I wrote the following paragraph on 12/07/2025. I'd make a point here about time and spirals and how the beginning is never a beginning (or, in other words, a seed always comes from another seed), but there will be more about that as I dig deeper into the spring. Suffice to say for now that on that day I first drafted a project definition that was itself a reference to a past conversation, and has since been edited and transformed into something slightly different. As water bodies such as this source here tend to do.
Some weeks ago, talking to one of the students of NØSCHOOL in Nevers, I described "my work" as writing emails. Later that day, I wrote in my book that my practice is threefold: I meet people, I walk, I keep notes. That is, I don't make things... that's not what I centrally do. Not how I define myself. Of course, in material terms I do every so often break, disassemble, change, or repurpose concrete objects. But more importantly: I collect stuff. Physical stuff certainly, but mostly digital stuff. And I store. And organise. And share stories about the things I collect and transform1. I have carried many bags over the last decades, and I miss the time when collecting and sharing stuff was easier. I'm old enough to have been a blogger on my formative years. This project (is it a project though?) is partly a reaction to that nostalgic feeling.
At that point, the idea was to channel this urge of returning to easier ways of collecting, which seemed to have disappeared - through manifold disappointments following the revelations of Assange, Manning and Snowden, the fading out of politically situated open-source, the corporate capture of initially socially-minded online sociability (blogging turned corporate social media turned algorithmically curated timelines), the waves of crypto, metaverse, AI, and whatnot. I'm pasting below what was a first outburst of ideas.
*PS.: oh how confusingly solutionist and pretentious it sounds in hindsight. I'm excusing myself for using too much of a tech project vocabulary after years of freelancing and jumping from one precarious opportunity to the next. And for the Benjaminian nod with another story fragment: the Benjaminian nod.
(DEPRECATED PROJECT NAME) is a solution for autonomous archival, composed of
- a set of digital open-source tools,
- an open protocol for persistent and sovereign archival,
- a collaborative method for data collection, storage, organisation and sharing.
Though (THE BURIED NAME) can be used for many different purposes, it was designed for experimental projects willing to create reliable documentation of their activities. Over the decades, many in the cultural and experimental fields suffered the over-dependency of profit-oriented proprietary tools and the disappearance of simple and reliable documentation tools. (THIS HERE THING) is committed to being easy to understand and use. It will allow different modes of use, such as
- single-project
- open-ended brainstorm
- zettlekasten
- research journal
- learning diary
Aimed at enabling focused logging and creative exploration, (THIS AMBITIOUS IDEA) enables you to become a digital Lumpensammler, an author of your own grapefruit book, a connected griot, an hunter-gatherer with a carrier bag full of stories, or a creative sibling to Hans and Gretel leaving breadcrumbs for future reference.
(THIS ARROGANT SOLUTIONIST NOTION) is not a tool to extract your ideas and feed the society of spectacle or blindly give you away to surveillance capitalism. You retain full sovereignty over your data and decide exactly what and how to share or publicize. It is based on open standards and open-source software, which means that there are no black boxes.
Ultimately, (THIS SHIT I FORTUNATELY GAVE UP DEVELOPING) allows you to store and maintain your data on the long run, overcoming the common problem of documentation evanescence that many of us have faced over time.
- Collect
Collection can be done through web or mobile versions. Adding and editing contents directly to a git repository or using your favourite editor on a local folder is also possible. An open API allows developers to develop integrations with your note-taking app of preference such as obsidian, joplin, notion, sublime, or others.
- Store
At the core of (THIS TOOL THAT DOES NOT EXIST) is the decision to stay focused on the purpose of offering simple, reliable and sovereign documentation methods. Each note is a plaintext file kept on a single folder. Each file has two main elements:
- frontmatter, with the following optional fields: title, creation and edit dates, permissions, author, taxonomy.
- body: markdown text.
The data is stored on your own device (desktop or mobile) and can easily be synced with a git repository or webdav cloud service. You can choose to use proprietary clouds at will (but you don't need to). Optional plugins may be developed to allow additional block storage for documents, photos, audio, video or binaries.
- Organise
Since all data is stored in markdown text files, you can easily organise and move your notes around. That means editing contents or metadata, changing permissions, creating collections, or batch-processing data. Optional modules enable you to generate autonomous data visualisation and analysis. Future developments may include the local use of AI to help navigate your documentation and generate insights - but you'll be able to do that on your own and with full control of how your data is used.
- Share
Here again, you are in full control of your data. Whether you want to keep your notes to yourself, share some or all of them with colleagues and project partners, or make them public to a broader audience, it's always your choice. Create a self-hosted blog with jekyll or hugo, select notes and export them to your fediweb presence, integrate your documentation with a git-backed wiki, or transform your ideas on public ebooks on the fly. You can opt to export your contents to proprietary social media (as all of us need to play the game of public visibility), but you will do that on your terms and maintaining a local copy of your data that will outlive the inevitable disappearance of those corporations.
Will write more later about: