[ insieme ad ugo in questo momento perso a newyork volevamo sfruttare il weblog media-activism per seguire dall'italia la partecipazione a WSIS. ogni contributo e' il benvenuto. questo il primo incontro di preparazione: http://rekombinant.org/media-activism/article.php?sid=109 /m ]
GENEVA03 http://www.geneva03.org At two separate occasions Geneva (Switzerland) and the area of the Lake Leman will host global summits that reflect the pending dramatic changes in the world in very challenging ways: Early June 2003 the yearly G-8 meeting will take place in Evian, a few kilometers across the border to France. The second event from December 10-12 2003 is the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that will be held in the Palexpo conference center of Geneva. Unlike the G-8 summit with its clear agenda of confrontation, the WSIS is a rather ambiguous meeting of thousands of governmental, corporate and non-governmental entities. The summit, organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), is supposed to shape the future of a worldwide communication regime also known as the "information society". While the G-8 gathers the leaders of the richest and most powerful governments and corporations plus approximately ten thousand of their accomplices, the WSIS represents the other, not less important side of Empire: a system of world hegemonic power that is blurring the distinction between formal and informal bureaucracies, explicitly including the civil society and the NGOs as a broad base of global governance. 1 Interventions at G-8 and WSIS It is easy to attack the corporate agendas of the telecommunication and deconstruct the "access for all" NGO rhetoric. Rather then demasking the liberal "digital divide" agendas, the real question WSIS puts on the table is how cultural and political differences can be worked out in a post-nation environment such as the Internet. It is time to map the power of the new communication structures without having to call for national regulatory regimes. What radical models are there, beyond the sweet dreams of a "civil society", that take up some of the global challenges that emerge out of the new media structures? Over the past weeks activists and artists with different backgrounds ranging from indymedia centers to the noborder-networks, from the free software movement to community media, from grassroots campaigns to hacker culture have been widely discussing how to make appropriate interventions during both events, the G-8 and the WSIS. When net activism and the global protest movement, all sorts of counter activities and parallel events connect and link up into a strong and powerful conceptual framework, one can indeed envision a series of actions and activities, that reveal the a new potential of struggling: Refusing and resisting both, war and info war, border management and digital rights management, restrictions of the freedom of movement and constraints of the freedom of communication. Let's leave the false dichotomies between "real" and "virtual" behind us and both shape and subvert the technologies that are now part of everyone's life. 2 First prep-meeting on april 5th and 6th In order to exchange ideas, concepts, and blue prints for all sorts of actions and activities around the two GENEVA03 summits we invite you to attend to a first meeting on the weekend of April 5th and 6th, 2003, in Geneva/Switzerland. During this meeting we would like to discuss what at the first glance might be seen as a compulsory program. For the G8-counter-activities one could expect protest as usual: mass demonstrations and road blockades, counter-summit and counter-information, criticism and repression. Nevertheless the communication between the many different events, between protest villages, counter-summits and direct actions, between local and remote participants might play an extraordinary important role. The activities around the WSIS in December 2003 might look like the freestyle dance of a movement of movements. While the representatives of governments and non-governmental organizations do only talk about networking, we are going there to actually practice it. When the leaders of the nation-states negotiate about the digital divide, we are struggling for free and unfettered access. As they shiver with piracy, we are sharing our skills and capacities, resources and experiences. Though the corporations desparetely try to control the flow of material and immaterial goods, we reclaim the world as the invention and creation of the multitudes. Let's squat the air and drown the Geneva summits into Wifi-clouds! Let's civilize the sky and occupy the satellites for community media! Let's flood the fiber networks with contributions from all over the world! Let's turn the NGO talkfests into jam sessions of liberated technologies! Let's spread the virus of tactical media and circulate the images and narratives of a global movement of movements! Let's celebrate the freedom of independent communications with a festival of conferences and workshops, local and remote events, parties and parades! Let's open a thousand media bazaars and celebrate the untamed channels! Let's cast the night away and corroboree in Geneva, December 2003. Please register for the preparatory meeting at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________ Rekombinant http://rekombinant.org Media Activism http://rekombinant.org/media-activism
