Varia

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

@commonknowledge@social.coop 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/

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/

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

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.]