Re: nettime For any reason or no reason - on virtual (extra-)territoriality
How is the credibility of the fiction of the government diluted by subjecting one of its manifestations to the good will of a private corporation, whose only motive for not flipping the switch off is accounts receivable? Or is this just a start of the new strain of banana republics, Sweden being the first one? We need a new name for that, for states not controlling ICANN, ARIN and major search and social networking engines. Browsepublics? The 30th of May, Sweden will be the first country in the world to open an official Embassy within Second Life, the online 3D multi user end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel and lay it on us. http://surveylink.yahoo.com/gmrs/yahoo_panel_invite.asp?a=7 # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime Fwd: Prelude to the G8: Tearing it up in Hamburg
-- Forwarded message -- From: *severino de giovanni* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: May 29, 2007 1:50 PM Subject: Prelude to the G8: Tearing it up in Hamburg To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] please forward!!! Prelude to the G8: Tearing it up in Hamburg By the Anti-G8 Action Faction http://hatetheg8.blogspot.com/ May 28th 2007 On their way to block the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, anti-capitalists from all over Germany and the world stop in Hamburg to confront the Asian-European Meeting (ASEM). Finally, something was happening. We were on the move again. It's been a while and we're a bit out of shape, but it's all coming back now. After linking arms in flanks for five hours straight in a huge, permitted march, we were getting antsy. As the first major demonstration in the lead up to the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, everyone wanted to start it off right. The city of Hamburg needed to send a message to the world that they have the violent demonstrators under total control. The cops must maintain discipline and it will all go smoothly. The protestors wanted to tear the city apart, to show the G8 leaders that they are not welcome here, and anyone who tries to host them will have to pay. With a thousand black clad anarchists in the front and thousands of others behind, the tension was thick. Screaming fight the system, fight the state, fight capitalism, fight G8, the demonstrators were not willing to comprise either their vision or momentum. But who would provoke who first? Would the cops use the water canons? Would the anarchists break through the lines and go off the script? Will the G8 2007 be the opening salvo of a new cycle of struggle against capital, perhaps the final one given the scope of the current ecological crisis? For two years the German autonomous movement in general and the Dissent Network in particular has organized across the world, from the USA to Turkey, for this coming week of action. The stakes have never been higher: until now the War on Terror has cast a pall over the movement, yet in Germany we anarchists and autonomists could again re-seize the stage of history by scoring a decisive victory against capital. Move swiftly. Stop. Fight a bit. Grab something. Then Run. Turn around. Watch out for the Snatch Squad. Which ones are they? Wearing all black with red diamonds on their back. Shit, there they are. They're gonna try and grab us. Move! But who are those ones? Don't worry, it's just the green team. Green team? Yeah, green uniforms, they're like the national guard. They won't arrest you, they'll just tussle a bit. And them? Who? The darker green and dark blue. Oh them, well, they're here to stop you. Be careful. The modern incarnation of the autonomous movement is distinctly anarchist, mostly young, and quite, quite punk. Even though the movement had been ebbing over the last few years, it appears the arrival of the G8 in Germany, combined with the police raids in early May on anti-G8 centers of activity, have united the often divided and self-critical Autonomen. To the chagrin of the police, the raids also backfired in the popular press, and now it appears that most of the media, and even much of the public, are on the side of the dissidents. Furthermore, in Red Hamburg, the home of insurrections, pirates, and a famous anti-fascist football league, it is often hard to tell the locals from the Black Bloc while in the streets. Shhh. What? Be quiet, they're looking for us. OK, hold it . . . hold it . . . NOW! The police are nervous, very nervous. And rightfully so! For months, the cars of the officials have been burned, and now internationals are streaming into the well-run convergence center in Hamburg, the former theatre Rote Flora that has been squatted for nearly two decades. The dynamic of the police is Freudian to say the least: the police would like nothing better than to release their inner fascist and ruthlessly clear the streets of all protesters. Due to such factors as public opinion and their brutality backfiring on them in the courts, they simply cannot just beat the protesters without pretext. So, instead, the officers express their frustration with an anal-retentive attention to detail about the smallest of the rules regarding banner size, demonstrators masking-up, and so on; they often stop demonstrations for up to thirty minutes or more for the most minor of infraction of the rules. The bridge was a trap and everyone knew it. That's exactly where they wanted us to end up and there we were. Yeah some fireworks were shot off, rocks thrown, and a couple arrests, but come on, it was their turf. We had no chance. They've surrounded the Rote Flora. What? The convergence center, you know, that huge squat. Are they going in? Not likely, I think they'll get a beating if they try. Barricades are going up, let's get behind them. The water canons are coming out. Well,
