Echoes from Afar: Build your own archive

Over the past years we’ve seen an increase in censorship, shadow-banning, and blocking of accounts across large social media platforms like Instagram. Many artists, designers, and cultural and social organisations, rely on these platforms to connect with their communities and share their stories and their work. But what if we can build our own archives and websites, and create our own networks to share our stories, as a way to keep authorship and intention in our own hands?

This hybird workshop, led by Kexin Hong and Yiyao Wei, opens through an introduction to Echoes from Afar, an open-source, living, online archive that explores how digital infrastructures can challenge conventional forms of representation while opening up space for Asian diasporic communities to narrate their own stories. In its approach to storytelling, the project seeks to safeguard the integrity of personal narratives, to cultivate plurality and openness in how stories surface and circulate, and to lay the groundwork for a living archive that makes space for richer, more textured forms of visibility in the place of flattened or reductive images.

In the first part of the workshop, participants will learn about Echoes from Afar and the basics of self-uploading and managing artworks on the platform, so that participants can begin contributing their own work if they would like to. In the second part of the workshop, we will learn about the open-source workflow behind the archive, showing how participants can build their own websites or archives using free and accessible tools that require no prior coding experience. Throughout this hands-on process, the workshop will draw on AI technologies, such as Claude, as one of the working tools that can assist website building, while still remaining grounded in a practice of ethical care.

No prior coding experience is necessary and you do not need to be of Asian heritage to join this workshop.

The Hmm experiments…

This event is part of a series of programs that we are developing with The Hmm, where we give space in our studio for our community to explore new ideas and experiment with workshops as part of our public program.

What you need to know

📅 Date: Saturday 12 September 2026 🕗 Times: 14.00 – 16.00 CEST 📍 Location: The Hmm’s studio, NDSM-plein 125, 1033 WC Amsterdam, and online 🎟 Tickets: €12,50 regular, €9,50 students (onsite or online)

As these workshops are more intimate sessions, there is a limited supply of tickets available. You can find information about physical accessibility at The Hmm’s studio here.

💚 This programme is kindly supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL