A Fair New Idea?! #3: Working Digitally in the Arts – A Feminist Server

Under the title A Fair New Idea?!, Flanders Arts Institute put out four open calls for ideas and proposals to be further developed. The topic of the third call was: Working Digitally in the Arts.

The jury sought entries that wanted to tackle the issue of working digitally in the arts in a more sustainable, transparent and solidary way. They asked petitioners to pay attention to societal issues, such as digital literacy, the environmental, social and political implications of using digital technology, and/or codes of conduct for a fair digital world.

Ultimately the project A Feminist Server was selected, which among other things, has been offering online residencies to several of the other initial initiatives.

Between September 2021 and the end of 2022, A Feminist Server organized a series of workshops about installing and using digital tools, took part in a panel discussion about privacy in an online context, set up residencies related to accessibility and streaming (more specifically combining coded video and streamed sign language interpreters) and gave (limited) visibility to a censure-sensitive film about post-porn.

A consistent factor throughout all of these activities is that A Feminist Server does not see the use of digital infrastructure as a service that you just buy into. Selecting, managing and using any digital infrastructure is an integral part of the endeavour and practice. As a consequence, awareness of the possibilities, as well as of the risks and limitations of digital tools, can be improved. A Feminist Server invests strongly in the sharing of knowledge, in order to create trust, but not a dependent relationship. The key word here is emancipation.