nettime Bytes For All... March 2007
http://www.i4donline.net/articles/current-article.asp?articleid=1110typ=Columns Bytes For All... March-2007 ICT4D Getting a voice in cyberspace Audio for social movements in campaign mode, everyone understands the importance of getting a voice in the media. The problem is, the mainstream media often trivializes or misunderstands your cause. So? You needn't just sit back and groan. Technology is today increasingly placing the tools in the hands of those who want to wield them. And it's getting simpler, more affordable and freer all the time. Concepts like 'social software' and 'participatory media' keep getting mentioned. Can these really help to make the campaigner more effective in computer-mediated communication? Can it enable people to collaborate more effectively? Social software, on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Social_software Bangladeshi school students discuss climate change in online forum School students throughout Bangladesh recently participated in an online discussion on climate change. The online forum is hosted by Relief International- Bangladesh and is a part of Global Connections and Exchange Project which has set up Internet enabled telecenters in Bangladeshi schools. Each month the project conducts an online collaborative project involving students from Bangladesh and abroad. Students did online research and discovered the concepts of climate change and global warming and their importance. Through Internet searches and the use of online libraries, students attempted to define and explain climate change and global warming. In groups, students researched their community's contribution to climate change. With this knowledge in hand, students brainstormed a local organization or business that they felt either a) contributes to climate change and the greenhouse effect or b) helps to prevent climate change and the greenhouse effect. www.connect-bangladesh.org, www.ri.org Defining e-Government: a citizen-centric criteria-based approach E-governance Compendium 2007, brought out by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) on the occasion of 10th National Conference on e-Governance, February 2-3, 2006, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, under the theme: avant-garde issues in e-governance. The paper is available for download in the Files section of the group:http://tech. groups.yahoo. com/group/ cyber_quiz/ . projects. May be of interest to the members of the group. India a 'promising' destination for community radio One-step forward, two steps back...is this the fate of non-commercial, non-state radio broadcasting in Asia? It would seem so, going by the perceptions of a campaigner trying to promote community radio even as he says India holds out hope. Community radio - also called rural radio, cooperative radio, participatory radio, free radio, alternative, popular or educational radio - operates out of rural or urban areas, is broadcast to small areas and offers alternate, non-commercial, non-state voices to a diverse set of people via the radio. India has just opened up its 'community radio' possibilities with a new official policy announced in mid-November 2006. Earlier, for a couple of years, it was mostly 'campus radio' stations that were being allowed. http://www.hindusta ntimes.com/ news/181_ 1924420,0008.htm Launch of Brazilian Portal to Promote National ICT Development Telemática e Desenvolvimento Ltda announced today the launch of the e-Brazil portal, a bilingual portal that is part of the international network of country gateways supported by the Development Gateway Foundation. The e-Brazil portal brings together information and discussions related to the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to build a more equitable and more competitive Brazil. http://www.dgfounda tion.org/ news-events/ news-releases/ view-news/ archive/2007/ february/ article/27. html FOSS How the net turns code into politics The launch of Windows Vista last week was accompanied by widespread criticism from advocates of open systems, open networks and the free flow of information. Particular attention was lavished on the digital rights management (DRM) features of the new operating system, the tools that determine whether you can play or copy video or audio on your computer. The Internet that we know today is changing, turning from an open, enabling and profoundly public space into a communications system which can be regulated, controlled, monitored and - where necessary -curtailed. A regulated Internet does not have to be a closed Internet, but the trend is clearly towards increased control and the loss of the freedoms which the net has provided thus far. We must understand how this is happening before we can find ways to resist it. http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/technology/ 6325353.stm New media briefing questions whether open source software can covert the software world? For many people in developing countries, commercial software packages are
