Totalism.org hackbase / CHT is an infrastructure project in Canary Islands, Spain, researching, developing & practicing the transitional technologies, theory, tactics and arts to end capitalism.

Since 2011. Currently in Fuerteventura, organizing temporary, experimental off-grid desert camps several times per year, that are open to all, no matter if already trained in these domains or not. Join the Telegram group or #hackbases:matrix.org, subscribe to the mailing list, or follow on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.




 S T A T U S:  

SEASONS 10 AND 11 (2024/2025) WILL FOCUS ON SOCIALIST CUBA & LATIN AMERICA, FUNDRAISING TO REBUILD BASE IN CANARIES, AND TRAINING FELLOW TRAVELLERS TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITIES IN BOTH DIRECTIONS.


For more info: to join, influence, independently use the infrastructure, or participate in CHT/T remotely: join the discussion channel (Telegram).

General focus is on software development: knowledge/coordination tech, economic cybernetics, media archive management.
Available to comrades under the Comrade License.

CHT/T was touring & documenting the Republic of Cuba (JAN→JUN 2023).

Bad news in summer 2022: The project's equipment storage was robbed.
We have rebuilt the basic infrastructure in Fuerteventura during CHT10-A (OCT→NOV 2023). Please, consider donating to help replace the lost solar power, water, lights, media, and studio equipment.

Base recently operated at Kunsthal Gent (Belgium), see CHT8-A (OCT 2021→JAN 2022).


https://archive.totalism.org/20171013.svg Basicscontactstuff (space equipment list)• commonground (manifesto / conceptuals / ideology)• faq (ask anything - Frequently Asked Questions)• season4 (full hackbase season plan, 2014-2016)• list (the mailing list)• donate Protocolsroles (how to co-organize inside a running subseason)• newcomers (what to be personally prepared for, do before/during/after, etc)• subfinance (accounting system + detailed costs info)• flocking (how to self-organize a subseason)• manual (was used at CHT 2011-2014, not used now; reference manual for hackbase-type1) Projectscoop-index (quit normal jobs and rent; live in bases, work 10h/week)• solar (the renewable energy setup)• E2H (collaborative hypermedia platform, using Etherpad)• hacking-housing (Urbanism law <-> Hacker architecture)• hackbase-type2 (abstraction & replication of the nomadic base)• base-eu (replicating the nomadic base in mainland EU)• metrics (Lifestyle representation research)• text (Text.Totalism Hypertext Library: Software + Content)• trucko (1984 VW LT2.8 van) Systematic Listscalendar (complete European scene calendar: tech, theory & avant-art)• maps (Lanzarote London Berlin Hamburg Amsterdam Brussels Paris Ljubljana...)• alike (list of similar spaces: hackbases, nomadbases, etc)• postuni (tactical academia? universities, institutes, theory, design, etc)• non-shitty (As part of coop: relatively non-bullshit places to labour for money)• resources (non-profit basic resources for all, by locality)• workflow (collaborative technology choices for bases: software, hardware, etc)• grants (hack-related grants and CFP resources) CHT and Hackbases at Eventsevents (Past events: emfcamp16, sqek '16, squatconf, 31-33c3, ccc-camp '15, OHM, ...)• calendar (Future events - not just the ones the base is attending)




About the base

    Dear Comrades !

https://archive.totalism.org/newphoto/cht/IMG_20150501_153217984.jpg

This hackbase is an infrastructure project designing and deploying a free living habitat. A recipe for, and an actual place, where you can live at for almost free — either for a limited time, or to organise a radically different work & life style.

Hackbases are live-in hackerspaces, the critically missing infrastructure to enable full-time vanguard lifestyles for technologists, theorists, artists, activists, ... - for hackers.. A common hacker is a hobbyist, playing with personal projects (perhaps at the local hackerspace) after necessary main work that covers their subsistence, and then going home to an often expensive urban-area apartment. Sometimes hailed as some ultimate constructive and radical force, hackers are subsumed by the life logic of current advanced capitalist societies.
The point is to change this, and shift a negative trend of how progress (in and outside of technology) is redefining societies. Currently, with "the end of work" (through work and process automation), hackers with normal day jobs are powering a bullshit neoliberal political reality, complicit in: destroying (through privatization and profiteering) general access to education, healthcare, and living space; an ongoing ecocide; the continuation of colonial/imperialist expropriation at the periphery; etc.
These problems are as insufficiently addressed, and structurally cannot be solved by big corporate, startup, non-governmental or academic organisations, as well as by current hackerspaces.

This hackbase began as "Cyberhippietotalism" or "CHT#1" in 2011. After 3 years as a rented house, the second version of the base restarted in November 2014, as an experimental off-grid habitat research initiative, scheming to buy first plot of land. A series of experimental living situation/camps have been performed since the 2014/2015 season: (season4-A, season4-B, season4-C, season4-D, season5-A, ... and so on).




    Core interests

    Vanguardism, Communism // Self-sustainability, off-grid, autarky / resilience and temporary architecture research & alternative construction // Free software and free hardware development / GNU/Linux / Free Industry // Open data, workflow and organisational technology, Tektology // Hypermedia // Anti-yuppie Digital nomadism // Critical theory // Sound studio, bands, Intermedia Art // Growing food // Renewable energy technologies // Nootropics // A nomad hacker lifestyle in a network of hacklabs // "Coliving" and "Coworking" // Hacker camp // Financial and temporal freedom // Autonomy // "Open source ecology" // Anthropocene, Environment regeneration

Also see: season4 (year plan), commonground (conceptuals / manifesto).




