selfservice.studio (Chris Dake-Outhet & Eren İleri)
infrastructure anxiety - mesh workshop

Starting with a presentation by Cade Diehm on digital rights and democracy initiatives, this hands-on workshop facilitated by Chris Dake-Outhet & Eren İleri (selfservice.studio), explores infrastructure anxiety through mesh networking practices.

This workshop is not included in the passes and requires an additional ticket, available for €5–20 (sliding scale). Limited spots available. The lecture presentation can be attended independently.

ANXIETY & EXILIC: Anti-Cybernetic Threat Modelling, Response, and the Self-Determined Counterpractice Infrastructure.

Who will remember us when the servers go dark? In this introductory presentation by Cade Diehm, the most pressing issues of this decade are laid bare. How did the romanticism of cyberspace and cybernetics contribute to the now weaponized US tech hegemony? What are the alternatives? Diehm presents ANXIETY & EXILIC as anti-cybernetic frameworks that critically draw on digital rights and democracy initiatives that proved ineffective against regulatory capture and authoritarian consolidation The lecture operates in dialogue with the workshop, examining conditions that produce infrastructure anxiety and the ethos of the counter-practices that follow.

Can be attended independently

Contemporary infrastructure anxiety is located where digital and material dependencies converge and are weaponized by design. Rather than treating this anxiety as pathology, we recognize its core tenants – social engineering, data control, power asymmetry and permanence – as accurate perception of actual conditions – moments where dependency becomes suddenly visible through rupture. EXILIC design poses orienting questions: What happens when the servers go dark? Can a project function in blackout conditions? Does it demand consent before it remembers? Can it forget, decay, contradict?

This workshop moves from collective threat mapping to hands-on hardware configuration, introducing mesh devices and protocols like Meshtastic while exploring what mesh networks enable or constrain. Where platform logic demands smooth paths to scale, the hobbyist counter-practice embraces friction, specificity, and deliberate amateurism – making infrastructure legible through subsequent successes and failures. This trajectory locates amateur engagement as an essential counter-practice and infrastructural awareness that carries personal experimentation into collective capacity.

The workshop will provide devices and hardware for participants. No experience required

Workshop Program

Infrastructure Anxiety Response and Orientation — Collective mapping of communication dependencies and their brittleness. Introduction to Berlin's existing mesh network and global practices.

Mesh Networks — How mesh networks operate, autonomy, resilience, privacy tensions, and political implications of distributed infrastructure.

Meshtastic Device Configuration — Hands-on setup: inspection, smartphone configuration, joining the festival's public channel, first messages across the Meshtastic network.

Break

Advanced Configuration Demos — Alternative protocols and file sharing, experimental and custom firmware, bots, MQTT bridging, location and range optimization.

Installation Integration — Connection to selfservice.studio's installation: workshop themes and message integration, circulation, redistribution.

Closing — Resources for continued engagement: Berlin community contacts, documentation, hardware sources, advanced workshop details.