Censored Online, Thriving Offline: Post-Platform Websites
Join us for the workshop led by Maisa Imamović as part of Rip Space’s first school – Really Radical Return 2 School. Through tech and education, it aims to encourage and organize solidarity energies for the future.
About the Workshop:
In response to increasing censorship, surveillance, and state-sanctioned silence, we will explore how to build resilient, offline-first websites. We will imagine and dwell in the the world without the internet - not by accident, but by design. What kind of websites emerge from severing our dependence on the cloud? Can we resist extraction, evade moderation, and exist without permission? Together, we’ll create web worlds that function as tools for survival, memory, rage, and community. Then, from the shadows of the offline archive, we’ll design a public-facing online teaser — the polished, the ambiguous, the safe-looking. By hiding truths and exposing lies via web design, participants will learn how the medium is a battleground of falsehood and resistance, and can be a tool for both: the art of lying and resistance.
Experience level: Beginner to advanced
Requirements: Laptop
Technologies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
suggested donation $25-$40
* If cost is a barrier to participation, please feel free to reach out to vera@rip.space—we’re happy to accommodate *
** space is limited **
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Maisa Imamović (BiH/NL, 1994) is a writer, web designer/developer, media artist, and educator based in Los Angeles, and, oftentimes, in Amsterdam. Text, Code + Talking are her main mediums. In 2022, she published her first book entitled The Psychology of the Web Developer, Reality of a Female Freelancer. In the academic year of 2024-2025, she taught creative coding and the history of cyberfeminism as an adjunct professor at USC Media Arts + Practice, UCLA Design Media Arts, ArtCenter Interaction Design, CalArts Critical Studies and Integrated Media. She holds an MA degree in Aesthetics & Politics from the California Institute of the Arts. She just started her Ph.D. in Media Arts + Practice at the University of Southern California, where she plans to do some radical stuff.
ABOUT RIP SPACE: Co-founded by John Threat and Vera Petukhova in January 2024, and run in collaboration with Maisa Imamović, Rip Space is a radical exploratory hacker / new media art x tech space with an ambitious programming schedule. We operate out of a loft space in DTLA featuring a large transparent configurable LED screen that is an invitation for artist experimentation and collaboration – along with a growing media library of new and retro tech. Rip Space is dedicated to showcasing new media, digital art, installations, performance, and experiential and sensory work. The name RIP SPACE is a flip on WIP or work in process – RIP or riot in process is a space where process, ideation, and experimentation override product and finalization. Rip Space exhibitions and programs are created in collaboration and in process with artists. In addition to exhibiting artists' work, we also host artist talks, skill share workshops, community gatherings, screenings, symposiums and other discursive events. Rip Space operates under the fiscal sponsorship of Gray Area, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, allowing us to receive tax-deductible donations and grants through their nonprofit status.