Mission Statement
Founded in 2015, Radical Networks is an annual conference that promotes artistic, grassroots activist, and experimental work in telecommunications, including the internet and world wide web. As a summit for investigators and instigators from all disciplines, the event facilitates the open exchange of ideas and collaborations, centering marginalized and underrepresented communities.
Our mission is to have the public critically engage with the communications tools and networks we use and participate in every day, while gaining access to the knowledge needed to create our own tools and alternative infrastructures for community, experimentation, and dissent.
Our Goals
- To share research, applications, artworks, and experiments in telecommunications counter to commercial enterprises and systems of control and surveillance
- To exchange ideas over how to use networking technology for ourselves and for our communities
- To address accessibility issues associated with infrastructure and communications networks
- To prompt a dialogue with technology framed around feminism, care, joy, safety, resilience, and sustainability for our bodies, communities, and environment.
- To prioritize and center community, social justice, and nondominant expression and storytelling.
- To create an inclusive space for people of color, women, disabled people, and LGBTGNCQI folx
Our Ideals
- Free and open networks built with free and open-source hardware and software
- Control of our own data, software, hardware, and infrastructure
- Access, power, resilience and sustainability via peer-to-peer and DIY methodologies
- Inclusivity and collectivism for reclaiming power, building our own tools, and liberating our communities
- Freedom to imagine alternative histories and futures through play and experimentation
Who is Radical Networks for?
Radical Networks is a community event. We invite a broad range of people to attend—from those who are thinking about setting up their own community networks, to those interested in art that addresses the hyper-connectivity of our society, to those who are just curious about how the web works and how they can protect themselves online. There is something for everyone, at all levels of experience and interest.
Radical Networks is also a social event. We offer evening programming all weekend featuring performances and even a dance party or two.