nooo.relearn.call.for.tracks

# Call for Tracks[^introduction] [introduction](#introduction){.footnote}

**Relearn**[^relearn] [relearn](#relearn){.footnote} is a collective learning **experiment**[^experiment] [experiment](#experiment){.footnote} with as many teachers as it has **participants**[^participantasteacher] [participant-as-teacher](#participantasteacher){.footnote}. It is motivated by the possibility to displace parameters of/for research, studying and learning. During the week of Relearn, **we**[^we] [we](#we){.footnote} work with a set of case-studies, observations, questions or stacks of study material that we call "**tracks**"[^tracks] [tracks](#tracks){.footnote}. Relearn outlines the idea of resetting thinking modes, for a diverse set of approaches that we can reconsider, that come out of the development of our cultures towards and through digital entities.

While Relearn is an experiment in collective learning, it grows from an interest in **Free / Libre Open Source Software culture and practices**[^FLOSS] [F/LOSS](#FLOSS){.footnote} as a way to address and acknowledge the production processes and frameworks[^softwareascritique] [software-as-critique](#softwareascritique){.footnote} involving technology and culture.

For the upcoming Relearn, *we* are looking for people that are willing to research together by initiating a track around a specific subject, methodology or issue they/you are currently working on or would like to investigate during this week. A key element for this experiment is that **tracks need not be fully determined**[^programme] [programme](#programme){.footnote}, and a concrete end-product is not required at all.

This year's Relearn is loosely connected to the **possibilities to reconsider forms of organisation**[^varia] [varia](#varia){.footnote} and to create **co-autonomies**[^thinkingautonomy] [thinking-autonomy](#thinkingautonomy){.footnote} in regard to both **machinic systems**[^localnetworks] [local-networks](#localnetworks){.footnote} and social formations. We hope to make use of the proposed tracks as a looking glass to reconstruct notions of **agency**[^agency] [agency](#agency){.footnote} and consider forms of maintaining them. Particularly within the current political and economic vortex, we would like to discover **ways in which co-autonomies can be re-explored, re-shared and re-created** from many different angles[^collectivepractices] [collective-practices](#collectivepractices){.footnote}.

We're allowing ourselves to prefix this word, co-autonomies, because the idea of autonomy alone doesn't emphasise the cross-seeding aspects we hope to stimulate. We mean co-autonomy as the conscious collective need for multiple autonomous systems and practices, that may also be alternative, simultaneous, off grid, self-standing or self-defining, but not operating inside a vacuum closed off to social, political and economical relations.

Feel free to get in touch with us to discuss ideas or possible forms of contribution to Relearn this year. We are looking forward to create a collective study moment in the summer of 2017 in Rotterdam!

<u>Practical info</u><br>
Relearn will take place between **Tuesday the 29th of August and will end on Saturday the 2nd of September**[^summerschool] [summer-school](#summerschool){.footnote}. We are currently working with the community at **Poortgebouw**[^poortgebouw] [poortgebouw](#poortgebouw){.footnote} to see if this could be our Relearn location of this year. Following a tradition from previous years, we will try to arrange a **hosting network**[^hostingnetwork] [hosting-network](#hostingnetwork){.footnote} in the city and find a place to stay for each participant. Depending on our subsidy requests, we aim for the lowest participation fee possible for the week, with a strong preference for **none**[^finances] [finances](#finances){.footnote}.

<u>How to submit a track</u><br>
The reader is invited to submit a proposal around a subject they have been investigating or would like to pursue in a collective setting. In order to propose a track, please send an email to registration@relearn.be with a short text where you informally describe the subject you would like to investigate during Relearn. Please send your proposals before the 15th of June, *we* will reply at the 25th of June the latest.

<u>Resources & contact</u><br>
→ email: registration@relearn.be<br>
→ subscribe to the Relearn mailinglist<br>
→ Relearn's gitlab repository<br>
→ IRC channel: #relearn on Freenode<br>
→ Photographs of previous Relearn editions can be found in Constant's gallery

[^introduction]: [**introduction**]{#introduction} This text is the *Call for Tracks* of Relearn 2017. The text sometimes includes some 'stiff', convoluted terminology, which perhaps does not very well represent the informal setting of Relearn, nor does it properly reflect the conviviality and enjoyment of writing this text as a group. Rereading it after a couple of years, we ask ourselves "why did we write it like this?". We recognize a tendency not to define, not to close-off, sometimes at the expense of clarity. Is vagueness just the result of collective writing or a strategic means to welcome different strands of thoughts? Maybe an open call text acquires its full meaning only in hindsight. Because of time constraints, the discussions we had were taking place while writing the text, and not before. More than the expression of a fully formed concept, the open call functioned as a window into an unraveling process. Furthermore, it was also always complicated to write a text that proposed an experiment to an undefined group of actors, all the while channeling the voice of a network with a history. Looking back at the text after two years allows us to rethink its mode of address, and the way it guided the developments of the event itself.
<iframe src="./relearn-2017.sources/relearn.be/call-for-tracks.html"></iframe>
<figcaption>A preview of the Call for Tracks how it appeared on the [http://relearn.be](./relearn-2017.sources/relearn.be/call-for-tracks.html) website.</figcaption>
![A preview of the Call for Tracks how it appeared on the [http://relearn.be](https://relearn.be/2017) website.](publication.assets/call-for-tracks.png){.printimg}

[^we]: [**we**]{#we} "We" is intended here both as the whole Relearn 2017 group, and as a smaller group that organised Relearn 2017. Finally, there is the "we" that is writing this documentation. "We" is also used as a collective noun, meant to be all inclusive and inviting to attendants old and new. While that current "we" wrote the call and invitation, that group was in no way static. We mean to invite people in by calling ourselves with a pronoun that includes the reader, however it is never meant to be understood as a monolithic voice speaking for the entirety of the Relearn network.

[^relearn]: [**relearn**]{#relearn} Relearn is an experiment in self-organised education that started as a summer school in 2013, originally organised by the Open Source Publishing group in Brussels, thereafter taking care of by Constant again in Brussels and later in 2016 organised in Calafou. Relearn takes place each time someone finds the resources and collaborators to make it happen. Since 2013 and up to 2017, there have been week-long editions each year, each time organised by someone different.
The work we, the annotators here present, did was to facilitate the organisation of Relearn Rotterdam in 2017. To start the process, to make sure the mailing list was informed of the newest developments, that no email was left unanswered, to get in contact with catering groups, to find a space and make sure it was equipped to welcome Relearners. Further than that, the organisation was shared with participants and track initiators alike in regards to the content and caring for the space.
This is also why we may refer to Relearn as an action by using the verb relearn, each edition is another opportunity to relearn what Relearn is.
We've also been referring to it by saying: Relearn editions, Relearn issues, Relearn iterations, Relearn years, Relearn instances, Relearn sessions; often a mix of nouns and rarely a standalone.
<iframe src="./relearn-2017.sources/photographs/index.html"></iframe>
<figcaption>A gallery page of the photographs taken during Relearn, generated with Distribusi.</figcaption>
![Third morning together in the Versioning the Networked Archive track.](relearn-2017.sources/photographs/day-3-selection/low_IMG_9823.jpg){.printimg}

[^summerschool]: [**summer-school**]{#summerschool} The 'summer school' attribute of Relearn has been under discussion in multiple editions. As a result, the 2019 iteration of Relearn started from breaking up the week of activities into concise moments of 2-3 days that could be distributed throughout a longer period of time and across different geographies. The goal was to make Relearn accessible for participants who cannot afford to take a whole week off, but this was also partly an attempt to move away from the summer school format, which has been coopted as another form of commodifying education and device for professional positioning. As Francisco Laranjo puts it, *"design summer schools are overpriced tourism gatherings with good weather and a nice view […] Working on a laptop on Indesign overlooking a lake is not a spiritual retreat to charge creative batteries, it's just privileged illusion"* (from *A Brief History of the Design Summer School*). Most of the people who make up the Relearn network are based in Western Europe, where summer schools are often inaccessible because of their high fees and in the worst cases become extensions of institutionalised pedagogy lacking self reflection. Relearn emphasises the leisurely, the conviviality and the slow-paced tempo that is generally associated with summer. It puts forward the critical engagement with the social, political and technical structures that make it possible (sometimes to a narcissistic extreme), as an attempt to reimagine what education could mean at a small scale. In 2017, we referred to it as a 'collective learning experiment' in order to open up to new formats.

[^varia]: [**varia**]{#varia} Parallel to the conversations about organising and hosting an edition of Relearn in Rotterdam, some of us were actively involved in finding a space in the city for Varia, soon to become a *center for collective approaches to everyday technology*, which was founded in Charlois a few months later (October 2017). Varia focuses on the combination of self-organizing in the digital and non-digital . Currently, [Varia](https://varia.zone) is exploring how self-organized spaces can gain agency [agency](#agency){.footnote} over their digital infastructure (amongst other things). At the time of Relearn, this was something that we wanted to discuss and also to put into practice.