nettime CEI 3 - Forum: Continental Breakfast. Outposts 2007', June 7th
Hello, everyone, here is the event and my presentation for the *Presentation on 3rd CEI Venice* The 'Third CEI Venice Forum for Contemporary Art Curators - Continental Breakfast. Outposts 2007', organised by the Trieste Contemporanea Committee, will *June 7th and 8th*, at the *Palazzo Zorzi *(Castello 4930), seat of the UNESCO Office in Venice-Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe (BRESCE) http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1314URL_DO=DO_TOPICURL_SECTION=201.html. http://www.triestecontemporanea.it/news.php?id_news=36l=eid_m=2 Ana Peraica Last years we are witnessing the appearance of bureaucratic global cultural policies and the appearance of creative industry which are defocusing, in large, our attention to the original accident of art. These incomprehensible and banal approaches are actually giving a perspective of globalization process on the art itself, as a political, economical and market field, treating the phenomena we used to call art as inherent to the history, groups and therefore being reduced onto pure social epiphenomena. Besides this, actually being Marxist definition used by market, reminding more than on any on programs of Socialist Realism, may have some of a operative truth, they are actually having an error of defining society in terms of groups that are consisting of same or similar individuals. Furthermore, they are generalizing in terms of majority. This definition is in complete contradiction to the art, and I intend to show -- to the public. *Do the current overall rules of creative innovation for competitive advantage influence the evaluating criteria of art in force?* As advertising becomes stronger managing to sell even what I will not name, competing with original art's mediums, the chance of recognition of art, as a primarily individual and isolated event (as; act, accident), it has become hard to recognize art and to actually isolate its phenomena outside of mess of what competes for its definition. This would mean to distinguish what is engineered at arts place and art itself for what methods and techniques visual studies appear insufficient, not even speaking on the old discipline art history. What misses is the ontological picture, rather then epistemological, that would define art in terms of the single event, rather than analyze its visual layout and message or define it in terms of style. That would be hard, but one thing is clear to professionals in the field, I assume: what fights to be defined as art is - surely not that. Or, to be closer to disciplines; what resembles on art -- is not art. It is a copy and in the world of copies there are also copies of art. So the hardest choice on curators today would be to find not originality but individuality, as originality can be industrial, it seems. *Is it useful to consider exhibitions in terms of their contribution to research and to understanding social transformation?* This has become more and more importantÂ… Emphasizing the individual creation and perception, by which I also mean -- researching needs of public not as a mass but the space or event connected group of individuals, the research undertaken by curators previous to the exhibition is to find all possible individual perspectives and approaches to individual art piece and make its, lets use that terrible word consumption easier. Namely, giga exhibitions and festivals are user unfriendly layouts for art. They treat the public as the background of the show at its best. Except for the resizing for the use of individuals, not a mass - curators should be able to find and define channels and open them up, for different individuals, even if it is not the standpoint of a curator, even at the cost of inner contradictionÂ… *What is the responsible (and reliable) role played by the curator in the era of virtual-media and market saturation?* One is sure - both virtual media and market are dealing with copies. Moreover, what comes with so called virtual media that in the newer age of the net emphasized moreover what is linked is that actual individual phenomena are staying disconnected. We are facing the situation in which some possibly original art can be lost behind those super-sponsored, mega-announce and extremely linked layouts. The role of a curator would therefore be to dig behind the surface or interface that economy and politics but especially advertising are offering as art. This would mean firstly to clearly distinguish art from its ontological copy as; art would appear as something that can be approached in plurality of ways, while copies would stand for one, usually designed by the market or political way. *Will good information on contemporary art philosophy offer suitable instruments for a better understanding of the individual in an extended and mediating field of relationships?* Yes, all but all the possible approaches should be offered in a simple way and
