Antumbra.xyz

Antumbra.xyz was a decentralised autonomous broadcasting organisation founded within the Architectural Association. It explored alternative routes for knowledge and governance, treating information as a material condition that shapes space, practice, and community. Antumbra rejected the digital–analogue split in favour of a synthetic attitude to spatial enablement, where proximity creates the possibility of chance encounter and collective authorship.

Broadcasting as Practice

Antumbra understood broadcasting as more than transmission. It is a way to convene, to re-route attention, and to assemble publics around shared questions. The project holds that infrastructures of communication are also infrastructures of governance, and that changing how we share knowledge changes how we organise.

The Interface and the Archive

The Antumbra interface functioned as a living archive of ideas, discussions, and associations generated by the community. The first network-scrape, Warmth, ran on a rolling basis from May 2022 and remained open for contributions through December 2022. Submissions were gathered, indexed, and preserved as part of an ongoing record of collective thought.

Community and Organising

Conversation and coordination happen in the open. Antumbra hosted working discussions about contemporary topics, proposals for gatherings, and the organisational development external projects. The internal culture valued experimentation, constructive disagreement, and careful documentation so that signals do not vanish into its feed.

Participation

Antumbra was conceived as a collective platform, growing through contribution. Members were invited to share work, propose routes, and help steward the archive. To participate was to shape the organisation itself. Ultimately, however, the proposal was not continued by students at the Architectural Association, who chose instead to pursue printed matter as their medium of exchange.