In 2018 we began to shape the concept of Feral Labs. Though the idea and the need to connect a series of events across Europe that did not fit any of the usual categories had been intuitively with us already for some time, it was only then that the incentive grew strong enough and the whys and the hows were figured out and put on paper. Before that, there was a camp, a summer school, a Wonderland, something that described itself as a “place where ideas come to play,” there were Field_Notes … Not even one of us used the same word to capture what we were doing, but we knew there was something our practices had in common. We were, and we stay, a rather diverse bunch, catering to overlapping yet very different crowds. Some of us were around for some time, others were just about to test our pilot editions. Nevertheless, we needed a name, a term for what we were doing. So, we called ourselves the Feral Labs Network.
Within Feral Labs we focus on processes and activities like peer learning, field work, research and co-creation. The six partners Projekt Atol (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Bioart Society (Helsinki, Finland), Catch (Helsingor, Denmark), Radiona (Zagreb, Croatia), Schmiede (Hallein, Austria) and Art2M/Makery (Paris, France) joined in their common interest in art-science research and contemporary do-it-yourself (DIY) & do-it-with-others (DIWO) communities. We initiated a network of temporary Creative Hubs that vary in scope, format and topics.
Feral Labs Node Book #1 comes in two forms, a tactile printed version and a portable digital format (.pdf). It covers the first two summers of our Feral Labs Network and intentionally keeps a non-linear, scattered structure. As Luis Campos explains in the following pages: “The feral is, after all, intermittent, staccato, provocative, opportunistic.”
For the first two years, the Feral Labs Network was co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme, which helped us develop five Feral Labs each year and support a wide variety of Artist-In-Residence (AIR) programmes. The goals in this period were to create and cross-pollinate knowledge, develop non-standard temporary formats for creation and sharing, explore technological and environmental challenges, build a resilient network, rethink and boost our outreach.
This Node Book includes the interviews which present each partner’s rationale behind individual Feral Labs, how each of them came to be, how their physical spaces shape their content and also how we have adapted our activities to the summer of 2020, which drastically tested the resilience of our Feral Labs, not just by reducing the scope of travel, but also by the precarity induced by the constantly shifting measures and plans. A year that felt wilder than the most Feral plans, a year that mostly kept us all home-bound, but luckily allowed a small window, a chance to adapt and, nevertheless, proceed.
It also includes four essays commissioned for this publication, which help us address some of the key notions of our project: ferality, alternative learning environments and resilience. In between one will find photos that offer glimpses into our Feral processes. While Campos’ essay examines different notions of going feral, Stefanie Wuschitz analyses how to accomplish independence through interdependence, collective practice and mutual self-care, and investigates the importance of non-formal learning. The remaining two essays reflect on resilience but approach the topic from very different angles; Rosemary Lee examines the notion of resilience in the world of machine learning, while the closing chapter by Xavier Fourt presents a speculative investigation which suggests leads for future resilient micro-systems and experimental territories. The many AIR programmes that could have filled a whole new Node Book are summarised at the very end of the publication.
We aspire this publication to be only the beginning, an invitation for a new series, issued at irregular intervals, documenting, presenting and thinking with and about our practices. Hence the #. We want the Node Books to keep their wildness, to be able to move freely between any type of feral research practice, terrain work and exploration and provide space for challenging and truly feral reflections. The next steps will hopefully enable us to grow the mesh of our Feral network, both in its width and thickness; we want to add new nodes, include more existing Feral Labs and seed new ones, and in general support feral activities as activities of intense and unburdened exploration. But most of all, we hope that as you move back and forth through the publication in your hands, you feel invited to join us at our future Feral Labs.