article

make world paper 3

Two years after 911 the global cup looks both half full and half empty. It's hard to be optimistic, yet there are plenty of reasons for it. With the Bush-Blair war machine running out of steam, the movement of movements shifts its attention to alternatives for the WTO, Security Council and similar post-democratic bodies. In the moral desert of the Iraq War the structuration of imaginary consent through the repetitive bombardment of the image began to show severe cracks in credibility. These discrepancies within the represented result in a heightened need for action. The Iraq war didn't fool any one and both sides are still reeling a little from the shock. While maintaining their anger, people moved on from protest to a collective search for that other, possible world. What might a global democracy look like? Would it be a system with representatives and 'rights,' or rather a dynamic set of events, without higher aims?

The focus of this publication digs into two concerns many artists, theorists and activists have had over the past decade: the fight for open architectures of modern communication tools and the support for refugees and migration to abolish repressive border regimes. One may ask: why these two? There are so many other concerns, such as gender issues, global warming, poverty, fair trade. It is not at all arbitrary. We found out that the demand to combine the freedom of movement with the freedom of communication is social dynamite. To conceptualize free software in relation to the rights of migrant workers is a powerful, contemporary struggle that questions a variety agendas.

How to break open the easy assumption of WSIS and NGOism in general that a mutual comprehensibility of concerns is always already a given point of departure? The assumption of a general communicability of concerns is perhaps one of the more problematic gestures of a world summit dedicated to issues of communication. Central to this trend is the spread of a homogenizing civil society discourse: one of the ways in which WSIS and similar events structure the 'grassroots' long before any actual encounter takes place.

While it would be easy to assume that all we need is a couple of open access/commons ideas from anglo-american media theory and stir it into an emerging dynamic of multitudinal self-organization to see the counter info-society in the interstices of the existing one, there might be the need, especially when the agenda is communication and information, for some constitutive openness.

This eclectic mix has no claim to representativeness and does not not presume that there is already a shared common sense, even within our own circles, on what the conceptual elements of a counter-discourse are. We just tried to make some legitimate and illegitimate connections between discussions, debates and projects that we are involved in or concerned with. Feel free to use and re-use but don't [..]

Geneva reloaded

Over the past months 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 intervene outside of, counter, or as alternatives to the agenda and organisation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) from December 10 to 12 in Geneva, Switzerland. Geneva03 is an open, loose and temporary association of groups and individuals who are currently preparing a series of events around the WSIS. The common goal is to create autonoumous spaces for tactical, grassroots, activist and community media of all kinds. Peer-to-peer technology, open source software and networked communications have become embedded, unalterable facts of a so-called information society. The actual challenge is to strengthen and extend these practices into a global culture of knowledge sharing, unfettered access and free communication. This means leaving the false dichotomy between "real" and "virtual" behind, and both shaping and subverting the technologies that are now

part of the everyday life of more and more people. It's about refusing and resisting both, war and info war, border management and digital rights management, exploitation of immaterial work and informalized labor. It's about freedom of movement and freedom of communication which we intend to bring into existence for every human being on this globe BY ANY MEANS NETWORKING: http://www.geneva03.org

What is to be done again?

WASTUN.ORG is a quarterly Hybrid Media Journal which will be relaunched in December 2003. It has been developed from the web version of a television evening dedicated to new forms of political activism that was comissioned by the german-french broadcasting station arte. The projects aims to intervene in the stagnating debates around globalization by releasing an online-publication on a regular basis that contains up to date contributions in a global view. WASTUN.ORG is based on an interactive Streaming Media Platform, that has been started as a prototype for the digitization of the "arte" theme evening. The existing platform will be further developed as the kernel of a Hybrid Media Journal. The essential feature of WASTUN.ORG is its interactivity: Editors as well as registered users, guest authors as well as invited visitors, regular contributors as well as random visitors, they will all have access to the vast array of available materials that will be systematically extended to an archive of videos and stories from all over the world. In order to tell new stories, the users can mix and remix the clips of other contributors with their own material from their desktop, which they also can upload to the system. Old and new clips are constantly being interwoven and built by new contributions making different relations with those already uploaded. http://www.wastun.org

Everyone is an expert 2.0

How is the shifting European border regime affecting the everyday life of people in the border regions? What kind of stories, experiences and desires do people have, who live on the one or the other side of one of the new borders of the official Europe? "Everyone is an expert 2.0" is crossing the borders from the real to the virtual Europe searching for something, so many are longing for: The possibility to move freely while being able to communicate freely. The categorical imperative of the projects is connectivity, no matter where and even if it is only temporary. "Everyone is an expert 2.0" is a mobile device that explores new forms of subjectivity on the margins of Europe with the means of mobile communication technolgy. "Everyone is an expert 2.0" consists of a white van equipped with audio and video editing units, mixers, soundsystem, two servers, antennas for wireless netzworking and a satellite dish for a bi-directional internet connection which can be established within a couple of minutes. In 2003 the van was touring from Bacelona, Geneva, Romania, Apulia, Crotia and Amsterdam. "Everyone is an expert" sets up ad-hoc networking for multiple purposes ranging from a roaming webcasting unit to a mobile online-library; from a wireless discotheque to an open-source job-market; from internet workshops on wheels to event-coverage in real-time. Logfiles are available at: http://www.expertbase.net

Discordia

DISCORDIA is a new, collaborative weblog working at the intersections of art, dissent, theory, tech culture and politics. Discordia is an online discussion forum where YOU post and moderate and filter the content. Non-English threads are encouraged. Discordia is not a replacement for mailing lists. Its name is pronounced "Discordia 'R Us." Discordia has been developed by a diverse group of people distributed across six time zones working together exclusively online. The developers group is looking for editors who want to kick off this exciting webtool. Discordia is now ready to welcome participation from people in any time zone writing in any language. See you online. URL: http://discordia.us
The Fourth World War

While our airwaves are crowded with talk of a new world war, narrated by generals and filmed from the noses of bombs, the human story of this global conflict remains untold. "The Fourth World War" is a new film that brings together the images and voices of the war on the ground. It is a story of a war without end from the front-lines of conflicts in Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, Korea, 'the North' from Seattle to Genova, and the 'War on Terror' in New York, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the story of men and women around the world who resist being annihilated in this war. The product of over two years of filming on the inside of movements on five continents, "The Fourth World War" is a film that would have been unimaginable at any other moment in history. Directed by the makers of "This Is What Democracy Looks Like" and "Zapatista", produced through a global network of independent media and activist groups, it is a truly global film from our global movement.
http://www.bignoisefilms.com

Published: September 20, 2003

Download:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/TMF_documents/paper3.pdf

Source:
www.makeworlds.org/node/2