A Feminist Server Manifesto

In 2013, Constant, a non-profit, artist-run organization in Brussels, hosted the workshop Are you being served? During the session: First Feminist Server Summit, artists and activists reflected on questions around the potential of a Feminist Server practice. The collective discussions brought the following outcome:

A feminist server…

• Is a situated technology. She has a sense of context and considers herself to be part of an ecology of practices

• Is run for and by a community that cares enough for her in order to make her exist

• Builds on the materiality of software, hardware and the bodies gathered around it

• Opens herself to expose processes, tools, sources, habits, patterns

• Does not strive for seamlessness. Talk of transparency too often signals that something is being made invisible

• Avoids efficiency, ease-of-use, scalability and immediacy because they can be traps

• Knows that networking is actually an awkward, promiscuous and parasitic practice

• Is autonomous in the sense that she decides for her own dependencies

• Radically questions the conditions for serving and service; experiments with changing client-server relations where she can

• Treats network technology as part of a social reality

• Wants networks to be mutable and read-write accessible

• Does not confuse safety with security

• Takes the risk of exposing her insecurity

• Tries hard not to apologize when she is sometimes not available

Source: https://areyoubeingserved.constantvzw.org/Summit_afterlife.xhtml

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