Social in the Media

Within the past six and a half years, Varia has experimented with the work of instituting a cultural organisation outside the confines of Big Tech technologies. What kind of cultural work is made possible when your organisation’s digital infrastructure is using free and open source software built by peers, digital services hosted by friends, and digital resources shared by activist organisations? What possibilities materialise when the tools one uses can be shaped in accordance with cultural workers’ habits and needs? Which conditions can be collectively defined, and which ones do we have to operate within?

While there are no obvious or definitive answers to these questions, they set a ground for experimentation, where the tools used for mobilising a space are part of the cultural work itself.

This zine shares some of the approaches Varia has developed, in collaboration with peers and friends, that hopefully expand the imagination of what cultural life and work might be shaped by.