Organizing / Pedagogy

Into The E-Metropolis: Residency

Into the E-Metropolis is a workshop-based initiative focused on reshaping the narrative of Ghana's relationship with electronic waste, particularly at TANTRI, Cape Coast. Rather than subscribing to the simplistic notion of technology being discarded in Ghana's "computer graveyards," the project seeks to illuminate the complex ecosystem of second-hand computer dealers, repairers, scrap-dealers, and metal casters. Operating through the lens of Afrofuturism, it will spark meaningful discussions and workshops involving these workers in order to collectively explore the past, present, and future of their knowledge and practices.

Dates

17 – 21 Feb. 25

Collaborators

Cyrus Khalatbari, Afrane Bediako Akwasi, Anwar Sadat Mohamed, Frederick Bamfo

Partners

STARTS (European Union), University of Cape Coast (UCC)

Role

Co-organizer, co-lead educator

E-waste e-waste TRONs: building low-tech videogames and controllers

What is at stake when we play "Candy Crush," "Minecraft" or "The Sims"? What are the physical and environmental components behind these seamless interfaces and aesthetics of our gaming culture? How can we create alternative technologies and interactions that question what we cannot directly perceive yet powers our play? In this workshop, we will create low-tech alternative gaming consoles or controllers from a variety of elements: either natural – wood, soil, water, and so on –, or material – electronic waste and other discarded devices found in flea-markets or the streets of Geneva. Participants will thereby engage in processes of recycling, technological subversion, and hacking. They will learn how to crack open these ubiquitous devices of our computational and gaming culture and reuse old technologies for alternative aesthetics of play.

Dates

17 – 21 Feb. 25

Collaborators

Cyrus Khalatbari, Vytas Jankauskas, Afrane Bediako Akwasi

Partners

HEAD – Genève

Role

Co-organizer, co-lead educator

Into The E-Metropolis: Summer school

Digital Pool (Pool Numérique) at HEAD – Genève is pleased to invite you to apply for the Into The E-Metropolis: Summer School, organized in collaboration with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana. This two-week summer school, conducted in Kumasi, Ghana, aims to connect students from both schools through reshaping the narrative of Ghana's relationship with electronic waste. Instead of reinforcing the simplistic view of Ghana as a mere "electronic graveyard", the workshop will explore the circular economy of second-hand computer dealers, repairers, scrap dealers, and metal casters. By combining workshop visits with the collaborative creation of sculptures and installations using discarded electronics found on site, the summer school aims to raise awareness—through art and design—of the crucial yet often overlooked work of e-waste workers within a broader environmental context.

Dates

1–14 September 2025

Collaborators

Cyrus Khalatbari, Vytas Jankauskas, Afrane Bediako Akwasi, Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu (Castro)

Partners

HEAD – Genève (Digital Pool), KNUST

Role

Co-organizer, co-lead educator

Assembling Intelligence

Assembling Intelligence, a multidisciplinary symposium organised by HEAD – Genève (HES-SO), will bring together artists, designers, and researchers to highlight a spectrum of alternative definitions for 'artificial intelligence'. The discussions will introduce much-needed diversity into the otherwise monochromatic and frequently cynical perspectives manifested in mainstream corporate AI models. A series of talks, workshops, and performances will bring attention to overlooked intellectual histories of AI, explore intersections between popular culture and human-machine intimacy, look at open software as means for creative emancipation, and highlight diverse futures for our damaged planet by extrapolating from the material and environmental underpinnings of AI infrastructures.

Schizoïdes intervalles

De l'intelligence artificielle (IA) aux crypto-monnaies et aux environnements 3D, la puissance de calcul est régulièrement représentée par les acteur.ice.s et corporations privées d'internet comme insaisissable et déconnectée de son infrastructure humaine et matérielle. En réfléchissant de manière critique à cette croyance sociotechnique, cette journée d'étude a pour but de nourrir une collaboration entre plusieurs artistes et chercheur.ses suisse et français afin de démystifier collectivement et d'éclairer les pratiques environnementales et humaines gravitant autour de nos cultures numériques. À travers des interventions de chercheur.euse.es, une série de conférences performée et de performances artistiques, cette journée d'étude ouverte au public vise à mettre en lumière les implications humaines et matérielles de la puissance informatique nécessaire pour faire fonctionner nos plateformes Internet et leurs objets numériques. En opposition aux discours privés de l'Internet utilisant la métaphore du cloud pour nous distancier des impacts sociaux et écologiques de nos comportements et actions en ligne, le symposium se concentrera également sur deux cadres de recherche placés en dialogue et rendus visibles.

Language

French

European Permacomputing Gamejam (Geneva Hub)

The Euro Permajam is a European decentralised game jam celebrating spontaneous playfulness and climate justice. After decades of searching for photo-realism and performance, the soon-to-be-over myth of perpetual growth is leaving the stage to more computationally minimal aesthetics and refocusing on the power of concept, stories and subjectivity in a scarce real-world. From this urgency to reconsider our real-time media production models, the Digital Pool of the HEAD – Genève in collaboration with Fabula proposes a time- and resource-limited game jam, to foster play with a considered ruleset, a desire for more imaginative, accessible and artistic video game productions. From October 11th to 13th, the Digital Pool of the HEAD – Genève will be one of the hubs to ensure the conditions for European new media students and artists to create computationally minimal video games and real-time media artworks that will feature in a European competition organised and hosted online. Each hub's winning entry competes for the main Permajam prizes, awarded by an international jury and the public on November 6th. The Digital Pool of the HEAD – Genève will provide a comfortable environment, a solid WiFi connection, snacks and non-alcoholic beverages. PCs, laptops and any other kind of hardware you want to use are on you.

Open Hardware Symposium x CUCCR

What can we do with our old radios, computers, or gadgets? In this workshop, we will ask participants to bring their own discarded electronics. We will open them, isolate some of their components and collectively cast these in clear epoxy resin to preserve and turn them into ornamental objects; whether keychains, necklaces or others. This workshop is intended to be fun and playful, resulting in the creation of objects participants will bring with them. We will bring paint to colour these objects, glitter to mix with the epoxy, beads for creating bracelets, casting moulds of several sizes and a fast-casting resin. Finally, with these discarded electronics, our workshop will also serve as a platform to collectively discuss and engage with the topic of electronic waste; inviting participants to share, in an organic, open-ended and inclusive way, stories, anecdotes and thoughts about the (after)life of these objects.