the third tool version, the idea of showing what is missing was translated in relation to search categories (not books). The concept of \'missing\' was interpreted in different ways. 'Missing' was understood, not only as \'what is missing but should be there\', but also as \'what is there but should be revisited or should perhaps not be used any longer\'.

- ~~Strike-through~~: Terms were crossed out when they should not be

   > used anymore, for instance because they are discriminatory.[^82]
   > Crossing out indicates that a term is still in usage (for now).
   > For instance, terminology now considered offensive but not
   > considered problematic at the time of authorship may appear in
   > certain historical texts and would be struck through. The
   > strike-through signals a general disapproval of the existence and
   > usage of this term.

- Red terms show when no book is found in the catalog under a certain

   > category.

- USE: indicates when another term should be used.[^83]

- ADD: signals suggestions that were made by the FST group for adding

   > certain terms.

- (Exclude): The term (exclude) signals terms that the FST group has

   > excluded from the search, for instance to give space to other
   > categories that are less represented in the catalog.

This version of the tool has been shown and tested on different occasions, usually in the context of workshops during which the tool could be contextualized, including choices that led to certain functions as well as malfunctions and shortcomings. The tool requires a login, which was a condition for IHLIA to let us use their dataset. Every time we would be workshopping the tool in a new context, we would inform IHLIA and ask permission, with an explanation of the context and our motivation for bringing it into the context. We would provide short updates after workshops about how the tool was used, perceived and discussed in the respective context. I perceived IHLIA's request for a login as a gesture of care, rather than a restriction. This request sets a condition in which tool use requires a certain commitment to contextualization in order for it to be used. Without explicitly articulated as a required condition, this tool version has always been part of a workshop situation and has never \'taken off\' on its own terms, meaning it was never used independently of the collective condition in which it was developed.

This version of the FST (in comparison to the other versions) and its conceptualization and actualization of tool and tool-use was rendered more complex in various ways. In terms of its interface design, the x-axes is more dynamic. It can be adjusted according to thematic clusters of search terms, which were curated on the basis of the Dutch version of the *Homosaurus*, by members of the FST collective and in sporadic collaboration with a librarian and information specialists.[^84] The search for the gender or nationality of an author has not been further pursued in this tool version. Instead intersections of themes and categories have been combined. Through color coding, overlaps of different thematic clusters are made visible. This means that when a book is part of several thematic clusters, it will be visible, in addition to others it is a part of. The vocabulary of terms that was used for the X-axes derives from the context-specific vocabulary of the library itself---a text document which the librarians initiated, used and took care of for many years. Interventions by the FST group as well as interventions from the *Homosaurus* were differentiated in the tool.

This version of the tool shifted from searching and displaying results based on author\'s identities as the main organizing principle, to looking at other factors of categorization such as publishers, description of books, as well as applying a specialized situated vocabulary of searched terms. To clarify, the search categorization in the IHLIA catalog is based on a cataloging system called Cardbox, a system IHLIA uses, which is linked to the widely used MARC21 and Worldcat cataloging standards. However, it also exists independent of them. The *Homosaurus* is an integral part of the Cardbox system and the librarians use it every time a new item is added to the catalog.

This version of the FST still applied search categories in an accumulative way. Examples of search categories coming from the

Homosaurus* were \'racisme\', \'discriminatie\', \'homofobie\',

\'sexuele_minderheden\', \'genderidentiteit\', \'transfobie\', \'klassisme\', \'validisme\'. Adding and combining categories and creating clusters of categories remains questionable. If a book description contains terms such as race, gender or social class it cannot be determined with certainty how these terms are used in the respective book. However, by sustaining a closer connection to the context within which the tool is developed and by implementing a categorization system based on vocabularies and tools developed within a particular context, this tool version seems to have followed a situated trajectory and creates separations and intersections in less crude ways than previous versions.

Conclusion: Slow collective processing

In this chapter, I discussed a distributed process of collectively imagining and building tools -- more specifically different tool versions that are referred to as \'Feminist Search Tools\'.

The FST project moved through and fed off short-lived formats for working together across different contexts. This included workshops (some of which self-organized and some were organized by like-minded initiatives), summer schools and events by universities, art academies, cultural institutions and meetings with librarians and archivists. Such contexts became significant for the tool-building process. Workshops, meetups and recorded conversations energized the collective tool imagining and making process and contributed to its continuation as well as occasional postponements.

In approaching the question of how the meaning and purpose of a tool is articulated through a collective process, the workshop-based approach to collective work needs to be taken into account. It signifies the manner in which fragmented, unconcluded definitions of the meaning and functioning of the 'tool' are also related to the fragmentation of its process of development. The distributed character of collective tool-building and tool-imagining also carries the potential to enter into and combine various contexts. The manner in which purpose and meaning are continuously rearticulated contributes to the possibility of context-specific and relational understandings, in addition to articulations of tools-in-the-making.

The answer to the question, 'what is the FST for?' will most certainly vary depending on who poses and who is asked the question. The distributed process of collective toolmaking also distributed the task of determining and articulating criteria for usefulness of the tool-in-the-making across different people, contexts, and timelines. This makes it difficult to sustain a generalized conception of what the tool may be for. Yet, I would argue there is also a common ground, which is a refusal of \'tool-routines\' (when tools become unquestionable). The process of continuous tool interrogation, collectively imagining tools *differently*, as well as actually altering them, became inherent to the collaborative processes adopted by the FST group; how we worked together and established relationships with the tools-in-the-making. Thus, to some extent, the so-called \'brokenness\' (the moment in which a tool becomes noticeable) of the FST tool became its purpose.

The pressure to produce something that can be considered \'functioning\' (a tool-in-action) combined with rushed processes can result in approaches and technologies that may deliver quick results but may also contradict values and ethics that evolve as part of the longer trajectory of collective toolmaking. Yet, notions such as 1st version\' are a way to articulate and uphold their unresolvedness and, at the same time, lay the path for continuation, for future (unresolved) versions. On their own, such unresolved tools miss the articulation work necessary to turn them into meaningful discursive objects. However, by drawing boundaries that are responsive to specific contexts and conditions (i.e. including context-specific vocabularies, limiting full access through a login or activating the tool within workshop contexts), collective tool-building can incite critical conversations, in addition to the questionability and mutability of the 'tool'.

One of the challenges of the FST project has been to accommodate various levels of involvement, states of precarity and the different timelines of the collaborators. As a collective toolmaking project, the FST required articulations and approaches that resist linearity and progress-oriented understandings of a design process. With reference to Barad, what is needed in such a process \"is a method attuned to its entanglements.\"[^85] Collectively imagined and built tools are relational things and time is needed to get used to them. The same applies to the systems and contexts they evolve within and interact with, which also require attunement. These environments seem to render separations between tasks, roles, subjects and approaches, bringing about their own vocabularies and social-technical conducts. Such conditions have implications for the tool-building process and those who are involved in it. Collective tool-building processes are receptive to influences that come with the contexts they move through.

This chapter discussed the manner in which a tool can \'emerge\' from particular configurations of short-term as well as longer-lasting collectives, socio-technical configurations. The \'inefficiency\' of the process constituted the way relationships to the tool and those involved with it developed. Such processes may confront expectations of a productive and rewarding process as they resist linearity and progress-oriented understandings of a design or development process. Yet, I argue it is precisely through the slowness of process that the tool can be questioned conceptually, technically, ethically and not necessarily conclusively. Observations and issues that emerge can be repeated and rehearsed across different contexts and at an inclusive pace, regardless of whether participants are able to attend each workshop and meeting.

Moments of demonstrating collective tool-in-the-making, explaining intentions and negotiating terms of publishing are important moments in which to reflect on the context and imagine the various ways in which the tool could live on. These meetings, workshops, presentations and demonstrations create a culture in which the tool is not presumed as an inevitable outcome. By repeatedly explaining and demonstrating the tool, by reconstructing its timeline, imagining its future use and hearing others explain it, the tool develops relationships in other-than-utilitarian ways. Narrating such a tool in the context of more and less public moments, revisiting the same issues over and over again is a generative, inventive process in and of itself---sometimes a rehearsal, sometimes a ritual, sometimes a practice.

The collective slow processing of potential meaning and functioning of the tool in these moments, occurred with the digital interface(s) as a central reference point. We gave so-called \'tool tours\'. However, throughout its various phases and contexts, the FST has also produced a series of non-tool artifacts that took center stage at certain moments as well: stickers and bookmarks, paper prototypes, wooden book dummies, recordings and transcriptions of conversations. Reintroducing the tool over and over again meant that every time our perception of the tool had a slightly different emphasis. In addition, our interpersonal relationships emerged and changed through these different \'tool-encounters\'.

I argue that this consciously \'inefficient\' approach to toolmaking is indicative of the manner in which collective toolmaking practices attempt to, and sometimes succeed in upholding critical, ethical, and sustainable ways of working and being together. Such an approach is certainly not suitable for any context. It will not produce search tools that take the place of existing library search engines. However, such processes bring about *other* formats, methods and articulations for tool-relationships that are contextual and self-critical, with the purpose of readjusting general perceptions of what is inevitable and what is useful in conceptualizing and actualizing tools.

![](media/image10.png){width="6.236111111111111in" height="6.222222222222222in"}

Workshop: Repository of Feminist Search Strategies, 08.02.2020

[[12]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Workshop%3A_Repository_of_Feminist_Search_Strategies%5C)

![](media/image7.jpg){width="6.267716535433071in" height="4.430555555555555in"}![](media/image8.jpg){width="6.069444444444445in" height="8.083333333333334in"}

Images: Paper prototyping workshop, H&D Studio, (2019) [[13]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/599cf406-ffb0-4dab-a7b9-59a962a01731.jpg)\ [[14]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/paper-proto-02.jpg)

https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Repository-of-Feminist-Search-Strategies_2.pn

![](media/image9.png){width="6.267716535433071in" height="3.6944444444444446in"}

Feminist Search Meet-up #2: 2021, with a presentation by guests: Infrastructural Manoeuvres, Rietveld and Sandberg Library Amsterdam

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Graham, Rosie (Richard). \"A 'History' of Search Engines: Mapping Technologies of Memory, Learning and Discovery.\" *Society of the Query Reader,* edited by René König and Miriam Rasch. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2014.

Haraway, Donna. \"Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.\" *Feminist Studies* 14, no. 3. (Fall, 1988). Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing.

Halberstam, Jack. *Vertiginous Capital, Or The Master's Toolkit.* https://www.dropbox.com/s/sal72piqxqpo58g/QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK_1.zip?dl=0&file_subpath=%2FQUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK_1\_Jack_Halberstam.pdf

Halberstam, Jack. *Queer Art of Failure.* Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

Harman, Graham. *Tool-being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of objects.* Chicago: Open Court, 2002.

Henry, Ray. \"Moving from Theory to Practice: Incorporating Feminist Approaches into Search and Discovery Tool Development.\" *Journal of academic librarianship* 41, no. 4 (July 2015): 514--516.

Kelty, Christopher. *Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software.* Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.

Steven A. Knowlton, "Three Decades Since Prejudices and Antipathies: A Study of Changes in the Library of Congress Subject Headings."

Cataloging & Classification Quarterly* 40, no. 2 (2005).

Latour, Bruno. \"A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans: Following Daedalus\'s Labyrinth.\" *Pandora\'s hope: essays on the reality of science studies*, 174--215, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Laurel, Brenda. *Computers as theatre. Reading,* Massachusetts*: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1993.*

Mansoux, Aymeric. \"Sandbox Culture: A Study of the Application of Free and Open Source Software Licensing Ideas to Art and Cultural Production.\" PhD diss., Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2017.

Le Guin, Ursula K. \"She unnames them.\" *The New Yorker*, 1985.

Noble, Safiya Umoja. *Algorithms of oppression: how search engines reinforce racism*. New York: New York University Press, 2018.

Olson, Hope A. \"The Power to Name: Representation in Library Catalogs."

Signs* 26, no. 3 (Spring, 2001): 639--668. The University of Chicago

Press.

Olson, Hope A. \"Mapping Beyond Dewey's Boundaries: Constructing Classificatory Space for Marginalized Knowledge Domains.\" *LIBRARY TRENDS* 47, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 253--254.

Miriam Rasch and René König (ed.), *Society of the Query Reader.* Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2014.

Rogers, Richard. \"Foundations of Digital Methods: Query Design.\" *The Datafied Society: Studying Culture through Data*, edited by Mirko Tobias Schäfer, Karin van Es. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (2017): 75--94.

Rosenblum, Brian. \"Decolonizing Libraries\" (extended abstract): [[16]{.underline}](http://brianrosenblum.net/2015/02/01/decolonizing_libraries/)

Smith, Martha Nell. \"Frozen Social Relations and Time for a Thaw: Visibility, Exclusions, and Considerations for Postcolonial Digital Archives.\" *Journal of Victorian Culture* 19, no. 3 (July 2014): 403--410.

Schmitt, Richard. \"Heidegger's Analysis of 'Tool'.\" *The Monist* 49, no. 1 (January 1965): 70-86.

Snelting, Femke. "I think that conversations are the best, biggest thing that free software has to offer its user.\" *Conversations*, 2015. [[17]{.underline}](https://conversations.tools/)

Suchman, Lucy. \"Located accountabilities in technology production."

Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems* 14, no. 12 (2002).

Suchman, Lucy. "Agencies in Technology Design: Feminist Reconfigurations." *Machine Ethics and Robot Ethics*. Routledge (2001).

Manovich. Lev \"The Language of Cultural Interfaces,\" *The Language of New Media.* Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT, 1999.

Wright, Stephen. \"Towards a lexicon of usership.\" Van Abbemuseum, 2013.

Relevant Links:

https://feministsearchtools.nl/

https://feministsearchtool.nl/

https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/fst-viz-tool

https://fst.hackersanddesigners.nl/

https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/fst-amz-shadow-search

GNU Bulletin, Volume 1, No. 1, 1986, [[18]{.underline}](https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt)

Homosaurus IHLIA: [[19]{.underline}](https://www.ihlia.nl/van-schoenendoos-tot-homosaurus/)

Women's Thesaurus Atria: https://institute-genderequality.org/library-archive/collection/thesaurus/5710/

https://womensbios.lib.virginia.edu/about.html

[[20]{.underline}](https://feministinternet.com/)

[[21]{.underline}](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DW4HLgYPlA&ab_channel=SouthbankCentre) (Kimberlé Crenshaw - On Intersectionality - keynote, 2016)

\'Teaching the radical syllabus\' in collaboration with Lucie Kolb and Eva Weinmeyr https://constantvzw.org/site/Constant-in-Teaching-the-Radical-Catalogue-Een-syllabus.html

\"Feminist Search Tools. "Intersectional Search: addressing own complicities"

https://vimeo.com/660599698?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=45925538

Feminist Search Tools Meetup, 2021 https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Events/p/H%26D_Meetup_2%3A_Feminist_Search_Tools

\"Intersectional Search in Queer and Trans Archives\", IHLIA Amsterdam \"https://ihlia.nl/events/intersectional-search-in-queer-and-trans-archives/

Feminist Search API Workshop https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Feminist_Search_API_Workshop

Unbound Library Worksession organized by Constant in 2020 https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html

\'Repository of Feminist Search Strategies\', 2020 https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Events/p/Workshop%3A_Repository_of_Feminist_Search_Strategies

https://read-in.info/

https://read-in.info/bookshelf-research/

https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/no_innocent-reading_red.jpg

https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Unlearning-My-Library-Forum1-Copyright-Coco-Duivenvoorde-38-768x512.jpg

H&D Meetup \"Scraping, counting and sorting\", 2015 https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Scraping%2C_counting_and_sorting\"

http://www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/participants/read-in/

https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/SummerSchool2019

http://densitydesign.org/2014/05/an-interview-with-richard-rogers-repurposing-the-web-for-social-and-cultural-research/

http://densitydesign.org/

https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase

https://mappingslavery.nl/educatie/publicaties/

https://atria.nl/bibliotheek-archief/collectie/thesaurus/459/

https://www.theblackarchives.nl/

https://read-in.info/bookshelf_research-2/

https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html?lang=en

[[22]{.underline}](https://git.xpub.nl/XPUB/XPPL)

https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/XPPL_Documentation

http://wiki.evaweinmayr.com/index.php/Project_2\_\*\_Library_of_Inclusions_and_Omissions

[^1]: Christopher Kelty, *Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free

   Software* (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008): xi.

[^2]: \'Free Software\' was defined and written by Richard Stallment and

   published by the Free Software Foundation. \"The Free Software
   Foundation is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying,
   redistribution, understanding and modification of software. The word
   \"free\" in our name does not refer to price; it refers to freedom.
   First, the freedom to copy a program and redistribute it to your
   neighbors, so that they can use it as well as you. Second, the
   freedom to change a program, so that you can control it instead of
   it controlling you; for this, the source code must be made available
   to you.\"

   *GNU Bulletin* 1, no. 1, (1986),
   [[23]{.underline}](https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^3]: In his dissertation \"Sandbox Culture: A Study of the Application

   of Free and Open Source Software Licensing Ideas to Art and Cultural
   Production\" Aymeric Mansoux wrote about the ways in which
   principles of free and open-source have been interpreted and
   actualized in free and open-source software on art and culture since
   the late nineties.

   Aymeric Mansoux, \"Sandbox Culture: A Study of the Application of
   Free and Open Source Software Licensing Ideas to Art and Cultural
   Production\" (PhD diss., Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths,
   University of London, 2017).

