Interview Meltionary

FSS - Feminst server Sysadmins
MELT - Meltionary

Could you walk us through the ways Access Server is used?

MELT: The first thing that piqued our interest was the sub page Access Server, because it has the same title as our project. Could you walk us through the ways in which that page is used? Who uses it? What are the steps to follow and what happens if something doesn't work? We are also interested in the kinds of conversations you perhaps already had among your group to set up the page.

FSS: When searching for an answer to this question, we had a very technical way of looking at it. The page is from a Mediawiki that we installed. We have this helpful "history" function under each created page, as it's a collaborative writing tool, it keeps track of the previous edits. So what we actually did yesterday is hit the history button to try to find the history of that specific page because it also has a timestamp, and it also sees the user who was actually creating this page. So we found that the user was THF and that there was three other users: ooooo, b04 and ezn. They were also contributing to the the technical appearance of this page. The THF user refers to ‘trans hack feminism’, which was a convergence organized in Calafou. . So it's not very clear who made that page, but it is made in that convergence, so there were people sitting around the table and making it. Do you want to contextualize the THF user spideralex? Or the trans hack feminist convergence?

FSS: So the THF user was created around the first TransHackFeminist convergence in 2013. It was a shared user of the different people that have been documenting the different sessions that were held at this first event of one week. We have been sharing <the user> to document basically the different conversations. And then the wiki has remained as a space where different TransHackFeminist events could document what they did. In the wiki, we write about feminist servers in general and when we document the Anarchaserver's technical and other work.

FSS: More on the technical side – this was the first thing I did when I joined Anarchaserver. As spideralex said, the documentations of different projects kept going on. So there were two similar pages with server set up documentation. The first thing I did was to merge and update them. But also, we had this conversation with ooooo that it would be nice if someone actually tries it. Yeah, sometimes it's nice if someone else tries to follow the instructions because you, yourself, know what you're doing. And I also did the styling of the page and then I did the overall styling of MediaWiki, and I wanted for it to be a bit more welcoming than a default page.

FSS: And I think also as it is a wiki, it would be nice now that you <MELT> are in residence for the Fair New Idea project, we would welcome your visions on accessibility. It would be an invitation, of course, that you could also become an active intervener or would change and modify and add to the content of that page to maybe broaden up this idea of what access to the server is. Besides from its technical perspective of how to exchange SSH keys (secure shell) and make user modifications.

How do you think about accessibility?

MELT: It is very interesting to hear from everyone about what kind of accessibility you think with! I hear a lot about collaborations that produce the wiki with you as a way to literally access the server. And I also understand that it is also a kind of accessibility to make the server accessible by documenting how to use it. But I'm curious what it would mean for you to make the server disability accessible? How do you think about accessibility? What does that mean in your project? Do you have some thoughts on that?

FSS: I can start with this question. So. Accessibility, yeah, it's a concern. Accessibility in terms of who can work and make use of our services that we host. And at the moment it‘s mostly people who are part of the collective and with this project. A Fair New Idea was also for us a way to try to reach out and to try to see how we could host people besides our internal network. So that's why we invited you for a residency. So anyway, it was an opportunity to reach out to first artists and of course, we'll see how it will go. But since most of are artists and at the same time we have technical knowledge and we would like to share basic cohabitation with artists who can learn to work outside very commercial, centralized online tools. So that's one path of accessibility. So then there's the accessibility of who can join in our networks because sometimes the activism is something that not everybody can afford, because most of the times that we volunteer on a project. So having available resources, even if it's minimal for people to do things, with our servers is a very important accessibility factor. And then it comes, of course, accessibility of our user interfaces who can actually read and learn and from the content we host on our servers.

FSS: Maybe I can add something: For me, the first part of accessibility was also for myself even, to start being familiar with, how to use a server, how to get there and how to do stuff there and not look at it as a black box that I cannot touch because I'm afraid. So by trying to bring people that are not experts or not technologists into collectives in which people can help each other in educating themselves so they feel more emancipated to use not only commercial tools, but also their own or open source ones. For the future what I'm currently thinking of is that I would like things that we do on the server, like maybe a website or a wiki or whatever to be more inclusive to people with disabilities, for example. What I see now when it comes to that is that colours could be too much for some people to read, or <we could develop tools like> some functions for people who cannot hear and who would really like it to learn more about technology can use.

