Between 7 and 12 December 2020, Constant organises the work-session Bureaucracksy.

This work-session investigates the governance of techno-social systems through the prism of bureaucracy. The execution of rules is an essential element of computation, of digital infrastructures, and of the societies that they operate with.

Critical practices of listing, naming, filtering, tool making, care and sharing require that some books are kept.

Initiatives around Free/libre, Open Source software for example insist on producing transparent procedures and thereby contribute to the creation of commoning structures, collective resources and addressing the Conducts of Code.

The work-session invites artists and activists to share imaginations of counter-accountancies and -accountabilities, of how to engage with paperwork, systemics and logistics.

The session takes place in Hacktiris, the shared workplace that Constant and many other artists and cultural organisations use in the center of Brussels. As the former headquarters of Actiris, the Brussels Regional Employment Office, the building has an infamous history of paperwork itself.

Program elements (among others):

• A series of visits to Bureaucra(ck)tic hot-spots in Brussels and Belgium.
• Collective exchanges of participants practices.
• Federation, organisation and moderation of distributed software repositories.
• Subversioning the figure of the Data Protection Officer

The session results in a collectively produced collection of late night stories. These Bedside tales of Bureaucracksies are destined to invade our dreams. They can be trans-feminist scripts, or anti-capitalist spells, They might be pamphlets or children’s stories. They could be radical administrative recitals, decolonial algorithms, ambient spreadsheets, fairy-tale fabrics, hummed scores, unruly writings.

You might sleep tight, or you might wake up screaming.

Work-sessions

Constant ’work-sessions’ are intensive trans-disciplinary situations to which participants from all over the world contribute. Every six months Constant opens such a temporary research lab; a collective working environment where different types of expertise come into contact with each other. During work sessions we develop ideas and prototypes that in the long-term lead to publications, projects and new proposals. Work-sessions favour the use of F/LOSS software. To facilitate collective work, these Guidelines for collaboration apply.

Participate ?

• Places are limited. If you are interested in joining, send an application to: peter@constantvzw.org before 15 September.
• Please explain why this topic is important for you and join one office/bureaucratic document that you consider to be relevant.
• We will confirm participation in the first week of October.
• Participation is free of costs. Constant offers: lodging, travels and lunch.
• Anti Covid 19 measures will be respected. Their bureaucratic formatting, implementation and execution are a potential case to study during this worksession.

This call will be updated regularly.