[^4]: Documentation of the Ethercalc instance hosted by H&D:

   [[24]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/H%26D_Ethercalc),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^5]: Documentation of the Etherpad instance hosted by H&D:

   [[25]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/H%26D_Etherpad),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^6]: ChattyPub documentation can be found at:

   [[26]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Chattypub)
   [[27]{.underline}](https://chatty-pub.hackersanddesigners.nl/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^7]: Momentary Zine documentation can be found at:

   [[28]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Momentary_Zine),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^8]: Documentation on the Heart-beat-to-print tool can be found at:

   [[29]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Heartbeat-to-print),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^9]: Website of Open Source Publishing:

   [[30]{.underline}](http://osp.kitchen/), last
   accessed March 2022.

[^10]: Website of Constant Association for Art and Media

   [[31]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^11]: Website of Varia -- Center of Everyday Technology:

   [[32]{.underline}](https://varia.zone/), last
   accessed March 2022.

[^12]: Website of fanfare:

   [[33]{.underline}](https://fanfarefanfare.nl/)
   [[34]{.underline}](http://fanfareinc.world/colophon),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^13]: Website of Eva Weinmayr:

   [[35]{.underline}](http://evaweinmayr.com/work-categories/publishing/)
   [[36]{.underline}](http://andpublishing.org/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^14]: Lecture and workshop by Clara Balaguer about \'\'Publishing as

   Bloodletting,\'\'
   [[37]{.underline}](https://www.kabk.nl/agenda/studium-generale-lecture-clara-balaguer)
   [[38]{.underline}](https://pub.sandberg.nl/sessions/pub-e-pub-4-session-3-publishing-as-bloodletting-w-clara-balaguer).\
   Example of Amy Suo Wu\'s \'embodied publishing\' practice:
   \"garments \[that\] are experiments in embodied publishing, spectral
   publishing, navel expanding, and ghostwriting\"
   [[39]{.underline}](https://amysuowu.net/content/dear-ursula)
   [[40]{.underline}](https://amysuowu.net/content/shapeshifty-0),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^15]: Website of the student initiative of the Sandberg Instituut, PUB

   [[41]{.underline}](https://pub.sandberg.nl/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^16]: Website of the Piet Zwart Experimental Publishing Master:

   [[42]{.underline}](https://www.pzwart.nl/experimental-publishing/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^17]: Hybrid Publishing Toolkit:

   [[43]{.underline}](https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/from-print-to-ebooks-a-hybrid-publishing-toolkit-for-the-arts/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^18]: Graham Harman, *Tool-being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of

   objects* (Chicago: Open Court, 2002): 39.

[^19]: ibid. 36.

[^20]: Documentation of the *Temporary Riparian Zone* workshop:

   [[44]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2020/p/Temporary_Riparian_Zone),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^21]: Sara Ahmed, *What\'s the use? On the uses of use* (Durham: Duke

   University Press, 2019): 12.

[^22]: Graham Harman, *Tool-being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of

   objects* (Chicago: Open Court, 2002): 45.

[^23]: Emily Drabinski, \"Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the

   Politics of Correction,\" *The Library Quarterly: Information,
   Community, Policy* 83, no. 2 (April 2013): 94-111.\
   Hope Ohlson, \"Mapping Beyond Dewey's Boundaries: Constructing
   Classificatory Space for Marginalized Knowledge Domains,\" *LIBRARY
   TRENDS* 47, no. 2, (Fall 1998): 253-254.

[^24]: Website of the Read-in collective:

   [[45]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/), last
   accessed March 2022.

[^25]: Some examples of my graphic design work for Read-in:

   [[46]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/example-1/)

   [[47]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/no_innocent-reading_red.jpg)\
   [[48]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Unlearning-My-Library-Forum1-Copyright-Coco-Duivenvoorde-38-768x512.jpg),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^26]: *Bookshelf Research* is a project initiated by Read-in:

   [[49]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/bookshelf-research/),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^27]: Casco Art Institute Working for the Commons

   [[50]{.underline}](https://casco.art/)

[^28]: H&D Meetup \"Scraping, counting and sorting\", 2015

   [[51]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Scraping%2C_counting_and_sorting),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^29]: Karen Barad, *Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and

   the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning* (Durhan, London: Duke
   University Press, 2007).

[^30]: ibid.

[^31]: ibid.

[^32]: Selection of different contexts in which the FST has been

   presented:\
   \'Teaching the radical syllabus\' in collaboration with Lucie Kolb
   and Eva Weinmeyr
   [[52]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/Constant-in-Teaching-the-Radical-Catalogue-Een-syllabus.html),
   last accessed May 2022.\
   \"Feminist Search Tools. "Intersectional Search: addressing own
   complicities"\
   [[53]{.underline}](https://vimeo.com/660599698?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=45925538),
   last accessed May 2022.\
   Feminist Search Tools Meetup, 2021
   [[54]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Events/p/H%26D_Meetup_2%3A_Feminist_Search_Tools),
   last accessed May 2022.

   \'Feminist Search Tools talk and mini workshop with Alice Strete,
   Sven Engels and Anja Groten\', at \'Post-digital archiving and
   publishing\', organized by Maria van der Togt, Sandberg Instituut,
   2020

   \"Intersectional Search in Queer and Trans Archives\", IHLIA
   Amsterdam
   [\"<https://ihlia.nl/events/intersectional-search-in-queer-and-trans-archives/>]{.underline},
   last accessed May 2022.\
   Feminist Search API Workshop
   [[55]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Feminist_Search_API_Workshop)p,
   last accessed May 2022.\
   Unbound Library Worksession organized by Constant in 2020
   [[56]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html),
   last accessed May 2022.

   \'Repository of Feminist Search Strategies\', 2020
   [[57]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Events/p/Workshop%3A_Repository_of_Feminist_Search_Strategies),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^33]: \'Scraping\' refers to Web scraping, or web data extraction and

   is used for extracting data from websites. l

[^34]: The title of the meetup was \"Scraping, counting and sorting\"

   [[58]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Scraping%2C_counting_and_sorting),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^35]: Sara Ahmed, *What\'s the use? On the uses of use* (Durham: Duke

   University Press, 2019).

[^36]: Bruno Latour, \"A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans: Following

   Daedalus\'s Labyrinth.\" In: *Pandora\'s hope: essays on the reality
   of science studies* (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
   Press, 1999): 174-215.

[^37]: Karen Barad, *Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and

   the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning* (Durhan, London: Duke
   University Press, 2007): 100.

[^38]: ibid. 107.

[^39]: ibid. 199.

[^40]: Website of the 1st version of the FST:

   [[59]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtool.nl/),
   last accessed February 2022.

[^41]: \"Zero Footprint Campus was an art program in the public area of

   the Utrecht Science Park, the area formerly known as De Uithof in
   Utrecht. Twelve artists selected from the Netherlands and abroad
   have been commissioned to conduct a one-year artistic study into the
   possibilities and impossibilities of Zero Footprint Campus.\"

   [[60]{.underline}](http://www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/participants/read-in/),
   last accessed March 2022.\
   \"The initiative of the Department of Search was taken by the
   Aardschap Foundation and the municipality of Utrecht in
   collaboration with the Utrecht Science Park Foundation and
   University Utrecht.\"

   [[61]{.underline}](http://www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/about-zero-footprint-campus/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^42]: [[62]{.underline}](http://www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/about-zero-footprint-campus/),

   last accessed March 2022.

[^43]: The search takes place specifically within works published in the

   period of 2006 till 2016\
   This version of the Feminist Search Tool provides a possibility to
   query an xml file containing a selection of 355000 records that were
   added to the Utrecht University Library in the period of 2006-2016.\
   The selection of fields was composed mostly by Sven Engels in
   collaboration with information specialists from the UU library and
   in conversation with other members of the FST project about the
   relevance of the fields for our inquiry. The selection consisted of
   the MARC21 fields:\
   Predominant language, Original language, Place of publication,
   Country of Publishing, Publisher, Date of publication (part 1), Date
   of publication (part 2), Relator term

   'Gender' is not an MARC21 field but was added to the database by
   trying to find the author on wikidata and using the "gender API" as
   a fallback if there was no entry on wikidata
   (https://gender-api.com/de?utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ga3&gclid=CjwKCAjw36DpBRAYEiwAmVVDMCdx8cQDbNKIyoR0p_nJjxS3JwVd26ac2_Lklob-VeAboDtiZov2yBoCEk0QAvD_BwE)

[^44]: MARC21 (abbreviation for Machine-Readable Cataloging) is an

   international standard administered by the Library of Congress; it
   is a set of digital formats used to describe items that are
   cataloged.

[^45]: René König and Miriam Rasch, \"Reflect and Act! Introduction to

   the Society of the Query Reader,\" *Society of the Query Reader*.
   Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2014): 14.

[^46]: Rosie (Richard) Graham, \"A 'History' of Search Engines: Mapping

   Technologies of Memory, Learning and Discovery,\" *Society of the
   Query Reader*, edited by René König and Miriam Rasch (Amsterdam:
   Institute of Network Cultures, 2014): 107.

[^47]: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, *Programmed visions: software and memory*

   (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2011): 60.

[^48]: Lev Manovich, *The language of new media* (Cambridge,

   Massachusetts, London, England: MIT Press, 2001).

[^49]: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, *Programmed visions: software and memory*

   (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2011): 66.

[^50]: ibid. 62.

[^51]: Wiki of the Digital Methods Summer School of 2019:

   [[63]{.underline}](https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/SummerSchool2019),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^52]: Interview with Richard Rogers published on the website of the

   DensityLab:
   [[64]{.underline}](http://densitydesign.org/2014/05/an-interview-with-richard-rogers-repurposing-the-web-for-social-and-cultural-research/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^53]: Website of DensityLab:

   [[65]{.underline}](http://densitydesign.org/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^54]: Tools documented on the DMI Wiki:

   [[66]{.underline}](https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^55]: Richard Rogers, \"Foundations of Digital Methods: Query Design\"

   *The Datafied Society: Studying Culture through Data*., edited by
   Mirko Tobias Schäfer, Karin van Es (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
   Press 2017): 75-94.

[^56]: We queried the feminist search tool (feministsearchtool.nl) for

   different terms and did some initial comparisons for publishers and
   the gender of authors. For a dataset to visualize, we queried the
   tool with the search string \[gender OR race OR intersectionality OR
   transgender OR \"social class\"\]. In order to get data on each
   individual record in the query results, this was done through the
   Solr search interface that is part of the feminist search tool with
   the following URL:
   https://feministsearchtool.nl/solr?q=gender%20OR%20race%20OR%20intersectionality%20OR%20
   transgender%20OR%20%22social%20class%22&rows=3000&fl=gender_s%20AND%20a_title_stat
   ement_t%20AND%20b_title_statement_t%20AND%20title_statement_t%20AND%20imprint_s

   The results were extracted into a json file and each record was
   annotated with the search terms that occur in the record (gender,
   race, intersectionality, transgender, social class).

   Using the javascript library D3.js, the records were color-coded by
   search terms and spatialized according to gender (horizontal) and
   publisher (vertical).

[^57]: Documentation of the visualization tool:

   [[67]{.underline}](https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/fst-viz-tool)
   in collaboration with DMI and Density Lab. Last accessed March 2022.

[^58]: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, *Programmed visions: software and memory*

   (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2011): 59.

[^59]: Donna Haraway, \"Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in

   Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,\" *Feminist
   Studies*, 14, no. 3. (Autumn, 1988): 575-599.

[^60]: ibid.

[^61]: The \"Feminist Search Assistan\" was a collaboration with Emile

   den Tex, at Digital Methods Summer School 2019.
   [[68]{.underline}](https://fst.hackersanddesigners.nl/)

   [[69]{.underline}](https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/fst-amz-shadow-search),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^62]: There were many more moments such as these, moments that were

   less distinct and seeped through different timelines, tool versions
   and group constellations. For clarity\'s sake, I decided to make
   this point by focusing on this specific tool version.

[^63]: Website of Mapping Slavery:

   [[70]{.underline}](https://mappingslavery.nl/educatie/publicaties/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^64]: Website of The Black Archives:

   [[71]{.underline}](https://www.theblackarchives.nl/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^65]: Vrouwenthesaurus of Atria Kennisinstituut voor Emancipatie en

   Vrouwengeschiedenis
   [[72]{.underline}](https://atria.nl/bibliotheek-archief/collectie/thesaurus/459/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^66]: Bookshelf Trolleys:

   [[73]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/bookshelf_research-2/),
   last accessed March 2022.
   [[74]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/teppich-install_uithof1.jpg),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^67]: \"Bookshelf Research\":

   [[75]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/bookshelf_research-2/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^68]: Kimberle Crenshaw, \"Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and

   Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine,
   Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.\" *University of Chicago
   Legal Forum* 1, no. 8 (1989).

[^69]: [[76]{.underline}](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DW4HLgYPlA&ab_channel=SouthbankCentre)

   Kimberlé Crenshaw, \"On Intersectionality\" keynote, 2016.

[^70]: Green: gender, Light-green: race, Blue: Social class, Purple: ?,

   Light Yellow: Social class, race, Light purple: Transgender, Pink:
   Intersectionality, Orange: gender, race

[^71]: \"Constant organises a worksession every six months. They

   function as temporary research labs, collective working environments
   where different types of expertise come into contact with each
   other. Worksessions are intensive otherwise-disciplined situations
   to which artists, software developers, theorists, activists and
   others contribute. During worksessions we develop ideas and
   prototypes that in the long-term lead to publications, projects and
   new proposals.\"
   [[77]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/Unbound-Libraries-Worksession.html?lang=en),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^72]: Information on the worksession \"Unbound Libraries\"

   [[78]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html?lang=en),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^73]: [[79]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html?lang=en)

   Cited:\
   Martha Nell Smith, \"Frozen Social Relations and Time for a Thaw:
   Visibility, Exclusions, and Considerations for Postcolonial Digital
   Archives.\" *Journal of Victorian Culture,* 19, no. 3 (July 2014):
   403-410. Last accessed March 2022.

[^74]: Wiki of the experimental publishing Master XPUB at Piet Zwart

   Institute:
   [[80]{.underline}](https://www.pzwart.nl/experimental-publishing/wiki/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^75]: Student project \'XPPL,\'-- a collective pirate library

   [[81]{.underline}](https://git.xpub.nl/XPUB/XPPL)
   [[82]{.underline}](https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/XPPL_Documentation),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^76]: Documentation of \'XPPL,\'

   [[83]{.underline}](https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/XPPL),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^77]: In October 2018 we introduced the Feminist Search Tools project

   to Atria Kennisinstituut voor Emancipatie en Vrouwengeschiedenis and
   IHLIA LGBTI Heritage collection. There were short presentations of
   the Women\'s Thesaurus by the initiators of the Women\'s Thesaurus
   (Maria van der Sommen & Gusta Drenthe) and the Homosaurus by the
   initiator, current board member of the *Homosaurus* and head of
   collection in 2018 of IHLIA (Jack van der Wel). The session brought
   these different projects into dialogue with each other and reflected
   on the first prototype of FST. Furthermore, the roundtable aimed to
   gain deeper insights into the design and drafting process of the
   Women\'s Thesaurus (Atria) and the *Homosaurus* (IHLIA) as well as
   aligned content to see how the latter could inform the new iteration
   of FST. For Atria and IHLIA, their distinct thesauri functioned as a
   form of self-empowerment by not trusting the mainstream method of
   searching and offering additional tools -- namely thesauri -- to the
   communities or people that use their archives. This has been an
   important entry point for our research in digital library catalogs.\
   Audio fragments of the roundtable are made available on the
   project's website of the new iteration:
   https://feministsearchtools.nl/. Furthermore, the event was the
   starting point for our collaboration with IHLIA LGBTI Heritage
   Collection and more in-depth conversations about the cataloging
   system used for their collection, CardBox and the Homosaurus.

[^78]: The clusters are: Race, Gender, Sexuality, Disability and

   Structural Oppression and each contained terms that were selected by
   Sven and Annette from the Homosaurus, in conversation with Thea
   Sibbels.

[^79]: Hosted by Constant\'s Big Blue Button instance.

[^80]: \"A red link, like this example, signifies that the linked-to

   page does not exist---it either never existed, or previously existed
   but has been deleted. It is useful while editing articles to add a
   red link to indicate that a page will be created soon or that an
   article should be created for the topic because the subject is
   notable and verifiable. Red links help Wikipedia grow. The creation
   of red links prevents new pages from being orphaned from the start.
   Good red links help Wikipedia---they encourage new contributors in
   useful directions, and remind us that Wikipedia is far from
   finished.\"
   [[84]{.underline}](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Red_link),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^81]: Development website of \'Infrastructural Maneuvers\':

   [[85]{.underline}](https://jekyll.all-syste.ms/),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^82]: An example of that is the term ~~blanken~~, which is a Dutch term

   that refers to white people as superior.

[^83]: For example \'witte\' instead of ~~\'blanken\'~~

[^84]: The clusters were curated by Sven Engels and Annette Krauss and

   were called: Race, Gender, Sexuality, Disability, Structural
   Oppression. Repeated here. Already mentioned in a previous footnote.

[^85]: Karen Barad, *Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and

   the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning* (Durhan, London: Duke
   University Press, 2007): 29.

