Untangle: A Day of Technology, Feelings, and Resistance

This event is presented in English
Free admission, RSVP via this link
Offered online and in person
Bar on site during the evening (cash and card)
In collaboration with Eastern Bloc 

As part of the HTMlles festival, Eastern Bloc in collaboration with Ada X invites you to a day of reflection bringing together discussions and demonstrations around feminist approaches to care, ethical technology, and digital autonomy.  The day, with its main programming offered in hybrid format, will open with a collective discussion exploring the connections between the projects being presented and the festival’s themes. This will be followed by a presentation of Cursors of Care, a project led by artist Tricia Enns, exploring how small creative gestures can infuse care and meaning into our everyday digital spaces through the creation of personalized pixelated cursors and icons. Following this will be a workshop led by Techtechtech on their project To Weave a Web: the Poetics of Opting Out, featuring artists and researchers Liane Decary-Chen, Marie LeBlanc Flanagan, Sarah Choukah, and Chanel Robin. They will invite us to reflect on ways to divest from tech giants and imagine ethical, sustainable, and community-centered tools.  The day will close with an in-person gathering for those who can join us on-site, with the opportunity to build your own mini server in a micro-workshop.

Cursors of Care is a project by artist Tricia Enns exploring how personal care and memory intersect with digital systems, particularly for queer, feminist, BIPOC, and/or (dis)abled communities. The project invites people to create pixelated cursors and icons using free online tools like Pixel Art and Online Cursor Maker, based on playful symbols or objects of care. These can be imagined or digital representations of physical objects. Through basic CSS integration, these custom cursors can be added to personal websites, turning them into playful persistent reminders to care for themselves and others while navigating our daily digital worlds.

To Weave a Web is a workshop exploring the logistics and poetics of divesting from tech giants. It is led by the Techtechtech team (Marie LeBlanc Flanagan, Liane Décary-Chen, Sarah Choukah) and Chanel Robin. Attendees will receive a copy of the zines Ada X and Techtechtech released in 2022, which will structure the flow of this activity.  During this workshop, we will unravel what technology feels like, and what we want it to be instead. Following the Tech & Tarot zine, we will begin moving towards divestment through a journaling style approach that addresses the emotional and practical challenges of migrating technological landscapes. We will end with a discussion on what ethical, community centred, digital tools or practices have worked for us so far, and what we are imagining for the future of local feminist tech activism.  Come to this session if you are interested in fostering your digital autonomy and collective resistance to extractive tech systems! Note that the workshop is designed for in person attendance, but that it will be streamed online for accessibility. Some portions of shared conversation might not be live-streamed to respect the privacy of attendees.

Schedule:

12:30 PM – In-person participants arrival/
1:00 – 5:30 PM – Videoconference (hybrid format)
1:00 – 1:30 PM – Discussion circle with participating artists
1:30 – 2:30 PM – Presentation-demonstration of “Cursors of Care” by Tricia Enns
2:30 – 5:30 PM – Workshop by Techtechtech
5:30 – 8:00 PM – Gathering: Meet & greet with artists (in-person participation only)
6:00 – 6:30 PM – “Build Your Own Mini Server” micro-workshop by Techtechtech

Source : https://htmlles.net/en/calendar/untangle-une-journee-de-technologie-demotions-et-de-resistance/