@ -13,9 +13,10 @@ Every last Sunday of the month the Varia Library and the Rotterdam Electronica D
In 2021 our Read & Repair sessions will be paired, we will take two months to explore one theme. During August and September 2021, we will be exploring the theme Digital Solidarity. In a time where everything points to the further consolidation and accelerated normalization of the Big Tech industry (Zoom, Facebook groups, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype, etc.), we need collective digital alternative practices. How can we develop mutual aid strategies and social closeness through alternative digital infrastructures in times of physical distancing, remote working or care giving?
This theme was inspired by the collective work on the [Digital Solidarity Networks Pad](https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/digital-solidarity-networks), by multiple people among which Manetta Berends, Lídia Pereira, Julia Bende, Jara Rocha and Cristina Cochior.
The text selection for Read in August was made by **Cristina Cochior**. Cristina is a researcher and designer who often collaborates in different constellations on digital infrastructures and tools for knowledge production & organisation. Her work revolves around the intimate bureaucracy of information organisation systems, affective interfaces and community networks with particular attention to their materiality and the politics that become embedded in them. She is a tutor in Hacking at the Willem de Kooning Academie and a Varia member.
This theme was inspired by the collective work on the [Digital Solidarity Networks Pad](https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/digital-solidarity-networks), by multiple people among which Manetta Berends, Lídia Pereira, Julia Bende, Jara Rocha and Cristina Cochior.
Together we will be reading chat transcripts of conversations around solidarity, mutual aid and self-organised care practices, speculative fiction written by activists and texts describing how computational infrastructures create patterns for social forms (Berlant, 2016). Inspired by public domain audiobook communities, we will try to make an audio recording of one of the readings.