Platform-design issues

Summary

The evolving monoculture of platforms for online gathering demonstrates the fast pace at which socio-technical conducts for online interaction emerge, are normalized, and create conditions in which it is difficult to imagine online collaboration otherwise. Such fast-paced socio-technical developments are invasive and impact ways of working, learning and being together with and through digital tools and technical infrastructure.

Drawing on Isabelle Stengers work on "problematization" and Celia Lury\'s concept of "problem spaces*,*" this chapter investigates whether collective platform-design experiments can develop and sustain *other* possible ways of designing and working together with and through technical objects that are neither utilitarian/solution-driven nor antagonizing.

Introduction: Situating \'platform\' in the context of the H&D collective

In the previous chapters, I discussed the concepts of the \'workshop\' and the \'tool\' and the ways in which they are understood and put into practice in and around the H&D collective. In this chapter, I will investigate the concept of the \'platform\' by means of various case stories. I will analyze the circulation of the platform and posit it as a means of articulating and actualizing technical and non-technical, social and economic aspects of working and being together.

With these platform stories, I offer yet another angle on collective practice---that of designing, using and maintaining technical infrastructures that cater to online collaboration, self-organization and self-publishing. Such self-made platforms combine tools in a manner that caters to the particular needs of a given collective. They involve (combinations of) content management systems,[^1] chat applications,[^2] collaborative writing tools,[^3] online spreadsheets[^4] and file-sharing systems.[^5] The difference between \'tool\' and \'platform\' is subtle. However, drawing a distinction is useful. Other than tools, platforms bring into focus the manner in which self-made, appropriated or hacked tools are composed together and, as such, are deeply intertwined with a collective\'s evolving socio-technical characteristics and functioning. H&D's technical infrastructure continuously evolves, and at times fails, or acts unexpectedly. H&D shapes and reshapes its modes of working together around the possibilities and limitations of these self-made platforms.

Relevance

The process of collective platform-making is pertinent as it points towards *other* possible socio-technical scenarios of designing and working together that are neither utilitarian, solution-driven or antagonizing. During the period of writing this dissertation, dependencies on easy-to-use digital tools increased. For example, due to the global COVID-19 pandemic the importance of staying connected and sustaining social and work relations while physically distancing intensified. The evolving monoculture and monopolization of platforms for online gatherings such as Zoom,[^6] Google Meet[^7] and Microsoft Teams,[^8] demonstrates the fast pace at which socio-technical conducts for online collaboration emerge and how quickly they are normalized, creating conditions in which it is difficult to imagine online collaboration otherwise. Such rapid developments are invasive and leave impressions on ways of working, learning and being together with and through digital tools, in addition to the ways technical infrastructure is perceived and practiced. Therefore, it seems urgent to pay attention to in-practice inquiries into different, contextual ways of articulating and materializing \'platforms\' differently.

Problem

In recent years the H&D collective has been frequently approached by organizations and initiatives that work at the intersection of art, design, technology and academia with the question: \"Do you want to design our platform?\" This recurring design request became the starting point for this chapter and a central issue underlying this dissertation.

Similar to the concepts of \'tool\' and \'workshop\', \'platform\' is a term that signifies different meanings, practices and materializations and it is used in various contexts. \'Platform\' may refer to technical infrastructure, environments in which software applications are designed, deployed or used, in addition to computer hardware, operating systems, gaming devices and mobile devices. The word \'platform\' is often used metaphorically. For instance, an organization may be referred to as a platform if it supports individuals or groups in addressing an audience. The original meaning of the term 'platform' refers to it in an architectural sense, \"human-built or naturally formed physical structures whether generic or dedicated to a specific use: subway and train platforms, Olympic diving platforms, deep-sea oil rig platforms, platform shoes.\"[^9]

The ambiguity of the term \'platform\' seems particularly amplified when articulated as part of a design brief.[^10] Resistance to responding with a straightforward answer to a request for platform design lies in platform's ambiguity, but also in the hesitance around the distinctive role of the designer and the platform can or should be presumed. Platforms seem to expand the realm of designed things---there is no fixedness, no beginning or end to a platform and no certainty in foreseeing a platform's trajectory. This leads me to the central question of this chapter: If the ways in which platforms take shape is enmeshed within collective practices, is part of a collective\'s functioning, including their characteristic of constant emergence, spontaneity, and unreliability---can platforms be designed at all?

Structure

I will approach this question by analyzing how platforms are articulated and actualized in the context of collective design practice. I begin with the examples of two platform design requests that were posed to the H&D collective. These requests were interpreted, materialized and put into action in the context of art and design education. Both platform projects were intended as online collaborative learning environments and developed different kinds of affiliations amongst the people engaging with them and each other. The Englishes MOOC was initiated by Dutch artist Nicoline van Harskamp, who asked the H&D collective to collaborate on developing an interactive online learning environment on the bases of existing course material. The *Workshop Project Wiki* was a collaboration between H&D and a collective of design educators called Workshop Projects. It converged different digital tools, into what I refer to as a self-made platform, for the occasion of an annual workshop series for design educators as well as a growing repository of syllabi, course material and workshop documentation. In both cases, the platform became a central reference point for collective learning and collaboration with groups that were not always present at the same physical location. I put forward these two digital environments to question the various implications of collective platform making and their functioning as a tactic to combine and permeate different, usually separate, contexts.

I will continue with ChattyPub, a platform evolving from self-organized activities that are at the core of H&D, such as organizing workshops and experimenting with self-publishing. ChattyPub is difficult to define as either a design software, a workshop or a tool for collective organization, yet it encompasses all these characteristics and has continued to play an important role in the way H&D\'s collective practice has evolved. I will then continue with tracing different yet intersecting meanings of the concept \'platform\', including a physical platform structure, the platform as a metaphor for collective organization and an online live stream platform. More specifically, I will pay attention to the ways in which different platform materializations and articulations respond to changing conditions and environments and how they carry material-discursive potential.

The example of the H&D COOP platform intersects technical and organizational aspects of H&D\'s collective practice with the longer-term effects (at times indeterminable) that such experimental platforms have on the way a collective evolves. Thereby, I cast doubt on the way the practice of collective platform making can establish \'unquestionability\' towards socio-technical incompatibilities. In the last section of this chapter, I discuss an experiment in collective platform-making referred to as \'platframe\'. The example addresses collective platform-making as a means to build and work with platforms, while simultaneously problematizing relationships that evolve and are hindered by and through the emerging platform. The question that will be discussed is; how to consider platforms as problematic, unresolved and uncomfortable from the outset?

Plat-formatted learning: Englishes MOOC and Workshop Project Wiki

In the following section, I will discuss two platform projects. In both cases, H&D (more specifically André Fincato and myself) were invited to collaborate on developing a digital environment, which would accommodate online collaboration and learning. While there are many aspects of these projects that could be discussed, in the interests of remaining within the scope of this dissertation, I will focus on the way in which the two different approaches to conceptualizing and materializing \'platform\' established their own ways of connecting people with each other and the platform. In the first example, H&D worked with preexisting course materials that were translated into the context of an online learning environment. Roles and tasks were clearly divided throughout the process. In the second example, the divides were not demarcated as clearly. Materials evolved along with the platform. I am drawing a distinction between these two projects to problematize H&D\'s involvement in \'external\' design and web development projects, arguing that they are indicative of the thresholds of collective design practice. That is, boundaries are drawn anew with every new context and collaboration. The first example was a more conventional design commission, \'executed\' by two H&D members. It did not feed back into the collective in the same manner as is evident in the second example, where technical aspects and excitement about them derived from and fed back into H&D's collective practice. To clarify, I do not intend to exemplify these two projects as good or bad platform-design examples but rather to distill aspects of their processes in order to question the ways in which collectives implicate themselves in the environments we pass through with our work and the boundaries we draw or fail to draw in the process.

Englishes MOOC

In 2018, H&D was approached by Dutch artist Nicoline van Harskamp to collaborate on developing an online learning environment, which she referred to as a \'MOOC\' (Massive Online Open Course). At the time of this inquiry (before the COVID19 pandemic), I had not familiarized myself much with online learning platforms, such as webinars or MOOCs. Besides remote seminar-style university education, online learning was not yet a common practice in art education. During our first meeting, Nicoline brought a large folder with physical course materials that she wanted to have translated into what I will refer to in the following as a \'platform\'[^11]---a website that allowed a committed group of participants---mostly students and educators within an international art school context, to access and engage with learning materials and interact with the course material, with Nicoline and each other.[^12] In our initial meeting, Nicoline explained that she had been recurrently invited by various organizations and educational institutions to teach this workshop sequel and she wondered how she could respond to the increasing demand. In her motivational statement on the website, she described how she had \"discussed the topic so often as an educator, that she decided to develop a curriculum and choose an online teaching format that maintains the qualities of a multilingual classroom environment: the Massive Open Online Course. \[\...\] Actresses from different language backgrounds perform Van Harskamp's classes \[\...\] Students and alumni from the institutions affiliated with the project, perform the process of learning.\"[^13]

![](media/image13.png){width="4.154166666666667in" height="3.0368055555555555in"}

Screenshot of the interface of the Englishes MOOC (logged in)\

It may not be intended as such, however my reading of the motivation for developing an online learning environment is as follows. It reflects a common narrative around platforms\' capacities to enhance processes of human interaction, to make such processes---here processes of learning and teaching---more efficient in an economical sense (reaching more people, avoiding repetitive labor). In reality, there was still a large amount of human labor involved in developing the platform, and perhaps even more so in pursuing the course once the platform was supposedly completed. In particular, there was labor involved in sustaining a committed group of participants and keeping them involved and engaged over a longer period of time. For instance, the live chat feature was initially one of the most important technical features that the \'Englishes MOOC\' platform was developed around.[^14] It was designed to accommodate exchange between participants. In the event that they had questions, participants could post these in the chat. Yet many participants preferred to use email to ask questions and to send in their assignments. The upload feature and the discussion forum were barely used, generating the considerable work of communicating with participants and helping them orient themselves on the platform.

Whether or not actualized in the way we had anticipated, the MOOC platform traveled widely, propelled by the narrative of it as a stable, online learning environment that accommodates large numbers of people. The project was featured on websites, newsletters, exhibitions and in public talks at various educational and cultural institutions and attracted many participants. In the guise of a \'MOOC\', the platform attracted many people and, just before the COVID19 pandemic, it was perceived as a unique way to present an artistic practice and as an unusual format for art education. Through its aesthetics, teaser videos, the description texts, the institutions and networks that announced it, the project had potential. Perhaps it did not fulfill its promises in a technical sense. However, by piggybacking on certain platform analogies (aesthetically, through features and through the narrative that evolved around it), the project managed to cut across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. Through its perception of an innovative project (involving the development of \'self-made\' technology), it also tapped into funding sources that would usually not be available for projects evolving in educational institutions.[^15]

The conceptual framework of the \'platform\' was an essential part of the narrative evolving around the project and contributed to its mobility and actualization. It became an effective tactic for connecting the different realms of art, education, research and web development.

Yet it seemed to me the Englishes MOOC\'s implications as a technical project actualized within the specific context of the H&D collective were not questioned sufficiently. That is, the project could have been challenged more in terms of its technical ambitions and the platform-image it (re)produced.

In retrospect, it seems the manner in which tasks and roles were divided in its development is indicative of how the platform \'as such\' became inevitable (the artist as platform-commissioner, H&D as designers and developers realizing the platform, and participants as \'users\' of the platform). The short timeline of the project caused pressure to finish the platform. Leading up to the launch of the first course cycle, pressure increased, over-hours were worked. On the one hand, the intention for the platform was to function as a way to make processes easier and more efficient. On the other hand, it required an immense amount of labor to keep up the platform image as a technical infrastructure that reduces human involvement. Throughout the process, there was not much space for problematizing the evolving technical infrastructure and preparing ourselves and others for the expectations and demands it may produce. For instance, we did not question if the envisioned digital platform, in terms of aesthetics, features and the manner in which it was contextualized through certain platform-analogies (liveness, reliability, efficiency, user-friendliness), misaligned with the conditions of its development.

Workshop Project Wiki

The Workshop Project Wiki (WPW)[^16] is another platform-project, developed with André Fincato (H&D) who I have also been working with on the Englishes MOOC. The WPW builds upon different open-source software tools that H&D had been working with since 2014. The WPW converges DokuWiki software[^17] and the online collaborative real-time editor Etherpad.[^18] Similar to the MOOC the WPW bridged various institutional boundaries and brought together different learning communities. It became a central digital workspace for developing and pursuing a workshop series organized for and by design educators. Reflecting on the development of the two platform-design processes (Englishes MOOC and the WPW), there were subtle differences in articulation of roles, responsibilities and expectations, all of which are pertinent. In comparison to the collaboration on the Englishes MOOC, the role of H&D in the process of developing the WPW was less distinctive. For instance in the case of the WPW, the technical aspects introduced were already tightly interwoven within the collective practice of H&D.

The proposition for combining certain tools that were already part of our tool ecosystem, in particular bringing them together in different ways seemed natural and exciting. Another point of contrast with Englishes MOOC, was that I had been in contact with one of the initiators of the Workshop Project collective before on different occasions. Yasmin Khan was one of my teachers in an exchange semester in Los Angeles and we have since sustained contact.[^19] Her approach to teaching resonated with me and inspired me in my own evolving practice as a design educator. Therefore, I did not consider working on the WPW as a new project or a commissioned work, but rather, as an occasion to reconnect and continue our ongoing exchange. Furthermore, the WPW was an occasion to combine resources and energy for imagining and building a growing repository of experimental teaching methods and materials across and beyond institutional boundaries. Together, we filled and edited the WPW and got used to the syntax together.[^20]

Rather than *plat-formatting* pre-existing content, workshop materials, pedagogical resources, prompts and syllabi evolved together with the evolving digital environment. By writing and publishing an elaborate note addressing our choice to work with certain tools, documenting and publishing the source code, the WPW was contextualized as a technical project. As such, it did not only display content and offer features, but was an evolving technical object that took active part in the exchange between the two collective practices of Workshop Project and H&D. Both collectives aspired to consider practices of using and building self-made tools and platforms as an inherent part of design education. During the first edition of the workshop in Los Angeles, I was able to join as a co-host and participant, and was therefore able to introduce and contextualize the WPW. I introduced the practice of H&D, demonstrated how the WPW came into being, how it worked and was present for questions.

![](media/image10.png){width="4.631944444444445in" height="3.7243055555555555in"}

In the article \"From Market to Platform\" (2012), Jane Guyer described platforms as \"made up of built components and applications, from which actions are performed outward into a world that is not itself depicted.\"[^21] I relate this quote to the two platform projects, in the ways they became active in the world in different ways. The Englishes MOOC, in the way that it was imagined and actualized, depended on a certain resolved appearance, on unquestionability. It became active in the world through the stable image around its existence. At the same time, it\'s unquestionability also caused a misalignment with the actual experience of building it, working with it and using it. In my view, its unquestionability also hindered its duration as a technical object that could live on, beyond the framework of the artistic project Englishes MOOC. Similar to the WPW, the Englishes MOOC was also built with open-source software. Thus, in theory, it could be repurposed across various contexts. However, due to its \'resolved\' forms of expression, it is difficult to imagine how it might be used differently than its initial purpose. For instance, some visual elements, such as the elementary colors, were drawn from the colors of the whiteboard markers that were also featured in some of the videos portraying the artists\' workshop reenactments. Thus, there was a close resemblance between the appearance of the \'platformatted\' materials and the structure and appearance of the different elements of the interface. For instance the background of the website is an image of a whiteboard, which derived from one of the artist\'s videos, as well as the colors of the lines that structure and divide content into different columns.

In studies and discussions about the so-called \'platform economy\',[^22] platforms are often described as designed for emulating and enhancing interaction. Theorists such as Guyer, Gillespie, Srnicek and Lury discussed how platforms have fundamentally changed how work is perceived.[^23] They seep into a collective vocabulary and imaginary. It is perhaps farfetched to connect theories on the platform economy to self-made artist projects, such as the Englishes MOOC. However, I wonder whether there has been a rise of platform economy semantics and models within the creative sector (perhaps more intensely since the COVID19 pandemic). On the one hand, the increasing interest in self-made platforms is indicative of a necessity to self-organize; to take matters into \'one\'s own hands\', making our \'own\' self-made, artist-run platforms. On the other hand, such a tendency perpetuates expectations around professionalism, efficiency and reliability that people are used to confronting in the guise of those platforms we aim to replace and build alternatives for. In my experience, demands for efficiency are usually articulated in a subtle manner, yet they lead to high expectations of self-made, technical artist projects that are in reality developed under meager socio-economic conditions. These expectations tend to reproduce and normalize such precarious conditions.

By juxtaposing these two platform projects, I ask whether there are other ways of making experimental platforms that do not fall into the efficiency trap, but are inventive in the ways in which they reflect on and respond to the particular contexts they evolve within.

In comparison to the MOOC, the visual design of the Workshop Project Wiki was rather rough. This roughness was demonstrated for instance by its use of system fonts,[^24] or by disclosing signatures of the various software and practices it combined. These small instances of unresolvedness make it, in my view, possible to imagine the WPW being used differently, in different contexts, repurposed and continued. In fact, in the context of the Feminist Search Tools project, the WPW took on another, parallel life as an online collaborative workspace and process archive.[^25] The wiki-etherpad convergence introduced a culture of documenting and note taking to an otherwise chaotic and fragmented collective process. It helped those who could not attend every meeting to catch up and follow the conversations asynchronously.

