On a resting rural road, desiccated dust rises from the pressure of tyres. Earth ascends towards the sky, creating a microclimate of red clay clouds around the road, the tyres, and the passengers. A trail of red mist follows as they journey to Wa.

As developers of the OtherNetwork platform, we were faced with the challenge of establishing a format for a website that moulds an existing shared reality rather than imposing a new one? How to visualise data in a way that is collaborative, and non-extractive?

A parasite is a key feature of any system, acting as a “thermal exciter” that alters the nature of the environment to which it belongs. The independent spaces within Bogotá’s art scene have acted as parasites in this sense, as opposed to the commonly construed notion of an organism that lives off others.

As queer activists in Ghana fighting against the anti-LGBTQ bill, we realised that the kinds of violence or the kind of systems that we have to change go beyond just legal: we are fighting to help change the narrative.

Independent art spaces – or offspaces in artworld speak – are shapeshifters that constantly metamorphose in response to accelerated flux and uncertainty. This includes reincarnating into second lives, or sometimes even dying when the time is right. Such redirection, through a dual strategy of refusal and reimagination, is how they sustain themselves

Since the foundation of OtherNetwork, we have used the notion of independence as a provocation, embracing the friction that the term itself may cause in an effort to redefine and unpack what it means to produce culture at the margins of society.