Experimental tooling projects
Guidelines
Working group: Gita, Binna, Yollotl
This guideline tries to create a common language and understanding of what tooling is and offers a way for (1) sharing your tools with others and (2) doing a collective tooling in experimental tooling project.
What is tooling?
Tooling is a process of generating tools that have been (consciously or unconsciously) used in our practices.
Tooling is a way of practicing our radical imagination not only for making artworks but also for supporting the way we organize our daily life resistance.
Tooling is a method for reflecting / making sense of the way we do our (im)material labour.
Tooling is a strategy for sharing knowledge inside and outside AC ecosystem, as well as building a solidarity/interdependent relations based on our open ethical principles beyond AC ecosystem.
Tooling is a mechanism to sustain openness.
Why tooling?
Tooling relates with our common interest in practicing AC (open) ethical principles.
Tools made from tooling process form the important part of the AC common resource, which consists not only of (1) money, space, infrastructure, facilities but also (2) ideas, thoughts, affect, and knowledge. Tooling makes (2) shareable and accessible within and outside of AC ecosystem.
Tooling also supports the sustainability of ideas and there’s a process of learning and unlearning when we form, share, test and give feedback to the tools.
What are tools?
Tools are different from products. Tooling shows the structure and the entire image of our working process.
For example: You made a book in a collaborative project. The book is a product. Inside the book there’s knowledge. But the way you make the book (e.g. how you collect resources, how you do collaborative editing, how you deal with conflict in collaborative process, how do you fundraise the project, how you make a DIY printing machine, how do you circulate that knowledge, hot do you circulate the book) is also knowledge, and that is what you can share as a tool, the methodology of that process.
Tools can be theoretical knowledge, practical knowledge, or both.
For example: Theoretical tools can be an argument about subverting the notion of School in conventional sense. This theoretical tools (the new notion of “School”) will feed to the growing knowledge of our (open) ethical principles and common languages.
Meanwhile, an example of practical tools can be about how to create a new setting of learning environment by changing the arrangement of chairs and tables in a classroom.
The example of practical tool that was given above can be generated into a theoretical knowledge, for instance about the politics of spatial division.
Tools should be replicable, in a sense that at least it can be applied or tested in different contexts. However, it doesn’t need to be a super mechanism or determinative algorithms.
Perhaps your tools won’t work in other contexts, but the process of testing the tools also form or add new knowledge to your initial tools. Tool is always in the process of becoming. For example: you share your tools of doing a collective making decision that you learned from a collaborative project with Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong. Could we use the tools to work with undocumented migrant workers in the Netherlands? It should be tested; and the person who try to use/apply the tool should give feedbacks and report their experience upon using the tool. This way, tooling replaces reporting and demonstrational practice of superficial publicity. All the tool need to pass through a process of contextualization that gives meaning of using that tool that comes from other place.
Tool is a cycle of sharing, it’s always working for and from inside and outside.
When do you have to do tooling?
Tools should be generated from:
Study Buddy triangle
Experimental tooling projects
Banga
Assembly
AC organizational works like Fundraising, Financial Admin, Website and Tam Tam (Internal communication)
Tools could be generated from:
Lifelines (individual organizational projects)
Each organizational works
How to do experimental tooling projects?
Experimental tooling projects should be based on affinity of minimum three organizations (the triangle!), with involvement from minimum two members of AC. Inviting other organizations outside AC is therefore allowed or even recommended in order to keep our network open.
Funding for experimental tooling projects can be taken from the collective pot. However, you may also consider the project as a strategy to get funding from outside for AC collective pot. Therefore experimental tooling projects can also be a form of fun(d)raising.
Experimental tooling project proposal does not need to be agreed by the Assembly. As long as two members of AC are involved, the project can be conducted. This is also an exercise of practicing our autonomy.
The accountability of experimental tooling project will be assessed in Tam-Tam and should be presented in the next Assembly.
How to do tooling?
Tools should be based from our own experience.
Before doing tooling, consider the existing tools that have been made by others. Therefore your tools won’t be redundant. If you have similar concept with other tools, you may just add your tools to the existing one.
As a start, think of comprising a “How To” “Why to” “When To” instruction based on things that you consider can be used by others (particularly when you’re going to write about a practical tool). However, remember that the instruction is not a universal mechanism. Therefore you should give a context of your particular situation and how you came up forming the tools. Giving concrete examples are also an effective way to give a clear understanding of how to use the tools.
When creating a theoretical tool, referring to the style of our Common Language is helpful as a loose guideline.
Tools are created for the commons and belong to the common resources. When it is go public in our website, it is not longer “Riwaq’s tools” or “Art Group 705 tools”, it’s only tools, that can be shared and used for everyone. We let go the ownership of the tools to disrupt the prevailing capitalistic paradigm of property and sharing. (tools are not signed)
When you do tooling, you should consider that the way you communicate the tool need to be understood by others.
Tools can took the form of diagram, video, writing, audio, everything you think can effectively communicate your tools.
Technicality:
The tooling process should start at least one month after doing events/activities/projects. The tools should be shared with the rest of AC members maximum 3 months afterwards.
When tooling is going to be done collectively within AC (for example from Banga, Assembly), form a temporary working group and appoint a guardian of process within the group.
The procedure for sharing tooling need to be discussed with the Internal Communication and Website working group. Proposal: We can share it through our Tam Tam newsletter for internal reading and then share it in our website for public under the section of Tooling.
Examples of Tools (or almost tools) from the Assembly:
Cascade of coherence
Cascade of coherence is a tool that works for checking correspondence and coherence between rooted struggles, ethics, activities, delivery mechanism and resourcing (labour, affect, money, time.
(1) The rooted struggle is a point of embarkation, the main reason behind our practices. The struggle can be identified as something that we want to tackle, for example: the prevalent neo-liberalist paradigm.
(2) Ethics is an open principle and an orientation, it serves as an objective that aims to shift the paradigm in our rooted struggle. Ethics should be the antithesis of our rooted struggle.
(3) Activities are the materialization of ethics through collective practices.
(4) Delivery Mechanism details the activity.
(5) Resourcing is the material and immaterial support for delivering activities. For example, if an exploitative oil company wanted to support our activities, the cascade of coherence will show that the resource contradicts our rooted struggles and ethics. Should resources follow ethics or ethics follow resources? Or, can resources and ethics create a productive conflict? When there’s a contradiction in the cascade of coherence, we will start to question all elements that interact in the cascade of coherence (and that’s good).
Triangle
Mechanism/guideline proposed by the Lifeline group can be a tool for sustaining self-care within a network.
Collective pot
Mechanism/guideline proposed by the administration working group can be a tool for radical decentralization of sharing money.
Please add more, anyone! :)
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