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Hello and welcome to Netzrauschen, the broadcast from MuRaté where we cover topics related to digital society, media art and net politics.
In this special edition with me Andreas Zingele, I present you the recordings from this year's work lab titled Paying Tribute to Aaron Swartz that took place between June 21 to 24, 2023 at Kik in Graz, Austria.
This program is part of the project series Aaron's Law that includes various artistic technical projects dedicated to Aaron Swartz and developed in close cooperation with AccoNet Net Art Coordination Center.
Along with Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, Aaron Swartz is considered one of the most important internet activists to date, who strongly shaped and influenced the development of the internet in his short lifetime.
As a programmer and advocate for the open access movement, net neutrality and civic awareness, he defended the exchange of information constructively across geographic borders via the web.
Aaron Swartz was conscious about the immense meaning of the words open access, open source and net neutrality for the creative development of art, design as well as science.
All further links you can find in the show notes. Let's listen to one of the presentations now.
Thank you for the invitation today. My name is Evelyn Canko. I'm working in the Afro-Asian Institute.
What is the Afro-Asian Institute? It's a student house close to the University of Graz.
It was founded in 1964. Since then, there are students from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
I've been working there since 2008 and I'm responsible for the cultural program.
When we are talking about my archive or the archive of the Afro-Asian Institute, we have to switch to the analog world.
I have no idea about archiving or just books. I like to collect really strange stuff. Maybe this is what I like.
I'm organizing talks and writing workshops, creative workshops and exhibitions as well.
I'm archiving as an art form. It was very interesting because I was never thinking about this in this way.
I give the name. We just have three exhibitions until now in the Afro-Asian Institute.
Everything started with a citation of a good friend of mine. She was in 2020 the city writer from Georgia, Volia Habeeva.
There was a title in the newspaper, There are no little things, there are no little things.
I totally agree because it was this time of the pandemic and everybody had to stay at home.
I was focusing on really small things. To survive somehow, I was thinking everything can give you good energy or power.
I think it is also to survive and that you have something good in your heart.
I also have my writing workshop and creative workshop. We were working on this all the time during the pandemic.
We were meeting with Distance and it was always the same group because we didn't open it.
We were thinking of making an exhibition in the corner. Where is the corner?
Last year I met Sebastian Palacios, he is an architect from Chile. He was participating in this creative workshop.
Now we are working together and it works really great because I cannot do it alone because I need somebody to work with.
It started then that he has the knowledge how to make a framework.
I already had ideas of what we could create for an exhibition.
Everybody had their own ideas. I was thinking that in the workshop everybody was working at home or knitting or whatever.
Handcrafted stuff or collecting some stuff or what is just stuff you had at home and focus on.
This was just like an analogue form to make something. Exactly not digital. Just doing something with the hands.
We did this and we started this year in January the first exhibition.
Maybe first we will start with the presentation of Sebastian to see where it is placed.
The Afro-Asian Institute is very close to the university and it is a very small corner.
It is just this corner. I was always thinking of the pandemic because there are passing every day 250 students living there.
There is a bar there and people are sitting in the garden. They are passing every day. It is like an open space.
It is a bit hidden. We decided to go here.
Small shelves there. This is the place we are talking about now.
This corner. The first was the archive of little patients.
We had an opening outside so all the participants could work on what was just handmade different kinds of crafts.
We had students studying at the TU Graz and they were working with fabrics, making some mobile phones, stuff inside.
I have no idea doing this but it was very interesting also to think about small things.
I was collecting a lot of citations about little things.
We were working on it. They could write something and also do some crafts if they wanted.
Now it is the part of Sebastian I think when we continue how it started with the window.
He was talking in Spanish and maybe Ricardo will try to translate.
This was the first archive of little things. There were different kinds of things working.
There were people coming from Morocco. They were talking about eating healthy things and whatever.
This was the first. The second was the archive of female artists thought leaders.
It is an outcome of women. They were always their whole life working on equality and female rights and human rights.
This was the second exhibition. They were always ahead of their time.
The third one now is the archive of a Sudanese nomad.
The archive of a Sudanese nomad is the current city writer coming from Sudan, Abdellah Sizbarakazakil.
I was just questioning myself what can be an archive of a Sudanese nomad.
We had a talk there. I also like collecting stories, oral history. This is how it started.