In her article \"Located accountabilities in technology production\" (2002) professor of Anthropology of Science and Technology Lucy Suchman proposed drawing new kinds of boundaries within processes and roles of technology-design. According to Suchman, accounting for technology production means being able to locate oneself in socio-material relations, but also to surrender control. Furthermore, foregoing control does not mean acting irresponsibly. It means seeing oneself \"as entering into an extended set of working relations.\"[^26] Suchman\'s proposition resonates with how some platform design processes, such as the WPW, seem to better reflect the manner in which they are part of various socio-material relations. Rather than imposing predefined roles, tasks and expectations, such a collective design process redraws boundaries with flexibility and according to the limits and possibilities of the present.

![](media/image6.jpg){width="4.541666666666667in" height="2.557638888888889in"}

To summarize, self-made platforms and the processes of conceptualizing and actualizing the \'platform\' can become an effective tactic for connecting different disciplines, practices and (institutional) contexts. By means of two examples, I have shown how experimental platform projects that involved the H&D collective dealt with the specific socio-economic / socio-technical conditions they were evolved within. A question that arose from these projects is how collective platform making can critically and reflexively negotiate the particular contexts they evolve within in order to avoid the \'efficiency trap\'. That is, upholding an image of self-made platforms to be efficient, reliable and functioning, while the opposite may be the case.

In the context of WPW, sustaining a certain unresolvedness, led to new openings and continuations in other contexts. While it derived from a specific context, the platform did not remain a singular technical object but emerged from and fed back into long-term collaborations between two collectives and expanded into other collective practices as well. The design and development process of the WPW included many exchanges, as well as co-editing and co-hosting workshops that included the platform as a central component, a technical object to learn from and with. In this sense, the WPW is not solely a platform for collaboration or a workshop accessory, but an ongoing collective process that converges, supports and challenges different socio-technical practices.

Rethinking platform boundaries: ChattyPub

In their text \"Platform Seeing\" (2019) McKenzie and Munster describe the mode of operation of platforms as \"transversal, thus its boundaries are not clearly distinct, or to be observed or discussed from one single vantage point.[^27] The evolving (individual and collective) habits around the use and construction of certain tools and tool combinations and their resonance in collective organizations can be difficult to trace, precisely because they cut across different registers of collective work and social relations.

\'Platforms\' usually presuppose the existence of a community, or the potential of the forming of a community---a group of people who share some kind of common ground, who agree to be part of the platform, work with the platform and who accept to do the work the platform asks of them. Within a collective design process, there can be less of a distinct or causal understanding of platforms in which the characteristics of certain platforms, such as those facilitating collaboration, are not being inscribed into a technical artifact, i.e. a website or content management system. Socio-technical relations evolve

with* a platform, rather than *on* or *because* of a platform.\

\ In the following section, I will draw on an example of a project referred to as \'ChattyPub\'. ChattyPub evolved from various workshop situations, as well as the need for a central online workspace for the H&D collective. In my view, ChattyPub as a platform operates as, what McKenzie and Munster\'s described as, transversal. Its boundaries are not clearly distinct. In terms of its purpose, it cannot be solely defined as, for instance, a chat application, a workshop, a design and publishing tool or an archive. Yet ChattyPub inherits all of these characteristics and has become an essential component of H&D's collective practice. Through its multiple modes of operation, its changing meanings and different materializations it developed and strengthened ties through and with the H&D collective. ChattyPub could be discussed from various vantage points. As a starting point, I consider a workshop that was facilitated by two design educators XinXin and Lark VCR during the 2020 of the H&D Summer Academy (HDSA). 2020 was an exceptional year for H&D. Due to the global pandemic, we decided to host the intensive workshop program for the HDSA online for the first time. The program consisted of fifteen workshops, which were hosted by different designers, artists and programmers from various geographic locations.

The Experimental Chatroom workshop particularly resonated with H&D members due to its attention to detail and the commitment on the part of the workshop hosts to respond to the different needs and levels of knowledge of a diverse participant group who were distributed across the globe and across time zones.[^28] The workshop impacted H&D in various ways. We referred to XinXin and Lark VCR\'s workshop script many times as an example of a \'perfect workshop\'.[^29] The subject of the workshop, designing and building experimental chat rooms, sparked the idea amongst H&D for co-designing a publication utilizing a chat environment. This would allow for several people to participate in the design process at the same time.

In the next iteration of the H&D Summer Academy in 2021, which was organized as a hybrid format on and offline and in four different locations, we started using an open-source chat platform called Zulip[^30] to streamline communication with workshop participants and co-hosts. The Zulip software combines real-time chat functions with an email threading model. Along with the practical desire for a central community chat platform, the idea of co-designing a publication using a chat interface was revived. ChattyPub became the name of a self-made publishing platform that builds upon the chat interface of Zulip. The text input fields for posting chat messages were used to edit and layout the contributions to our publication---some were text-based and some visual contributions. Different CSS styles[^31] (font-families, font-sizes, font-styles, margins, text alignment and colors) were applied through Emoji reactions.

![](media/image16.jpg){width="6.268055555555556in" height="3.5277777777777777in"}

Image:\ Left: Zulip interface / book stream + chapter topics,\ Right: ChattyPub CSS preview.

ChattyPub was developed in preparation to a workshop taking place during the H&D Summer Academy 2021, and was further developed in different workshops hosted in other contexts afterwards.[^32] In autumn of 2021, H&D self-published the book *Network Imaginaries*, which was designed with ChattyPub. Among others, contributors included Lark VCR and XinXin, who wrote a contribution about their \'Experimental Chat Room\' workshop, within the various chat rooms that were built in their workshop.

To sum up, ChattyPub functionalities were/are manifold. As a platform it congregates and activates various aspects of collective practice transversally. It is a socio-technical object, emerging from and intertwined with collective organization; it traveled through and connected various contexts and practices; it served as a technical object to learn from and with. It has been the subject, tool and context for workshops and through its different instantiations, affords continuation of various collective design processes. ChattyPub, along with the installation of Zulip on H&D's server and the different workshop occasions, thrived off shared, energizing moments and a contingent collision of diverse individual and collective curiosities. As a platform ChattyPub evolved and functions despite, and because of the fragmented and chaotic character of H&D\'s collective practice.

![](media/image15.png){width="5.2131944444444445in" height="3.738888888888889in"}

Image: Zulip interface / book stream + chapter topics ![](media/image11.png){width="5.4631944444444445in" height="3.28125in"}

Image: ChattyPub CSS preview

![](media/image14.jpg){width="6.2034722222222225in" height="3.4631944444444445in"}

![](media/image8.jpg){width="6.268055555555556in" height="3.513888888888889in"}\ Images: Example of page spread of the printed book with visible emoji reactions

The figure of the platform

Referring to the example of ChattyPub, I demonstrated how platform characteristics, as they are defined and actualized as part of collective practice, cannot be inscribed into one distinct technical artifact, one distinct moment or one distinct group of people. Instead, different platform meanings and materializations are indistinctly intertwined in (distributed) collective work and shape what may be perceived or articulated from the outside as a solid and functioning technical object that serves a predefined purpose. Such inscriptions of purpose and intentions are often detached from collectivity-in-action; for instance they are articulated after time has passed or by people who were perhaps not directly involved in the process and interpret the socio-technical functioning of the H&D collective at a distance.

Tarleton Gillespie wrote that the term \'platform\' \"depends on a semantic richness that, though it may go unnoticed by the casual listener or even the speaker, gives the term discursive resonance.\"[^33] Semantic richness, in my reading of Gillespie, means that the term \'platform\' is equally vague as it is specific and therefore can obtain meaning across various fields and multiple audiences. Gillespie delineates four distinct yet intersecting semantic territories for the meaning of the term platform (\'architectural\', \'political\', \'metaphorical\', \'computational\') \"'Platform' as a descriptive term for digital media intermediaries represents none of these, but depends on all four.\"[^34]

Thinking with Gillespie\'s observations on and theorization of the semantic rich \'platform\', I will follow intersecting platform meanings and the ways in which they were and were not actualized as part of a collective design process. The manner in which platforms materialize within and due to collective practices, seems to carry discursive potential. They are altered and produced by their various instantiations and contexts. In the following, I will trace the genealogy of the concept of \'platform\', at first taking the shape of a physical platform structure, which was meant to facilitate workshops, yet was not actualized as such. Instead it became a metaphor for collective organization and then took yet another form, that of a kind of TV set accompanied by a live-stream platform. Furthermore, the H&D live-stream platform took on a life on its own.

Installing a platform

In 2018, H&D accepted an invitation to organize an exhibition. I hoped for new insights deriving from a process of putting together this exhibition and perhaps to find new ways to articulate in a cohesive manner what it really is we do. I asked a friend who is a scenographer, Thomas Rustemeyer, to work with us on the exhibition design. The involvement of Thomas---who was familiar with but not actively part of H&D---allowed us to reflect about H&D\'s collective practice with some distance. Thomas patiently proposed many possible directions for the exhibition by means of different drawings. At one point, he proposed to showcase and demonstrate some of the tools H&D had developed in the past, outcomes of workshops, websites and publications. However, while we were always enthusiastic about creating publishing karaoke machines,[^35] turning toy cars into self-driving cars,[^36] and performing bodily interfaces,[^37] the idea of showing such objects in an exhibition context created discomfort. The resistance to exhibiting these objects may have derived from the fact that most of these objects/prototypes are developed in the context of workshops and have the status of idea sketches or tryouts.[^38] They are not meant to be exhibited and are also often disposed and decomposed. Components are reused for other purposes.

Another consideration was to exhibit works produced by individual members of the H&D collective. We entertained the idea for a brief moment, but soon acknowledged this would be a terrible exhibition, an incohesive, random potpourri. We started to discuss the core of H&D, our individual and collective values. Slowly we came to realize that H&D might consist of individual practitioners. However, H&D should be seen as a practice in its own right. H&D brings together people (including ourselves) to do the things we would usually not do in our individual practices. At H&D we get to experiment without the pressure of creating precious artifacts. Thus an exhibition seemed to counter what we do as part of H&D. Finally, we decided to use the exhibition as an occasion to collaborate with other artists and art collectives that inspire us and started imagining a spatial structure, a \'platform\' that would function as a place and occasion to accommodate different kinds of encounters with makers, through workshops, performances and talks.

![86](media/image1.jpg){width="4.091666666666667in" height="3.0194444444444444in"}

> Sketch by Thomas Rustemeyer > > ![](media/image2.gif){width="6.268055555555556in" > height="3.736111111111111in"}

Sketch by Thomas Rustemeyer

![Afbeelding met binnen, vloer, blauw, kamer Automatisch gegenereerde beschrijving](media/image3.jpg){width="3.073611111111111in" height="2.0375in"}

Photos by Philip Ullman, Tetem, Enschede 2020

![](media/image5.jpg){width="2.8618055555555557in" height="1.8972222222222221in"}![](media/image4.jpg){width="2.8340277777777776in" height="1.8819444444444444in"}

![](media/image7.jpg){width="2.839583333333333in" height="1.8916666666666666in"}![](media/image12.jpg){width="2.8409722222222222in" height="1.8923611111111112in"}

Photos by Philip Ullman, FUSE, NDSM, Amsterdam, 2020

Platform metaphor

Although the platform was built, it was not put into action as we had initially envisioned it---as a physical site that could be activated through workshops and in-person events. Shortly after the exhibition opening, the Netherlands went into its first lock-down and physical gathering became impossible for the duration of the exhibition. Nevertheless, the image of the platform circulated and became an image representing the H&D collective. The physical platform intended to serve the purpose of gathering also became a metaphor---as the term \'platform\' is often used to refer to organizations and tends to imply an assumed value to the \'platform-organization\' as supportive and enabling.[^39]

Without the activation of the physical platform, the image of the platform seemed to flatten the socio-material particularities and unresolvedness of H&D\'s collective practice. As an image, a shape and a figure, it seemed too finite. Yet, the \'platform\' as a metaphor and its coming-into-being as a physical structure also set into motion a reflexive articulation process about the at times intangible experience of a collective design process. Involving other artists and artist collectives in the process of developing the installation and having to readjust together to new emerging conditions, we had to (re)articulate the ways we understand and question the role and function of H&D in relation to other (collective) art and design practices, both in and outside of the Netherlands. Exhibition-making seemed an odd thing to do for H&D. At the same time, it also offered an occasion to find ways of expressing and questioning our resistance towards showing final results. There were points of friction in the process that challenged us in our ways of working, including our ways of financing what we do. The budget offered by the organizers of the exhibition space catered to one artist or artist collective to produce and present a new work. In the context of H&D, we felt the need to include more people, to be able to convey that H&D is not an art or design group, with the goal of producing art works together. It was important to us that we could convey the manner in which H&D brings together and mingles with *other* artists, designers and developers to do things we would not usually do. The collective practice of H&D, as we came to understand it through the process of making this exhibition, also became increasingly incompatible with the economies around the making of this exhibition as it was thought about by the organizers of the exhibition space that invited us. The intention to host workshops and events as an essential part of the exhibition was not only a conceptual choice, but also a way of co-financing a collective project that involved more people than were accounted for by the hosting organization. By organizing a workshop program, other financial sources could be accessed from H&D\'s annually subsidized activity program that is funded by Dutch Creative Industries fund. Simultaneously, by introducing more and more activities, we increased a sense of obligation towards the hosting institution.

Moving the platform online

Responding to the global pandemic's challenge to in-person exchange and collaboration (a promise made), H&D developed a different means for continuation. We built a website for showcasing the works of the contributing artists, which were initially installed on, under and inside the platform.[^40] The works were shown and contextualized on the website along with accompanying research and reading materials. Furthermore, we built a live stream platform, which converged a streaming service with a chat interface.[^41] The physical platform was moved and reactivated as a set from which we broadcasted events, and whenever possible also hosted smaller audiences to join us in real life.[^42]

As aforementioned, the desire for alternative, self-made, self-hosted platforms for online gathering increased during the pandemic. The H&D livestream platform resulted in many new 'opportunities', including platform-requests by cultural organizations in the Netherlands.[^43] Yet, when hosting larger events on the livestream platform, especially those events that included people who were less familiar with the way the H&D collective is organized, I noticed the 'inefficiency' and unreliability of our technical infrastructures were not always appreciated. These DIY platforms materialized within the context of H&D, are not easily disconnected from the socio-technical conducts developed alongside their emergence. I recall a particular event hosted by the FST group that attracted 180 viewers and hosted a number of speakers, some of which I had not met or spoken to before. Most of them were used to environments such as Zoom and Teams for live events, and did not interface with other, more experimental formats for live streaming. We tried to 'prepare' speakers before the event by offering an onboarding meeting though a few speakers did not attend.

The experience of the event was rather chaotic and stressful. One of the speakers wrote to us a day after the event took place, informing us that it took him a while to recover from this stressful experience. It became apparent that the kind of discomfort that accompanies self-built technical tools and infrastructure, requires special care and attention towards different experiences and expectations. I have been asking myself who is responsible for this kind of work? How can we---within our collective practices---interface with diverging experiences and expectations? How can we create conditions in which technical projects such as the H&D livestream platform are not just assumed to be functioning in the same manner as platforms that are developed by large commercial companies such as Google, Zoom, Teams. The desire to articulate what H&D is about derives from a feeling of responsibility on the part of the H&D collective.

We cannot assume that our experimental platform projects are 'harmless'. We had anticipated different experiences and abilities to deal with discomfort that comes with the digital space, and tried to address the experimental character of the platform in the introduction text of the event, in the welcome speech and by offering an onboarding meeting to try out and contextualize the platform. Yet it seemed like these attempts did not sufficiently account for the platform experience and did not prepare people to approach the platform with curiosity and openness. The pressure of being watched by a rather large amount of (anonymous) people viewing, paired with a lack of familiarity on the part of the speakers and viewers with the context and conditions they would encounter, turned this event into an overwhelming experience.

![](media/image19.png){width="4.626558398950131in" height="2.6580774278215222in"}

Image: H&D livestream platform

To summarize, the platform, first envisioned as an installation and physical workshop space, took on different meanings, materializations and scales. Due to the changing conditions and different relationships, responsibilities and obligations, the platform was defined and redefined (as metaphor, as workshop space, as technical infrastructure) while trying to hold together a multiplicity of activities, people and objects. Furthermore, the development of the livestream platform showed how different proximities and scales of groups are rather significant for the ways such unconventional platforms are put into practice, and are experienced. On the one hand, the H&D livestream platform was easily accessible from any location, through an open link to anyone. Yet the particularities of the different contexts it combined, required particular contextualization, care and attention. I question the capacity on the part of a self-organized collective such as H&D to handle this, especially if the contexts are not familiar or exceed the size of a workshop situation.

Platformed organization

A platform can also be understood as a plan or articulation of organizational principles on the basis of which a group operates. In the context of H&D, such principles can be expressed rather implicitly. From my own perspective, I would describe H&D's organizing principles as non-hierarchical. For example, the organization of activities is up for discussion while the intention is to accommodate as many voices as possible. This accommodation is made possible through the distribution of efforts and resources amongst the group. H&D\'s modes of organizing have developed over the years and are performed through subtle gestures rather than declarations. Yet, there were moments in which attempts were made to enforce more explicit organizational rules and conducts.