FSS: So I agree with everything that has been said and the different layers of accessibility. I am interested in understanding accessibility as something that too is about how we make our tools and services and contents more accessible to Deaf and disabled people. And also to people who don't speak Spanish and English. Then again, in general how contents and services can be made more known and accessible to short term collectivities and individuals. I’m also interested in how you can enable a lower threshold for feminist collectives to engage in and maintain their own technical infrastructures.

MELT: Thank you so much for these answers and also these very varied and different considerations of access. In relation to infrastructure, tech and language, and of course, disability. Yeah, I think we are both excited to continue working on that together. The next question is about speculative dreaming: What future perspectives for the feminist server do you wish or dream of?

FSS: I dream that our feminist server continues to be a meeting point and space for feminist peers that will help us to evolve and collaborate and work together. And I'm also thinking about local feminist groups here in Rotterdam where I now live, but also back in Athens, where I come from. And I know that there is a need [for feminist servers] there. I hope that they can benefit from the existence of servers like ?Femserver ?, especially towards helping to a future of more technological autonomy. Probably that cannot be completed, but at least to try to be less dependent on giant tech corporations for their communication or for publishing our works or our struggles or things that we need to communicate with the world, um, and interconnect with other feminist groups out there. So I hope that the feminist servers can help that perspective.

FSS: I totally agree, and I find it so beautiful how we use tools as always a means to an end. I don't think anyone of us glorifies them and it's like: [making a] server is the end game. No, it's about using [a server] to learn together and to hang out and communicate. So I think that's very beautiful. I'm from Georgia and I didn't have anyone to talk about any of those things around me. That's how I actually ended up here. And this is already my dream scenario come to life. So now I'm trying to reconnect with people who are not so technical, but we are already starting to have something local in Georgia as well. So yeah, it's kind of that's what feminist servers are to me.

FSS: Yes, I agree with Estragon and I would like to give a more pragmatic and nuanced [view] on this thing. I would say that the cooperative model here would be one of my dreams for the feminist servers we have. And that it can include a membership fee so we can make our services more sustainable because from the past experience, and we've seen that the only way of giving time, it works well for learning and things like that, but then it's very difficult to host services for other artists and feminists that we would like to have. So a more concrete approach to the dream of the future for the life of our servers.

FSS: What I observe right now is that the critique of big tech companies is high but the awareness that there is an alternative way way to use technology is very invisible so far. And that's a lot of work to speak up for that and to make it shown. So that would be some vision of mine to not look at faces of complete disbelief when talking about having our own server.

FSS: I would like more people and collectives engaged in setting up feminist servers and in general feminist infrastructure initiatives. I would be interested in more local gynecological considerations embedded inside the set up of future feminist servers. Dreaming, creating data centers made for and by feminist servers. And coordination between different feminist servers to avoid reinventing the wheel or to enable supporting each other in knowledge and solidarity processes. To share resources and funding, to share common technical infrastructure or by having people that have specific skills and knowledge that can contribute to different service initiatives. And finally, my big dream is one day to have feminist servers that then orientate towards providing services to communities that are facing strong gender based violence online and censorship in digital spaces [such as] pro-choice activists, post porno and sex workers. So that's a long term projection, but I would like that we can manage to go there one day.

FSS: The idea of more sysadmins people who join us in the backend! [People] not just there for the services, who learn with us and try to engage with the technology and the machines which are surrounding us waiting to be engaged. Sysadmins unite (!) to break the isolation and the local isolation of having that awareness.

MELT: Maybe it's nice to continue because our project also works with trans* feminism and Disability Justice, and I love the ways in which the trans*feminist, THF, trans hack feminism becomes a shared user in the access server page. But also, I think that there's a specific understanding of trans*feminism that you seem to be working with because it comes up again many times on the Anarchaserver page. What does it mean to you to serve trans*feminism in this project? I think it's also related to a lot of the dreams that you just shared. Would you want to say something more about trans*feminism specifically?

