Computing in/from the south call for papers

Care Baobáxia
31

Abstract

This article will discuss unique Free Software-based digital infrastructures and networks that were actively developed in Brazilian communities, presenting situated models of resistance. We will provide the background of the networks and characterize their unique discourse as, along with their infrastructure, it is largely understudied. Through understanding their decentralised technological setup, these aparatuses benefit a broader understanding intersectional and decolonial studies. The analysis we pursue highlights the importance of minorised technological practice that convey integral organisational models opposing capitalist hegemony. In order to frame our research problem, we will mobilize a feminist epistemology which considers necessary principles of “intra-action” (Barad 2007) across heterogeneous sociotechnical spaces.

Then, we will proceed to explore intersections between the different projects, such as: Baobáxia, “a rota os Baobas” an network which nodes are located in over 200 Quilombolas communities; “Metareciclagem” where a group of Brazilian technologists and artists have been promoting the “up-cycling” of discarded computing technologies and their usage for artistic expression through “Gambiarra” (“makeshift”) ; and another political articulation of the reflection about the appropriation of digital technologies that has given rise to practices which are identified by local activists and artists as “technoshamanism.”

The role and place of digital activism in the Brazilian context is uniquely tied to acknowledging specific needs of the communities at a moment in time. The construction of “singular technologies”emerges from an decolonial position and cultural narrative reappropriation,supported by a benevolent policy, is very informative on the ways that a Third Technoscape emerges.

Intro: Take Back the Future

"Take back the future" is the keyword that popped up while reading different documents and communications coming from the very active independent Brazilian networks that have been serving Singular Technologies, we mean intentional and contextual technologies. "The concepts of Third-TechnoScape and Singular Technologies stem from the need to characterize daily practice by citizen groups that deploy their successful institutional arrangements and afordances under the radar and outside the competency of traditional institutions. Both concepts do not try to define any tangible essence, but rather articulate social dynamics of the studied groups."[1] We qualify these social dynamics as the unique relation that technological processes emerge from. Decentralized technological infrastructures are diverse, they develop along different paths, and Singular Technologies multiply across the world, their hybridization with a community or a place, settles a space of resistance, another relation technology. The uniqueness of those Brazilian projects reside in their alliance with communities, in a hybrid trans-disciplinary methodology at a determined moment of Brazil’s politics.

It appears that the dominant centralized corporate technological model, deploys a monopolistic power over our communication infrastructure, resulting in the argument of scale often opposed to decentralized free software and independent projects, arguing they cannot face the competition of tech giants. However, in this article we will approach this issue with a different perspective addressing how Singular Technologies converge with community organization creating a unique terrain for identity construction, resistance, expression and solidarity, that contrasts with the dominant perspective.Working from a necessary distance, this research is fed by some direct implication of the authors in those networks, and the cross-reading of the archives hosted on different online platforms, mostly wikis.

From a feminist perspective these initiatives address the necessary engagement with context and express consideration given to the tool. A Feminist Epistemology considers necessary principles of intra-action (Barad) looking for apparatuses that are conceived in situation opening ways to understanding phenomena emerging from their agents.

This analysis will approach important, although minorised free software projects in Brazil, and work to understand the horizontal and emerging spaces they have help to build. The research will focus on seizing a specific discourse of digital activism in the Brazilian context, enlightning how a Third-Technoscape emerges from an anti-colonial position and cultural narrative re-appropriation. In the light of the historical Manifesto Antropófago[2], we will consider their anthropophagist organization, absorbing western practices in computer networks and technologies and regurgitating them with a transformed discourse to the use of oppressed Brazilian groups creating for example infrastructure for Afrobrazilian communities. This research will focus on 3 projects: Metaracyclagem, Baobáxia, Technoshamanism (Tcnxsnm). Those 3 projects expand in time from the beginning of the 2000’s to actual Brazil, they were especially active and dynamic during the first decade of the century as there was explicit support to independent communication systems.

  • Baobáxia: "A Network of Local Servers - the conversation wheel with the theme Baobáxia, the Route of Baobabs."[3] Baobáxia has implemented with Rede Mocambos more than 200 servers, a Rota dos Baobabs (“the route of baobabs”) in Afrobrazilian communities: Quilombos all over the country, that allows the communities to share their media and information independently. Each implementation of a mucua (node of the network named after the fruit of the baobab) is assorted to a community-oriented workshop, presenting and sharing the technology and reflecting on its nature and its purpose through specific cultural practices.