At the beginning of 2018 one of the core members of H&D at the time, James Bryan Graves, proposed formalizing organizational aspects of H&D, including the distribution of finances. At that point, the H&D collective was organized informally and ad hoc, which led to frustration at times. Some people took on too many tasks, others felt left out. The lack of structure led to unbalanced involvements and divergence of expectations on what H&D as a collective necessitated. James\' proposal was to build a website that would help to decentralize organizational efforts and would make decision-making more transparent. The platform was inspired by \'cooperative\' models for organizing groups and administering financial aspects of working together.

![](media/image9.png){width="4.668055555555555in" height="2.9138888888888888in"}

> *Screenshot of the interface of the H&D COOP platform\ > [[87]{.underline}](https://wiki.hackersanddesigners.nl/index.php?title=Hackers_%26_Designers_Coop)*

The H&D COOP Platform divides available funds equally amongst the members of the coop.[^44] In its initial realization by James, the platform built upon smart contracts deployed on a self-hosted private Ethereum blockchain.[^45] James chose this implementation because of the transparency of distributed ledgers as well as the immutability of blockchain technology, both of which, he believed, would be potentially valuable features for collective organization. The immutability of transactions but also the high maintenance required by the platform proved not to suit the organizational culture of H&D. The platform was a technical as well as organizational experiment of which the technical aspect was discontinued after about one year because it required too much technical maintenance. Yet, the cooperative model continued as an organizational principle and in the form of an elaborate spreadsheet.

The H&D COOP platform served as a concrete occasion to bring to the fore concerns and observations about how we worked together as a group and set into motion new collective imaginaries and plans for collective self-organization. Discussions became more active amongst members of the H&D. Around the time of implementing the H&D COOP platform, in 2018, H&D also opened up to welcome more members. People seemed more informed about and involved in each other\'s activities. Yet the organizational change did not resonate with all H&D members equally. Some became less active. Subscribing to an ad hoc working style, they seemed unable to, or were perhaps uninterested in formulating their tasks clearly and regularly. Perhaps, they had difficulties with the workload that comes with constant formalization and quantification of activities.

The H&D COOP Platform evolved from the desire to open up organizational work and decision-making to all members equally by offering an interface and process that is comprehensible to all. However, the attempt to formalize the rather disorganized collective working mode by introducing a more intentional and explicit structure, also introduced new obligations. All activities had to be distinctively described. The fact that everything had to be formulated as a \'project\', solidified the collective into a structure that was inclusive to all members in theory but not in practice. Aspects that were not describable within the H&D COOP platform logic, were left aside. For instance, how would one describe and quantify someone\'s contribution to the general atmosphere or the mood of a collective? Another question is how activities can be quantified within the H&D COOP platform if they simultaneously involve many other practices and economies?

A platform like the H&D COOP platform is designed in a manner that takes for granted that involvements are determinable and comparable. The platform, in more and less concrete ways, went on shaping the ways members of H&D interacted with it and with each other, including the indeterminable effect of refusal and exclusion of some. I relate this relational aspect of H&D to Jane Guyer's misgivings about the ways platforms establish relationships. She wrote, "bursts of rule-making \[\...\] are beginning to establish protections and obligations.\"[^46] Those participating "must carve out a role and a set of expectations that is acceptable to each and also serves their own interests, while resolving or at least eliding the contradictions between them.\"[^47]

The continuously evolving relationships between a collective, its members and its technical companions produces advantages as well as disadvantages, and it depends on who you ask as to how such socio-technical relationships are experienced and expressed. If we consider platforms as 'infrastructural things', then it is often in their glitches that they become tangible. Lauren Berlant (referring to sociologist Susan Leigh Star) used the term \'glitchfrastructure\', which describes the moment \"when infrastructural things stop converging \[\...\] they become a topic and a problem rather than automata of procedure. \[\...\] When things stop converging they also threaten the conditions and the sense of belonging, but more than that, of assembling.\"[^48] I relate Berlant\'s delineation of glitchfrastructure to the aforementioned moment of slow, gradual disengagement on the part of some H&D members with the H&D COOP platform and the H&D collective. The glitch that occurred in that moment is not solely a technical *or* organizational malfunction, but a result of socio-technical re-configuration that might be expressed subtly and unnoticeably. Such a glitch may not even be perceivable as a problem that needs fixing.

Sociologist and cultural theorist Celia Lury proposed that \"platforms are mediators in the composition of problem spaces; and as such, they \'transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning of the elements they are supposed to carry.\"[^49] According to Lury, a problem space does not \'contain\' problems but is a steadily changing composition of problems.

The composition of a problem space is an ongoing, forming and transforming activity and therefore cannot be presumed in advance. As a socio-technical mediator in the composition of problem spaces---a platform such as the H&D COOP platform, cannot be assumed to be a discrete or self-contained object but is rather interconnected and co-dependent in the various ways members of a collective organize themselves through the platform, relate to, and resist it.

The H&D COOP platform, despite its discontinuation as a technical object, had a lasting impact as an organizational principle. It marked an attempt to formalize what had been only talked about before in implicit ways. For example, organizing ourselves in an egalitarian manner. It introduced a new discursive culture into the collective ethos. And yet, to some extent, it also illuminated another angle on collective platform making. Such platforms, as they gradually evolve, do not always work in our favor, especially not if the conception and definition of \'working\' is left to us. If such DIY platforms, themselves shaping socio-technical relations in collective practices, stop converging while their incompatibilities also become increasingly inextricable from new collective routines, their exclusions may not be perceived anymore as problematic but rather become an unquestionable part of their development and functioning.

Platform contours

In my readings on digital platforms and the platform economy, I came across many boundary concepts. Terms such as \'edges\', \'contours\', \'separations\', or \'confinements\' seem significant in comprehending and articulating platforms and their effects on technical, social and economic spheres. They are expressed through, for instance, intellectual property law, the licensing of source code, restricted access, or technical dependencies. Such boundaries determine the threshold of who or what is in or out. They can also be conceived as encompassing a specific way of perceiving and experiencing technical infrastructure.

In the following section, I will analyze a platform-design project, which points at the manners in which collective platform making can be articulated and pursued as a process that is simultaneously generative and problematic. At the beginning of 2021 I worked with one of my H&D peers, Karl Moubarak, on an online environment that has also been referred to as \'platframe\'. Jara Rocha, who was one of the collaborating artists of the aforementioned exhibition project, had seen and experienced the H&D livestream platform. Jara approached us with the proposal to develop an online environment together, which she explained to us as a convergence of online tools (a phrasing that has become very useful in the context of this research). The occasion was an upcoming online workshop, which she developed with a group of researchers, some independent and some affiliated with academic institutions, from different fields of studies.[^50]

![](media/image20.png){width="5.557292213473316in" height="3.1386701662292213in"}\ Image: H&D livestream platform. The online event was co-hosted with The Hmm and was an occasion to present and speak about the works of the exhibition that could not be opened due to the global COVID19 pandemic, 2020.\ [[88]{.underline}](https://thehmm.nl/event/the-hmm-hackers-designers-2020/) [[89]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Events/p/The_Hmm_%40Hackers_%26_Designers)

The request was to develop a technical infrastructure and interface that would accommodate the presentation of diverse media content such as videos, text, images and pdfs and would facilitate about 150 participants to watch and listen to live as well as prerecorded presentations and interact with each other in real time. Next to accommodating presentations, and live chats, the goal was to facilitate more informal encounters between participants and speakers, that would usually occur during coffee breaks in a hallway had meeting in person been possible. While negotiating what might be achievable in a limited timeframe and within the limitations of our technical skills, the website became an increasingly complex and large canvas, consisting of various so-called \'regions\' that could be navigated either as a map or as a list view. The different regions encoded different functions that referred to physical spaces one might find at a symposium or conference, such as a reception, an exhibition space, a library and a study room. The large canvas, which could be explored by scrolling or moving and dragging the mouse cursor, also functioned as a \'spatially\' distributed chat on which the many cursors of other website visitors were visible in real time. Messages could be left and live discussions could be held anywhere on the large canvas. Seeing the cursors of other visitors move around the canvas created a lively image and reminded visitors that they were not \'alone\' on the website.

![](media/image18.png){width="3.893768591426072in" height="2.3489588801399823in"}

Screenshots of the interface of the \'platframe\' for the 3rd

obfuscation workshop, May 2021*

![](media/image17.png){width="3.9555555555555557in" height="2.401388888888889in"}

Screenshots of the interface of the \'platframe\' for the 3rd

obfuscation workshop, May 2021*

It is often when platforms act up, that they stop converging. One becomes aware of them through problems that occur. However, as I have discussed in previous sections, it cannot be guaranteed that such \'platform issues\' can be anticipated, nor are they always explicit when they occur or perceived in a similar manner. A question that reoccurred to me during the process of working on this project was; what does it mean to build and work with platforms? Simultaneously, how can one problematize the way relationships evolve and are hindered with and through the emerging platform? How to consider platforms as problematic from the get-go? Or in Lury \'s words, what are \"vocabularies by which to understand the form of problems emerging in relations of continuity and transformation across a problem space.\"[^51]

The rephrasing of \'platform\' to \'platframe\' effectively illustrates how the process of developing a digital environment can, to some extent, sustain a question around its emerging \'edges\'---it brings to attention the limits of the \'platframe\' but also its possibilities. Throughout the process of imagining, building and activating the digital infrastructure, the edgy term \'platframe\' reminded me that this online environment we are building together consists of many parts, which do not necessarily blend together nor are they experienced as seamless.

The notion of the \'platframe\' underlines an evolved collective understanding and vocabulary that enabled us to approach and express to others, this technical object can be conceived of as unresolved, \'framing\' it as an experiment with the potential to fail. Leading up to the most active moments of the platframe (the day of the online exhibition opening, the workshop and conference days), many (not always easy) exchanges prepared us---along with the potential conference participants---for a bumpy collective online experience accommodating 150 people moving through streams, channels, chats, and maps of this self-made, self-hosted technical infrastructure.

I produced a \'copy\' of the website in the form of a PDF that could have been sent to participants via email, in case they weren\'t able to access the platframe anymore. Furthermore, we collectively wrote a Readme section that was published on the platframe, which incorporated reflection on the making process, instructions on how-to use the distributed chat and a list of potential soft and hardware (in)compatibilities. Karl created a guided platframe tour and Jara Rocha edited an elaborate document that incorporates different ways of dealing with the experience of \'digital discomfort\'.[^52] Below is an excerpt of the Readme section:

> \"This platform might challenge participants more than the by now > habitual experience of meeting on Zoom, Teams or Google Meet. As the > conference on obfuscation raises questions about inner workings, the > ethics, and the socio-technological entanglements, this platform too, > aims to trouble our expectations towards the platform. At times, the > platform will therefore ask a bit more patience and endurance than you > may be used to.\"[^53]

In her article \"Putting Problematization to the Test of Our Present\", Stengers described problematization as \"the creation of problems and the activity of learning required by them.\"[^54] Problems can thus be understood, not as hurdles to overcome, or in need of fixing, but as setting \"thinking, knowing and feeling into motion.\"[^55] Problematization is thus \"a form of experimentation, which implicates ourselves in our present, requiring that one allows oneself to be touched by what the present presents in the form of a test.\"[^56]

To summarize, the unresolved and experimental character of the platframe has been interwoven and written into its narrative from the beginning within the context of the group of collaborators, but also as part of announcements on social media, newsletters and websites of the various partner institutions and in the introduction speeches during the workshop and on conference days. Along with the evolving technical object, a collective vocabulary evolved that allowed those involved to prepare themselves and others for an unusual, perhaps slightly uncomfortable platform experience.

Conclusion: Platforming as a practice

The term platform---in its manifold meanings---has become general vernacular. It is widely discussed across disciplines and fields of knowledge and has also seeped into the everyday habits, economies and social conducts of collective practices, affecting their various spheres of life and work. Instead of offering another universalizing definition, or coining an alternative term, I argue for the material-discursive potential of collective platform-design processes that evolve from their changing meanings and materializations, attuned to the manner in which platform-design processes intersect different spheres, how they change and are changed through varying contexts and conditions.

I propose that collective platform-design processes foreground the manner in which platform characteristics can be articulated and put into practice in a contextual and distributed manner. Thus, platform-design should not be located in either the technical object, or an organizational model, or a group of people. Such platforms emerge along with specific quirks, requirements and curiosities of collectives, including those that are indeterminable and perhaps even undesired.

As a starting point, I asked whether platforms as unresolved and unreliable technical companions, and as inherently part of a collective, can be designed at all. The different platform-cases touched upon in this chapter focus on the possible approaches in dealing with \'external\' platform-design requests, as well as platform-design processes that evolved in a less distinctive manner. The two platform projects (Englishes MOOC, WPW) both combine various contexts, such as different educational and cultural institutions. Yet, both platform-design processes developed various kinds of affiliation between those involved, to the technical object in-the-making and to each other. While creating the Englishes MOOC platform, the roles of designer / developer, commissioner / end-users were rather distinct and similar to a traditional design commission, the Workshop Project Wiki shows other kinds of affiliations. The process of collectively imagining and actualizing a platform, brought together the two collectives and highlighted what they have in common.

These collective design processes evolve, operate and develop connections in a transversal manner, and therefore, cannot be articulated or \'designed\' from just one vantage point. A certain unresolvedness in the manner in which platforms are conceptualized and put into practice can offer openings for them to be carried into other contexts. The characteristics and purpose of platforms then, can be considered through various registers and timelines, which also require them to be defined and designed in a relational manner. For instance, ChattyPub is a publishing platform *and* a design tool *and* a workshop

and* a central organizational tool. ChattyPub evolved along with the

H&D collective by way of an accidental collision involving an energizing workshop that was harbored in the collective\'s memory. ChattyPub was also informed by H&D's curiosities about unusual publishing tools and formats, as well as the collective\'s desire to establish a central communication tool.

Collective platform-design processes are put into practice by challenging distinct boundaries and established design notions, even those that incorporate and consider collaborative processes, chance, contingency and interdisciplinary approaches. In my view, designing such platforms requires an expanded understanding and articulation of design, one that locates what it is to be designed (whether an object, a process or a context) across different spheres: different people, objects, contexts and timelines. Collective platform-design also requires taking into account several distributed \'platform\' meanings and materializations and their material-discursive potential. The various intersecting platform meanings and their material-discursive potential is here demonstrated through the transition of a physical platform installation, which was intended to function as an exhibition and workshop space and evolved into a DIY livestream platform necessitated by the global Covid19 pandemic. Platform metaphors can hold together people and objects throughout turbulent times and throughout the struggle to find the right words, as well as the appropriate visual, material, and technical means to articulate collective practice. The material-semantic transitions of \'platform\' are also indicative of the manner in which collectives pass through and engage with different contexts, their limits and possibilities to respond to such different (on and offline) environments. For instance, H&D's resistance to fixed definitions and finite products makes it, on the one hand, malleable and receptive to diverse contexts. On the other hand, the mutability of collectives can also create situations in which the diverging organizational, social and economic conditions generate increasing obligations and responsibilities. The example of the H&D livestream platform is demonstrative of the limitations of H&D\'s adaptability. Collective platform-design, as it has been discussed in this chapter, cannot accommodate anyone in any context, but requires specific attention and commitment to collectively developing context-specific, socio-technical conduct along with a design process.

Platforms, as they are discussed here---conceived as actively involved in collective practice---cannot be described in either spatial, figurative, organizational or technical terms. There is neither a blueprint for designing such platforms, nor a recipe for a fruitful process of collectively working on and with platforms. Rather, they take shape and change shape in action and through interaction, which, in my view, also makes it impossible to uphold a user-versus-designer distinction. The analysis of the H&D COOP platform---even though it was discontinued as a technical project---had long lasting effects on the organizing principles of H&D. Its making process served as a concrete occasion to reflect on concerns, desires and new imaginaries for the manner in which members of H&D wanted to work together and introduced a new discursive culture within the collective. Yet the H&D COOP also enforced new administrative obligations and new necessities of articulating involvements in a determinable, comparable manner. These forms of articulation became gradually part of new collective routines and stimulated active exchange and discussion of some members on the one hand, while simultaneously resulting in disengagement of others. The question that arises from the case of the H&D COOP platform as well as the discomforts caused by the H&D live stream, is whether it is conceivable that such experimental platforms-in-the-making, along with their evolving socio-technical conducts, can be designed in a manner that takes their potential for being potentially problematic, exclusionary and alienating into account. It is my view that an expanded design vocabulary is necessary in order to approach such a question in a manner that does not center the figure of the platform-designer or the self-contained object \'platform\' as an entity that can be controlled and managed. Building on my analysis of the platframe*,* I propose

other* possible articulations that offshoot from the notion of

designing one singular technical object into various forms of expressions. Such formats and practices may be unresolved and distributed, but stable enough to hold together people and objects. They are utterances indicative of a shared commitment and responsibility towards the articulation work required to prepare ourselves and others for the platform-issues potentially awaiting us.

To summarize, \'platform\' is a capacious concept that holds the potential for collective design processes to trespass and connect a manifold of contexts, practices, economies and timelines. Along with different interpretations and materializations, such platforms can challenge pre-established design conventions that assume roles as distinct, processes as successive and determinable and outcomes as purposeful in a generalizing sense. Collective platform-design processes, as they are interwoven with multiple contexts and conditions, can foreground, in a concrete and material manner, other possible scenarios of working, learning and being together with and through digital tools and technical infrastructure. If such processes are taken as an occasion to learn *from* and *with,* and to collectively articulate context-specific vocabulary and socio-technical conduct, such collective platform-design projects can uphold a critical collective awareness about the relationships they may enable, or disrupt.