FSS: I'm still a little bit like scared about this fact of serving and hosting. And it's like, I feel like by inhabiting these servers and then also maintaining and configuring the affective infrastructures in which we are moving that we are trans* hack feminists. And it's [about] these kinds of spaces. It's not serving. It's, you know, like fluid. It's like good. It's like you are feeling the practices of technology. It's like configuring together. It's yeah, it's more like an actualization of trans* hack feminism than than this kind of serving. And I get a little bit lost in it. But like it has a history, also. Also, the trans* hack feminism, it was a reaction in the electic tech carnival (https://eclectictechcarnival.org/) to open specific identity politics and women-only-spaces up to trans* people. And then the reaction came. But I guess spideralex and Sophie were involved in redefining the trans* feminist as, uh, a convergence in Calafou. So maybe she can say something more about that.

MELT: I would also be super curious to hear what it means to have come from a cis-woman only space and going through the process of opening that up to trans* people.

FSS: So I try to put here just a little definition that we created for the feminist museum about trans* hack feminism. Hmm. So we have to define it like: The Mummy is a museum of the future taking place in the 22nd century. It's a museum about sexism that has disappeared. And so we make a curation with Anamou, which is a sys adnim of Anarchaserver that organised the trans* hack feminist convergence in Mexico. We try to collect seven different artistic pieces. I have been in a collective in Spain that is called Donestech (https://www.donestech.net/) in Catalan that was created in 2007. At that moment, there was no other collective that was working on the relation between gender and technologies and free software technologies. But I think that the paradigm of inclusion of women in digital tech related spaces was needed, no? But it's very 90s, no? [We became more] trans* feminist in our politics, in our feminist politics. We made an event where we would meet together, [and you had to be] open to trans* feminism. So that's why it was called trans hack feminism and because it was organized not only by me and Sophie Toupin, but also by the people of the XXX which was a space in Calafou and Pulido who were trans feminist. It appeared in 2008 in Spain, in the feminist conference in Granada.

FSS: Yes, I would like to elaborate a bit more on what ooooo mentioned a little bit of the story of events because we are based in different locations within Europe. So we have these events maybe for a year or maybe two to meet. Well, I admit I haven't been at that many. I've been in the last one, it was an organized in Greece where I am based. The one before was in Italy, and the one before Italy was called Trans Hack Feminism in Calafou. And because I organized it, the question of who can join this event came up because every time as time passes as spideralex mentioned feminism itself changes, and it's always this question of who can join our event? And again, for example, the last, let's say a firewall, is cis men. Can cis men join our events? So this is the base of the conversation as we try to provide safe spaces and for those who are marginalized, within technology and its environments. But I would say it's an open question, and it always depends on the locality of the event. And on those organizing it. Of course, we all have our own idea and praxis of feminism.

FSS: To me it was also new, I was not sure what that trans* referred to, because in the German speaking context [people] were talking maybe of queer feminism. So I was curious to also learn [about trans* feminism as] a part of the struggle against a current of feminism that in some places is stronger than others, and that is about the exclusion of trans* people and non-binary. And so that was one aspect that I find interesting to learn, and I find its good to call it trans* feminism to make it explicit.

FSS: Yeah, and important because at a certain moment, there was really a confusion for me because I was at the CCC (Chaos Computer Congres) and there was a trans hack meeting. So I joined into the meeting because it was about the organization of the next festival. But actually, it was about trans nationality. So it was more like focusing on Spain and Italy. They have like trans hack meetings, but it's actually transnational meetings.

FSS: So we have hack meetings. Yeah, when we make it across different countries it becomes a trans hack meeting.

FSS: Yeah, sure. But it's interesting that the one refers to like identity politics in relation to gender, it seems. And the other, of course not. It's much wider also about your national identity. But it is confusing, or it is also how the term can be hacked so that that gets certain meanings by actually also using it.

FSS: Yeah, it was confusing. And then the confusion was pretty interesting. We only had two trans hack meetings in the history of trans hack meetings in Europe. One in Poland and the other one was three years ago, four years ago in Danack and there some people thought it was a trans* hack meeting, but it was pretty cool because this way we had more queer people around. Yeah, it wasn't that easy. It was like: No, no, this is not the trans* hack meeting.

