Questions (no answers)

Ecologies of Dissemination: Questions (no answers)

The questions we have put together can be used to warm up a collaborative practice that is committed to decolonial, feminist practices of sharing and reuse. They are meant to be activated at the beginning of a collective practice, at the moment you start to get a sense of how your practice might reuse materials and get reused itself. They resonate with the prompts, cases, and conversations published in this issue but are different because they take your own practice as a starting point for a hands-on discussion on the implications of reuse. As such, they are meant to trigger reflection, to help you to articulate relationships, assumptions and needs.

You are invited to select a few questions that feel relevant to your context, or pick 3–5 questions randomly. Answers can be revised over time.

1. Try listing the ideas, knowledges, materials, practices or works that you are reusing – is anything missing?

Example: In an attempt to re-invent a practice of citation that is beyond academic signposting, Black feminist theorist Katherine McKittrick describes the committment to map the genealogies, while at the same time knowing that these genealogies can never be complete: "I show the images because I want to be as honest as I can about my intellectual history while also recognizing my dishonest memory. I show the images because I want to be honest about where my ideas come from while recognizing that this is also a process of forgetting." (Katherine McKittrick, "Footnotes, (Books and Papers Scattered about the Floor)", in Dear Science and Other Stories, Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2021, 15)

2. What kind of citational strategies have you been experimenting with? Can you invent a few new ways to experiment with citational practice by refering to circumstances, people, tools and experiences?

Example: Experiment with writing a colophon that features a narrative account of influential encounters involved in, for example, creating a movie rather than a list of roles and responsibilities.

Example: Avoid using given descriptors or names (such as "authors"). Experiment with alternatives to ordering references alphabetically. Flip the usual hierarchy of who or what gets listed first (authorial roles, production roles, care roles). Cite things, places, experiences. To further expand your citation practice, see also Angela Okune: Self-Review of Citational Practice.

3. When we encounter something that catalyses our thinking, how do we make this encounter legible? How do you account for the relationship that is being built?

Example: In the prompt Spaces for discomfort - recognition, Nkule Mabaso describes how she meticulously keeps track and documents each encounter in order to remember and be able to disclose how something comes into being. Are there any other strategies you know of? And how do you do this in collective situations, or when multiple strands of thinking are co-constructing each other?

Example: Andrea Francke asks in the prompt Intimacy vs Property for shifting relationships based on property to relations based on intimacy within practices of reuse.​​​​​​​ What would a relationship of intimacy mean for your colophon? Could you think of ways to recognise and acknowledge this relationship publicly? (See also question 5)

4. Can you think of yourself as a reuser (rather than as author). What shifts? What frictions might come up?

Example: Such a shift might map onto how Katherine McKittrick distinguishes “making something your own” (reuse practice) and “owning something” (authorial practice), when she writes: "by observing how arranging, rearranging, and collecting ideas outside ourselves are processes that make our ideas our own, I think about how our ideas are bound up in stories, research, inquiries, that we do not (or should not claim we) own." (Katherine McKittrick, "Footnotes, (Books and Papers Scattered about the Floor)", in Dear Science and Other Stories, Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2021, page 15)

Example: Cristina Rivera Garza insists that “First times do not exist”. She talks about the communality of writing and counters the assumption that one could come first to a scene or start from scratch. Rather, she insists, that we are always building upon others' work. (Cristina Rivera Garza. The Restless Dead: Necrowriting and Disappropriation. Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Pres, 2020.)

Example: In: Rebeing: A practical exercise in psycholexicography, Stephen Wright proposes the exercise "Restarting all verbs with re-" to intervene in day-to-day language. You could do this exercise to widen your imaginary for practicing reuse.

5. Let's try to think with intimacy rather than contracts, licences and the promise of clarity for organising around reuse. This does not necessarily mean all reuse needs to be figured out on a case-by-case-basis. What processes can you rely on? Are there any protocols in place to help?

Example: Andrea Francke's proposition to think with intimacy rather than with (intellectual) property asks us to allow for unstable relations. "That’s what I want to hold onto. To refuse the creation of a ‘neutral’ admin infrastructure that takes the awkwardness out." she writes.

6. Let's imagine property to be inclusive, instead of exclusive. What shifts? What frictions might come up?

Example: In the conversation Subverting the narrative of property, Séverine​​​​​​​ Dusollier introduces us to the work of Sarah Vanuxem, a French lawyer who developed an ecological notion of property, proposing that all systems of property could be conceived as a milieu. Séverine​​​​​​​: "you do not own a thing, you're not dominating a resource, but you live in it, you inhabit it. So whether you are the owner, whether you are the tenant, she says your legal relationship to this resource is that of an inhabitant. Her theory helps us to understand that you don't have only rights, you have mostly liabilities."

7. If someone reused materials/practices/works you were involved in, would it matter who, what, when or for which purpose?

Example: In the credits for the tarot game Bewitching Technologies, Dilan U+16DE decided to adapt the anti-colonial software licence to read as follows:

Bewitching Technologies is anti-capitalist, anticolonial, and anti-fascist software available at www.bewitchingtechnologies.link [1]. It is released for non-commercial free use by individuals and organizations that do not operate by capitalist, colonial and/or fascist principles.

Example: The Copy Far AI Licence can be added to extend any Free Culture licence to stipulate that "This work, in the present or previous versions, cannot be used for procedures known as 'machine learning' and stylometric analysis without the previous authorization."

8. How could you share the histories and contexts of the works that you reuse?

Example: A font publication could include, besides the font files, also source files, technical manuals and a documentation of the process. (see: Practice Documents, Conditions for engaging typographic use (CUTE))

9. Release situation: Are there any instructions that you need to provide to potential reusers, so they can reuse in solidarity (not contribute further to power asymmetries, economic differences and privileges)?

Example: The open access publication As I Remember It Teachings (Ɂəms tɑɁɑw) from the Life of a Sliammon Elder (2018) shares the teachings of elder and knowledge keeper Elsie Paul in Canada by setting an indigenous guest-host protocol to access the online publication.

Example: See the copyright page in G.B.Jones, Kunstverein Toronto, 2022.

10. Do you think a compensation for reusing work is needed, and if so in what way, how much and who would need to be compensated?

Example: The "Engaging typographic conditions for use (CUTE)" give detailed references for relational compensation, ranging from zero (if you reuse from a precarious situation) to a suggested €1000 (for a cultural institution). Large corporations are asked to look elsewhere.

11. What to do when work was reused without recognising one another, or relevant issues, sufficiently?

Example: An editors' note can be added to an ebook version—even after publication. This example states the regret and grief about the ommission failing to cite the influences and inspiration to the book. The note is also understood to instigate a shared reflection on the oversight. (see: Practice Documents, Editorial note)

Example: Omissum is term that was invented for what needed to happen in response to the omissions in editorial work with/around the historical figure Paul Otlet, which included to be silent about how racism is part of his oeuvre. The term ‘erratum’ was proposed at first, but rather than using a word that would suggest an isolated mistake that needs to be corrected. (see: Practice Documents, Omissum)

Example: In the prompt: "Space for discomfort: recognition" Nkule Mbaso describes the search for a way to deal with the discomfort not to have been recognised in the reuse of a work she has co-created. Very clear that it is not about "performing" some preset transactional corrective, she emphasizes the need to acknowledge and reflect on the emotions and create space for a conversation: "They´re feeling something, I'm feeling something. We talk, you go back, look at the book, and then remember another case... There's nothing linear about it. And whatever happens will inform other things. It's just the willingness to be in conversation. And to say, there's something here.​​​​​​​"