This is how it's inside. This was just what Sebastian did.
This is his design to see if you look good from inside.
We did then a documentation of what you could see from outside here.
This was then the archive of the female artistic thought leaders, Audre Lorde.
For example, your silence will not protect you.
This is again connected with sticker Syria. We do always on the International Women's Day.
We started with human and Earth rights defenders, mainly from Abiy Ayala.
This is how they call now Latin America.
Always with one quote is,
We belong to the land.
All these women are part of their own territories.
The territories, they defend their territories.
The next one is, and this is somehow connected also to the books here.
This is what we started already in 2020.
Then it's black feminism. Your silence will not protect you.
This is one of the books here.
They are really great. I can recommend all these books if you're interested.
It's not a classical library, but it's just to think about it.
If you're interested.
Now the new version is women's rights defenders.
They are women from Iran fighting for their rights.
This is another archive, I think.
The last is now about the Sudanese archive.
What can be an archive of a Sudanese nomad?
Baraka Abdelaziz had to leave his country because of his literature.
He's been living in Austria and France for about 10 years.
Here is another archive.
I would say these are stories of what is happening going on at the airports and borders if you have no passport.
There are short stories about his experiences.
What happened to him?
The other one is just how can we say this as a writer?
So is the mind, the books, and also what he was saying spices from his childhood, from his homeland, from his territory.
What is important? I got to know Arkesia.
What is Arkesia?
This is a tree and they take it like everything very healthy.
It is for his health.
So the Arkesia is he eats it every day and also the clothes and the incense.
So it is it's very important for him and for a nomad.
He has to keep it.
He wants to be healthy, of course, otherwise he cannot travel around.
And when I met when I got in touch with Ricardo and Andreas, I was saying I have no experience in archiving things like this.
It is just my brain and putting together two people because they are students.
I learn a lot from the students every day.
So when we meet, they are coming from Africa, Asia, Latin America.
And this is just interesting for me to get always new information.
And then I try I want to be a platform to put together the people, so to connect and also to get in touch.
And when they were asking me, they had the first idea what can be a Sudanese nomad.
They were thinking on a computer or something like this, that you have all your stuff in your computer.
But he said, no, no, no, no, this is just a book, books, his brain and this herbs he has.
So now we have this exhibition about his many important books for him and books.
So he published in Arabic, German, English, French, Kurdish, Amharic.
And so this is just his archive.
Unfortunately, he cannot be here today because he was also invited to tell you more about his nomad life.
But it was not possible today.
But he was he would like to greet everybody here.
He was calling me today.
I think now it's just some impression about Ahif the Clan and Leidenschaften.
And maybe then Sebastian can tell us more about his ideas as an architect as well.
About the windows.
What is also special was Ricardo's idea that normally an archive is always a hidden place and just nobody wants to see it.
And this is just in a window and it's open to everybody.
You can it is light in it and everybody is passing by there because they are going all the time people around.
And this is funny. I wasn't seeing I never thought about this because I was thinking just it is more than an archive in my mind.
But it was so we did.
Yeah.
And we didn't we didn't buy anything.
It was just everything what you had at home.
So just old stuff what we were working on.
This is Sebastian's work.
But maybe now you can focus more on your work.
You can talk a little bit about your ideas.
And where is...
Here.
Yeah.
What did you get?
Can you sit here?
My English is...
She left.
Well, I'm point.
From an architecture point of view, the window is a point of...
You can speak Spanish because...
Ah, okay, okay.
If you understand me, tell me if you know.
From an architecture point of view, the window is a point of opening between the inside of the outside of the building.
I think we see it more as in between thickness where things can also happen.
Things like containing an archive, an ephemeral archive, a rotating archive, a moving archive.
If it's possible to put in parallel the word archive with rotation, ephemeral and movement.
Sorry, the last part.
Therefore, the most important thing was always the objects.
And not the structure.
The structure had to be as unobtrusive as possible in the window.
So we were trying to put in parallel the archive, the rotation.
For that, it was more important to focus on the objects themselves than the structure.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Yeah, these objects can perhaps be understood as an archive of memory.
They are the physical representation of stories, rites, memories, testimonies, a flower, a piece of mineral.
From the material point of view, it can be seen only as small things.
From the symbolic point of view, it can contain a whole world.