FSS: And actually, there was one recently in Bologna that also had a sysadmin of syster server involved. It was also called like that. That's nice. So yeah, it's a somehow yeah, it's hacked then. But yeah, it's not so nice if you're then there and it's a quite cis-normative environment because that's not that the safer space that you went there for. This is not a trans* hack meeting this is a trans hack meeting.

FSS: During THF, the question was also: what is now the most important term in it? Is trans*? is it hack? is it feminism? Can feminism be hacked, can feminism be trans*? Can hack be transed? Can you trans* hack? It's like, you know, it was like circulating inside of the dependencies within these three terminologies.

FSS: In the pad, I have shared the link to the documentation of that session. So maybe then you can dig more in. It wasn't so many people that say they're interested, in trans*feminism. But the trans terminology, about transitioning, about transition, about all the links that it could have with immigration with transformation, with even of politics, you know, and so on, so on, so on. So yeah, I think we can put it in different layers and for sure, at least when it was set up in Calafou in 2017 the first layer was about trans*feminist politics.

FSS: Yeah, just to add, sometimes when you encounter a term for first time, you make a conclusion depending on your background and your identity, etc. So of course, when our services uses terms it feels important and to give a description of them: what does this term contain? It's also very important that when we do things that we are open about it, the terminology we're using what does refer to and why it is constructed like that? And it is important because it changes very quickly, in all this researches of all that is happening in migration realities to multi species studies and keeping in mind always intersectionality they all add up in the end in the concept of creating safe spaces. So I think this is something to consider when we use terms, how we came up with and why we came up with the terms we use.

FSS: And it was really important that people do a bit of research and find their own history in this terminology, you know. It's also by the people inhabiting or by the people embodying that it becomes and not only by a definition. I mean, it's ever changing also.

FSS: I agree in the sense I think that Anarchaserver is one of the first pages including the THF and all the documentation, and I feel very complicated to give a straightforward definition. And now we are trying to make access to the documentation that has been created around that concept. Now we are trying to clarify, to know, a definition of our internet politics and gender and diversity and so on, which is the text that we are trying to set up about Anarchaserver. But for Trans Hack Feminism convergences, I would find it very difficult to give a straightforward definition and an explicit one.

FSS: It's not about giving you straightforward definition. They can be, as you said, you link to a document that as you said gives a story of how this happened.

FSS: Mm-Hmm. Yeah, that's all there.

FSS: Maybe we have to create expiration dates on our Wiki pages. If we don't visit them in certain time becomes too old and it becomes a reference without being actual.

FSS: But I've seen this, coming up when we organize events and you know, we have to do open calls and these things are always reconfiguring. Hacking with THF helps to hack patriarchy, capitalism and other systems of oppression. Hacking refers to the act of doing and taking things apart, understanding them in a deeper way. Hacking is action performance.

MELT: So one last question is how do you define in your group the terms server and the relations between service and clients because we also read in your manifesto and that your project is about re configuring these relations? So it's a question that maybe speaks to like literally the server, but maybe also metaphorically the serving of values or the working together for the making of space.

FSS: For me, the server is like a space, like a room. It's not only a machine, but we can go into it because usually we meet, especially if we live in other places, we meet on the server. It's our meeting point like instead of going to a cafe, we meet in the terminal. So while we’re in the terminal we try to help each other, educate ourselves and spend time together. So it's a connecting room that we can go in and work together in. And about the ‘server’ ‘client’, I really don't like the word client in general, but I know the technical term. I just don't see it translating in a social way for us inside the feminist server constellations because it is more of a corporate thing. Other people have said its more like inhabiting the servers instead of serving. So its not only that the server serves, and the other is a transmitter it becomes an interchangeable role that you also receive at the same time instead of only offering the other side. I would like more that we do both.

FSS: We have a lot of humor in the poetics, and really intense reflections and critical thinking about the terminology, which is used inside of these machines. Common are terms like master/slave. Server/client. So there is really critical thinking about it and also to approach it differently, fail/success. And you can say, OK, yeah, we have failed but try to say, oh, we have some data somewhere, we can reconstruct this. So we often deconstruct this language and appropriate it in a way that is closer to our identity and our politics.

