“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
Maya Angelou
“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world, is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
David Graeber
Can’t believe it’s been so long since the last time I meowed to you! We sure have been busy (well, I certainly have, although beauty naps also take up a lot of my time). Just realized that this is our seventh issue. Seven is a magical number. It would be the total number of lives I have left if I hadn’t been such a handsome and reckless rebel, fighting the patriarchy and economic inequality with every twitch of my dreaming whiskers.
But enough about me, let’s talk about us. I’ll stop beating around the cardboard box and tell you the huge news. We’ve just released a snazzy new website that looks absolutely stunning and we’ve created an entire new site called ✨the DisCO Basics✨ for all of you that find the DisCO dancing a bit difficult or confusing. So, even if you’re a sassy quadruped like me, this comprehensive overview will help you follow the rhythm pretty easily. However, getting familiar with the moves does require practice. But don’t despair, if you have some sardines to spare, I’m more than happy to guide you.
New DisCO Website and DisCO Basics!
So what’s better than a new DisCO website? Two brand new DisCO Websites! To provide a good understanding of DisCO in lieu of reading the Manifesto or attending an event, we’ve developed ✨the DisCO Basics✨, an online primer that takes you on a tour of the DisCOverse.
This lightning-fast and beautifully designed website has 9 entries on the main menu. Within each there are pop-up glossary definitions for specialized terms and special links that instantly bring you to relevant sections within the site. Each entry also features a TLDR with the highlights, and a “More Resources” section.The 9 entries are:
We’re happy to say that Basics is ideal if you’re reading on hand-held devices. We hope it provides the best balance between user ease and content depth. The beautiful designs were provided by Rory-Robertson Shaw of Autonomous Design Group and the Solidarity Economy Association, who also crafted the designs for the main site.
OK, I know I should have sent a postcard – I haven’t written to you earlier because I’ve been traveling around presenting DisCO, participating in conferences and running workshops. It really is tough to be a celebrity touring the DisCOverse, but, at the end of the afternoon, nothing makes me happier than laying on my tattered cushion and reading the stories about how fiddling with the DisCO model is such a game changer for many of you. Definitely makes everything worth it. Here’s a fine assortment of this year’s events and their respective reports:
Berlin Workshops!
A report of the second workshop will be published soon, but you can check the programme here!
Meanwhile, enjoy the report of our first adventure!
“This is the story of the first workshop and the collective experience shared by a number of self-organised groups based around Berlin during the workshop Dancing on Moss: DisCO underground regenerative economix, celebrated at Moos Space in January 2023. The DisCO team assembled for this ocassion was formed by Sari Escribano, Ela Kagel and Irene Lopez de Vallejo. We took the audience on a solarpunk, lunarpunk, twilight reflection on the meaning of governance and self-organisation in times of dire social and economic need. We envisioned how, together, can co-build transformative resilience from the very decay of values in the current dominant system.
For this workshop we wanted to sail across what lies beneath the surface, beyond the invisible, beyond the binaries. The DisCO framework proposes a form of organisation that is a living organism, and as such, it adapts to endure and resist everyday systemic stressors and corrosion.”
DisCO co-founders Ann Marie Utratel and Stacco Troncoso also presented DisCO at the Edgefunders Conference in November, asking the question, “What does Anticapitalist, Decolonial and Intersectional Feminist Tech look like?”
DisCO REMASTERED and Pink Paper
In September, we held an event called DisCO Remastered, to work on the forthcoming DisCO Pink Paper. The final piece of our DisCO Trilogy, the Pink Paper explicitly calls for Anticapitalist, Decolonial, and Intersectional Feminist technology, and promotes a “DisCOtech” that will always be user-friendly, modular, fully configurable, consensual, surveillance resistant, and conducive to safe online spaces. Our meeting was held at a quiet farm lodging, moderated by the undisputed champion of seamless and nuanced facilitation (and honorary cat) –Lucas Tello of ZEMOS98. In this cozy container, we allowed ourselves to dream up two amazing Super-DisCO prototypes along with an outline of the Pink Paper. Together, these results will be expanded into fully-fledged work streams in 2024, sharpening our vision of an accessible, sufficient technology by and for the cooperative commons, and making it possible for others to share and co-create in an open source, open-hearted way.
We also gave an musically electronic, yet personally “unplugged”, presentation with DisCO Pink Board member brandon king at DWeb Camp entitled This Is a Journey Into Sound: A Proposal for Beats, Tech and Future Economies. Here we asked the question, What does Anticapitalist, Decolonial and Intersectional Feminist Tech look like? This was the start of a contemplative, deep, ongoing conversational inquiry, a journey which, along the way, brings new color, new dimension, new value to our awareness. Pump up the volume! Pump up the values! Pump that bass. (I couldn’t be there but I think it went a little like this). The following week, brandon and Stacco presented the latest on DisCO and Resonate.coop at Embassy House in San Francisco.
Throughout the year we’ve been listening to communities on the technologies we need to ensure a livable planet and future. This has resulted in a number of video interviews filmed during the Beyond Growth Conference in Brussels, the aforementioned events and other visits to Berlin and London. Stay tuned to hear more about our adventures!