Counter Coloniality Study Group: the dream of energy as energy

Date: Friday 24th of July
Time: 14:00-17:00
Location: Varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam)

Varia’s Counter Coloniality Seed organises a Study Group in 2026. We (usually) meet on the last Fridays of the month, from 14 - 16/17h, in Varia.

The Counter Coloniality seed investigates the manifold ways in which colonisation - as attitude, process, knowledge imposition, organisational model, force and output - is deeply embedded into the technologies we use everyday. This is evident in various aspects of technologies we use routinely; from the human and environmental cost of rare-earth element extraction like cobalt or lithium used in device components, to the outsourcing and underpayment of labour in Africa and Asia for annotating artificial intelligence data or moderating disturbing content on commercial social media.

With this series we wish to open the research thread and study these topics collectively. The sessions are led by a Varia member or co-programmer each month.

For the third session, we will focus on how solar energy imaginaries are shaped by policy and the tech industry, and reimagined by communities. We may take notes together and there will be snacks.

We would love for participants to join as many sessions as they can, in order to get continuity in our discussions and our group dynamic, however this is not a requirement. To join, please send a message to info@varia.zone with the subject title [Counter Coloniality Seed Study Group] with your access needs and dietary requirements, if any.

This event falls within Varia’s Counter-Coloniality Seed research thread and is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.

https://varia.zone/en/2026/counter-coloniality-seed-study-group-3/

📃 Luddite Academy; Towards a politicised digital creative practice
https://luddite.academy/assets/UCC-2026-paper/

The write-up of our inaugural presentation given last April in Cork is finally available! with nods to @320x200 @danmcquillan @varia @titipi @prepostprint @JulianOliver and thanks to @jcalpickard

edit: corrected Varia's fediverse handle

Lunarities: A cosmogram workshop on the political-relational ecologies of land, solar and computation

Thursday 25 June 2026 - 19:45 CEST

https://computingwithinlimits.org/2026/

With Infrastructural Rehearsals and Guillemette Legrand

In this session, we propose to work on an anticipatory cosmogram for what lunar computational practices might be. Informed by cosmogram making, herbalism, sensorial practices and infrastructural resistance–– lunarities is about finding temporalities, movements, and attunements.

Hello computer lovers/haters, the Homemade Computer Club is back in town and this time around we’re looking at the Network 🕸️

Come join the club on the 17th of July at Varia to learn about and play with Reticulum (the hottest new communication protocol 🥵)

See you there! 🌱

https://varia.zone/en/2026/homemade-computer-club-4/

🕯🕯🕯

The workshop “Plotting Futures Through Waking The Oracle” explores the relationship between humans and machines by simulating cooperative practices of the future. Moving back and forth between the past and the future, we will journey through a collective waking dream and create shared oracles with the help of Roland the plotter.

🔮 This workshop will be coordinated by Futurology of Cooperation (Anna Czapski and Diederik Peeters) and Open Source Publishing (Sarah Magnan and Vinciane Dahéron). It is part of the plotterstation.osp.kitchen workshop series organized by OSP.

👁👁
June 27, 2026
from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
at Zonne Klopper (23 avenue de la Verrerie - 1190 FOREST)
Breakfast/snack included!

📧
No prior knowledge is required. Everyone is welcome!
Since space is limited, registration is required, but we will not be selecting participants.
To register, please email cookwithus@osp.kitchen. Feel free to describe what you hope to gain from this workshop, as well as any questions or ideas you have regarding plotters or collaborative simulations of the future.

plotterstation.osp.kitchen
supported by the FWB

We added documentation of our last plotterstation workshop "a line is a dot taking a walk", which happened on a late spring day with special guest Louis Garrido https://louisgarrido.com/, at his studio Jette400 in Koekelberg: https://plotterstation.osp.kitchen/agenda/a-line-is-a-dot-taking-a-walk.html

The next one is planned around cascading patterns at @greenfabric. Another will follow that explores the relationship between humans and machines through the lens of role-playing.
We’ll post updates here to keep you in the loop ➰➰➰

And we will organise a plotter party in collaboration with VROOM, details coming soon!

📚 🤩 Online Booklaunch!
⏰ June 9th, 11h CET

We are so happy to invite you to the launch of *Unsettling Data: Mapping Labour and Land against the Representationalist Legal Form*, a very special publication by Dilan Dagaz. The book examines what prevents data governance law from redressing the widespread exploitation of labour and land, by scrutinising the legal grammar of ‘data’ to expose the persistence of hierarchical power relations between the observer and the observed.

The event will pivot around a panel discussion with Cristina Cochior, Prof. Angela Dely, Dr. Ozan Kamiloglu, Prof (retd.) Usha Raman, Nayantara Ranganathan and Prof Joris van Hoboken.

Dilan worked on this path for his PhD dissertation, and his critical positionality placed him out of academia, which we as TITiPI understand as a gesture both liberating and difficult. Since then, his practice has continued to unfold a sensibility on witchcraft against fascism, as a result of the deep problematization of the rigid configuration of so-called reality that Dilan approaches as an ongoing endeavour.