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Cultural Studies Review* 11, no. 1 (2005): 183--196.

Stengers, Isabelle.\"Putting Problematization to the Test of Our Present.\" *Theory, Culture & Society* 38, no. 2 (2021): 71--92.

Suchman, Lucy \"Located accountabilities in technology production,\"

Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems* 14, no. 2, 7, (2002).

[[91]{.underline}](http://aisel.aisnet.org/sjis/vol14/iss2/7)

Suchman, Lucy \"Configuration.\" *Inventive Methods edited by Celia Lury; Nina Wakeford*. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. *Friction: an ethnography of global connection*. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press: 2005.

Tsoukas, Haridimos. \"Organization as Chaosmos." *Organization and Organizing Materiality, Agency, and Discourse edited by* Daniel Robichaud and François Cooren. New York: Routledge, 2013.

Vallas, Steven and Juliet B. Schor \"What Do Platforms Do? Understanding the Gig Economy.\" *Annual Review of Sociology* 46 (July 2020): 273--294.

Relevant links

[[92]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Chattypub)

[[93]{.underline}](https://www.englishes-mooc.org/)

[[94]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Englishes_MOOC)

[[95]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Free_Wiki)

[[96]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Obfuscation_platframe)

[[97]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/H%26D_livestream)

\"A catalog of formats for digital discomfort\" edited by Jara Rocha [[98]{.underline}](http://titipi.org/projects/discomfort/CatalogOFFDigitalDiscomfort.pdf)

[[99]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Publishing/p/Hackers_%26_Designers_Coop%2C_2018_Retrospective_by_James_Bryan_Graves)

[[100]{.underline}](https://www.discourse.org/)

[[101]{.underline}](http://www.workshopproject.org/)

[[102]{.underline}](https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki)

[[103]{.underline}](https://etherpad.org/)

[[104]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Presentation_H_D_fst.017.jpeg)

[[105]{.underline}](https://babf.no/program/workshop-chattypub-hackers-designers)

[[106]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Open%2A_tools_for_collective_organizing)

[[107]{.underline}](https://platformlabor.net/output/criticizing-disruption-platformization-discontent)

[^1]: The H&D website uses MediaWiki as a content managment system:

   hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Publishing/p/The_making_of_hackersanddesigners.nl,
   last accessed March 2022.

[^2]: ChattPub is a publishing tool that utilizes the open-source

   collaboration and chat application Zulip
   hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Chattypub, last accessed March
   2022.

[^3]: The Free Wiki converges Wiki software with the open-source

   collaborative note taking software Etherpad
   hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Free_Wiki, last accessed March
   2022.

[^4]: Ethercalc is an open-source online spreadsheet software:

   hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/H%26D_Ethercalc, last accessed
   March 2022.

[^5]: Hyperdrive is a peer-to-peer file sharing tool developed by H&D

   member Karl Moubarak:
   hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2020/p/Becoming_a\_Server,
   last accessed March 2022.

[^6]: Zoom is a company providing \"videotelephony and online chat

   services through a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform used
   for video communications (Meetings), messaging (Chat), voice calls
   (Phone), conference rooms for video meetings (Rooms), virtual events
   (Events) and contact centers (Contact Center), and offers an open
   platform allowing third-party developers to build custom
   applications on its unified communications platform (Developer
   Platform). Zoom software was first launched in 2013
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications

   Zoom has been widely critiqued for its privacy and corporate data
   sharing policies:
   https://www.consumerreports.org/video-conferencing-services/zoom-teleconferencing-privacy-concerns-a2125181189/

[^7]: Google Meet (formerly known as Hangouts Meet) was launched in 2017

   as a video-communication service developed by Google.
   [[108]{.underline}](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Meet),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^8]: Microsoft Teams is a proprietary business communication platform

   initially released in 2017 by Microsoft, \"offering workspace chat
   and videoconferencing, file storage, and application integration\".
   [[109]{.underline}](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Teams),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^9]: Tarleton Gillespie, \"The politics of 'platforms'\'\', *new media

   & society* 12, no. 3 (2010): 349.

[^10]: Jane Guyer: \"According to Gillespie (2010), the Oxford English

   Dictionary lists fifteen different referents for \"platform,\" and
   the Wikipedia \"disambiguation\" page directs us to twenty-two
   different entries.\" Guyer, Jane I., \"From Market to Platform:
   Shifting Analytics for the Study of Current Capitalism\" *Legacies,
   Logics, Logistic* (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press,
   2016): 115.

[^11]: The project description by Nicoline van Harskamp contextualizes

   \'platform\' slightly differently. It refers to one specific feature
   of the website and infrastructure as a platform -- the discussion
   feature \"\[The MOOC\] also features a platform for live discussion
   between its participants.\"
   [[110]{.underline}](https://www.englishes-mooc.org/),
   last accessed April 2022.

[^12]: The platform became an enclosed environment that participants

   could access after receiving a login. The course was divided into
   different blocks and course materials (videos, preparatory readings,
   schedules, assignments) would be released one block at a time, over
   the course of six weeks. The platform offered the possibility for
   discussions in a live chat room and participants could upload their
   assignments.

[^13]: [[111]{.underline}](https://www.englishes-mooc.org/),

   last accessed April 2022.

[^14]: The platform was built upon an open-source forum software called

   Discourse, that allowed for the creation of different channels,
   which we repurposed to differentiate the course modules within the
   structure of the website. The functionalities of the forum software
   allowed us to create more and less public areas of the website, some
   of which could be accessed by anyone with a link, and some only with
   user logins and once modules were released. Eventually, when the
   course took place, the chat function was barely used by the
   participants. Neither was the upload button (to submit assignments
   and exercises).
   [[112]{.underline}](https://www.discourse.org/),
   last accessed April 2022.

[^15]: The Englishes MOOC was funded by the Creative Industries Fund NL

   and supported by Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit
   Amsterdam. Creative Industries Fund usually does not fund projects
   evolving in educational institutions.

[^16]: The Workshop Project Wiki converges DokuWiki -- an open source

   wiki software that doesn\'t require a database, and Etherpad, a
   real-time collaborative note taking tool. I developed this Wiki-Pad
   mesh together with H&D member André Fincato, \[Img: WPW - Etherpad
   https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Presentation_H\_D_fst.017.jpeg\]

   Editors can read, edit and create articles. A new Etherpad is
   automatically generated along with and bound to every new Wiki
   article. The pads other than the Wiki articles are only accessible
   with a user account.

[^17]: \"Designed for collaboration while maintaining a history of every

   change\"
   [[113]{.underline}](https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^18]: Etherpad allows editing documents collaboratively in real-time

   [[114]{.underline}](https://etherpad.org/), last
   accessed March 2022.

[^19]: I was invited to Otis College of Art and Design, as a visiting

   student in the summer of 2010, and as a visiting lecturer in 2012
   and 2014.

[^20]: With syntax I refer to the hypertext markup language used to

   format Wiki articles.

[^21]: Jane I. Guyer \"From Market to Platform\" (first published in

   2012) Jane I. Guyer, \'Legacies, Logics, Logistics\' (The University
   of Chicago, 2016): 110-127.

[^22]: Social and cultural anthropologist Jane Guyer proposes the term

   \'platform\' as an alternative to the term \'market\' and \'platform
   economy\' as an alternative to \'market economy\'. Guyer, Jane I.,
   \"From Market to Platform: Shifting Analytics for the Study of
   Current Capitalism,\" *Legacies, Logics, Logistic* (Chicago, London:
   The University of Chicago Press, 2016).

[^23]: Platforms are widely discussed, particularly their implications

   in the global economy and society at large. In *Platform Capitalism*
   Nick Srnicek, writer and lecturer in the fields of political
   philosophy and digital economy, differentiates the sphere of
   platform capitalism. Most ubiquitous is the category of advertising
   platforms such as Google and Facebook that extract and analyze the
   information of platform users, in order to sell space for
   advertisement. There are cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services
   that own and rent out server infrastructure to digital-dependent
   businesses, and product platforms such as Spotify that collect
   subscription fees. Lean platforms like Uber, Airbnb and Taskrabbit
   position themselves as platforms upon which users, customers, and
   workers can meet and take part in the \'gig economy\'. Their
   platform model is profitable through hyper-outsourcing and keeping
   costs as low as possible. Nick Srnicek, *Platform Capitalism*,
   Cambridge; Malden: Polity, 2017.\
   \"Bowker and Star say, 'infrastructure does more than make work
   easier, faster or more efficient; it changes the very nature of what
   is understood by work.\" In: Celia Lury \"Platforms and the
   Epistemic Infrastructure,\" *Problem Spaces. How and Why Methodology
   Matters* (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021).

[^24]: System fonts are the typefaces already installed on a computer

   through its operating system. These typefaces do not require
   licenses and are usually considered inelegant.

[^25]: The FST Wiki is used to take notes during meetings, to write and

   edit outlines for conversations and interviews, to accumulate
   resource lists, to write workshop outlines and to structure the
   clusters of library categorization.
   [[115]{.underline}](https://wiki.feministsearchtool.nl/),
   last accessed February 2022.

[^26]: Suchman, Lucy (2002) \"Located accountabilities in technology

   production,\" *Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems* 14, no.
   2: 7.

[^27]: Adrian MacKenzie and Anna Munster \"Platform Seeing: Image

   Ensembles and Their Invisualities,\" *Theory, Culture & Society* 36,
   no. 5 (2019): 3-22.

[^28]: Workshop outline of the Experimental Chatroom workshop on the H&D

   website:
   [[116]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2020/p/Experimental_Chatroom),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^29]: Experimental Chatroom workshop script developed by Xin Xin and

   Lark VCR:
   [[117]{.underline}](https://experimental-chatroom-workshop.glitch.me/script.html),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^30]: Zulip is an open-source software application that combines the

   immediacy of real-time chat with an email threading model.
   [[118]{.underline}](https://zulip.com/), last
   accessed March 2022.

[^31]: CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is \"a stylesheet

   language used to describe the presentation of a document written in
   HTML or XML. CSS describes how elements should be rendered on
   screen, on paper, in speech, or on other media.\"
   [[119]{.underline}](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS),
   last accessed March 2022.

[^32]: For instance, in 2021 at GFZK Leipzig \'Digit\'

   [[120]{.underline}](https://digit.gfzk.de/de)
   and the self-organized H&D symposium \'Open\* tools for collective
   organizing\' in 2021
   [[121]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Open%2A_tools_for_collective_organizing)
   and at Bergen Art book fair in 2022
   [[122]{.underline}](https://babf.no/program/workshop-chattypub-hackers-designers),
   last accessed April 2022.

[^33]: Gillespie, Tarleton "The Politics of 'Platforms'." *New Media &

   Society* 12, no. 3 (May 2010): 349.

[^34]: ibid

[^35]: [[123]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Publishing/p/Momentary_Zine)

[^36]: [[124]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Self-Driving_Car_in_Basel)

[^37]: [[125]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Interfacial_Workout)

   [[126]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Body_Electric)

[^38]: We tried to organized prototype exhibitions at Dublin Science

   Gallery in 2019 and H&D Summer Academy 2017 'On &/ Off the Grid at
   Mediamatic and De Ruimte in Amsterdam.

[^39]: An organization might profile itself as a platform when it gives

   stage to individuals or groups to address an audience or gain
   recognition. In that context, a platform is often seen as a support
   structure from which to speak or act.

   https://www.platformbk.nl/ ("Platform BK researches the role of art
   in society and takes action for a better art policy. We represent
   artists, curators, designers, critics and other cultural
   producers.")

   https://thehmm.nl/ ("The Hmm is an inclusive platform for internet
   cultures.")

   https://v2.nl/organization ("V2\_ offers a platform for artists,
   designers, scientists, researchers, theorists, and developers of
   software and hardware from various disciplines to discuss their work
   and share their findings.")

   https://pub.sandberg.nl/information ("PUB functions as a hub and a
   platform...")

   https://www.li-ma.nl/lima/about ("LIMA is the platform in the
   Netherlands for media art, new technologies and digital
   culture\...")

[^40]: [[127]{.underline}](https://bodybuilding.hackersanddesigners.nl/),

   last accessed May 2022.

[^41]: [[128]{.underline}](https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/the-hmm-livestream),

   last accessed May 2022.

[^42]: \"Inefficient Tools for Quantified Beings\", exhibition and

   public program at NDSM FUSE in Amsterdam:
   [[129]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Inefficient_Tools_for_Quantified_Beings_Exhibition_and_Public_Program_at_FUSE),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^43]: The initial livestream platform was developed by André Fincato in

   collaboration with Karl Moubarak, both members of H&D. Karl also
   installed and developed the livestream for two Amsterdam-based
   organizations \'The Hmm\' and \'Sonic Acts\'.

[^44]: Explanation about the functioning of the H&D COOP platform:

   Projects could be proposed to the coop by one or more members. Other
   coop members review the project proposal, which they can either
   fund, reject or, they can suggest how the project should improve.
   Within this workflow anything the cooperative does, any activity or
   purchase, needs to be described as a project, including structural
   activities such as administration, server maintenance, communication
   and writing funding applications. A project cannot be funded by the
   members who initiate it. That means H&D COOP members cannot fund
   their own projects but only contribute to others.

[^45]: Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart

   contract functionality.
   [[130]{.underline}](https://ethereum.org/en/),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^46]: Guyer, Jane I., \"From Market to Platform: Shifting Analytics for

   the Study of Current Capitalism,\" *Legacies, Logics, Logistic*
   (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2016): 125.

[^47]: ibid.

[^48]: Lauren Berlant \"Infrastructures for Troubling Times,\"

   *Environment and Planning D: Society and Space* 34, no. 3, (2016):
   393-419.

[^49]: Celia Lury \"Platforms and the Epistemic Infrastructure,\"

   *Problem Spaces. How and Why Methodology Matters* (Cambridge: Polity
   Press, 2021).

[^50]: The 3rd Workshop on obfuscation was organized by Ero Balsa

   (Cornell Tech), Seda Gürses (TU Delft), Helen Nissenbaum (Cornell
   Tech) and Jara Rocha (Independent researcher).

[^51]: Celia Lury \"Platforms and the Epistemic Infrastructure,\"

   *Problem Spaces. How and Why Methodology Matters*, (Cambridge:
   Polity Press, 2021): 47.

[^52]: [[131]{.underline}](http://titipi.org/projects/discomfort/CatalogOFFDigitalDiscomfort.pdf)

[^53]: [[132]{.underline}](https://3rd.obfuscationworkshop.org/readme)

[^54]: Isabelle Stengers \"Putting Problematization to the Test of Our

   Present\", *Theory, Culture & Society* 38, no. 2 (2021): 71--92.

[^55]: Celia Lury \"Platforms and the Epistemic Infrastructure,\"

   *Problem Spaces. How and Why Methodology Matters* (Cambridge: Polity
   Press, 2021): 14.

[^56]: Isabelle Stengers \"Putting Problematization to the Test of Our

   Present,\" *Theory, Culture & Society* 38, no. 2 (2021): 71--92.

Conclusion

I began this dissertation by claiming that many design theories are still too attached to, and therefore insufficiently question, the notion of a \'purposeful\' relation between design and collectivity. As I have explained in the first chapter \'Design & Collectivity\', it is often during moments of crisis and disorientation when desires for collectivity are articulated. Designers and design theorists are calling for collective approaches as a form of disciplinary disobedience,[^1] to counteract permanent insecurity,[^2] and to redesign economies and interdependencies.[^3] Collectivity is proposed an organizing principle that embraces care[^4] and resists exploitative forms of life.[^5]

However, these ongoing calls for collectivity within the field of design do not so often address how exactly this structure shift might occur?

How* precisely is collective design put into practice? My thesis has

focused throughout on the \'how\' of collective design, and to some extent, this dissertation is a counter-proposition to the notion of a \'purposeful\' relationship between design and collectivity. In this concluding chapter I will summarize and reflect on the findings of my thesis, which were initiated and directed by my central question: How to design *for* and *with* collectivity*?* To gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between design and collective practice, I have discussed the various ways in which collectivity and design are understood, articulated and practiced in the context of the Hackers & Designers collective. My analysis of different in-practice examples demonstrates how collective design processes can be conceived of and put into practice in a manner that is distributed over people, objects, conditions and timelines.

While the desire for collectivity often occurs during moments of uncertainty, frustration or (dis)orientation, I argue that collectives are not and should not be framed as a panacea to the issues at stake. Collectives are often (rhetorically) used as stand-ins for what is not functioning or cannot be immediately addressed. My argument is that collective practices should also be considered a result of and a reason for, unstable, unreliable social, technical, and economic conditions. Collective practices are fragile ecosystems that operate on the basis of a semi-committed engagement on the part of practitioners who are all, individually and collectively, trying to uphold a balance between their diverging socio-material conditions. Thus, collective practice, in the way it is problematized in this thesis, is not fully deliberate, at least not in the same way as for instance \'teamwork\', \'the commons\', or \'cooperativism\', are purposeful organizational frameworks for living, working or being together. Collective design processes, as discussed here, take part in and are a result of particular (often fragile) socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and shape the ways collectives function. They also signify the formats and conducts they resort to, such as short-lived workshops and chaotic ways of working and being together. The fragmentation of social and work relations is as much a characteristic of collective practice as the effort to sustain long-term relationships. As fragmented and permeable configurations, collectives are therefore not enclosed entities. They take shape in response to the various contexts within which they travel, and in turn are implicated in such contexts.