FSS: I'm looking at some of the histories of feminist servers. I saw two approaches that I really like one that was from 2013 was when they twisted the language at the feminist server summit that was held on the question of a feminist server into: Are you being served? And I really like that because it fits my my understanding of feminism as talking about the embodied experience of not being served in certain contexts. And the other one is from the fall, the ‘From Skin to Steel Manifesto’ that must have come from to Brazil. They start their manifesto by claiming that we are all already and thinking about, body experience as serving. And that's very close to what I would call care practices. So where where are the lines between serving and caring? It's really a very radical political claim to look for things about who is being served and it is close to this question of who has access and who can participate.

FSS: Even though we do things all the time we never say server/client. If we want to be fair to what convention you need for the client, even the commercial thinking, we use the word interface and allies with the collaboration when we want to talk about the people who would like to do things with our servers and interfaces can apply. Apply both to the look of the of the websites, but also how we communicate to the people outside our internal group. So we don't refer to the client almost at all.

MELT: But then as a tiny, technical follow up question, how do you technically reconfigure these relations?

FSS: It's like another network topology, peer to peer. So technically there are protocols which are allowing that, but we're not there yet. But for example, what we also tried to do with the feminist server is to have distributed services that not each server has the same, services that we are using. One has the ether pads, another has other things.

FSS: So its not really changing the server client, but like it's more like making a redistributed model of dependency.

FSS: One of the points that THF articulated is that of autonomy where with having a Feminist server: you choose your dependencies.

FSS: I would like to ask MELT something, so you are also working on server access? Access Server? Is it still server access the project you are working on?

MELT: It's called Access Server, the project.

FSS: I wondered, maybe its too quick to digest what we said so far. But still, I wondered what you thought about the convergences between the thoughts between your Access Server project and what we have been discussing so far?

MELT: Hm, yeah so part of the ACCESS SERVER project is that we're technically trying to understand how it can work so that when people email institutions asking for accessibility, the email will cc the previous email with access requests to the same institution. So we're trying to technically create a collectivity so that disabled people emailing understand see that they're not the only ones that are emailing to any institution. So emailers have the sense that, oh, many other people have emailed as well. So I think that this relates to how you’re talking about technical collectivity and trying to share resources and offer other options for points of connection. This is still a technical question. We're not exactly sure how to do it yet and also to maintain people's privacy at the same time. So there's a few questions there behind that. But I think that this is the desire to understand the technically active collective body that is emailing with access requests.

MELT: When listening to you. I think notions of care and trust is where I feel a lot of shared questions and maybe sometimes struggles or figurings out. And also in these relations between how to reach out and work with other people with an infrastructure that we provide. Because the idea is really that other disabled people can use the email server and the website that comes with it. So there are also questions of how to even make the website accessible. There are guidelines around that, we have some knowledge around that. But then also how to reach out, also across other axes of discrimination and oppression. How to build that trust also. And also technically then if someone sends an email through our email server how can we make sure that their name is anonymous, for example, the IP address, etc. So that's a lot of questions that still seem also hard to ensure safety. Then also, we skipped the question on trolling and how to carry the risk of providing, feminist and accessible services. That's also a big one for us still to figure out. How can we, I think we can’t prevent people from abusing our service, but how can we even make sure that it doesn't affect more people? And maybe also it doesn't affect us too much. So all of these questions, I think, are quite related.

MELT: Also, when you were speaking, something that also came to mind is that I think that the idea of the access server, constantly reminds us of the world that we live in where ableism is so structural. And this is the kind of reality that we're posited against. I'm also curious to see how how we can get people interested in using it, because also even when people are paid for their labour and even when they write emails to institutions, institutions themselves have so much work to do to change. And so I think that that is also a similar condition that you're working with with the feminist server projects where you're publicizing. We're trying to make more visible, so to speak, that there are alternatives, other ways of doing things that do not conform to ableism and capitalism as discriminatory and oppressive standards. Our project approach institutions and requires them to change. And that's also what you're doing. I think what the feminist server project is like trying to provide an alternative to show that a change is possible.