+ details: https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Unsettling_data_book_launch

Pre-order: https://framaforms.org/pre-order-unsettling-data-1779199442

A printable soft copy is available under Migrantifa BY-NC license.

Register to join the event on BBB (thank you @constant !) https://framaforms.org/register-unsettling-data-book-launch-1779195057

Counter Coloniality Study Group: Amongst us in the undercommons

Date: Friday 29 May
Time: 14:00 - 17:00
Location: Varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam)

Varia’s Counter Coloniality Seed organises a Study Group in 2026. We (usually) meet on the last Fridays of the month, from 14 - 16/17h, in Varia.

The Counter Coloniality seed investigates the manifold ways in which colonisation - as attitude, process, knowledge imposition, organisational model, force and output - is deeply embedded into the technologies we use everyday. This is evident in various aspects of technologies we use routinely; from the human and environmental cost of rare-earth element extraction like cobalt or lithium used in device components, to the outsourcing and underpayment of labour in Africa and Asia for annotating artificial intelligence data or moderating disturbing content on commercial social media.

With this series we wish to open the research thread and study these topics collectively.

Led by a Varia member or co-programmer each month, the study group will cover the following themes: Defragmenting Data, Green Tech Colonialism, Divestment from Big Tech and Cold War Current.

For the second session, we propose to read an excerpt from Fred Moten and Stefan Harney’s The Undercommons:Fugitive Planning and Black Study. Together, we will discuss our capacity to organise, learn and live together both within and against systems that enforce oppression, including educational institutions and capitalism. We may take notes together and there will be snacks.

We would love for participants to join as many sessions as they can, in order to get continuity in our discussions and our group dynamic. To join, please send a message to info@varia.zone with the subject title [Counter Coloniality Seed Study Group] with your access needs and dietary requirements, if any. This event falls within Varia’s Counter-Coloniality Seed research thread and is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.

https://varia.zone/en/2026/counter-coloniality-seed-study-group-2/

The Peculiar Supply Chain of Data: Data Centres as Infrastructures of Empire

Date: Thursday, 4 June 2026
Time: 18:30–20:30
Location: Varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam)

Join us for a lecture, conversation and videogame walk through all about data centres. These energy and resource draining, power and control granting, obfuscated behinds to our current realities will be our focus of attention this evening.

To map the supply chain of violent surveillance technologies is an unwieldy task for many reasons. This is, in part, due to how surveillance technologies are conceptually unruly as a subject of investigation, often traversing different categories in technical, marketing and legislative environments. Drawing crucial lessons from abolition geographies and critical cartographies, Yung Au will present four maps of the peculiar supply chains of data-driven surveillance and explore different ways to visualise obfuscated processes and the larger surveillance industrial complex that data systems are embedded in. Reem Al-Masri will then bring these violent processes into sharp focus, examining data centres built on occupied Palestinian land and how these infrastructures are yet another manifestation of israel’s regime of colonialism, apartheid and genocide that has been ongoing for decades. Following this lecture we will open out to a conversation including Jill Toh, who will respond with her practices against and research into laws and discriminatory labour practices that uphold extractive processes in our technologies. Alongside this Artemis will share experiences in alternative, smallscale infrastructures and the collective work required to maintain them, as counter to the vast regimes of domination submerged within Big Tech.

After lecture and conversation we will roam through an imaginary, gamified data center, devoid of technocolonial context, with a play test of ‘Data Center’, released in March 2026 by Waseku. It is a first person simulator game where you can, “Build, cable and automate. Assemble racks, servers and switches, connect enough capacity for each app, earn money from processed data, and unlock gear and bigger customers with XP and reputation. Follow colored data packets as your center comes to life". We’ll contrast this world to self-hosting practices, and bring a critical commentary to the popularised vision of data centres.

With Reem Al-Masri, Yung Au, Artemis Gryllaki, Jill Toh

This workshop is facilitated by Varia members Czarina Calinawagan and amy pickles @p_p with the support of SocTalk.

https://varia.zone/en/2026/data-centres-infrastructures-empire/

Miscalculating Risk: Organising Divestment in University

Date: Saturday, 30 May
Time: 13:00 till 17:00
Location: Varia, Gouwstraat 3

Continuing the Miscalculating Risk series, this session focuses on how technology enables the surveillance of communities at both national and global scales, and, crucially, how we can collectively organise to sever the links and ties between universities and companies producing violent technologies.

In this session, we will explore initiatives that organise, research, and campaign to dismantle this infrastructure of violence at the intersection of technology and surveillance. Taking a hands-on approach, we will experiment with strategies for exposure, resistance, and even forms of glamorous refusal.

This workshop is facilitated by @ccl, @sofia, Sanne Stevens, and Antye Guenther, with the support of SocTalk.

