Notes on Refusal & Repair*
Your portal to join me in this study now has a door. the abc questionnaire is a community submission form with a set of meditative prompts, that will hopefully grow into a public archive of terms and conditions that we can begin to reimagine together. the site is inspired by nancy wu’s a website is a room and tiger dingsun’s chimeric worlding. the site’s design is by studio tibby and was hand coded by dan hemerlein.
a series of exercises invite you to map your local area network (LAN), locate your server, go for an internet walk, study your network, create a short manifesto, and to imagine new “terms & conditions.” these prompts are an introduction into how we can begin a practice of refusal that acknowledges our ability to choose, once empowered with our right to information, and to repair through the breaking of oppressive systems and reimagining our relationships to and between the internet, our natural environment, and our surrounding community networks.
i hope you are inspired to explore your relationship with the web, the wires and cables, (server) farms, and (data) clouds that bring these words to you, and are able to reflect on the status of your connections. i created the abc glossary questionnaire as a resource to assist you in those reflections and in submitting a new term and condition. in the words of alexis pauline gumbs, it is an “interdependent ceremony.” as your words are submitted, they will begin to populate the right column so that we can each see new possibilities, and branch off of each other.
“What if this life as an independent experimental artist is not itself an independent experiment? What if it’s an interdependent ceremony?” —
the god of every day, alexis pauline gumbs
here are some questions to take with you as you head to abcglossary.xyz:
What words do we use to describe our electronic experiences
What terms do you associate with the internet, computing, and cyber culture?
What words do we ignore?
What words do we need to use in new ways?
Thank you again to all who were a source of inspiration and support for this project and questionnaire. it has truly been a labor of love over that last few months. i am so excited to finally open the door to you all. please take a look inside.
© 2024 New Terms & Conditions