a-nourishing-network/content/pages/about.md

Title: About

# A Nourishing Network

*A Nourishing Network* is a publishing project that aims at documenting
and circulating current research done by a network of artists, activists
and programmers that collaborate with the Austrian net culture
initiative *servus.at*. Especially in this moment of reduced mobility
and physical encounters, the publication stimulates the circulation of
materials and their further development in a community that usually
gathers in small-sized events and festivals.

The project is a continuation of *Art Meets Radical Openness*--*AMRO*
in short--a bi-yearly festival organized by servus.at in Linz
([https://radical-openness.org](https://radical-openness.org/)). The
festival creates space for discussions around the current impact of
internet technologies and platforms. It aims to imagine possible (real)
sustainable models for computational infrastructures, as an alternative
to the growing techno-solutionist trend.

*A Nourishing Network* is produced as a hybrid publishing process
realised by Manetta Berends and Alice Strete from the Rotterdam
initiative Varia ([https://varia.zone](https://varia.zone/)).

The project emerged as a response to the following three departure
points:

**Another lost occasion for degrowth?**

At the beginning many thought that the spring lockdowns of 2020 might
have been a great opportunity to embrace less impactful lifestyles and
production models. As soon as the measurements loosened up, the level of
consumption rose to pre-lockdowns levels. Was the emerging environmental awareness overshadowed by a „sort of" return to normality?

**Re-centralization or blooming alternatives?**

During the first wave of lockdown, data-avid proprietary services gained
a more central role within online ecosystems and daily life. Faced with
this new context, communities dealing with free and open source software
continued to work on alternative platform models. What happened? And
what could be further explored?

**Artdiversity loss: is now Zoom the best art gallery 2020?**

In 2020 many cultural initiatives were forced to shift towards online
videocalls, where often the materiality of bodies and matter is
deprioritised. As the spectrum of technical possibilities offered by
(centralised) digital platforms currently shape and actively format the
field of the arts, how can we make space to experiment with alternative
formats?

## How the nourishing network works:

The publication is in itself an experiment: one in peer-to-peer
publishing starting from the *feed* as a potentially multi-directional
circulation device. Through web-syndication protocols and mail art
practices, this publication engages with complex circulation flows,
thereby exploring the social dynamics of such networked forms of
publishing. Borrowing from food terminology, the activity of
*nourishing* translates into an act of continuous care within the
network and for the network itself.

A subscription to the digital and/or postal feed, nourishes her
subscribers with a stream of essays. The feeds are available at
[https://](https://a-nourishing-network.radical-openness.org/)[a-nourishing-network.radical-openness.org](https://a-nourishing-network.radical-openness.org/)
and can be digested in different ways: as RSS, Atom and ActivityPub
streams, or as a stream of physical publications which are distributed
through a "postal feed" throughout Europe.

## How to circulate within the Nourishing Network?

The project is an invitation to stimulate circulation by further
disseminating the material in online and offline ways. Each subscriber
to the postal feed will receive two copies of the publication in order
to extend the circulation network with one step -- by sending it to
someone who might appreciate it. Similarly, the feed is prepared to
circulate in online networks.

Finally, to enforce feedback and more spontaneous responses to the
articles, we are open for contributions from the community of readers.