[^experiment]: [**experiment**]{#experiment} There are several horizontal educational experiments out there, various critical summer schools or self-organised festivals. Relearn 2017 is influenced by several of these experiments, such as the Anti-University festival in England, Scuola Open Source in Italy or the traveling Parallel School, but it tries to apply what it knows to the local conditions in which it operates. Relearn is considered an experiment because it understands education as an experimental process. It is perhaps not a coincidence that many of the attendants have a background in teaching. Some aspects of the ethos which have guided the relearning experiments until now are: <br><br>
    - a decision to move away from the teacher - student model and replace those terms with participant and, in some editions, track initiators [participant-as-teacher](#participantasteacher){.footnote} <br>
    - an attitude towards organisational tasks, where we share the day-to-day roles and care/use of the spaces<br>
    - an emphasis on process over outcome. This may not be as important in the later iterations of Relearn but in the earlier years, it was important to make clear that Relearn did not have to produce any tactile objects. We originally felt that using the words 'workshop' or 'summer school' [summer-school](#summerschool){.footnote} meant (text/book/object) production sprint (the hackathon model). This perspective was questioned because it does not allow time for researching and probing (production) processes, which for us became the focus.<br><br>
Questions that drive Relearn as an experiment: <br>
- How does the group steer this learning situation collectively ?<br>
- What does re-learning depend on in terms of group dynamics ?

[^participantasteacher]: [**participant-as-teacher**]{#participantasteacher} One of the foundational aims of Relearn is to erase the duality of learners and teachers and create a space where pedagogy is exercised as a group, where hierarchies are frequently restructured.

[^FLOSS]: [**F/LOSS**]{#FLOSS} From the beginning of the Relearn editions, F/LOSS (*Free/Libre Open Source Software*) has been an underlying principle of the sessions. Inspired by the F/LOSS community, we rely on free software to carry out our experiments and to set up the infrastructure that makes self-organisation possible. In the same spirit, we release and make public the findings, discussions and code that emerged during the week and try to encourage multiplication through the distribution of materials.

[^softwareascritique]: [**software-as-critique**]{#softwareascritique} Relearners see software not only as a tool or a medium, but as a large web of organisations, protocols, people and machinic agents. In this sense, software is more an environment than a thing. From this perspective, using and inhabiting software means taking a stance, often critical, sometimes radical, towards default decisions.

[^tracks]: [**tracks**]{#tracks} Whatever might be going on during Relearn, we tend to focus on processes over outcomes. However, research thematics are important to provide entry points into collective research. Thematic tracks (usually simply called tracks) are subject proposals which are put forwards during the week in different ways, some more technical, some more discursive, some more exploratory. → [Read further](#nooo.relearn.call.for.proposals-proposal-footnote)
<iframe src="relearn-2017.sources/etherdump/tracks.diff.html"></iframe>
<figcaption>An etherpad page that was made to link to the different pads for each track.</figcaption>
![Thomas describing the experiments of the Random Headlessness in the Design of Language group.](relearn-2017.sources/photographs/day-4-selection/low_IMG_9893.jpg){.printimg}

[^programme]: [**programme**]{#programme} Relearn started with the recurring *Install Yourself Into Relearn* session, where introductory tables to *XMPP*, *Etherpad*, *Local Network* and *Collective Practices* were set up. Participants could join a different table each round to find out about the ways in which we were using these practices.
This was followed by another table carousel, where the four tracks were introduced: *Ransom Headlessnesss in the Design of Language* was looking at the interplay between design and (programming) languages; *Versioning the Networked Archive* was exploring the link between networked communities and archives starting from practical examples; *Not-So-Utopian Open-Source Pedagogies* was combining a critical examination of utopian conceptions in open source software with constructive methods for the organisation of groups; *Collective Care Transmission Forms* worked with forms of networked collectivity that emerge around certain health situations.
The tracks are usually a starting point for the week to unfold. During the time we spend together, other paths are taken. For example, alongside these groups, other types of gatherings took place as well, from impromptu skill-sharing sessions during which chargers were fixed, to one-day satellite workshops, evenings of short presentations of the participants' work, to eetcafe dinners organised by the Poortgebouw.
Everyone is encouraged to use their time at Relearn as they see fit.
<iframe src="relearn-2017.sources/etherdump/program.diff.html"></iframe>
<figcaption>An etherpad page that was made to link to the different pads for each track.</figcaption>

[^thinkingautonomy]: [**thinking-autonomy**]{#thinkingautonomy} The term 'co-autonomy' emerged from the unease we felt to talk about autonomy-as-independence and autonomy-as-full-agency  when our own conditions were entangled with those of others, exemplified by the fact that we were guests of Poortgebouw, we had to apply for a small local fund to partly cover costs of catering and the electronics needed to have a functioning local infrastructure, etc. All of these elements made us shift focus towards relational agencies: observing and acknowledging the ties that create the fabric of our self-determined associations. The word autonomy, especially in relationship to the digital, hasn't left our minds, since it brings with itself a baggage of emancipatory traditions. Under the umbrella of Varia or Constant, some of us are still working on it and collecting other terms and expressions that can help capture the entanglement of being related to something, while preserving one's own position. 