  • Metareciclagem network was active mostly between 2002 and 2012, is central to the governmental project of ‘puntos da cultura’, and was also linked to the protest movement ‘lixo electrônico’ both projects were co-founded by Felipe Fonseca. Metareciclagem has organised the creative up-cycling and reuse of discarded computers to the benefit of a number of citizen groups, promoting not only free software but mostly creative appropriation of electronics as "Gambiarra&quot and “HiperTropicalProgramação”.; (Fonseca, 2015).

  • Tecnoxamanismo (TCNXSMNSM, or TCNXSM) positions itself in resistance, it is dystopian and pessimistic, but yet entropic as it resonates creating noise in this dystopian future, aiming at taking back the future. TCNXSM network, builds from existing projects, targeted towards autonomy but considering autonomy as a pathway a process that never really achieves since everything is always connected. “Technoshamanism is neither the beginning nor the end, it is a medium.” TCNXSM is a space of articulation, a network, (Borges 2017).

All three projects are related, as they are intertwined to a specific moment of Brazilian history where support was given to free software and multidimensional cultural projects by the former ministry of culture, Gilberto Gil (who is also famous musician, and a key figure of Tropicalia avant-garde movement of the 60’s).

These projects develop in a culture of resistance manifesting itself through language, cultural appropriation, spiritual quest and a necessity for independent infrastructure. We will observe how they successfully put in practice taking back the future by "rooting technology" a double-entendre: first, “rooting” as in growing roots, with reference to locality ; then, “rooting” as the hacker jargon for gaining privileged access (superuser, or root) to a system, here: re-appropriating technology production, and acknowledging ancient history, this in the scope of those project implies several levels of action, that this analysis will take a cross-look at all three projects from 2 specific angles:

Firstly, Emphasizing their strategy of appropriating technology through a dedicated language for their technologies and technological practice. Baobáxia, TCNXSM, and Metareciclagem have developed a language they deem more appropriate because it fits better their "knowledges" and conception of communication. This important appropriation, ca be understood as a process of absorption allowing for different models of expression in the digital space.

Further on we will examine their process of building coherence and intra-action in the technology, it is the essential meaning of taking back the future. Associating contemporary technology to ancestral "knowledges" results in the development of specific decentralized infrastructure, from dedicated free software, Third Technoscape is understood as an active pathway.

The movement has started at the beginning of the 2000, a little bit before Lula’s presidency where he appointed Gilberto Gil, active participant to the Tropicalism movement (an important critical cultural movement of the 60’s in Brazil), as minister of culture. At this moment in time, worldwide, there was a desire to "bridge the digital gap" and bring connectivity "everywhere"; in Brazil, the size of the territory, the number of different communities, the importance and the isolation of many specific knowledges, made for a very unique terrain to develop connectivity. In the supportive political context, free software was promoted in the context of the program "Puntos de Cultura" aiming to "valorize cultural initiatives from groups and communities, augmenting access to means of production"[4]. Involved in this challenging movement, Metareciclagem and Baobáxia contributed to the program with, among others, Casa de Cultura Tainã. We will present the unique technologies they developed and organized all over the country. We will be looking at the organizational choices they made, and consider their position as one of resistance, acknowledging that the systemic support they received is negligible compare to the one received by major companies who established new capital accumulation strategies for the capitalist Internet economy (Fuchs 2015).

language a process of absorption

Singular Technologies such as the ones presented here share modalities that differ in their organization and coding language. As N K Hayles has framed it: "Language alone is no longer the distinctive characteristic of technologically developed societies; rather it is language plus code" (Hayles 2010), she calls this: regimes of computation. Therefore, she claims, language analysis and critique needs to embed technology in the different ways that it materializes. In addition, the necessity to reformulate contextual interaction has been addressed by feminists who explain that some parts of society, have been obscured from language by simply underusing or devaluating their vocabulary, overtime denying the epistemic authority of these communities. As an active response to this reasoning, in Brazil, Singular Technologies have addressed technology both by developing unique networks, reorganising its functions, and through a differentiated formulation of key concepts, renaming them and the elements of the network.

