Loving Constellations
a participatory installation about feminist, healing and decolonial hacking

@ Mur.at

 by goldjian,

visiting from Tio’tia:ke
unceded mohawk land
aka Montreal, Canada

A constellation is an ensemble of stars whose appearance from a specific/situated position make them look visibily close enough that civilisations draw links between them, creating meaningful shapes.

To constellate is a practice that allows us to make sense, to align ourselves (Estela López Solís), and possibly to find lights and grow roost in a sky quite devoid of stars(Sheree Renee Thomas) citing Martin Luther King and Octavia Butler.)

This constellation aims at fostering hope, bonds and imagination by making visible feminist hacking practices and contemporary forms of healing and decolonization. She aims at looking at the loving celestial and terrestrial bodies that are being cared for in our exploitative colonial and ecocidal capitalist sky, from which we know too well the paleness. Remaining conscious of the ambient doldrums, the design of this constellation involves travels, discoveries, encounters, joint explorations and the collection of meaningful narratives.This immersive and participatory installation recreates a terrestrial-celestial vault, offering a collective navigation interface for the discovery of visionary practices and fictions.

Building upon fragmented memories, ewast, analog and low tech devices and generative loving practices and imaginations, this installation will present three related constellations :
1. a terrestrial and celestial geolocalisation of feminist decolonial and healing hacking initiatives
2. a visualisation of THF documentation*
3. a presentation of contemporory concepts, issues and questions that inhabitate the winds between and from those collective bodies.

Even if they tend to become a reference that draw upon their reader some forms of directions,
we are aware that all constellations are subjective and culturally constructed. Therefor, all the presented constellations will be open to edition and contribution. Feminist epistomologies tells us that knowledge is always partial and subjective, incomplete and contextual. A technofeminist standpoint remind us that digital and human memory are always subjected to loss and reformulation, and that power lies into its saving and forms of diffusions. We consider archiving as collective responsability from wich we write us into the present and build desirable futures.

* The third iteration of THF!2016 occured in august 2016 in StudioXX, Tio’tia:ke, aka Montreal with the thematics : decolonize technologies, hacking with care, autonomy of infrastructure and feminist pedagogies. The first iteration occured in Calafou, a eco-industrial colony based in the montains next to Barcelona.
In between, the 2nd edition took place in Mexico.
Due to minimal financial support and geographical distance, they’ve been very little crossing of attendance between the 3 editions.
This time together is aimed at documentating the 3rd edition as well as making connexions with what happened in the previous edition.

Captures of the opening, by Renata