Category: event

Friday, October 7 promises to be a beautiful day. Two Dutch-singing pop talents (Burger Service and Thor Kissing) are going perform in Varia and that is certainly something!

Join us for the Publishing Partyline on the 14th and 15th of October, to dive into the dependency relations that are being formed when working with web-to-print techniques, between designers-and-tools and between tools-and-standards.

Join us to celebrate the launch of the paper edition of Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Precence, a book compiled by Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting en Jara Rocha)!

On the Friday the 16th and Saturday the 17th of September 2022, we are hosting the Plaintext Protocol Partyline, in which we will explore and experience plaintext protocols as a communication medium.

On Friday, the 22th of July, Varia will once again host an evening of music. This time with KRAMP (who will present his new release on Bergpolder Records) and Bloedneus & De Snuitkever. It's been a while!

On April 4, 2022, after 32 years of existence, the Rotterdam Walk of Fame came to an end. The last sixty tiles of this well-known star sidewalk near the Metroplein and Ahoy were dismantled. Since then, Rotterdam has been missing one of its most noticeable landmarks. Fortunately, we managed to retrieve one of these special tiles. On July 8, at the start of the summer holidays, the tile of none other than Shrek will be reinstalled on the corner of Gouwstraat and Wolphaertstraat. Everyone is welcome at the green unveiling at 7 p.m. sharp. There will be snacks, drinks and music.

Calibre remains to be popular among amateur librarians and digital libraries. Over time, the software was supplemented by many new features and plugins. Now, we want to revisit the digital library as an extensible space, and step back into the imagination of the library as a generative and social environment.

We're delighted to invite you to our LIMITS-hub, an open and informal gathering moment taking place during the Eighth Workshop on Computing within Limits this June 21st/22nd. As this year's LIMITS will be taking place online, we are setting up a hub, to have a physical space to meet. Come along to watch the conference together!

As you may already know, a number of Rotterdam-based artists & hackers are busy working on projects related to documenta 15. These projects are happening in collaboration with ruangrupa, the artist collective from Jakarta Indonesia who are running the artistic direction of documenta this year. As documenta 15 approaches, we'd like to have a moment to eat together, share what we're up to and discuss over some drinks. It can also be a moment to focus on our local ekosistem.

Join us for an open and free workshop on Sunday, May 29th 11am–4pm, at Varia and learn more about the Digital Archive of Artists' Publishing and how you can start using this resource, too!

This evening, Angeliki Diakrousi will present the Hunting Mosquitos, a research in progress on 'The Mosquito', a technology used in hangouts in Rotterdam, that emits high-frequencies to deter the youth from loitering in public space.

You are warmly invited to the launch of the Infraschool, an experimental peer-to-peer learning project that aims to explore local community infrastructure, co-operative organisation and digital tools.

Streaming With Infrafem is a moment of exchange of communal strategies, infrastructural knowledge, and design choices starting by redefining the notion of streaming. We will explore ways of "streaming" to each other by listening, waiting and responding, both through text (for example via collaborative editors), through audio (for example via the streaming audio/video servers), and other means.

A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) is a collaborative project of Varia, LURK, Constant, HYPHA, Feminist Hack Meetings and ESC formed around intersectional feminist, ecological servers. In the first session at Varia during the weekend of March 26 and 27, we will focus on tools and methods to make space for understanding what feminist publishing infrastructures could be.

XPUB and Varia are delighted to invite you to this double launch of the publications Learning How to Walk While Catwalking and Vernaculars come to matter on Friday the 17th of December.

Experienced users might be surprised: nowadays it is totally possible to use a computer device and have no clue whatsoever about files and folders. While the file/folder paradigm is still foundational within computers, it is increasingly buried under layers of smart interfaces: search boxes, automatically curated collection, phone manager …

The third episode of The User Condition series will take place just before the holidays! On the 29th of July, French designer Anaëlle Beignon will discuss with Silvio Lorusso about design approaches that take into account the use of obsolete devices.

But what does obsolete really mean? In her master …

Blue is the sky, blue is the ocean. Blue is our mood (sometimes). Blue are the paths that have not yet been followed. Varia hosts this year's graduation show of the master Experimental Publishing (XPUB), Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam.

Time for the second episode of The User Condition series! On the 10th of May, artist and reluctant engineer Brendan Howell will converse with designer without qualities Silvio Lorusso about – ominous soundtrack — N E T S T A L G I A.

MySpace eulogies, pure HTML pride, RetroPie consoles, Geocities …

On May 8 (Saturday) & May 9 (Sunday), Plaintext Partyline explores the modest space of the rigid X-Y axis of plaintext. Varia members and friends spend a weekend exploring this old, but not old-fashioned technology. Various outcomes will be presented online and in the windows of Varia.

What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?

In …

This radio broadcast is the result of conversations and working relationships that navigate the concept of what an archipelagic construction could mean, in terms of organization, belonging, and self.

This will be a strange evening, during which the wet, dark and yet undiscovered basement of Varia comes to life and transforms every audible sound into a shepard tone.

An event exploring the hierarchies, difficulties and politics of voice in the digital domain, arranged for the launch of web-based artwork Wet Signal Voice Gardens by Kari Robertson.

Join us for an afternoon of food! Alice Strete presents the new food magazine Magiun and Varia announces the start of a new open membership food and fermentation club. Expect Kombucha, sourdough bread, ASCII art and other tasty treats.