Ah, the hackspace, the dreamspace,
Of soldering smoke rising with whispered hopes,
Tinkerers’ hands weaving through wires and whispers,
Six years a shimmer, a hive in its hum,
Of silicon and synapses, Art’s guest, brass gears turning—
Not often, but often enough—
Like clockwork hearts synced to the pulse of creation,
Fueled by foukou offerings, homebrewed beer,
Debates on freedom-respecting software,
News of court dates for underage prodigies,
And the not-always false promise of cake.
And then, a crack—no, a chasm—
Through which the vultures crept in suits,
Funds flowing like oily rivers,
Interreg silken tongues whispering CNC, 3D printed prototypes,
“solutions for community problems”.
BalkanMED with its mask of fortune,
Municipal hands shaking, signing, breaking.
And the tenders fell—like poisoned fruit—
To hollow NGOs and universities, hearts all paper,
Brandishing impact factors, group photos,
For their ‘successful’ deliverables.
While the real ones, the ones who soldered their souls
To this dream, were pushed aside,
Watching their child, the thing they built,
Come undone, like a circuit frayed at every end.
Where are the makers?
Where the hack of the mind, the crack of code,
The deep-rooted love of hands and hearts?
Where’s our community of brothers (and the few sisters, or mothers), to help solve
This bug in my aeroponics experiment?
To vent with me about the parliament transparency site
Running on proprietary software,
To laugh at our scam of a space program.
Where is our shared equipment, our Star Trek jokes,
Our horizontal decision-making structure?
Lost—buried beneath the weight of bureaucracy,
Shallow promises and sterile partnerships,
Where the spirit of creation dies in silence.
Oh, hackspace, once a haven of bright minds,
Where fingers danced over keyboards like a poet’s pen,
Now your Wednesdays echo with apathy,
As those who know not what it means to build
Take credit for the ruins.
And so we mourn,
Not for the loss of walls or wires,
But for the souls who gave their all,
Who bled their ideas into every screw and board,
Only to see it all implode,
In the cold, indifferent grip of greed.
May you rise again,
Somewhere, somehow,
Where the true white hats will find each other,
And where the spark of creative resistance can never be quenched.
allonan 