Help Ellie keep the Cyber Love Hotel alive!

Hi, I’m Ellie (aka Liane), and I’ve spent the last decade doing grassroots education and organizing around tech. In 2020 I started a tech resistance community center in Montreal called the Cyber Love Hotel. I’m making this fundraiser because although the CLH is on the brink of self-sustainability, I’ve personally run out of funds to get it off the ground. As the main caretaker of the space, I need your help to pay rent at the CLH and at home. If we reach our goal, I’ll be able to keep my apartment as well as cover the finishing touches needed to open the Cyber Love Hotel doors officially.

__Why is the Cyber Love Hotel Important?__

Facebook, Amazon, and the tech giants are creating a world of mass alienation, polarization, and surveillance. We cannot let the tech elite dictate what the future will look like. We need fast-acting solutions for our communities to become empowered with the capacity to understand and formulate what technological futures are still within reach.

I created the Cyber Love Hotel as a portal between worlds. Between IRL and URL, between technologists and luddites, between local and global scales… The CLH is important because it offers a space where possibilities are not bound by capital, government, industry, or convention. The Cyber Love Hotel serves as an open door for people who are unfamiliar with tech and as a magic carpet to carry along those who have become exhausted from toiling away in these fields.

If you are tired and out of hope, you can rest your heart with us. There is enough firewood for the winter and food cooking for everyone!

__What does the Cyber Love Hotel offer?__

The Cyber love hotel is a space for community to form around tech, experimentation, accessability, and resistance. It aims to center marginalized voices in tech and share knowledge to allow people at the margins to enter these fields and conversations. Our approach to tech includes present and future tech as much as it does past tech like food preservation, print, and textile work. We pull inspiration from artists like Neema Githere and their framework of love as a technology.

Concretely, we currently offer equipment lending, knowledge-sharing, and physical space. People can come to use the computers, VR headsets, electronics station, sewing/ e-textiles equipment, riso printer, music gear, DJ gear, cameras, and photo backdrop. We also offer workshops, 1-on-1 sessions, zines, digital guides, and residencies. Most importantly, we are creating a community that is tech-literate and future-driven without falling into silicon valley tropes and non-profit pitfalls. The space is financed by members: about 5-10 people pay for 24/h access so that the rest of our activities can stay free. The center is also a revolving door of people, local and international, who come by to think, take some breathing space, and share knowledge.

__Current needs__

We need rent relief between now and February (Lunar New Year) so efforts can be focused on getting grants for the year to cover our operational expenses. I had to pay double rent for over a year until we got enough members to cover rent, and it’s taken a big toll. The funds from this campaign will be allocated to the following expenses:

- Rent (up to 4.5k)

- Building materials (bathroom fixes & wood to build a mezzanine so we can have a place for residents to stay for free/cheap/pwyc) (up to 3000$)

- Security measures for the studio (better locks) (200$)

- Common food for group meals during the winter (500$)

- N95 masks, rapid covid tests (500$)

- Operational functioning (honorarium for people doing core activities, ink for the riso printer, thread for the sewing machines, paper)

__Future plans__

We will continue to offer events and resources that are free or PWYC and develop our offering as we deepen our understanding of community needs. We are excited to invite residents and workshop leaders from abroad who can share their perspectives and use our space to develop their practice as artists, thinkers, educators, and organizers. We are also excited to connect with similar centers in other places of the world and work towards global solidarity.

There are a million and a half projects that have been proposed by members and visitors. We are looking forward to laying solid groundwork for individuals and collectives to actualize their ideas!