Introduction of Interviewees
Our primary research was based on interviews with organizers of camps and networks. Several organizations were associated with each other based on their friendship from the e-Textile Summer Camp Paillard. The rest are associated with Shih Wei Chieh’s participation. Due to the research target in this research are mainly networking and friendship between people, this research can also be seen as a study involving anthropological aspects, even more, perhaps it also empowers the potential network in the future. All interviewees are shortly introduced below.
Marc Dusseiller is a promoter of open source and DIY culture, an educator and a workshopologist. He’s one of the main characters of Hackteria Open Source Biological Art. His main activities across Europe and Asia and these camps he organized play a big role for intercultural communication. As one of the founders of Hackteria global network, he’s been working with Indonesia collective Lifepatch for more than 12 years. He has been organizing events collectively in Yogyakarta, Slovenia, Zurich, India, Taiwan. His cross-class activities has became a bridge between government and autonomous organizations.
Mika Satomi and Hannah are known as the dual artist group, KOBAKANT, one of the pioneers of e-textile and wearable art. They have been organizing a summer camp for e-textile artists gathering for 7 years, which created an enormous artist network. Several international camps were derived from the friendships in this camp, such as Tribe Against Machine 2017, 2018 in Taiwan, Attempts, Failure, and Errors 2018 in Romania, e-Textile Spring Break in Wassaic 2018-2022, I.N.S.E.C.T 2022 in Denmark. In this research, e-Textile Summer Camp Paillard is considered as an autonomous camp. They have briefly tried to convert their exclusive camp into a completely open festival back in 2017. In her interview she mentioned that her e-textile library HOW TO GET WHAT YOU WANT was not a motivation to establish a community, but simply to build an online documentation for e-textile material sourcing.
Andreas Siagian, the main member of Indonesian collective, Lifepatch. In the interview, a brief history of Lifepatch was told. Andreas has been working with Marc Dusseiller for more than 12 years across Switzerland and Yogyakarta. Their friendship established a unique example of community forming and global collaboration.
Anastassia Pistofidou, camper from the e-textile summer camp in Paillard, founder of Fabricademy in Barcelona. Fabricaedemy is a community and a global educational platform with a commercial system. It has several international nodes in Europe and in India.
Rully Shabara, Indonesian sound artist in Indonesia, member of Senyawa. Although Senyawa is an individual music label rather than a community, which differs from all the other interviewees in this project, his rich experiences in working with tribal culture with the care of colonialism is crucial to the potential project that will work with aboriginal community in the future. In this interview he didn’t follow the given questions but chose answers on a fundamental level. His project Gugus Gema is a music production project which works with more than 23 aboriginal traditional instruments. The other project he was involved with, Instrument Builder Project (IBP) is an Australian government funded project but executed in Indonesia. His experience in both of the projects provides a good standard to refrain colonial exploitation in global collaborative projects.
Giulia Tomasello and Christian Dils are a pair of scientists and designers in Re-FREAM, an European union funded science art grant for incubating future projects. This interview provides an insight of the administration part and funding usage in a European Union funded art science project with depth. Giulia is also a member of e-Textile Summer Camp Paillard and Tribe Against Machine in Taiwan. She’s been working as a queer activist, and her attempts empowers feminism with wearable electronics and biological technology are well-known globally. Christian Dils is the head of e-Textile department of Fraunhofer IZM, he has been dedicated in this field for more than 20 years, his experience and opinions in working with government funded projects is of valuable reference for this research.