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| 4 ENCUENTROS SOBRE CULTURE JAMMING, HACKTIVISMO, CULTURA DE LA VIGILANCIA, CONSTRUCCION DEL PRESENTE |
| d-i-n-a // CCCB |
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In the first session (October 4th-5th) Surveillance Camera Players and Ubermorgen presented their works. About 150 persons attended the first presentation and at least 100 the second one.
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The formula we chose for each night is the individual presentation: the invited guest decides how to manage the space-time at her/his disposal. we decided not to focus on a single issue, leaving also room for improvisation (as it happened in a street action led by bill brown of Surveillance Camera Players New York - see below). Electronic Disturbance Theater and Casseurs de Pub are scheduled for the upcoming second session (November 9th-10th).
VIDEO + TEXTS
The proceedings of the events will be published soon on N5M4 journal (videos and hopefully a transcription or an abstract of it). The audio stream is already available at
http://www.radiored.org/hypercut/compilaciones/Bill Brown.ram
http://www.radiored.org/hypercut/compilaciones/UBERMORGEN con Hans_extrem.ram
(thanks to Radiored - see below)
As linked below, Ubermorgen's transcript is already available, thanx to Ubermorgen's Hans_extrem!
APPROPRIATION OF THE MEDIA
What we are interested in is focusing on an attitude towards digital communication technologies and discover that some projects developed in different contexts, addressing apparently different issues or adopting different styles of action do share a similar view on how contemporary (western) mediascape can be radically reshaped. What these projects do is challenging the apparent technical, conceptual or political limitations of current technologies (as they are being sold to us), developing sustainable models of reproduction of ideas and tools. With this series of happenings we want to underline that a sort of 'open source' way of acting in the public domain is possible; and even in the cases where the creation of a "myth" (a tale, a narrative, a hype) is being used as a tactical tool, we find interesting to publicly reverse engineer it, not in order to weaken it, but rather to understand how to re-use it in a different context.
LOCAL-GLOBAL
The purpose of these (nearly no budget) happenings in barcelona is contaminating a local scene with some of the most relevant examples that succeeded in raising local issues up to an international level. We members of d-i-n-a used to live far from the (cultural) capital cities (and Barcelona is not necessarily one, at least not under any point of view) and we know that an international network of people can turn into a source of inspiration, an unexpected support, an opportunity for traveling and so on.
A first and immediate result of these events has been the collaboration between d-i-n-a and Radiored (http://www.radiored.org), a project by Platoniq.net collective, in order to live stream and archive the audio files of the events.
THE STREET ACTION
The street action, lead by Bill Brown of Surveillance Camera Players, was one of the most intense moments of the whole event. While the two presentations resulted to be a very important moment to deliver ideas and details about the projects and to publicly discuss them with the audience, the street action revealed something unexpected. Performed as a simple and funny ritual with ready-made objects, the action against video surveillance in public areas took place in George Orwell Square, which is ironically one of the heaviest video surveilled areas in the old centre of the city. What follows is a short account of what happened.
======We are perfectly aware that the Barrio Gotico is not Manhattan, nonetheless we wanted to test the idea and see what might happen. What we didn't expect was that a topic we decided not to focus on (immigration), re-emerged and got stuck on our own bodies. During the whole performance (btw it was silent, very polite, almost hieratical) some old men from the building in front of which we were performing started making fun of us, talking loud, throwing lighted cigarettes over us. That's interaction! After 15-20 minutes the police showed up, refusing to accept the flyers we were handing them and breaking into pieces a simple 'Actores de las camaras de vigilancia' placard (according to them it couldn't be held at a closed rolling shutter, nor could it be put on the ground for it was like dirtying the public soil).
At the end of the performance a man from the restaurant at the corner (the owner?) started calling us names, trying to turn more people within the little crowd against us. "You're not even Spanish, you don't know what it means to live here", he kept shouting. Of course some of us are not Spanish, but some are or live in Barcelona since a long time, but that was not enough for him. "The Spain you have in mind fortunately does not exist!" replied one of us and even some people from the public started discussing and almost arguing with the man, now supported by some of his mates. "Go and wash yourself and your clothes before talking to me" was the reply to us. The funniest thing was that the restaurant this man works for (or that he even owns) has multi-lingual menus at the door, and as a provocation we had been told not to stand in front those multi-lingual menus window "because you are disturbing our job".
While that neighborhood is today a mostly turism-colonized area, some decades ago it was one of the most relevant destinations of internal immigration. The same shop owner that tried to argue with us might be part of the Spanish families that in the 40s or 50s moved to the city from the country or from the South.======
A FINAL NOTE
What happened during the street action confirms that migration is definitely a hot topic, from both the migrant's and the local communities' point of view. During this improvised street performance the participants - people from Surveillance Camera Players, d-i-n-a, friends, passers-by - momentarily "embodied" this problem, even if migration may be only an external problem in their daily life: that is to say, as EU citizens we d-i-n-a are like "business class migrants", and usually we don't have problems with papers, (relatively) few problems as far as job, bank account, house are concerned, etc. This investigation + embodiment + radicalization of a situation/topic is what 'artists' do or might do, and on the contrary it is something institutions never do (since they tend to create and reproduce a protected environment). The street performance showed that something stranger - and definitely interesting - happens when the roles of the artist, of the organizer and of the audience overlap and mix.
RASHOMON REPORTS
(more text material from our beloved guests)
*Surveillance Camera Players*
La Plaza de George Orwell, Barcelona
http://www.notbored.org/7oct02.html
*Ubermorgen*
uberNEWSAGENCY
http://www.ubermorgen.com/ (the uberNEWSAGENCY window just pops up)
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http://www.ubermorgen.com/DINA_2002/ |
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