Presentation short abstract

This presentation explores the everyday practices through which knowledge is generated, disseminated and embraced within PIFcamp and DiNaCon — so-called 'hackers' camps' where technology and art converge in natural environments.

Presentation long abstract

Hackers' ethics encompasses a variety of practices, including the sharing of information, data and knowledge. The existence of temporary spaces that facilitate the exchange of these elements has been shown to lay the foundations for collaboration. Drawing on fieldwork conducted at the PIFcamp (an annual hacker camp held in the Soča Valley, Slovenia) and the Digital Naturalism Conference (held in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Bali), I focus on activities that can be categorised as 'commons', where concepts and ideas are practised and adopted across disciplines and domains. Field workshops inspired participants to incorporate local practices, such as plant foraging, into their artistic creations, as well as engaging in fermentation experiments. A recurring theme was the formation of ad hoc research collectives tasked with identifying indigenous edible flora in the environment. This subsequently prompted a more in-depth examination of the role of food practices in and for society, exploring and comparing everyday practices that can be categorised under the degrowth umbrella.

I explore conceptual proposals inspired by community collaborations (Knox, 2021; Kera, 2012), rethinking urban metabolism (Zhang, 2020), approaches to thinking about food (Mann et al., 2011; Mann & Mol, 2019; Mol, 2021) and the commons (Curto-Millet & Corsín Jiménez, 2022; Corsín Jiménez & Curto-Millet, 2023; Murillo, 2025), and ask what insights can we gain from foraging and fermenting hacker communities when it comes to imagining and proposing practices for potential collective futures? Can foraging inspire us to consider social, political, and economic imaginaries in terms of regrowth, undergrowth, and overgrowth?