[COMMA] Ground Loops Workshop - Consensual Hacking

Consensual Hacking is a collective thought experiment and a guided, participatory workshop focused on digital and relational consent. Through conversation, writing, and hands-on computer access, students will explore what it means to give, withhold, or request consent in digital and romantic spaces. 

Students may choose to engage in a consensual process of hacking into each other’s personal computers—a practice that raises questions around control, vulnerability, and care. What is social and digital consent and how are they interwoven? What does it mean to responsibly give and take access and control to our most intimate digital or physical spaces? Is there pleasure to be found in a bounded exchange of trust and vulnerability? 

Together, we’ll navigate secure networking protocols and basic uses of the terminal, while also co-creating sociotechnical contracts that express our boundaries and desires towards a loving, secure, and mutual transgression of digital space.