Baobáxia is a digital network project rooted in specific concepts used by communities pertaining to Rede Mocambos: a network of Quilombos. Quilombos are communities of African seized people that resisted to Portuguese and European slavery and culture. The project sets its grounds by renaming all the elements composing a digital network: this renaming is essential to the structure of the project, it is based on a language that refers to the Quilombos organization, functioning as building blocks in the service of their resistance carried over the centuries. The project’s wiki serves as the main documentation tool hosting reports of numerous workshop events, technical meetings, reports, funding requests, etc. are conserved, including assembly minutes; one can read for example:

"Some of the conversation themes were the Principles and Reflections on the Mocambos Network - the conversations were oriented around the name Mocambos and the technology of the drum; the form of organization of the Quilombo dos Palmares was in Mocambos, so were their houses called. Another symbolic element, the Baobáb, was the center of the conversation round; the philosophy of the Baobá and the drum are central to the Mocambos Network: they are at the service of humanity, offer meaning to the world and strengthen a political commitment: never stop fighting." "Pajelança do dia 27 de maio e 3 de Junho de 2013 IV encontro da rede Mocambos"[5]

Felipe Fonseca, who was central to Metareciclagem, also proposed to rework language. He used the popular concept of "Gambiarra"(Fonseca, 2015), meaning "makeshift,", solving problems creatively in alternative ways with low cost and lots of spontaneity, or giving unusual functions to everyday life objects a creative popular terminology. Gambiarra is of course, creatively appropriating devices otherwise discarded by the mainstream products, an idea that was later grabbed in the upcycling movement. However, not only did "Gambiarra" meant repairing and enhancing objects and machines, but doing so thanks to collective effort, and the use of free software, invention and creativity. Here again the choice of the term "Gambiarra" is not random but corresponds to a valorization of popular Brazilian culture that creatively deals with material defections, therefore adds intimate and personal value to objects, and most importantly integrates this process in a social and community organisation.

As Hayles explores the impact of code on everyday life, she argues that it has become comparable to that of speech and writing: language and code have grown more entangled, the lines that once separated humans from machines, analog from digital, and old technologies from new ones have become blurred. While this can be seen as a colonization of everyday life led by major telecommunication companies, Singular Technologies engage in activating differently this space of knowledge. Language is a specific part of those many aspects, as well as other forms of cultural significance such as time place/localization, eventually forming a Third Technoscape. The projects we study here are built from the concepts of "situated knowers", every element comes from principles that are key to those who relate to the technologies, they also significantly rename concepts and tools, transforming the relation to technology in a community centered process, Singular Technologies. In this prospect, the claim raised by Fabi Borges, main researcher of the Technoshamanism (TCNXMN) network, who practices "Ancestrofuturismo" (Borges 2016), she explains that it consists in bridging the timeline from ancestral "knowledges" to actual technological practice. Fabi Borges presents shamanism as a technology of knowledge production based on ancestral models of communication. She argues that TCNXMN builds on these ancestral technologies of communication, and pairs them to contemporary digital technologies. In order to reach her purpose she looks for entropic interferences and noise that recombine to bring forth a "Shamanic Ontology" to technological production rather then as she calls it "Capitalist Ontology". She explains "it is entropic because it inhabits this paradoxical set of forces and maintains an improbable noise – its perpetual noisecracy, its state of disorganization and insecurity is continuous and is constantly recombining itself." (Borges, 2016) She brings this recombination of language to the larger scope of concepts, and ontologies, affirming a resistance across time and places, in a hybrid process that inhabits many spaces.

All 3 projects are active in decolonizing language, a process they run in parallel to decolonization of technology, the later is characterized by the use of free software and decentralized infrastructure, this analysis will be developed further. Both processes are complimentary, constitutive and intrinsic to the project, such a thorough process cannot be justified by the sole necessity to respond to a lack of infrastructure, or a specific situation of some isolated communities. On the contrary, these projects are born from an encompassing tentative to remodel technology from needs and "knowledges" of communities and they have developed unique hybrid infrastructures where social organization actively differs from existing organization of centralized networks. All three networks build Singular Technologies of resistance, creating space for a third Technoscape that is activated by these communities, through active organization, and structural support in the context of Puntos de Cultura. While the implementation of Puntos de cultura in Brazil has sometimes been criticized for bringing the "worst of the Internet" despite proposing computers installed with free software (Foster 2008), the approach that those three networks took is contrary, since they build from the needs emerging from their situation in the communities. Baobaxìa associates inhabitants and include local process of governance as documented in the reports available on the Baobaxìa wiki. As for Metarecliclagem, sets a situation where art and culture are constitutive of the development of the technology, this is for example advocated in video documentation presenting the creative and educational processes as a primary motivation, and motor for "Gambiarra"[6]. Felipe Fonseca, in a presentation from 2013 [7], emphasizes that some principles were set in collaboration with ministry of culture about principles such as, primacy of culture over technology, use of free software and open licences, easy accessibillity and active education.

