At the beginning of this year, Rhizome launched a pay-what-you-wish Discord to create a space for community members to share resources and internet discoveries, and connect for IRL and online events. Shortly after, Discord became the home of our informal talk series, Office Hours, which featured artist talks, showcases, and project walkthroughs that relate back to rhizome's ecosystem. Recordings of these events are available on our self-hosted video platform.
Rhizome is now launching Season 2 of our Discord this week, with more participatory formats for community events. There are two new monthly formats, “presentation parties” and “reading groups.”
Discord members can now sign up to casually present anything they want at a monthly presentation party. Presentations can vary from WIPs from an ongoing project to a montage of your favorite animated GIFs. We’re excited to be exposed to new ideas and see how our discord members challenge traditional presentation formats. These will happen on the last Friday of each month (with the exception of holiday weekends + our next microgrants community program).
Reading groups will happen on the 15th of every month and cover a range of articles related to digital culture. A mini-syllabus will be shared preliminary to the event as a notion page (similar to the reading list we put together for our Office Hours on the Internet Pigeon Network , then we’ll meet in a voice-channel and read excerpts from the writing. Throughout the event, members can discuss their thoughts via text-channels and forward recommendations. Post-reading group, we’ll update the mini-syllabus to include community links that relate to the month’s theme.
As a note, Discord members will also continue to have discounted access to IRL rhizome’s events. We’ll update the group in discord for further updates.
See you in the chat!
Image courtesy of Bri Griffin, Rhizome Community Designer.
Schedule:
October 27 - presentation party #1
November 15 - readings on archives & libraries
December 15 - readings on soundweaving
January 15 - readings on networked communication
January 26 - presentation party #2
February 15 - readings on non-human intelligence
February TBD - microgrants community program
March 15 - readings on queer histories of computing
March 29 - presentation party #3