Totalism.org hackbase / CHT is an infrastructure project in Lanzarote (Canary Islands, Spain), researching, developing & practicing the transitional technologies, theory, tactics and arts of post-capitalism.

Since 2011. Currently organizing temporary, experimental off-grid desert camps several times per year, that everyone can attend. Subscribe to the mailing 🔗list, or follow on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.



CURRENT STATE + PLANS FOR 2018

"Is anyone on the island right now"? "When is the next camp"? Discussion is on the mailing list. Camps happen when enough people and finances are confirmed - so participate by coming, or donating. Write directly to info@totalism.org or list@totalism.org .

Thinking of coming in 2018? Enter here.
Camp running at the moment: No.







Site index


(Topic map of project documentation, interactive at 🔗graph-index)


    Basics
  🔗contact includes public Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
  🔗stuff (space equipment list)
  🔗commonground (manifesto / conceptuals / ideology)
  🔗faq (ask anything - Frequently Asked Questions)
  🔗season4 (full hackbase season plan, 2014-2016)
  🔗list (the project mailing list)
  🔗donate

    Protocols
  🔗roles (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)

    Projects
  🔗coop-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)
  in 🔗season4#Season_Projects_–_Priorities
  in past subseasons (🔗season4-A, 🔗season4-B, 🔗season4-C, 🔗season4-D, 🔗season5-A)
  in next subseason ( http://next.totalism.org )

    Systematic Lists
  🔗calendar (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 Events
  🔗events (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 !
(Too long? Skip and just read the annotations.)



This hackbase is an infrastructure project designing and deploying a free living habitat. A recipe for, and an actual place, where you can live-in for almost free, any time you want, and organise a new and completely different lifestyle around.

Hackbases are live-in hackerspaces, the critically missing infrastructure to enable full-time vanguard technologist lifestyles. A common hacker is a hobbyist, hanging out at the local hackerspace, playing with personal projects 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 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, which is destroying the basic pillars of public life, like free accessible education and healthcare, rising city rents and gentrification, an ongoing ecocide, 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 and settle in the same area: North of Lanzarote, Canary Islands . 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).




    Core interests

    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 // 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 !

Season 4 & 5 are experimental camping (see 🔗season4): focusing on new nomadic tech 🔗stuff and know-how, and sites in Lanzarote.

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



Where?
    * Currently the project has no fixed house or territory. It operates as temporary camps on temporary grounds, researching and experimenting with different approaches
    * We understand the territory 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"  
   


    CHT4-B (2015/April, May, June)

      "Desert Autarky Sketch"  
   


    CHT4-C (2016/February, March)

    "Advanced Permanently-Temporary Resilience"  
   


    CHT4-D (2016/May, June, July)

      "New typologies"  
     


    CHT5-A (2017/Jan, Feb)

      "Nomadic Maintenance Research Culture"  
   


    CHT5-B (2017/Nov, Dec)

      "Repetition"  
   

___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  

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




Coming to the base

Next camp: http://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)!

• 150+ people have stayed at the base, with ~6 average, and 15 maximum in Year 3
• The Lanzarote island has a well-connected airport in Arrecife.
• A flight from EU should be 30-100€, check Skyscanner

(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.





    Where? Why? What?

The base is set up on Lanzarote, Canary Islands (wiki, map), a UNESCO protected 40x20km island 100km off western African coast, under Spanish jurisdiction. It's 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 http://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 ^Wiki🔗Ted_Nelson^(R/W) and ^Wiki🔗Alexander_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