To clarify, I am not proposing a turn away from collective practice, nor am I disregarding the efforts and accomplishments of the many collectives that have inspired me to engage with and write about the relationship between design and collectivity. The ubiquity of collectives are indicative of our times. They can be incredibly inventive, critical and reflective in the ways they manage to organize themselves and others, despite their often sparse resources (i.e., little time, money and space) while dealing with unstable, unclear and uncertain conditions. On the one hand, this inventiveness plays into the unstable condition of diverging socio-economic realities, while on the other hand, collectives simultaneously develop formats and practices that resist fragmentation and sustain continuity. A workshop's instantiation is not simply a single instance of gathering, but is rather a component of an expansive, distributed and iterative process of building a tool or making a publication.

Nonetheless, the double bind of collectivity requires critical attention and articulation that moves beyond general, positive and container definitions. This dissertation has examined this double-bind throughout. I propose (and have put into practice throughout my thesis) actively working against the stable and fetishizing image of collective practices, instead paying critical attention to the inefficient and convoluted ways of organizing, designing and programming. The refusal of efficiency, usefulness and finality also carries potential for subtle but effective forms of resistance against a general acceptance and normalization of such unstable, precarious times and working conditions.

I have proposed and contextualized several subtle tactics throughout this thesis; ways that collective design processes critically negotiate socio-material conditions, which point towards a (desirable) future for collective practices. Such tactics are not necessarily deliberate. They evolve within and are responsive to specific collisions of people, tools, contexts and should therefore not be read as recipes but as an invitation to others to consider their meaning within the site/context-specificity of their respective collective environments, perhaps inventing their own maneuvers.

Making oneself understood through collective design practice

Throughout the various chapters of this dissertation, I have paid sustained attention to the different manners in which collective design processes assemble people, tools, infrastructure and offer occasions for those involved to make themselves understood---for instance in workshop situations or through the collective process of imagining and making a Feminist Search Tool.

Workshops, as peculiar temporary spaces, require a certain openness and flexibility in order to attune to their contingent socio-material dynamics. The divergence between practitioner's ways of doing and making becomes itself a condition that requires attention and explication of what usually goes without saying (i.e. skilled practice).[^6] These workshops are occasions for trying and testing articulations of other practices, experimenting with making oneself understood and understanding the *other* through different registers; verbal, aesthetic, technical, methodical utterances.

I have also proposed the format of the \'workshop script\' as well as a \'workshop about workshops.\' Both explicate and interrogate the otherwise ambiguous format of the workshop as it has become unquestionably accepted in a manifold of contexts, crossing boundaries between art and activism, between different disciplines and institutions, between commercial and educational contexts. A \'meta\' workshop about workshops opened up the workshop as a format to be questioned and unleashed a process of collectively reimagining and reiterating workshop propositions and methods within the very context the workshops would take place. Participants were workshop hosts and vice versa and could together articulate and put into practice a desirable, context-sensitive workshop atmosphere that worked against fashionable workshop rhetoric (rapid, sprint, agile, marathon), which insinuate high-velocity, hyper-efficient and result-oriented production.

The chapter \'Tool-building\' discusses the collective tool-making project \'Feminist Search Tools\' (FST), a fragmented and non-conclusive process, marked by the different (some rather precarious) socio-economic realities of those participating. As such, it required *other* ways of working together that resist linearity and teleological understandings of the design process. Through the slow and fragmented making process, the \'tool\' along with its meaning and actualization, was questioned constantly, conceptually, technically, ethically, though not necessarily conclusively. Personal desires, frustrations, observations and issues were expressed throughout the process of imagining and making a tool. Various aspects of the tool-in-the-making, including technical problems, discomforts, personal hopes and desires for it to become \'useful\', were repeated and rehearsed in the different contexts and at a pace that included all participants, regardless of whether they would be able to attend every workshop and meeting.

Conscious inefficiency

\'Slow collective processing\' is what I call the process of narrating and testing the FST through various workshops, meetups, in various contexts and different constellations. Within this non-conclusive process, the same issues were revisited repeatedly. Drawing on Sara Ahmed\'s exploration of the concept of \'use\' and the metaphysical meaning of \'tool\' as developed by Graham Harman, Bruno Latour and Karen Barad, I argue that the inefficiency of such a process can be generative and inventive in and of itself. It can emphasize other-than-utilitarian relationships to tools, as well as various context-specific criteria and articulations for usefulness or usability of such tools, which I have summarized with the phrase \'broken-tool-in-action\'. This approach which I call \'conscious inefficiency\' is explored throughout the various chapters and is distilled here in this concluding chapter as yet another subtle tactic for collective design practices to critically and inventively negotiate their specific socio-material conditions. For instance, the lens of \'conscious inefficiency\' highlights the resourceful and thoughtful manner in which collective practices connect different people, environments, tools and technical infrastructure.

The chapter \'Platform-design issues\' discusses different collective experiments in \'platform-making\'. For instance *ChattPub,* (an experimental publishing platform) could be regarded as inefficient and convoluted if considered a mere design software. Yet as I have argued, such self-made platforms can become inherently part of a collective\'s functioning. As part of ongoing collective actualization, collective platform-design processes bring about contextual and critical socio-technical conducts and articulations, which in turn are significant for their \'functioning\'. As such, collective platform-design experiments resist and readjust generalizing perceptions of what is inevitable and what is useful.

Leaning into friction: Problematization as experimentation

Throughout the various chapters I have recurrently referred to the writing of feminist scholar and physicist Karen Barad. Barad wrote in

Meeting the Universe Halfway*: \"the point is not merely that knowledge

practices have material consequences but that practices of knowing are specific material engagements that participate in (re)configuring the world. Which practices we enact matter--in both senses of the word.\"[^7] Technical objects, as they are conceptualized and materialized in and through collective practice, *matter*. They are not alternatives for \'seamless\' proprietary tools, or \'easy-to-use\' commercial platforms. They are also not merely speculative or illustrative. The practical and experimental approach to conceptualizing and designing tools and platforms *differently* matters in material ways. Such experiments enable collectives to concretely and imaginatively test out and put into practice other socio-technical relationships.

I have argued that self-made platforms, as they are imagined and materialized in and through collective practice, are somewhat unreliable, unresolved and may create discomfort. Simultaneously, they put into practice *other* possible platform-design scenarios. Drawing on Celia Lury and Isabelle Stengers work on problematization[^8] and problem spaces[^9] I argued that such platform-design experiments are remarkable in the way they can sustain a collective awareness of platforms as potentially \'problematic\' from the get-go. Those who are imagining, building and using such platforms, can develop a critical consciousness of their potential failures, and together learn to lean into their frictions. In my view, such an approach differentiates a collective design processes as theorized in this dissertation from, for instance, participatory design, adversarial,[^10] or contestational design[^11] or from critical/speculative design.[^12] I argue that collective platform-design processes imagine and put into practice

other* possible ways of designing and working together with and through

technical objects that are neither utilitarian/solution-driven nor antagonizing.

Collective vocabularies: Invented words and ambiguous concepts

[Made-up terminology]{.underline}

In the chapter \"Platform-design issues\" I refer to the word \'platframe\', a term made-up during a collective process of designing and building a digital environment for collaboration, and how its recurrent use contributed to sustaining a collective awareness and questionability of the limits and possibilities of the platform-in-the-making. Such word inventions underline how collectives are able to express socio-technical relationships as problematic on the one hand, and on the other, build and sustain a somewhat supportive relationship with the evolving technical object and with each other.

Collective practices often develop their own vocabulary. The invented term \'nautonomy\' by Raqs Media Collective[^13] is a good example, which they define as

> \"more than autonomy. It is nautical, voyaging and mobile. Nautonomy > re-articulates and re-founds the \'self-organizing\' principle > inherent in what is generally understood when considering the idea of > autonomy, while recognizing that the entity mistakenly called \'self\' > is actually more precisely an unbounded constellation of persons, > organisms and energies that is defined by its capacity to be a voyager > in contact with a moving world.\"[^14]

Constant Association for Art and Media[^15] also work with invented terminology.[^16] Words such as \'ex-titutions', \'DiVersions\' and 'cqrrelations', are reminiscent of and relate to familiar terms.[^17] Yet, they are invented when familiar terminology does not fully suffice or encompass all the attributes and idiosyncrasies of continuously evolving collective practices. Alternative dictionaries, lexicons, \'contradictionaries\'[^18] attend to these invented collective vocabularies. The book *Making Matters -- A Vocabulary of Collective Arts* is an example of such a repository, which this research has contributed to and benefited from.[^19]

[Piggybacking on ambiguous concepts]{.underline}

In the chapter \'workshop production\' I propose that concepts such as \'workshop\', \'tool\' and \'platform\' blend seamlessly into the trajectories of contemporary precarious cultural workers and have also become part of a common vocabulary around collective practices. Yet there is a risk of obscuring the implications of collective practices that come with ambiguous terminology and flexible definitions. Nevertheless, I persist with \'workshop\', \'tool\' and \'platform\' and throughout the various chapters, I disentangle and disambiguate their meaning and functioning for collective practice. I argue that these ambiguous concepts and formats are indicative of the inventiveness of collectives. They are equally loose and stable enough for collectives to interact with different contexts and to keep those involved connected, while simultaneously defining and redefining what that means. Persisting with \'workshop\', \'tool\' and \'platform\' to articulate and practice collectivity means to always take into account the fact that such concepts and formats require critical attention. For instance, it is my view that organizing workshops responsibly requires context-specific interrogation of how a workshop should be actualized and its implications for the specific context in the long-term. This question cannot be answered in general terms. Thus, it must be revisited again and again and should be answered in accordance with the particular composition of people, resources, tools, infrastructures and environments involved.

Designing for and with collectivity

As I have argued, the relationships between design and collectivity cannot be presupposed as relationships of utility. Therefore, it requires relational approaches for articulating collective design practice. Designing *with* collectivity proposes a relationship between design and collective practice that is reciprocal and mutually entangled, and differentiates collective practice from other modes of working and designing together.

Designing with others

Designing *with* collectivity means to be involved in design processes that are distributed over various people, objects, diverging timelines and conditions. It is a process, not a method or a goal, in the sense that a participatory design process would follow a goal by involving others, i.e., to improve design processes or outcomes. Designing with collectivity is not about designing better. It is an imaginative as well as concrete material process of being and doing things together differently from how it would be usually done. It is about imagining and putting into practice \'terms of transition\', forging collective imaginaries for \"managing the meanwhile within damaged life\'s perdurance.\"[^20]

Designing for continuity

Gaining a deeper understanding of the relationship between design and collectivity goes hand in hand with learning to design *with* collectivity---that is, attuning to collectives\' unpredictabilities. As fragile and unreliable ecosystems, collectives are reflective of our unstable times, and as such, also offer possibilities for those involved to develop subtle tactics to address and counteract technical and economic uncertainties, flexibilization and fragmentation of work and life. Designing *for* collectivity is indicative of the effort to keep those involved connected, while upholding critical, ethical and sustainable ways of working and being together.

Collective practices develop context-specific social and technical conduct, which I have also compared to the manner in which workshop instructors take care to maintain their workshop spaces, in terms of both facilities and hospitality. While formats and utterances of collective practice seem dispersed and never resolved, they are significant for their continuity and long-term commitments. As I have demonstrated throughout with reference to various examples, designing for and with collectivity is an artful balancing act, which cannot be prescribed as a design method but contributes to the larger field and discourse of design, precisely through its requirement of continuous practice and problematization. In persisting with this sustained effort, collective design practices offer the opportunity to readjust and rearticulate generalizing perspectives to relational, context-sensitive and iterative approaches to designing with others.

Bibliography

Abdullah, Danah, \"Disciplinary Disobedience. A Border-Thinking Approach to Design.\" *Design Struggles* edited by Nina Paim and Claudia Mareis. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2020, 227-238.

Barad, Karen. *Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning*. Durhan, London: Duke University Press, 2007.

Brave New Alps, \"Precarity Pilot,\" 2015, https://modesofcriticism.org/precarity-pilot/.

Cramer, Florian and Janneke Wesseling (eds.). *Making Matters. A Vocabulary for Collective Arts.* Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022.

Davis, Cherry-Ann and Nina Paim (Complaint Collective). \"Does Design Care?\" 2021, https://futuress.org/magazine/does-design-care/.

DiSalvo, Carl. *Adversarial Design*. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2012.

Escobar, Arturo. \"Design for the Pluriverse.\" Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018.

Hirsch, Tad. \"Contestational Design: Innovation for Political Activism.\" PhD diss., MIT, 2008.

Lovink, Geert. \"Precarious by Design.\" Silvio Lorusso. e*veryone is an entrepreneur. nobody is safe.* Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2019.

Lury, Celia. *Problem Spaces. How and Why Methodology Matters*. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021.

Mugrefya, Élodie and Femke Snelting. \"DiVersions. An Introduction.\"

DIVERSIONS / DIVERSIONS / DIVERSIES*, (2020),

https://diversions.constantvzw.org/wiki/index.php?title=Introduction#introduction

Raqs Media Collective. \"Nautonomat Operating Manual. A Draft Design for A Collective Space of \'Nautonomy\' for Artists and their Friends.\"

Mobile Autonomy. Exercises in Artists\' Self-organization edited by

Nico Dockx & Pascal Gielen*, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2015.

Snelting, Femke. \"Undisciplined.\" Janneke Wesseling & Florian Cramer (ed.) *Making Matters. A Vocabulary of Collective Arts,* Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022.

Stengers, Isabelle. *In Catastrophic Times.* London: Open Humanities Press, 2015.

Stengers, Isabelle. \"Putting Problematization to the Test of Our Present.\" *Theory, Culture & Society* 38, no. 2 (2021): 71--92.

Suchman, Lucy \"Configuration.\" *Inventive Methods* edited by Celia Lury; Nina Wakeford. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

[^1]: \"I propose the decolonial concept of border-thinking within

   design as a method of disciplinary disobedience for moving design
   towards more collective approaches.\" Danah Abdullah, \"Disciplinary
   Disobedience. A Border-Thinking Approach to Design,\" in: Nina Paim
   and Claudia Mareis \"Design Struggles\" (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2020):
   228.

[^2]: \"Yet, despite all the flexibility and ever-changing styles and

   modes of production, what lacks is the collective design of a
   subjectivity that would overcome permanent insecurity\" Geert
   Lovink, foreword in Silvio Lorusso. *everyone is an entrepreneur.
   nobody is safe.* (Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2019): 12.

[^3]: \"It becomes possible to collectively redesign economies and

   interdependencies in ways that defy, resist and/or exit precarising
   ways of organising and designing.\" Brave New Alps, \"Precarity
   Pilot\", 2015,
   [[133]{.underline}](https://modesofcriticism.org/precarity-pilot/),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^4]: \"To embrace care as an organizing principle in every part of

   life, we must do so collectively.\" Complaint Collective, \"Does
   Design Care?\" Cherry-Ann Davis and Nina Paim, 2021,
   [[134]{.underline}](https://futuress.org/magazine/does-design-care/),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^5]: \"The collective determination toward transitions, broadly

   understood, may be seen as a response to the urge for innovation and
   the creation of new, nonexploitative forms of life, out of the
   dreams, desires, and struggles of so many groups and peoples
   worldwide.\" Arturo Escobar, *Design for the Pluriverse* (Durham and
   London: Duke University Press, 2018): 7.

[^6]: Isabelle Stengers wrote: \"It should be unnecessary to emphasize

   that making divergences present and important has nothing to do with
   respect for differences of opinion, it must be said. It is the
   situation that, via the divergent knowledges it activates, gains the
   power to cause those who gather around it to think and hesitate
   together.\"

   Isabelle Stengers, *In Catastrophic Times* (London: Open Humanities
   Press, 2015): 143.

[^7]: Karen Barad, *Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and

   the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning* (Durhan, London: Duke
   University Press, 2007): 91.

[^8]: Isabelle Stengers \"Putting Problematization to the Test of Our

   Present,\" *Theory, Culture & Society* 38, no. 2 (2021): 71--92.

[^9]: Celia Lury \"Platforms and the Epistemic Infrastructure,\"

   *Problem Spaces. How and Why Methodology Matters* (Cambridge: Polity
   Press, 2021): 14.

[^10]: Carl DiSalvo, *Adversarial Design* (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT

   Press, 2012).

[^11]: Tad Hirsch, \'Contestational Design: Innovation for Political

   Activism,\' (PhD diss., Media Art and Sciences, MIT, 2008): 23.

[^12]: Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby, \"CRITICAL DESIGN FAQ\"

   [[135]{.underline}](http://dunneandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/13/0),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^13]: Raqs Media Collective, \"Nautonomat Operating Manual. A Draft

   Design for A Collective Space of \'Nautonomy\' for Artists and their
   Friends,\" *Mobile Autonomy. Exercises in Artists\'
   Self-organization* edited by Nico Dockx & Pascal Gielen (Amsterdam:
   Valiz, 2015): 100.

[^14]: ibid.

[^15]: The activities and practices of Constant \"depart from feminisms,

   copyleft, Free/Libre + Open Source\" and encompass for instance
   programming, organizing exchanges and learning environments, making
   performances, writing, publishing, making installations
   [[136]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^16]: Femke Snelting, \"Undisciplined,\" *Making Matters. A Vocabulary

   of Collective Arts* (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022): 300.

[^17]: \"With the neologism "DiVersions" we wanted to allude to the

   possibility that technologies of \"versioning" might foreground
   divergent histories,\" Élodie Mugrefya, Femke Snelting,
   \"DiVersions. An Introduction,\" *DIVERSIONS / DIVERSIONS /
   DIVERSIES*
   [[137]{.underline}](https://diversions.constantvzw.org/wiki/index.php?title=Introduction#introduction),
   last accessed May 2022.

[^18]: Lucy Suchman, \"Configuration,\" I*nventive Methods* edited by

   Celia Lury; Nina Wakeford (London; New York : Routledge, Taylor &
   Francis Group, 2014): 48-60.

[^19]: Florian Cramer, J. Wesseling (ed), *Making Matters. A Vocabulary

   for Collective Arts* (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022).

[^20]: Lauren Berlant \"Infrastructures for Troubling Times,\"

   *Environment and Planning D: Society and Space* 34, no. 3 (2016):
   393--419.

Bibliography

Summary

This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). H&D self-organizes educational activities at the intersection of technology, design, art, and education with a focus on hands-on learning and collaboration between practitioners from the different fields. Along with organizing workshops people involved with H&D produce on and offline publications and build open source tools and platforms.  The main thesis of this research is that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of sufficiently expressing and accounting for collectivities' resistance to fixation and stabilization. Collective design as it is discussed here challenges notions of individual authorship, differentiations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. While collectives shape particular affiliations and commitments, design approaches and aesthetics, they also require perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of a design process.  Thus, collective practice is not to be misunderstood as a design method, or an antidote to an individualistic design approach. By means of several case studies, it is argued that the fragmentation of social and work relations is as much a characteristic of collective practice as the effort to sustain long-term relationships. As fragmented and permeable configurations, collectives take shape in response to the various contexts within which they travel, and in turn are implicated in such contexts. Thus, collective practice is not fully deliberate, at least not in the same way as for instance 'teamwork', 'the commons', or 'cooperativism', are purposeful organizational frameworks for living, working or being together. Collective design processes take part in and are a result of particular (often fragile) socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and shape the ways collectives function.

Taking H&D as a central study case, the relationship of design and collective practice is discussed through the three main concepts 'workshop', 'tool', 'platform' – all ubiquitous terms that travel through and change meaning in manifold contexts.

The workshop is examined as a site for specialized material production, in addition to its meaning as a format for bringing together groups of like-minded people; to meet, spend time together, work on a specific topic, and explore new techniques or tools. Paying critical attention to the tension between, on the one hand workshops as egalitarian learning formats, and on the other hand workshops' role in reinforcing neoliberal conditions, it is argued that the workshop is a format that is implied in the economization of education and the learning economy, and perpetuates a culture in which self-employment, self-improvement, and self-reliance is normalized. Drawing on different workshop situations it is exemplified how possibilities and pitfalls of the workshop as a format for cultural production are being dealt with within collective practice.

An 'inefficient' collective tool building process brings to the fore other-than-utilitarian articulations of tools. The concept 'tool' here refers to digital tools, software or hardware that are discussed through a distributed process of collectively imagining and building different tool versions that are referred to as 'Feminist Search Tools'. The FST project moved through and fed off short-lived formats for working together across different contexts. The manner in which purpose and meaning are continuously rearticulated contributes to the possibility of context-specific and relational understandings, and articulations of tools-in-the-making. I argue it is through a certain slowness and fragmentation of the collective process that the tool can be questioned conceptually, technically, ethically and not necessarily conclusively readjusting general perceptions of what is inevitable and what is useful in conceptualizing and actualizing tools.

Yet another angle of collective practice is discussed through the concept of the 'platform'—that of designing, using and maintaining technical infrastructures that cater to online collaboration, self-organization and self-publishing. Several collective platform projects bring into focus the manner in which self-made, appropriated or hacked tools are composed together and are deeply intertwined with a collective's evolving socio-technical characteristics and functioning. While evolving monocultures of platforms for online gathering created conditions in which it is difficult to imagine online collaboration otherwise, processes of collective platform-making point toward other possible socio-technical scenarios of designing and working together that are neither utilitarian, solution-driven or antagonizing.

Collective practices are situated. They are site, context, and time-specific, and so are their various expressions. This dissertation makes the thresholds of collective practice legible by discussing the ways collectivity weaves together a range of places, legacies, objects and people across practices and disciplines, and timelines.

Samenvatting

This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). H&D self-organizes educational activities at the intersection of technology, design, art, and education with a focus on hands-on learning and collaboration between practitioners from the different fields. Along with organizing workshops people involved with H&D produce on and offline publications and build open source tools and platforms.  The main thesis of this research is that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of sufficiently expressing and accounting for collectivities' resistance to fixation and stabilization. Collective design as it is discussed here challenges notions of individual authorship, differentiations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. While collectives shape particular affiliations and commitments, design approaches and aesthetics, they also require perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of a design process.  Thus, collective practice is not to be misunderstood as a design method, or an antidote to an individualistic design approach. By means of several case studies, it is argued that the fragmentation of social and work relations is as much a characteristic of collective practice as the effort to sustain long-term relationships. As fragmented and permeable configurations, collectives take shape in response to the various contexts within which they travel, and in turn are implicated in such contexts. Thus, collective practice is not fully deliberate, at least not in the same way as for instance 'teamwork', 'the commons', or 'cooperativism', are purposeful organizational frameworks for living, working or being together. Collective design processes take part in and are a result of particular (often fragile) socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and shape the ways collectives function.

Taking H&D as a central study case, the relationship of design and collective practice is discussed through the three main concepts 'workshop', 'tool', 'platform' – all ubiquitous terms that travel through and change meaning in manifold contexts.

The workshop is examined as a site for specialized material production, in addition to its meaning as a format for bringing together groups of like-minded people; to meet, spend time together, work on a specific topic, and explore new techniques or tools. Paying critical attention to the tension between, on the one hand workshops as egalitarian learning formats, and on the other hand workshops' role in reinforcing neoliberal conditions, it is argued that the workshop is a format that is implied in the economization of education and the learning economy, and perpetuates a culture in which self-employment, self-improvement, and self-reliance is normalized. Drawing on different workshop situations it is exemplified how possibilities and pitfalls of the workshop as a format for cultural production are being dealt with within collective practice.

An 'inefficient' collective tool building process brings to the fore other-than-utilitarian articulations of tools. The concept 'tool' here refers to digital tools, software or hardware that are discussed through a distributed process of collectively imagining and building different tool versions that are referred to as 'Feminist Search Tools'. The FST project moved through and fed off short-lived formats for working together across different contexts. The manner in which purpose and meaning are continuously rearticulated contributes to the possibility of context-specific and relational understandings, and articulations of tools-in-the-making. I argue it is through a certain slowness and fragmentation of the collective process that the tool can be questioned conceptually, technically, ethically and not necessarily conclusively readjusting general perceptions of what is inevitable and what is useful in conceptualizing and actualizing tools.

Yet another angle of collective practice is discussed through the concept of the 'platform'—that of designing, using and maintaining technical infrastructures that cater to online collaboration, self-organization and self-publishing. Several collective platform projects bring into focus the manner in which self-made, appropriated or hacked tools are composed together and are deeply intertwined with a collective's evolving socio-technical characteristics and functioning. While evolving monocultures of platforms for online gathering created conditions in which it is difficult to imagine online collaboration otherwise, processes of collective platform-making point toward other possible socio-technical scenarios of designing and working together that are neither utilitarian, solution-driven or antagonizing.

Collective practices are situated. They are site, context, and time-specific, and so are their various expressions. This dissertation makes the thresholds of collective practice legible by discussing the ways collectivity weaves together a range of places, legacies, objects and people across practices and disciplines, and timelines.

acknowledgements

This book is an outcome of a collaborative research project conducted by five research and art institutions in the Netherlands: Leiden University, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Waag Society, and West Den Haag. Its point of departure was rather unlikely: the technocratic creative industries research and development agenda of the Netherlands, conceived by a neoliberal government in the 2010s. The government’s cultural policy had boiled down to scrapping arts-related research in favour of digital technology research and development (based on a partial misinterpretation of ‘creative industries’ as Silicon Valley-style start-ups). Funding for contemporary art was cut, too, in favour of programmes for the creative industries. These policies have caused much wilful damage to the art world in the Netherlands over the past fifteen years.

The representatives of these five institutions came together as the Workgroup Making Matters to explore ways of bridging art, design, and technology as an alternative to the paradigm of ‘creative industries’.

The research project and the book are financed by the Smart Culture programme of the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

We received a great amount of support from colleagues in our field: Lotte Betting, Loes Bogers, ginger coons, Garnet Hertz, Emily Huurdeman, Janneke van Kersen (NWO), Shailoh Phillips, Rosalien van der Poel, Marielle Verdijk.

We thank Hackers & Designers for their collaboration and the design of the book.

We thank Het Nieuwe Instituut, West Den Haag and Waag for contributing the work and research time of their people.

Curriculum Vitae

Imprint

↑ I have been organizing workshops with H&D since its inception in 2013. H&D started as a meetup-series organized by James Bryan Graves (software developer) and Selby Gildemacher (visual artist) and myself (graphic designer). Since 2016 other members have joined, such as André Fincato (2016), Juliette Lizotte (2018), Heerko van der Kooij (2019), Karl Moubarak (2019) Loes Bogers (2019), Margarita Osipian (2019), Christine Kappé (2020), Pernilla Manjula Philip (2022). James left the collective in 2018. Margarita left in 2021. Abdullah, Dana. "Disciplinary Disobedience: A Border-Thinking Approach to Design." In: *Design Struggles* edited by Claudia Mareis, Nina Paim, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021.
↑ A recurring activity for H&D, which usually involves all members of the collective, is the H&D Summer Academy, a self-organized 1-2 week-long workshop program that takes place in the summer, in Amsterdam since 2015. [[138]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2015), [[139]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2016), last accessed March 2022. [[140]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2018), [[141]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2017), last accessed March 2022. [[142]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2020), [[143]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2021), last accessed March 2022.
↑ Lauren Berlant, "The commons: Infrastructures for troubling times*," *Environment and Planning D: Society and Space*, Volume 34, no. 3 (2016): 393--419. University of Chicago, USA
↑ Erling Bjgvinsson, Pelle Ehn, Per-Anders Hillgren "Design Things and Design Thinking: Contemporary Participatory Design Challenges" Design Issues Volume 28, no. 3 (Summer 2012). Susanne Bødker, Kaj Grønbæk, and Morten Kyng, 'Cooperative Design: Techniques and Experiences From the Scandinavian Scene,' Participatory Design: Principles and Practices, edited by Aki Namioka and Doug Schuler (New Jersey, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995).
↑ Tad Hirsch, 'Contestational Design: Innovation for Political Activism', PhD in Media Art and Sciences, MIT, 2008, 23.
↑ Mahmoud Keshavarz, Ramia Mazé, "Design and Dissensus: Framing and Staging Participation in Design Research,\" *Design Philosophy Papers* Volume 11, Issue 1 (May 2013): 7-30.
↑ For instance Tad Hirsch wrote that in some contexts, participatory design processes only reinstate the division between experts and laypeople ("In most cases, designers' status as experts confers relatively greater authority in decision-making than laypersons.") Tad Hirsch, 'Contestational Design: Innovation for Political Activism', PhD in Media Art and Sciences, MIT, 2008, 23.
↑ Furthermore, Keshavarz and Mazé wrote that "to approach design in ways that do not merely affirm the current constitution of society, along with exclusions and differentials, we seek alternatives to concepts such as consensus." Mahmoud Keshavarz, Ramia Mazé, "Design and Dissensus: Framing and Staging Participation in Design Research," Design Philosophy Papers Volume 11, Issue 1 (May 2013): 7-30.
↑ Carl DiSalvo, *Adversarial Design* (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2012).
↑ Mahmoud Keshavarz, Ramia Mazé, *Design and Dissensus: Framing and Staging Participation in Design Research*, 2013.
↑ Tad Hirsch, 'Contestational Design: Innovation for Political Activism', PhD in Media Art and Sciences, MIT, 2008.
↑ Mahmoud Keshavarz, Ramia Mazé, *Design and Dissensus: Framing and Staging Participation in Design Research*, 2013.
↑ ibid.
↑ Johanna Schmeer, *Xenodesign --- Towards Transversal Engagement in Design*, PhD Thesis, Royal College of Art London, 2016-2020. [[144]{.underline}](https://johannaschmeer.net/johanna-schmeer-phd), last accessed January 2022.

[1] I have been organizing workshops with H&D since its inception in 2013. H&D started as a meetup-series organized by James Bryan Graves (software developer) and Selby Gildemacher (visual artist) and myself (graphic designer). Since 2016 other members have joined, such as André Fincato (2016), Juliette Lizotte (2018), Heerko van der Kooij (2019), Karl Moubarak (2019) Loes Bogers (2019), Margarita Osipian (2019), Christine Kappé (2020), Pernilla Manjula Philip (2022). James left the collective in 2018. Margarita left in 2021. Abdullah, Dana. "Disciplinary Disobedience: A Border-Thinking Approach to Design." In: *Design Struggles* edited by Claudia Mareis, Nina Paim, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021.

[2] A recurring activity for H&D, which usually involves all members of the collective, is the H&D Summer Academy, a self-organized 1-2 week-long workshop program that takes place in the summer, in Amsterdam since 2015. [[138]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2015), [[139]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2016), last accessed March 2022. [[140]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2018), [[141]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2017), last accessed March 2022. [[142]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2020), [[143]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2021), last accessed March 2022.

[3] Lauren Berlant, "The commons: Infrastructures for troubling times*," *Environment and Planning D: Society and Space*, Volume 34, no. 3 (2016): 393--419. University of Chicago, USA

[4] Erling Bjgvinsson, Pelle Ehn, Per-Anders Hillgren "Design Things and Design Thinking: Contemporary Participatory Design Challenges" Design Issues Volume 28, no. 3 (Summer 2012). Susanne Bødker, Kaj Grønbæk, and Morten Kyng, 'Cooperative Design: Techniques and Experiences From the Scandinavian Scene,' Participatory Design: Principles and Practices, edited by Aki Namioka and Doug Schuler (New Jersey, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995).

[5] Tad Hirsch, 'Contestational Design: Innovation for Political Activism', PhD in Media Art and Sciences, MIT, 2008, 23.

[6] Mahmoud Keshavarz, Ramia Mazé, "Design and Dissensus: Framing and Staging Participation in Design Research,\" *Design Philosophy Papers* Volume 11, Issue 1 (May 2013): 7-30.

[7] For instance Tad Hirsch wrote that in some contexts, participatory design processes only reinstate the division between experts and laypeople ("In most cases, designers' status as experts confers relatively greater authority in decision-making than laypersons.") Tad Hirsch, 'Contestational Design: Innovation for Political Activism', PhD in Media Art and Sciences, MIT, 2008, 23.

[8] Furthermore, Keshavarz and Mazé wrote that "to approach design in ways that do not merely affirm the current constitution of society, along with exclusions and differentials, we seek alternatives to concepts such as consensus." Mahmoud Keshavarz, Ramia Mazé, "Design and Dissensus: Framing and Staging Participation in Design Research," Design Philosophy Papers Volume 11, Issue 1 (May 2013): 7-30.

[9] Carl DiSalvo, *Adversarial Design* (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2012).

[10] Mahmoud Keshavarz, Ramia Mazé, *Design and Dissensus: Framing and Staging Participation in Design Research*, 2013.

[11] Tad Hirsch, 'Contestational Design: Innovation for Political Activism', PhD in Media Art and Sciences, MIT, 2008.

[12] Mahmoud Keshavarz, Ramia Mazé, *Design and Dissensus: Framing and Staging Participation in Design Research*, 2013.

[13] .

[14] Johanna Schmeer, *Xenodesign --- Towards Transversal Engagement in Design*, PhD Thesis, Royal College of Art London, 2016-2020. [[144]{.underline}](https://johannaschmeer.net/johanna-schmeer-phd), last accessed January 2022.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

Figuring Things Out Together: On the Relationship between Design and Collective Practice

Introduction

Context

Research Question

Problem

Contribution to design discourse

Approach

Bibliography

Design and Collectivity

Summary

Introduction

Tool building

Summary

Introduction: Situating tools within the H&D collective

The Feminist Search Tools project

Distributed articulation of use

Interfaces as tool simulations

Platform-design issues

Summary

Introduction: Situating \'platform\' in the context of the H&D collective

Relevance

Problem

Structure

*Plat-formatted* learning: Englishes MOOC and Workshop Project Wiki

Englishes MOOC

Workshop Project Wiki

Rethinking platform boundaries: ChattyPub

The figure of the platform

Installing a platform

Platform metaphor

Moving the platform online

Platformed organization

Platform contours

Conclusion: Platforming as a practice

Bibliography

Conclusion

Making oneself understood through collective design practice

Conscious inefficiency

Leaning into friction: Problematization as experimentation

Collective vocabularies: Invented words and ambiguous concepts

Designing for and with collectivity

Designing with others

Designing for continuity

Bibliography

Summary

Samenvatting

acknowledgements

Plat-formatted learning: Englishes MOOC and Workshop Project Wiki