Notfoundon:About
Not Found On
Aay Liparoto in collaboration with WORM, Just for the Record & Publication Studio Rotterdam
1 Why?
In an era of fake news and alternative facts, it is time to question how and where we gather our knowledge and how we can think differently about who gets to create knowledge and ‘facts’? Feminist, Queer and Intersectional performance based researches act as sites of knowledge creation, by questioning both how we live and how we could live differently. Due to their transitory nature they have a great need to be recorded in the public domain, yet they struggle to fulfil the threshold criteria for Wikipedia publishing.
Open source structures such as Wikipedia can offer the illusion of inclusion, whilst maintaining normative patriarchal concepts of knowledge creation (via referencing structures) and system biases (predominantly male contributors). How can these criteria be fulfilled? Why have certain types of knowledge been marginalized from contemporary online encyclopedias?
I was invited by WORM’s Pirate Bay Media Archive to create a record of my project Andrew Has His Period (See 6. Appendix ) this led me to examine how Performance Based Researches - performances sustained over duration in
daily life with a specific aim in order to better understand a subject through experience - function as sites of knowledge creation and the problematic of how best to share and distil that new knowledge within the existing information architecture of Wikipedia as mainstream information source and what ultimately cannot be included and why.
2. What?
The Not Found Project will bring together diverse arts/activist professionals for a writing workshop to address the questions of knowledge creation and value on contemporary online encyclopedias, actively pursuing different strategies
of writing into Wikipedia. Through this active process and drawing on previous experience/expert advice we will work together to co-create a ‘how to guide’ for writing marginalized knowledge into wikipedia. From this workshop we will create a new Not Found On platform to host the guide, support pages and acknowledge limitations of the current Wikipedia structure.
The project works 3 fold:
- 1. Wikipedia writing workshop to generate a ‘how-to-guide’ in entering ‘alternative knowledge’ Hosted at Worm Rotterdam in collaboration with Just for the Record & guests.
- 2. Develop an online platform to (a) host the strategy/guide (b) Cite pages that need assistance (c) To provide space for excluded knowledge via Not Found On open source publication series.
- 3. Create a publication template with Publication Studio Rotterdam for the book series Not found On for the types of information and images unable to be included on wikipedia.
