IsayUsaySsay

Name   : Geke van Dijk
Time   : 16.30 - 17.30 (Paradiso Hall)
Subject: Final Debate
Date   : Sunday 21 january 1996

Why are we not organizing ourselves more around media? Activists are used to organize all sorts of initiatives around multinational companies, but not around media moguls. Many documentaries and also websites are focussing on corporations like McDonalds or Gap. Maybe we should have sites on Berlusconi too.

During the Next 5 Minutes many radio pirates from Amsterdam and other places have cooperated in making live programs for round-the-clock broadcasting. Though illegal, these transmissions are usually 'tolerated' in The Netherlands. This is an unthinkable situation in Birma, where even listening to the transmissions of 'The Democratic Voice of Birma' is considered as a crime. During the Next 5 Minutes a campaign was launched to pressure the Dutch brewery Heineken to not invest anymore in Birma and not support the military junta.

The N5M electronic journal was set up to be a platform for reflection on what was happening during the conference. Launched as an experiment, it has grown out to quite an extensive collection of reports, impressions and opinions. The journal will be kept alive after the Next 5 Minutes. Anyone who would like to add her or his reactions to it, is warmly welcomed to do so. In this sense the journal, together with the rest of the website, can function as a 'collective memory' of what has come out f this conference.

On events like this it is important to built up an extensive database of participants, organisations and also programs. The Media Archive of N5M 2 will be publicly available via the net. It can support the contacts that have come out of this conference and be of help for future initiatives.

At the Media Archive there has been a lot of discussion on the risk of leaving material. It is obvious that the question of copyright needs more discussion time. On the one hand it is good to spread material and get as much exposure as possible, on the other hand people tend to be cautious not to get 'ripped off'. Both arguments are valid but this does not imply that there is no in between option.

The live-TV crew were happy to have many participants joineing them in the studio to add their work to the programs. Leaving a large part of the schedule open for spontanous additions turned out to be very fruitfull.

The exchange of experiences and ideas between the participants is a very important aspect of the conference. Unfortunately there was not much space left in the conference schedule for discussions. The sessions in the big rooms of the Balie and Paradiso were packed with plenary presentations. For a next time it is necessary to think up some solution to both have a formal and an informal path in the conference.

During many of the sessions it has been mentioned that tactical mediamakers should be aware of the political context of their activities. A very important, but often not acknowledged, aspect of this context is the fact that in large parts of the world the fairly liberal environment of engaging with the media is not at all the case. Compared to, for instance, Asia the struggle for public access in Europa and the USA is a luxoury problem. Also, from the point of view of eastern/southern countries the so-called tactical use of media in the western/northern countries can be considered as 'mis-using the media'.

Another aspect of 'the political context' of tactical media is the awareness that only because of the bad economical, social and political circumstances in many countries can there be relatively cheap equipement in others to be used by tactical media makers.

The notion of reality in relation to cyberspace seems to be a problematic one, according to the discussions during the N5M. This is not the case in many spiritual cultures where the world itself is not considered to be 'the reality'. Maybe the discussion around cyberspace could be enlightend by this insight?

Though it is generally the assumed that countries like India are not bading in hardware it was mentioned that, due to a nationwide government operation to produce identitycards, there are about 50 thousand camcorders and tapes left in the hands of grassroot workers. What interesting project could come out of this?

As a reaction to the more and more centrally organized and controlled internet, the initiative to develop 'Panet' has come up during the N5M. Panet is meant to provide tactical producers a way to escape the unnecessary control of domainnames. (For information check 'mediafilter.org')

Broadcasting as many interviews and works as possible has helped to get the messages of the participants out to a larger community than just the other participants of the conference. The risk of only speaking amongst eachother is a classic mistake of many networks. Afterall, are we doing all this work just for ourselves or for making a connection with others, to get something out?

The Next 5 Minutes is a non-academic, interdisciplinary conference. This gives the event an energetic and productive atmosphere. The improvisation that is needed in the course of the event is a part of this proces.

Unfortunately there was only very little information on the proceedings in Rotterdam during the N5M. Hopefully a report of this can be added to this journal later.

Thanks to everybody for being present and contributing to the Next 5 Minutes. Be welcome to join again next time. In the meanwhile: do something fruitfull with whatever you got out of participating in N5M 1996. This journal can still be used for further elaborations on the conference. Feel free to send your material here.

And finally: thanx to all the organizers of N5M 1996!

Geke van Dijk