This would be just my short presentation about this archive.
So we are just a baby, just three exhibitions until now.
We are working on new ideas.
So tomorrow I have a next meeting with the next one.
And I think to focus on little things is something that gives me a lot of...
I like it just because everybody wants to be big.
And so I think now it's somehow like a homeopathic way.
And what I also like is 24-hour open.
You can go, it's free entrance.
You can always pass by.
You can get new ideas.
It is just like this, like a Nafa Srogga.
You can just go there if you want, because the library is closed.
But I will not always focus just on books, but as well.
So on literature.
This is just one idea that I say, so if you go for a walk and maybe you get new ideas, you can pass by.
And also what is important also for the students, because now they see there are so many books written in Arabic, for example.
And they were asking me, where did you get all this book in Arabic?
And so on, because it's not so usual in Austria that you can see so many books, for example, in Arabic.
So they were very proud as well if they see their literature there.
So this is just really total improvisations.
But now we, Sebastian, so he did all this nice, I always forgot the name of Regale.
And he's making the documentation as well with the photos.
And it's everything on the homepage already.
You can find it on the homepage.
So we are working on this always with a short description as well.
And it's always different, of course.
First it, yeah, you can find here in the AAE, you can find archive of Ahifta, Klan, and Dinger.
And you can find all the different objects there.
And I will invite artists now to work on this.
So it is just, but I always think we have to start.
It will never end.
It is never perfect.
But I think just to do and to do something is important.
And yeah, I think it makes a lot of fun for us as well, always working together and making the whole new ideas.
Yeah.
So if you have some ideas, so just work on.
Just I can give you my, we can talk now or however.
Okay.
Yeah.
And also thank you to Ricardo and Andreas, because now we're doing, we're doing to try to professionalize our homepage and everything, because so we were just working.
But now we can feel another energy as well.
And also with all the night inputs before you, because I like books and I like libraries and something.
So in collections, what I want to say, if you like, it's really strange.
I like a strange exhibition, maybe.
And so I got in touch.
Maybe you know this.
This one month ago, we went to the André Heimatmuseum.
It is based in Styria and really not a lot of people know this place.
It's a former, as a castle.
And this is full of different archives.
So if you're interested, I can pass by the book and the director now, he's he was working with the theater.
And this book is also really very interesting because it's the Bühne von Visoko oder Dinge meines Lebens.
And it's really inside.
It's like a library because it's alphabetical structure.
And you can see really old words.
It is just like like a dictionary and a description of old word.
What is also in this old castle.
But this is really a big recommendation to go there if you like really special kind of archives.
This André Heimatmuseum.
It is not this normal.
So I can just pass through.
OK.
So thank you for the invitation.
And thank you also Sebastian for always supporting me because together it's always funnier.
And also with all the other my colleagues at the office, but also with all the students.
And these workshops, they are always open to everybody.
So it's not just the students, but it's also for the students.
And so if they're coming with other people, they like to work in a creative way and they get in touch with other generation.
This is also very important because we have a very elderly lady.
She likes so much to be there.
She doesn't want to be with the Austrian people.
So they want to be in touch.
She's bringing always cake, handmade cakes.
And so this is really nice also to connect and to learn from each other all the time.
Yes.
OK. And we are planning now because in this writing workshop is with this current city writer, Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin.
And we are planning to do next spring an exhibition and also a reading with a text they are writing now about future.
We are working on the future because I like his idea.
Of course, with Sudan, it's always very difficult at the moment.
And so it's he always likes to say if you never learned future, so we never learn future.
We just have history of art history, of music history, literature, history, history.
And we never have a subject at school what's called future.
I think we should learn future.
And what he's saying is if you plan a better future, you will have a better past.
And this is just so simple said, but it is so difficult to do.
And so in this case, we work on this.
So we are making experience.
I have no I also cannot say any more than this, but just to be connected and to exchange with the ideas.
OK. Thank you.
That was another episode of Netsrauschen, a broadcast by MuA.T.
This time, a special edition with recordings from this year's work lab titled Paying Tributes to Aaron Swartz.
You can listen to past episodes of our program on netsrauschen.muA.T.
and in the cultural broadcast archive at cpa.media.
Andreas Zingerle says goodbye and we'll hear each other next time.
Bye.