rhizome.hfbk.net
From 2016 to 2021, the HFBK Hamburg operated the social network rhizome.hfbk.net. It transferred the current artistic production of the university as well as the discourses that are virulent at it to the WWW and linked to debates conducted there. It opened a digital forum for exchange and discussion in which students, teachers, guest authors, art critics and the interested public provided a broad spectrum of content and perspectives. Bettina Steinbrügge and Raimar Stange, for example, already led a lively pro-con discussion about the 9th Berlin Biennale. At the same time, the network wanted to provide further offerings on a content and practical level that result from the specific possibilities of the digital and feed impulses back into the university. This included, for example, the format "Lab: Criticism on the Net," conceived and supervised by Andreas Schlaegel. It was dedicated to the current developments of art criticism on the net: What effects do the new social media have on the style, language and form of debate? What formats are available at all? Is it possible to invent new ones, and what can artists learn for themselves from the discussions about art on the Internet, or how do they deal with them? In addition to the discussion of selected examples, the focus was on the independent creation of contributions within the social network. The forms of publication and interaction were diverse: from own texts, shared content, short comments, artistic works put up for discussion to interviews, chats or online picture galleries, all formats were conceivable and explicitly desired.
rhizome.hfbk.net was based on the open source software Diaspora. Unlike Facebook, a decentralized structure ensures that users retain control over their content and do not hand over their data to unknown third parties. Content can either be shared only with selected people (i.e. published in a limited area) or made accessible to the entire public. Thus, there is always the possibility of communication in a "protected" space, such as the classroom or the studio.
The social network rhizome.hfbk.net was one of the first digital projects established as part of the Hamburg Open Online University (HOOU). However, the network never achieved the response we wanted and needed to continue the experiment. Therefore, the website rhizome.hfbk.net was shut down on June 15, 2021.