    Current camps !

Focus is on experimental camping (see season4): new nomadic tech stuff and know-how, and developing new sites.

When?
Anyone can come at any time:
    a) during planned subseasons. How - check next.
    b) start a new subseason -  fly in, and unpack the base following flocking (self-organisation protocols).


Where?
   Currently the project has no fixed location - no house or territory. It operates as temporary camps on temporary grounds, researching and experimenting with different approaches. The territory is understood through maps, and develop existing and new sites for temporary inhabitation.

How?
    * The immediate, short-term goal is to choose and buy own land
    * Between current temporary camps, the base's stuff is in storage
    * Focus is on off-the-grid temporary architecture: hexayurts / woodsheds / polytarp / DIY tents / dugouts / camouflage shelters / ..., with own renewable energy, water and food systems.

Read the complete season manifesto: season4.




Past camp photos

    CHT4-A (2014/Nov, Dec)

      "Experimental Hacker Campground"  
    https://archive.totalism.org/newphoto/cht/DSC09631.jpg https://archive.totalism.org/newphoto/cht/DSC09584.jpg



    CHT4-B (2015/April, May, June)

      "Desert Autarky Sketch"  
    https://archive.totalism.org/newphoto/cht/IMG_20150524_204038.jpg https://archive.totalism.org/newphoto/cht/IMG_20150506_124604843_HDR.jpg



    CHT4-C (2016/February, March)

    "Advanced Permanently-Temporary Resilience"  
    https://archive.totalism.org/atras_sunset.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdN-dBSXEAEvfCw.jpg:large



    CHT4-D (2016/May, June, July)

      "New typologies"  
    https://scontent-mad1-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/13394907_591243524380652_212370437_n.jpg
 


    CHT5-A (2017/Jan, Feb)

      "Nomadic Maintenance Research Culture"  
    https://instagram.flju1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/t51.2885-15/e35/16906867_168405463668076_7532641096879308800_n.jpg



    CHT6→8 (2018→2022)

      "Hackbase Types 4, 5, 6 & 7


For more see Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, the channel #hackbases on Matrix.org, write to info@totalism.org, or see contact for other ways to connect.




Coming to the base

Next camp: https://next.totalism.org.

contact the base. You can come any time, but if there is no ongoing Subseason, you have to set one up & tear it down yourself. Coodinate with others for the next iteration. Everything you need is here (full camping gear for >10 people, diesel generator, solar, tools, network equipment, etc). More info on equipment is here: stuff. The base is open to everyone (not only computer programmers)!




https://totalism.org/pics/databox_subfinance.png (Historic 30-day costs per person)

    Costs: Shared expenses, Contributions, Donations

The base minimizes dependence on money, and so the need to do work for money, and so maximizes independence. Costs of life are ~ 100€/week per person (400€/month) and this is for everything (place to stay, food, power, water, tools and investments, etc). The remainder can be earned as part of the coop. There is a limited chance for a starving rate (if you are broke, unemployed, and break nothing) going <300€/month.

The space owns stuff and tools that is shared and can be used by anyone.
Currently buying: ordering.

If you have work, please consider a donation: donate.

For much more accounting details, see subfinance.



https://totalism.org/poster.png

    Where? Why? What?

The base started (—but is now moving around the other islands!—) in 2011 on Lanzarote, Canary Islands (wiki, map), a UNESCO protected 40x20km island 100km off western African coast, under Spanish jurisdiction. It seemed a good idea to spend winters living in a constant 20°C average climate, with year-long ocean swimming.

Against The Roommate Anti-Pattern of classical hackerspace design: while hackerspaces are only hobbyist places to go to after your job, ultimately, the hackbase is an integrated institution reinventing the basic life & work infrastructure. You won't need regular paid work nearly as much. Life beyond nuclear families in rented apartments you can never afford to buy, and work for hierarchical for-profit corporations (startups etc), by rediscovering old counter-culture recipes and exploring new patterns in architecture, agriculture and information technologies; random psychedelia parties, and exploring nature. Basically, like in 1972, but with an industrial model that's not selling sea shell jewelry.

The long term plan is to be self-sufficient with means of open technology, get rid of dependence on money for a dignified basic lifestyle, and give everyone the means to achieve the same.

If you want to come around just get a cheap flight. Anyone can stay here on a micro-budget, build up and use the lab and workshop, co-curate the e-archive of books, films and music, hang out, focus on your projects, and connect them into the general theory/practice of the space, plus whatever's specifically going on then. Includes great local food, the weather and the nature (ocean, volcanoes and desert). See https://next.totalism.org.

Equipment wise, see stuff. The base has everything you need to live and work here: basic electronics/DIY/hardware tools, collection of random stuff and materials to hack, internet access and independent LAN with selfhosted local services. People donate more new stuff all the time.

The space has hosted over 150 people so far. 



    Trivia

♪ The hackbase is EU's second-most southernmost and westernmost hackerspace ↙ ↙ ↙ ↙
Similar to hacker camps (like OHM2013 and CCC Camp) but less flashy and more permanent
Current weather is awesome
♪ Please bring cool stuff we are ordering
♪ Guerrilla food growing; plan going large scale with equal parts permaculture and cybernetics
♪ Biggest influences are WikiTed_Nelson(R/W) and WikiAlexander_Bogdanov(R/W)
All pages on this site are open-editable Etherpads (see bottom of page!)
♪ Maybe we can have camels in the future
♪ Old house location was (in this village) but not anymore



(Site generated by E2H, an "Etherpad hypermedia" project by @dcht00). Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.