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report



N5M 4 TML Dubrovnik report
and announcements for further activities!

After a short period of recuperation from organising the Dubrovnik event we
are sending you a report on the activities and some plans for future
activities! As one of the issues not mentioned previously is why Dubrovnik
and why multiple events (announced later in the report).

The decision for Dubrovnik was made fairly early on as we wanted to avoid
a Zagreb centered event and continue the process of decentralisation
intiated in overall concept of Next 5 Minutes 4... which is finally
possible thanks to the http://www.clubture.org/ nation wide assosiation of
cultural NGOs. In the same time hosts Art Workshop Lazareti has 10 years
of experiance of organising/hosting low/no-budget cultural events and also
has an intereste in establishing media-lab fascilities for local and
international artists in residence.
 
Decision to continue working in multiple events after Dubrovnik and
"consolidate" activities/projects during Tactical Tech/Media Camp on
Island of Vis (First week of August) was a result of both unfamiliarity
with the "tactical media" topic in cities outside Zagreb (that's why the
one day sessions will also happen in Split, Pula and Osijek) and late
arriving funds (we couldn't organise the international participants on
such short notice so we delayed international part for later). On the
other hand the island of Vis with the "Otokultivator" event is probably
the most unique of all of our activities and is an interesting model of
work that we still haven't come across elsewhere.
 
__SUMMARY of Dubrovnik TML
 
As one of the issues discussed before (among organisers) and after (on
netime-see list) was how tactical would/should the whole event be. Without
going into details of what are the "semantic borders" of the term,
organisers agreed that some of the activities would definitely be of
questionalble "tactical" use, so the TML acronym was extended to Temporary
Media Lab rather than tactical one and this was more appropriate for the
event that was co-organised with exclusivly art-focused (Art Workshop
Lazareti) and tech-focused (Info-Veritas) Dubrovnik NGOs.
 
Activities branched into:
 
a) infrastructural (wich proved to be a small nightmare due to both
bureaucratic and technical obstacles in this UNESCO heritage city):
 

setup of wireless connection (first delayed, than operational, than
working bad, than being fixed and not working again)
setup of local intranet (was easily set-up for Tam Tam workshop)
setup of local streaming facilities unfortunately never happened as
wireless never reached that level of stability
b) educational (out of 3 planned workshops/demos one proved to be
never-ending as wireless needed to be repaired most of the time)
 

wireless technologies was unfortunatly educational only for people setting
it up (limited scope of 3 geeks + 2 / 3 assistants)
TamTam workshop by mi2lab
 
was fairly succesfull for the cca 15 people who sat through it (3 instead
2 hours) and managed to set-up their websites with in a few minutes, get
an overview of dynamic website building and collaborative nature of
wiki-culture... results should be visible soon as Art Workshop Lazareti
and CIMA network on Island of Hvar switch over to this technology for
their websites
 
the streaming media workshop was unfortunately cancelled due to wireless
issues
c) open public programs (each night featured lectures in Advocacy 2 Public
Policy, screenings and performances):
 

Friday:
 
lecture by Marcell: Copyleft - Creative Commons - EGOBOO.bits
screening of "Revolution OS" (made a lot of geeks happy + produced some
new informed FLOSS advocates)
performance of EGOBOO.bits - live act: ?NoNameNoFame
 
Saturday:
 
lecture - discussion by Zeljko Blace: non-profit internet ... with case
studies: Next 5 Minutes platform, ICANN, WSIS...
presentations of ICT NGOs in Croatia (from ISPs through LUG to squats and
cyber caffes)
screening: Illegal Art exhibition - videos
presentation/lecture of installataion by Daniel FISCHER "Surveillance
Entertainment System", with more insights into surveillance software
development and trends
performance of EGOBOO.bits - live act: Tomislav Domes & Lina Kovacevic
"TV-Clubing" a popular act (Tomislav being a part of Hit duo Zvuk
Broda) mixing TV News propaganda into familiar club visual and sonic scape
 
Sunday:
 
screening of the documentary on history of radio pirates in Croatia "Nek
se .uje i nas glas" (eng: May our voice be heard!...Someone correct me if
you know how to translate slavic imperative into English without losing
socialist feeling to it), this documentary/comedy made really interesting
intro through early practices of local community media for later
discussions
lecture/presentation by Ognjen Strpic: Broadcast media and hybrid forms of
radio, presenting mostly his theoretical research and translations he did
for http://projectbroadcasting.mi2.hr/
presentation/screening of research work by Maple Razsa: in regional Video
Activism , including mainly work of Slovenian groups (with very
interesteing experimental performative approach to action/protests by
non-formal group http://www.dostje.org/) and Croatian Fade-IN video
production group
performance of DJ Marino - Metamedia, Pula and VJing by Daniel Fisher
d) closed workgroup meeting:
 

meeting of ICT NGOs in Croatia with representatives of Government's Office
for NGOs on regulation of state policies (bandwith, privacy,
infrastructural development, Croatian representatives on WSIS...)
__CONCLUSION?
 
Event featured around 25 people in the program from 11 NGOs. Local
audience was scarce and only a few individuals set through most of the
programms... others came just for screenings or just lecture. The overall
feedback from people was that Dubrovnik is going through a turbulent time
(Otok club which is known to be meet space for art/act/alt audience was
now closed for over a year) and withouth big media hype it is hard to get
anyone intersted in non-mainstream programs... and this was a reaction
from 28 y.o. Dutch antropologist researcher who is living in Dubrovnik for
past 4 months.
 
Was it a success? I would say not up to the point we expected, but was a
good attempt for sure... Anyway we are continuing with shorther programs
with international guests that will visit cities of Pula, Split, Osijek
and Zagreb (during this month), all in preparation of the big summer camp
on island of Vis (first week of August) which should feature working
meetings of several networks (Open Source Streaming Alliance, a.network
and regiona IMCs) + workshops (Content/Community Managment Systems & FLOSS
media authoring and distribution). This will hopefully for most of us be a
culmination of work towards festival Next 5 Minutes 4 in Amsterdam!
 
For organisers:Zeljko Blace