Whispering Spaces / Traces of Absence 

Curatorial Statements for the "Crossfire" exhibition, an Installation by Shahidul Alam on Extra Judicial Killings, Drik Gallery, Dhaka, March 22 - 31, 2010.

• photography,
• Bangladesh

The Dangers of Co-optation with Corporations 

Over 2,000 Ogoni, including their leader, Ken Saro-Wiwa have died since they started their non-violent campaign against Shell. Many Ogoni are still imprisoned today. Their only crime was to campaign against the ecological destruction of their homeland by Shell and ask for a greater share of the oil wealth that had been drilled from under their land.

• environment,
• campaign,
• propaganda,
• globalisation

Rehearsal of Memory 

About his CD-ROM production called ROM

The production of this interactive programme has been commissioned by Video Postive 1995 and the construction of the artwork is set to take place during January to April 1995.

The Californian Ideology 

"Not to lie about the future is impossible and one can lie about it at will"
- Naum Gabo [1]

ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) 

ACT UP, AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, is a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals, united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis, started in 1987. We meet with government officials, we distribute the latest medical information, we protest and demonstrate. We are not silent.

• AIDS,
• aids activism,
• act up

Ten Theses on WikiLeaks 

These 0.

"What do I think of WikiLeaks? I think it would be a good idea!"
(after Mahatma Gandhi's famous quip on 'Western Civilisation')

• wikileaks

Dawn of the Organised Networks 

At first glance the concept of "organised networks" appears oxymoronic. In technical terms, all networks are organised. There are founders, administrators, moderators and active members who all take up roles. Think also back to the early work on cybernetics and the "second order" cybernetics of Bateson and others. Networks consist of mobile relations whose arrangement at any particular time is shaped by the "constitutive outside" of feedback or noise.[1] The order of networks is made up of a continuum of relations governed by interests, passions, affects and pragmatic necessities of different actors. The network of relations is never static, but this is not to be mistaken for some kind of perpetual fluidity. Ephemerality is not a condition to celebrate for those wishing to function as political agents.

• tactical media,
• network cultures,
• activism,
• net.activism,
• post-governmental organisation,
• info-activism

International #GlobalDebout meeting, May 7-8, Paris 

International meeting for #GlobalDebout programme May 7th-8th – Paris, Place de la République
Location: Paris, Place de la République

This meeting is intended for activists and citizens all over the world.
International Call by #NuitDebout

• precarity,
• art of campaigning,
• labour,
• street protest

Simona Levi

Simona Levi is a multidisciplinary artist born in Italy and established in Barcelona since 1990. She is the Director of Conservas, a cultural activity centre. Since 2000, she has directed the arts festival INn MOTION which takes place at the Centre of Contemporary Culture of the city of Barcelona. She is an outstanding activist in European social movements in the area of free circulation of knowledge and the right to housing. She is also involved in several artistic and activist platforms. She is co-founder of EXGAE, a civil organization that defends from the abuses of the cultural industry trade groups.

• art,
• free culture,
• austerity

Conference Report ‘The Society of Post-Control’
 

Summary of the extended conversation on the emergence, consequences, and activist responses to the concept of "post-control"
Report of the conference 'The Society of Post-Control', organised by Eric Kluitenberg and David Garcia, tying into the opening of the exhibition As If.

• art,
• infopolitics,
• info-activism,
• culture jamming,
• meme wars,
• visual culture

The Role of the Engineer in the Information Age 

When looking at technology, we barely see machinery, let alone the people who made it. We seem to take technology and its development for a given, neglecting the process of its creation. We live off the fruits of the tree, without examining its roots.

World Charter of Free Media 

Tunis March 2015
We, communicators and activists committed to multiple emancipatory communication practices across different regions of the world, freely assembled in March 2015 in Tunis, on the occasion of the 4th World Forum on Free Media, organized in the framework of the World Social Forum 2015, adopt this World Charter of Free Media, as the result of our collective reflection initiated in 2013, and as an expression of our resistance, and our commitment to just and emancipatory communication, and our engagement with world developments and humanity.

• media,
• activism,
• globalisation,
• social justice,
• info-activism,
• participatory media,
• censorship

The Invention of the Savage: Colonial Exhibitions and the Staging of the Arab Spring 

Watching a popular uprising in real time was indeed a dramatic experience. As viewers tuned in (or streamed in) to the violence, courage, and uncertainty of events in North Africa this year, many of them had the impression of witnessing the "actual" events, free from the framing tactics and analytical bias often found on the six o'clock news. A host of new media celebrities became household names as they reported live from Tahrir, and news outlets such as Al-Jazeera saw an unprecedented rise in viewership. Spectators were made to believe that a return to the event "itself" was once again possible after decades of being locked into what Jean Baudrillard called the hyper-real. The revolution in-and-of-itself seemed to unfold before our eyes, creating a fetish for real-time revolt.

• middle east,
• street protest,
• postcolonialism

N5M3 South Asia Forum Presentation 

Working with new media in the part of South Asia that I come from is something like crossing a tightrope on a bicycle. The bicycle which could have helped me along were I on my way on flat ground makes the crossing that much more precarious. Consider the bicycle to be the single computer and the internet connection which I use along with at least seventeen other people, friends, colleagues, neighbours and complete strangers.

Postscript on the Societies of Control 

1. Historical

Foucault located the disciplinary societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; they reach their height at the outset of the twentieth. They initiate the organization of vast spaces of enclosure. The individual never ceases passing from one closed environment to another, each having its own laws: first the family; then the school ("you are no longer in your family"); then the barracks ("you are no longer at school"); then the factory; from time to time the hospital; possibly the prison, the preeminent instance of the enclosed environment. It's the prison that serves as the analogical model: at the sight of some laborers, the heroine of Rossellini's Europa '51 could exclaim, "I thought I was seeing convicts."