Update 2023-10-02-An interview with Joana Varon.md

_posts/superrr-lab-blog/2023-10-02-An interview with Joana Varon.md

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 <p><b>Joana:</b> In November 2017, when many experts came to Rio de Janeiro for the Global Symposium on AI and Inclusion, we decided to host a small side event at the Coding Rights offices to consider the question: what would a feminist algorithm look like? We wanted to do something different to debating inclusion in AI, because inclusion sometimes means that you're going to be included in something that was developed by someone else, in someone else’s perspective. So we wanted to steer the conversation away from that kind of framing and deliberate on questions like, “What would a feminist algorithm do?" and “How do we envision that piece of tech when it comes from our needs and our desires, and our imaginations and our cosmologies?”. We held a workshop on these questions, and with that, we started to assemble post-its with values written on them, that in the end kickstarted ideation for what would later become, after a series of other workshops, the sum of the transfeminist values of the Oracle. And I don't know exactly when we shifted to the card game, but already we were assembling the values, playing with the post-its and using our imagination.
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-In developing the deck, we were also inspired by the Design Justice Principles and by the work of my colleague and good friend, Lucía Egaña Rojas. In another gathering held in Panama, I had the opportunity to attend a speculative feminist writing workshop that she developed for Cooptècniques. Taking cues from her work and that lived experience, we started to play with that methodology and weave in the question of what a feminist algorithm would look like. 
+In developing the deck, we were also inspired by the Design Justice Principles and by the work of my colleague and good friend, <a href="https://luciaegana.net/"> Lucía Egaña Rojas </a>. In another gathering held in Panama, I had the opportunity to attend a <a href="http://cooptecniques.net/taller-de-escritura-especulativa-tecnologias-feministas/">speculative feminist writing workshop that she developed for Cooptècniques</a>. Taking cues from her work and that lived experience, we started to play with that methodology and weave in the question of what a feminist algorithm would look like. 
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 This is how the game started to take the shape of an Oracle. It began as a loose brainstorm in a small friendly gathering, and then we started to developed the values cards. Up to that point, we had been using pilot cards with designs from The Noun Project, but once Clarote was selected as a Superrr Fellow, we could develop our own designs – thus starting a new process. In fact, I believe you experienced that moment even closely than me because you two were in Berlin and I was in Brazil. Clarote held some brainstorming workshops around visualizing the values, which inspired what their graphic illustrations would look like. It was very important that we had that development moment, and it was the first funded activity of the project, when it actually took the shape of a proper deck, with our own visual identity.
 
 <p><b>SUPERRR:</b> Do I recall correctly that there were different names along with each iteration?
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-<p><b>Joana:</b> Yes, one was “The Oracle for Transfeminist Futures” and then “The Oracle for Transfeminist Tech”, because we were focusing on feminist technologies from the future. The situation cards were incorporated after we played it with a group of feminist colleagues from the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) network. After the session, Jac suggested we could somehow use the Feminist Principles of the Internet, also developed in collectivity. So we took the principles, which have great goals (e.g. “A feminist internet respects life in all its forms; it does not consume it.”) and transformed them into situations. Altogether, as you can see from all the projects and people I’ve mentioned so far, developing the Oracle has actually been a very collective process which fed into many of the interactions and feminist projects that were happening at the time.
+<p><b>Joana:</b> Yes, one was “The Oracle for Transfeminist Futures” and then “The Oracle for Transfeminist Tech”, because we were focusing on feminist technologies from the future. The situation cards were incorporated after we played it with a group of feminist colleagues from the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) network. After the session, Jac suggested we could somehow use the <a href="https://feministinternet.org/">Feminist Principles of the Internet</a>, also developed in collectivity. So we took the principles, which have great goals (e.g. “A feminist internet respects life in all its forms; it does not consume it.”) and transformed them into situations. Altogether, as you can see from all the projects and people I’ve mentioned so far, developing the Oracle has actually been a very collective process which fed into many of the interactions and feminist projects that were happening at the time.
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 <p><b>SUPERRR:</b> Throughout this iterative process, did any stories or tools come up that were particularly surprising? And who participated in these workshops? </p>
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 <p><b>SUPERRR:</b> There are so many futuring methodologies like backcasting or forecasting, often used by companies or governments. How would you say the Oracle differs from traditional futuring methodologies?
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-<p><b>Joana:</b> Firstly, the fact that it is based on transfeminist values, which we sourced. In the first iterations we used empty cards to which people could add transfeminist values and use those values to think about future technologies.  Another point is that the Oracle is not a tech solutionist deck, it is not meant to encourage ideas that depart from the belief that tech by itself can solve our historical problems. So the deck also includes the joker card, which is inspired by the sayings and thoughts of indigenous leader Ailton Krenak in Brazil, who has a book titled “Ancestral Future.” These cards question whether the tech we have imagined for the future should exist or not. Should it actually be created? What kind of experiences, lives or history is a particular tech erasing? While amazing ideas can be imagined, the Oracle poses the question of whether they should or shouldn’t exist, even in the future. This brings you back to the past while playing with the idea of the future.
+<p><b>Joana:</b> Firstly, the fact that it is based on transfeminist values, which we sourced. In the first iterations we used empty cards to which people could add transfeminist values and use those values to think about future technologies.  Another point is that the Oracle is not a tech solutionist deck, it is not meant to encourage ideas that depart from the belief that tech by itself can solve our historical problems. So the deck also includes the joker card, which is inspired by the sayings and thoughts of indigenous leader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ailton_Krenak">Ailton Krenak</a> in Brazil, who has a book titled “Ancestral Future.” These cards question whether the tech we have imagined for the future should exist or not. Should it actually be created? What kind of experiences, lives or history is a particular tech erasing? While amazing ideas can be imagined, the Oracle poses the question of whether they should or shouldn’t exist, even in the future. This brings you back to the past while playing with the idea of the future.
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 I don't think we should have a linear vision of time and there are many cosmologies that also believe in that but, due to colonization, this is not in the mainstream view, but is a view that is pretty much alive in practice – particularly here in the territory of Brazil. I live in Rio de Janeiro, where afro-decendence enriches and is totally reflected in the local culture, our music, our parties, our festivities. We are always reconnecting with those ancestralities, when we go out to parties, when we sing, or when we connect to the territory and our histories, sometimes histories of violence, but also of resistance and maintenance of powerful cosmologies, in which in the present we are in continuous conversations and interactions with energies that have lived far longer than us. They trace pathways to pull back and reconnect us with the past, with our ancestralities – and this also makes us more grounded. So the linear vision of time was imposed by colonization and is furthered by neoliberalism. Neoliberal theories impose one path to development, proposing that there are underdeveloped countries that are developing towards one specific ideal which values consumerism and the notion of us as individual beings, instead of part of a collective and an environment and of the histories from where we come. That proposed disconnection is what is leading us to technologies that cause anxiety, depression, and degradation of beings and of the planet.
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