[^agency]: [**agency**]{#agency} When discussing this text in 2019, we realised that "agency" does not have a direct translation in many of our native languages. Perhaps the closest to the meaning to the English version is "zelfzeggenschap", "agentschap", "autogestione" or "autodeterminare". Furthermore, depending on the field, agency can mean "the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment" (philosophy), or "the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices" (sociology). Whereas the emphasis is on the capacity to act, doing so independently might be the very limit to it.

[^collectivepractices]: [**collective-practices**]{#collectivepractices} Digital processes allow us to intervene into a practice in many ways and at different moments. A case in point is this very text: it is being written collectively, in real time. Collective writing reflects Relearn's urge to preserve a multiplicity of voices. Live (online) and collaborative text editors are often a tool of choice as they let us think, read and write together, and keep trace of oral conversations. This collective practice is not easy, it requires some daring, some testing and the vulnerability to show others how one's writing is produced. Collaborative working methods are a point of interest for Relearn because they let us rethink digital practices that are made for 'the user'. Practicing together brings context to the foreground.
<iframe src="relearn-2017.sources/etherdump/not-so-indexed.diff.html"></iframe>
<figcaption>A collective initiative was taken to start writing a "not-so-index" page that could guide outsiders through the multiple pads that were made.</figcaption>

[^localnetworks]: [**local-networks**]{#localnetworks} Relearn is also a moment to experiment with the communication tools that we use. In 2013, git, a software for tracking changes in code during development, was a focus, whereas in 2014, the group of Relearners used the IRC protocol to communicate with one another. In 2015, a local network was set up. In 2016, unfortunately none of the members of this text's writing group was able to go to Calafou. The following year, we continued using Etherpad software for collaborative note taking, next to which we set up XMPP multi-user chatrooms and used XMPP bots to send messages to the whole group or to print content that would be displayed on a physical wall in Poortgebouw. Each edition an attempt is made to rethink the infrastructure on which we rely on, not to fall into defaults, or if we do, to fall consciously.
<iframe src="relearn-2017.sources/etherdump/local_network_carousel.diff.html"></iframe>
<figcaption>*Local network carousel* introductions on the first day.</figcaption>
![*Local network carousel* introductions on the first day.](publication.assets/local-network-carousel.png){.printimg}

[^hostingnetwork]: [**hosting-network**]{#hostingnetwork} The hosting network is one of the tactics that re-appeared in all of the editions: volunteer local participants are matched with visiting participants in order to ensure a place for them to stay during the week. On the one hand, this is a practical solution that helps us keep costs down and on the other, it is a more welcoming introduction to the city and to the group.

[^finances]: [**finances**]{#finances} The process of organising Relearn in 2017 started out as a voluntary task. We applied for a local fund to cover the catering expenses during the week (breakfasts, lunches and two dinners) and some equipment needed for the local network and the care taking of the Poortgebouw. Being dependent on a grant proposal meant that we didn't know until very late if we would receive the funding - when we did, all of it was spent on lunches. We also asked for a €50 participation fee to cover the most basic needs of the space. After the week was over, the sum that was left was split among three of five continuous organizers, who received a fee of €300 each. The remaining two waived the payment for having a stable income.

[^poortgebouw]: [**poortgebouw**]{#poortgebouw} The Poortgebouw is a Dutch monument built in 1879. After being in a limbo of non-use, it was squatted by a group in 1980 as a protest against an increasing housing shortage. Despite the relatively short duration of this period (only two years), the group managed to organise legally as an association in 1984, and since then has been hosting cultural activities and a co-living community of around 30 people. The space self-organises food-on-donation eetcafes, clothesswap days, alternative music nights, info evenings by activist organisations, among many different do-it-yourself projects and events.
The building particularly resonated with the topic of co-autonomy, as can be seen in the [archival project](https://giuliadegiovanelli.com/The-Autonomous-Archive) that Giulia de Giovanelli & Max Franklin, 2017 co-organisers, coordinated together with others in and around Poortgebouw; it was taken as a case-study for the *Versioning the Networked Archive* track.