Filtered by: presentation
Maisa in Webland: Detouring UX Destinies - Book launch and workshop
Thursday, December 18, 2025
Join us for the launch of the book *Maisa in Webland: Detouring UX Destinies* by Maisa Imamović which will be preceded by a workshop with her.
'Why Read Together?' Publication Launch
Saturday, December 6, 2025
After a year of reading sessions organised in different spaces throughout Rotterdam; After many hours spent perched behind our laptops, writing, editing, 3d sculpting, designing, debating word-choices in the comment sections of online documents; After a month of tensely awaiting the arrival of our companions, our small but abundant books, we are thrilled to announce the launch of our publication ‘Why Read Together? On Companions, Co-conspirators, and Breathing Words’, published with HumDrumPress.
Community technology from below
Thursday, September 18, 2025
fauno is a software developer, organiser and worker-owner at Sutty.nl). His work and activism focus on investigating, re-thinking, adapting, modifying, and implementing ecological and resilient technologies, especially autonomous, collectively managed infrastructure. On Thursday evening, September 18th, we will have an informal show & tell. We will be learning about fauno's work, and have space for discussion & dinner afterwards. Everyone is welcome to join!
Futile Data. Cold War Current: Artist talk with Francis Hunger
Friday, September 12, 2025
Francis Hunger’s practice combines artistic research and media theory with the capabilities of narration through installations, video essays, radio plays, performance. Currently he co-teaches the class for Emergent Digital Media at the Academy of Visual Arts, Munich and is co-editor of Carrier-Bag.net.
Money Talks
Friday, September 5, 2025
‘Money Talks’ is a form of tools sharing that plays with the format of a talk show to converse about the tricky topic of money.
Common Dirt Map - Presentation
Sunday, July 13, 2025
Get to know the common dirt of Charlois: from the neglected patches of earth around the plane trees to the communally managed facade gardens. On the 13th of July, we will present a map that takes you along some of the most fascinating pieces of urban nature that the district has to offer; from the Arie Berkelaarpad to the Kromme Zandweg and beyond. Together we will look at how nature finds its way between buildings and pavement. Let's go for a walk!
Haunting the Network: Gendered Surveillance and Media Memory. How can visibility become a trap? with Nabila Ernada
Thursday, July 10, 2025
In this presentation, Nabila Ernada will share research exploring postcolonial surveillance, feminist resistance, and the architectures of visibility in Indonesia, from the weaponised image of Gerwani (a feminist group violently disbanded in the 1960s) to contemporary forms of algorithmic control.
A Color With A Body And A Place with Karla Claudio
Sunday, April 6, 2025
Boricua artist Karla Claudio hosts a talk, film screening and workshop about Caribbean dye plants and their colonial histories.
Game & Watch: Cold War Ideologies
Friday, November 29, 2024
The times of Cold War seem long gone, yet they significantly impact present cultural ideologies that repeat and evolve in contemporary creative production. This evening gathering is the starting point of a series that tries to expose the influence of the Cold War across present day narratives, technologies and geopolitics.
Whine, Dine and Decline
Thursday, November 28, 2024
Whine, Dine and Decline is a dinner and conversation around the local foodscape of the Netherlands and it's potential future in the context of climate change.
Vernacular Echoes: Sounds and Collective Expressions
Saturday, November 16, 2024
What is the role of the vernacular in sound knowledge and modes of organisation? Knowledge and information organisation are deeply powerful acts, which relate to how we envision the world. This event further develops an ongoing thread about the ways the vernacular (re)orients language and technology and generates other forms of knowledge sharing and organising. Khamoosh is a participatory artistic research project that mediates conservation and restoration by exploring the sonic heritage of Iran through recorded sounds of everyday life; sounds less heard or even silenced. Golnoosh and Maryam, two members of Khamoosh, will begin by presenting how Khamoosh as a process-based project operates, and share insights to their own roles within the Khamoosh community.
Solarigraphy
Sunday, October 6, 2024
Diana Pankova will share her work and process on 'Solarigraphy - a hand-crafted technology aimed at the star(s)', teaching us how to make your own camera out of a beer can (or any light-tight container)! During this workshop she will share a specific way of capturing sun, that anyone can do, but most don't even think about. You can bring your own empty beer can (or not empty so you can have it for a drink later!)
Miscalculating risk: Policing Technologies in the Netherlands
Friday, July 12, 2024
In light of the increasing use of data-driven policing technologies, how can we understand and find ways to address the impact of their deployment? As surveillance technologies become more and more entangled in everyday life, what are our possibilities of response? Who or what are the key players in these considerations? Sanne Stevens and Jair Schalkwijk will join us to unpack these questions.
Anti-colonial tech: a conversation
Friday, February 16, 2024
During the event, participants will share modest proposals for moving networks and political engagement away from toxic cloud environments. From Counter Cloud Action to Digital Discomfort and trans*feminist servers, the techno-disobedient practices they share will unsettle computationally mediated depletion, activating paths towards anti-colonial tech.
Doing the Dishes and then Revolution
Saturday, December 9, 2023
Doing the Dishes and then Revolution is an event in two parts on doing things collectively.
Colonial Infrastructures Worksession with Yasmine Boudiaf and film screening with Riar Rizaldi, Simnikiwe Buhlungu and Tessa Mars
Friday, October 27, 2023
This worksession intends to be a moment of collective learning, to make tangible invisible colonial mechanisms of hierarchy and oppression that are prevalent in everyday communication technologies, yet often difficult to comprehend.
Rotterdamse Belhuizen
Thursday, July 13, 2023
Belhuizen (call shops which in The Netherlands functioned also as internet cafes) are places where access to technology has been made possible through the practical acquisition of knowledge related to specific usages, as most shops are operated by diaspora members connecting community members from within and outside of Europe. For migrant populations in Rotterdam, they are points of entry to local internet infrastructure, which enables the pursuit of everyday life.
Launch of Performing Patents Otherwise: Archival conversations with historic clothing inventions
Saturday, April 15, 2023
This event launch will start with a performative reading and activation of the online platform 'Performing Patents Otherwise'. It will follow with a series of conversations on its making process, from the data collection and curation to how the interface facilitates access to these datasets while encouraging critical interpretation and discussions. We will also showcase the short video documentation of 'I, Martha Gowans,' a performance for two sewing machines, a voice and a computer based on a clothing patent filed by Martha Gowans in Dundee in 1903.
Feminist Hack Meetings #6 - How about access?
Saturday, June 4, 2022
This FHM session is for us to reconsider the accessibility of online realms. We will learn about this in two parts, first through a guest talk from artist-design duo MELT, who will share their research and practice around accessibility.
Graanschuur tarwewijk: documenta 15 pre-pre-preview
Friday, June 3, 2022
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.
Hunting Mosquitos (research-in-progress)
Friday, May 27, 2022
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.
Infraschool Open Day
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
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.
The User Condition #04 - 'Losing Your Data is Good for You' - with Dave Young
Saturday, December 18, 2021
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 apps, etc.
Double publication launch: Learning How to Walk While Catwalking and Vernaculars come to matter
Friday, December 17, 2021
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.
Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano + Dachen Bao @ Varia with a screening of ~~~~ by Sami Hammana
Friday, October 29, 2021
Juan Pablo will share his research on the Atlantis-2 submarine cable and its landing site in Conil, a small coastal town in the south of Spain filled with ruins of colonial and information infrastructures. Dachen Bao will share his research conducted as part of the self-organised collective 'Chongqing Work Institute'(重庆工作研究所). The second half of the gathering will open a space to collectively reflect on infrastructures as contentious production and mediation of reality, proposing a collective mode of research on media technologies that operates from a relational and networked proximity.
The User Condition #03 - With Anaëlle Beignon
Thursday, July 29, 2021
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.
Blue Links - XPUB Graduation Show
Saturday, July 17, 2021
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.
Digital Solidarity Networks - How can we rethink digital infrastructures in terms of capacity and care?
Thursday, June 10, 2021
Notions of scale, usability, collectivity and agency play an important role in generating possibilities for technological self-determination in an attempt to imagine computational infrastructures differently. How can we imagine technological attitudes that don't rely on data extractivist models? How do we make space to reconsider the figure of the user? And what if digital tools can be adapted to the specificities of each situation? For the third event, we will be joined by TITiPi (Miriyam Aouragh, Seda Gürses, Femke Snelting, Helen Pritchard) who will speak about infrabels.
Digital Solidarity Networks - What are lessons learned from alternative, decentralised or federated infrastructures?