In those projects, decolonization of language functions there as performative utterances, affirmative in their cannibalistic approach, they are speech acts (Austin, 1962). They embed a different relation to technology countering the fact that important specific concepts pertaining to the domain of communication are not represented, therefore rendered difficult to use in the contemporary technological domain, as significant areas of social experience are obscured from collective understanding of technology, such as ancestral indigenous conceptions of comunication, social organization and consciousness. In addition, the dialogue with feminist scientists such as Karen Barad, is almost immediatly established. Indeed, while all 3 projects value the relational understanding of communication presented in indigenous communities Tcnxsnm is particularly clear in stating as a ground fact that: Shamanism is a communication technology. Explaining Ancestrofuturismo, Fabi Borges says that indigenous "knowledges" have been riped out, she argues following Silvia Federici in her book Caliban and the Witch that "there has been a violent destruction of ancestral knowledge and technologies to leave space for science following monotheist principles."[8] By affirming Ancestrofuturismo, Fabi Borges formulates a diffracting relation (Barad 2007), in the sense that she brings the history of technology on other terrains, allowing for an intra-action modulating ancestrofuturistisc relations based on ancestral "knowledges" and contemporary technologies. Breaking the sense of continuity, (re)configuring the relation to space and time and developing other modalities; Ancestrofuturismo asks to rethink with and through dis-contuinity (Barad 2007). This approach diffracts across the spectrum of time and space, and therefore allows to reconfigure the scenes, from a large set of perspectives, read them through one another, and thread through one another. "Faced with this, techno + shamanism is an articulation which tries to consider this historical trauma, these lost yet not annihilated leftovers, and to recover (and reinvent) points of connection between technology and wasted ontologies," (Borges 2016)

All 3 networks are therefore primarily cultural processes based on a form of re-apropriation very true to the Brazilian principle of Canibalist Theory. Starting there endeavor from Language, all 3 networks activate different community organization and resistance models, producing diffracting and decentralized intra-actions. The 3 projects studied here, revise current concepts and organize technologies that can better serve resistances; reconfiguring their capacity through active use of ancestral language, and communication practices in dedicated decentralized networks. We will continue this analysis by understanding how this reconfiguration of the relation to technology translates also in the technological choices driving the development of those Singular technologies.

  1. Petites Singularités "Singular Technologies and the Third-Technoscape" JOPP (Journal of Peer production)#11 city, February 2018, Singular Technologies & the Third-TechnoScape » The Journal of Peer Production ↩︎

  2. Oswald de Andrae, Manifesto Antropófago, Em Piratininga, Ano 374 da Deglutição do Bispo Sardinha, (Revista de Antropofagia, Ano I, No. I, maio de 1928.) http://www.ufrgs.br/cdrom/oandrade/oandrade.pdf ↩︎

  3. "Uma Rede de Servidores Locais - a roda de conversa com o tema Baobáxia na Rota dos Baobás" NPDD/Baobáxia - Rede Mocambos (last seen 07/02/2019) ↩︎

  4. "valorizar las iniciativas culturales de grupos y comunidades, ampliando el acceso a los medios de producción," source: http://www.brasildamudanca.com.br/es/cultura/puntos-de-cultura last checked March 8th 2019 ↩︎

  5. "Alguns dos temas das rodas de conversa foram os Princípios e Reflexões sobre a Rede Mocambos - neste momento as falas foram orientadas em torno do nome Mocambos e da tecnologia do tambor; a forma de organização do Quilombo dos Palmares era em Mocambos, assim chamavam suas moradias. Outro elemento simbólico, o Baobá, esteve no meio da roda; a filosofia do Baobá e do tambor são centrais na Rede Mocambos: estão a serviço da humanidade, oferecem sentido ao mundo e fortalecem um compromisso político: nunca mais deixar de lutar."Introduction to the Pajelança Quilombólica Digital, Territorios Digitais Livres - Materia da TVB - Record (Abril 2015) referenced on https://wiki.mocambos.net/index.php/NPDD/ Baobaxìa (last seen 27/02/2019) ↩︎

  6. Projeto MetaReciclagem - YouTube (last seen 07/02/2019) ↩︎

  7. Felipe Fonseca "MetaReciclagem" on Vimeo (last seen 07/02/2019) ↩︎

  8. Source: Em Rede – Fabiane M. Borges: Tecnoxamanismo como meio de recuperar (e reinventar) pontos de conexão entre tecnologia e ontologias diversas | Em Rede (last seen 07/01/2019) ↩︎