Soctalk is a junior staff initiative within the Department of Public Administration and Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam. The collective organizes workshops and courses both inside and outside the university. Soctalk aims to foster a culture of care that critically engages with institutional structures, while redistributing and collectivizing resources to support communities and initiatives in the city of Rotterdam.

https://varia.zone/en/2026/miscalculating-risk-organising/

Luddites Anon
Date: Saturday 09 May
Time: 16:30 - 18:30

Luddites Anon is a workshop where we will come together to collectively share and reflect on how digital technologies impact our lives every day. Through the use of various discursive and written exercises we will form new critiques rooted in our lived experiences. Then we will play around with older writing tech as we create alternative imaginaries focused on less digitally optimised ways of being in the world.

p.s. Don’t worry if you aren’t sure what a Luddite is, you might just be one already.

Speaker: Fred Wordie

Fred Wordie is an artist, critical designer and creative technologist, whose practice uses provocative, playful and performative design fiction to critique and spark debate about technology’s impact on us all.

https://varia.zone/en/2026/luddites-anon/

[Guest-host events have been organised by people who propose to use the space. This event has been organised by Fred Wordie.]

The Palestine Shadow Library is accessible here https://monoskop.org/Palestine_Shadow_Library

Covers made by participants for the library printouts

Colonial Infrastructures #6: Resisting Knowledge Erasure, with Learning Palestine
On: April 18, 2026
Time: 17:00 - 19:00
https://varia.zone/en/2026/resisting-knowledge-erasure/

As part of the Colonial Infrastructures series, this 6th edition will focus on knowledge under duress and its circulation in times of repression. How do we gather to disseminate knowledge that was erased and dispersed? Considering destruction and censorship as acts of colonial force, Resisting Knowledge Erasure will focus on efforts of circulating knowledge via shadow libraries, fugitive archives, infoshop repositories, and other unsanctioned collections.

This event closes a chapter of labor that began in our 2023 programme, in collaboration with the BAK Community Portal in Utrecht, with the LIBRARIAN SWARM: Fuzzy Mirror Solidarity Network for Palestine. From hereon out, we will continue devising strategies for circulating this shadow library, assembled with many anonymous volunteers and in consultation with many shadow librarians, whom we thank.

Learning Palestine will join us for this session. They are a group of artists, academics, intellectuals and community members, who aim to disseminate knowledge on the history of the ongoing struggle for justice, liberation, and freedom of Palestine and the Palestinian People. They wish to practice new and old ways of disseminating this knowledge, that function out with the constrains of social media and corporate controlled networks.

Tomorrow, from 14-17 CET, we kick off the Counter Coloniality Seed study group, with the session "is AI in the room with us?"

Varia’s Counter Coloniality Seed organises a Study Group in 2026. We (usually) meet on the last Fridays of the month, from 14 - 16/17h, in Varia.

The Counter Coloniality Seed investigates the manifold ways in which colonisation - as attitude, process, knowledge imposition, organisational model, force and output - is deeply embedded into the technologies we use everyday.

For the first session, we propose to look at literature available on AI and its entanglements with extractive capitalism, colonialism, computation and power. We may take notes together and there will be snacks.

We would love for participants to join as many sessions as they can, in order to get continuity in our discussions and our group dynamic. To join, please send a message to info@varia.zone with the subject title [Counter Coloniality Seed Study Group] with your access needs and dietary requirements, if any.

https://varia.zone/en/2026/counter-coloniality-seed-study-group/

@commonknowledge are coming to Varia to talk shop about self-organised practices, digital and spatial infrastructure and anything else that comes to find in an informal chat with some varia members :)

Come by on Wednesday the 15th from 19:00 to join in!

https://varia.zone/en/2026/common-knowledge/

"The Cloud is a Factory" Series: lecture "Cloud Capitalism" by Devika Narayan on March 16th & reverse-seminar workshop on the 17th, together with TITiPI members Seda Gürses & Miriyam Aouragh to engage with the concerns on how clouds and mobile devices in our pockets have become the taken-for-granted foundations of contemporary society. What are the consequences of this far-reaching influence of ‘tech’? How did it become embedded in a broader capitalist logic?

Livestream here -> https://spui25.nl/live

+ infos:
https://www.spui25.nl/programma/the-cloud-is-a-factory-cloud-capitalism
https://algosoc.org/events/workshop-cloud-capitalism

Thanks to Katía for nominating us for 'Institution(ing)s Seals of good practices', we're enjoying reading and learning about the practices of other groups mentioned 🌱

https://institutionings.eu/
https://institutionings.eu/posts/seal-varia

To celebrate the launch of Varia's new website here's a text that @alcstrt @d1 @cmos4040 and I wrote during a Research Fellowship at Het Nieuwe Instituut, in which we looked into what our website was, and thought about what it could be: https://varia.zone/en/2024/stock-taking-sense/

Hello friends, we lost access to our old Varia fediverse account, but we are now back and ready to federate!

This is our new account, please follow us on here to connect with us again.

For those who don't know us, Varia is a member-based collective that maintains a ground floor space at Gouwstraat 3, Charlois Rotterdam, since 2017. Together we experiment with creating and maintaining physical and digital infrastructures needed for collective, cultural work. More about what we do here: https://varia.zone/en/

#introductions