Thursday, May 27, 2021
Notions of scale, usability, collectivity and agency play an important role in generating possibilities for technological self-determination in an attempt to imagine computational infrastructures differently. How can we imagine technological attitudes that don't rely on data extractivist models? How do we make space to reconsider the figure of the user? And what if digital tools can be adapted to the specificities of each situation? For the second event, we will be joined by LURK (represented by Aymeric Mansoux and Roel Roscam Abbing) who will speak about lessons learned from alternative, decentralised or federated networks.
Digital Solidarity Networks - How can we reconfigure digital networks across timelines and communities?
Thursday, May 20, 2021
Notions of scale, usability, collectivity and agency play an important role in generating possibilities for technological self-determination in an attempt to imagine computational infrastructures differently. How can we imagine technological attitudes that don't rely on data extractivist models? How do we make space to reconsider the figure of the user? And what if digital tools can be adapted to the specificities of each situation? In this presentation, Dušan Barok will briefly discuss their genealogies, varieties and dilemmas.
The User Condition #02 - With Brendan Howell
Monday, May 17, 2021
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.
The User Condition #01
Tuesday, March 23, 2021
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?
Wet Signal Voice Gardens (launch & event)
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
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.
Subject: Writing with(out) gestures!
Saturday, August 29, 2020
This Saturday, Joseph Knierzinger will present ongoing investigations into the combination and modification of ancient media and rediscovered methodologies!
Heath Bunting - in conversation with the Voluntary Fire Brigade of the Apocalypse
Monday, February 17, 2020
Heath Bunting visits Varia to share his past and present projects against control systems, in conversation with Florian Cramer and the Voluntary Fire Brigade of the Apocalypse.
Activating an archive
Friday, May 31, 2019
At the end of last year, **De Player** approached **Varia** to develop a web-publication for their Pushing Scores project archive. The project investigated the state of the arts of composing scores in a contemporary environment and spanned over 2-3 years.
The Network We (de)Served, (XPUB Special Issue #08)
Thursday, April 4, 2019
Dear guest, we traveled from home to home by bicycle, setting up homeservers. As friends and companions on this Infrastructour, we studied our routers over drinks served by our hosts. Where possible we installed our servers in our homes, in other cases we had to depend on another member of the group.
Pushing Scores with De Player
Thursday, November 29, 2018
During this evening we focus on the archiving of the Pushing Scores project by DE PLAYERl; A project on the contemporary meaning of the 'graphic score', which has been running for the last 2-3 years. What are the possibilities of graphic scores, in a day and age in which graphic notation is still usually seen as a ‘drawing’, serving as some kind of sheet music?
Life Hacks: Space
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
What shapes the daily routine of a telemarketing sales agent? How to go beyond the co-working model when it comes to organize a place for collaboration? What's the territorial and political role of furniture within the semi-domestic area of the artist's studio? Are life hacks a form of liberation or yet another burden? Together with author and designer François Girard-Meunier, the WORKNOT! collective (Arvand Pourabbasi and Golnar Abbasi), Varia, the Centre for Everyday Technology (represented by Roel Roscam Abbing, Manetta Berends and Niek Hilkmann) and XPUB (the Experimental Publishing program of the Piet Zwart Institute), we will tackle these and more questions during an evening dedicated to spaces that are at once entrepreneurial and precarious.
Moving Monument - Presentation
Saturday, June 2, 2018
Long before there were people in Charlois, there was already water. Water is always on the move and always finds a way. Historically, fountains were gathering places that occupied a central place in village- and city life. Often they were installed to commemorate a great battle, a plague epidemic or some other historical event, donated by the municipality or a patron. Unfortunately, Charlois currently has no working fountain. Niek Hilkmann and Anne Kolbe want to remedy this shortcoming and temporarily give Charlois a mobile fountain that is not tied to a single place or interpretation. After an opening ceremony, held on the 2nd June around 13:00, next to Varia, the fountain can be seen during the weekends of the Charlois Speciaal festival, in search of new meaning and appreciation.
It Is As If We Were Doing Work
Saturday, March 10, 2018
A few months have passed since the 11th issue of the Pervasive Labour Union zine was launched, but the topics that were touched upon are yet to be digested.
Solutions and problems in Extratonality
Friday, February 16, 2018
The 4th International Conference on the solutions and problems in extratonality titled 'Extratonality - Opening Doors Is Not Enough' focuses on an evaluation of practices in the field of extratonality.