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In partnership with the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, based at the London South Bank University, Marloes de Valk was appointed as a Doctoral Researcher to study the potentials of alternative media ecologies on community-run servers and networks.
Since 2020, she engaged with and analysed practices surrounding non-profit, artistic and activist servers, maintained by communities to suit their specific, often local needs, using existing networking tools and protocols as well as developing their own.
The title of the project references Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's book 'The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins', published by Princeton University Press in 2015.
Marloes de Valk's Research abstract
(Inter)governmental efforts to deal with the climate crisis are all based on a definition of technology that makes the consolidation of two incompatible aims—economic growth and environmental sustainability—seem possible. Technology is supposed to make the decoupling of economic growth from environmental depletion a reality. Technology has become a magic word granting us a way out of the climate crisis without changing anything fundamental. This specific definition of the word is invested with a strong—and well financed—drive to keep existing power structures in place. However, the paradox at the heart of this reading of technology has not gone unnoticed.
The definition of the word technology in the climate crisis has become brittle; the mismatch with lived experience and material practices makes the word ‘uninhabitable’; giving rise to many new terms associated with communities of practice which give voice and shape to different definitions and roles for technology on a damaged Earth: permacomputing, computing within limits, collapse informatics, salvage computing, slow tech, redundant technology, low-tech, feminist technology, convivial computing, disability driven development and more.
Building on Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by Raymond Williams (1976), I describe practices giving expression to different definitions of a single keyword, technology, by quite literally seizing control over the means of communication as the means of production. These communities of practice are not only taking control over the elements of network technology within their reach, they are also actively shaping the vocabulary used to discuss this. This dissertation aims to bring understanding of how the language around these infrastructures expresses this change, bringing the means of production in line with the interests of practitioners. Each practice, when situated historically, can teach us something about their transformative character and potential, which together constitute a low theory about questions emerging from these projects, fostering experimental togetherness, a pragmatic learning of what works and how (Graeber, 2004; Stengers, 2005). Exploring the contested meaning of technology—a word which holds a pivotal position in debates about ways to tackle climate change—can provide important insight into how this position emerged and support the experimental performing of other worlds that demonstrate computing otherwise is possible and doesn’t only consist of dreams, but also tests ideas in code, hardware and community organisation.
Damaged Earth Catalog, Courtesy Marloes de Valk
The project acknowledges the materiality and weight of this data, its carbon footprint, the hardware required to transmit, receive and view it, how these are produced, consumed and disposed of and asks what alternative practices currently exist that try to reduce its impact on the planet.
ICT’s carbon footprint is estimated to make up 3% to 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The networked image plays a central role in this, as it has become a commodity that is responsible for 80% of network traffic. Streaming media is currently (2021) responsible for 1% of global greenhouse emissions.
The project refuses the rhetoric of progress and a dismissal of alternatives based on scalability and universality and instead focuses on alternatives, existing practices that aim at providing situated solutions.
The Small File Photo Festival advocates for alternatives to high tech photorealistic aesthetics traditionally linked to notions of truth and objectivity. It aims to encourage experimentation with more efficient digital image formats and their specific visual qualities.
Small File Photo Festival‘The damaged Earth catalog: Technology on a depleted planet’ - Marloes de Valk, in A. Jehle and J. Schickedanz (eds) Aram Bartholl: Package Ready for Pickup. Osnabrück: Distanz Verlag, pp. 63–65, 2024
Presentation ‘Permacomputing’, La Nuit des Idees 2024: Faut-il craindre les machines?, Institut français NL, Openbare Bibliotheek Oosterdok, Amsterdam, 26 February 2024
Exhibition ‘Tangible Cloud Oracle’ at Media Mediterranea, Metamedij, at Galerija Novo, Pula, 27 May – 1 June 2024
Lecture-performance ‘A tale of two data centres’ during Synthetic Vision/Images of Power symposium, Leiden University, at Framer Framed, Amsterdam. 28 June 2024
Lecture-performance ‘A tale of two data centres’ during The Hmm’s Data Centre Tour, Amsterdam and Middenmeer, 09 November 2024
Presentation of ‘A Tale of Two Data Centres’ at the Master Experimental Publishing at the Piet Zwart Institute, 2024
Presentation of ‘A Tale of Two Data Centres’ at FIBER’s reassemble lab ‘Practising Permacomputing’, 2023
Presentation of ‘A Tale of Two Data Centres’ during The Hmm’s Data Centre Tour, 2023
Delete by Default, article on unthinking.photography. Jon Uriarte, 2023
The Tangible Cloud Oracle at the Tangible Cloud, exhibition at Gallery KBK, Brussels, March 2023
Small File Photo Festival, The Photographers' Gallery and online exhibition, 2023
rosa’s Ecofeminist Dictionary, in: Sunthinking. Marloes de Valk, 2022
Permacomputing. In: Counter-N. Marloes de Valk and Ville-Matias Heikkilä, 2022
rosa’s Ecofeminist Dictionary. In: A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers. Rotterdam: Varia, pp. 167–176. Marloes de Valk, 2022
A Paper Archive: Documenting the Live Performance Capitalist Magic, in: Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 1–6. Marloes de Valk, 2022.
Damaged Earth Catalogue - A wiki mapping alternative terms and communities of practice working on sustainability and social justice, critically responding to the classic Whole Earth Catalogue.
Green Hacks: Optimising images for web - Rekka Bellum. Produced for The Photographers' Gallery's Green Hacks – a series of artist-made how-to videos unpacking practical tips to educate, inform and inspire their community.
Douglas Schuler, Marloes de Valk, Shreya Urvashi and Scott Rose. 2022. A Pattern Language for the LIMITS Community: We Make the Road by Walking, a Messy Ethnography. In LIMITS’22: Workshop on Computing within Limits.
Talk and workshop at Art Meets Radical Openness, Linz, 16-18 June 2022.
https://art-meets.radical-openness.org/
Workshop at Tangible Cloud, Green Fabric, Brussels, 18-21 May 2022.
https://tangible-cloud.be/
Performance and talk at NØ LAB: Post-despair, la Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, 28 April 2022. https://gaite-lyrique.net/evenement/no-lab-post-despair
Talk at FIBER Reassemble Lab: Natural Intelligence, Towards Renewable and Regenerative Digital Infrastructures, Amsterdam, 10 March 2022.
https://www.fiber-space.nl/project/natural-intelligence/
Green Hacks: How to install custom firmware - Mathijs van Oosterhoudt. Produced for The Photographers' Gallery's Green Hacks – a series of artist-made how-to videos unpacking practical tips to educate, inform and inspire their community.
Talk at On the Edge #1, with Laura Marks and Olia Lialina, Merz Academy, Stuttgart. 7 December 2021. https://www.merz-akademie.de/en/veranstaltungen/on-the-edge-1/
Presentation of paper A pluriverse of local worlds: a review of Computing within Limits related terminology and practices, LIMITS'21, 14 June 2021. https://computingwithinlimits.org/2021/
Marloes de Valk, A pluriverse of local worlds: A review of Computing within Limits related terminology and practices (2021) in Workshop on Computing within Limits
Marloes de Valk, Refusing the Burden of Computation: Edge Computing and Sustainable ICT (2021) in APRJA: Research Refusal
Marloes de Valk interview with Joana Moll on 4004, her new commission by The Photographers' Gallery digital programmes and the role of artists and the art world in the transition to a less polluting society. Read it on unthinking.photography
Marloes de Valk interview with Nestor Siré on the development of alternative networks that arose in Cuba, visual culture on SNET, as well as the social and physical aspect of digital networks. Read Part I & Part II on unthinking.photography
