DIY media bits

In the middle of the deserted region of northern India - women engineers of the Barefoot college engage into an eco-development projects using solar energy. Working with local people and tools to electrify villages, the Barefoot engineers are demonstrating that they can use their skills and knowledge to strengthen their social position on one hand and empower community.

Annemie Maes (OKNO, Bruxelles) is currently making a video documentary about the project involving local women groups and their DIY approach to self-sufficiency. More about Annemie’s participation and involvement with the Barefoot project in her blog ThoughtsandTalk

The Tibetan uprising has not been so violent in over a 20 years - the attention to the Tibetan government in exile during the Olympic games 2008 will be followed by protests worldwide and censorship will be undermining freedom in mainland China. Just one day after the protest in Lhasa, the Chinese government has decided to block access to the video sharing platform Youtube after riots in Lhasa have been reported with a dozen of videoclips.

Living in a dictatorship regime, often unable to travel, performing in apartments and in vacant buildings throughout Minsk - using a phone number to communicate with their audience, who ventures to the outskirts of the city to watch the performances of the Belarus Free theater company. This description only scratches the surfaces of daily life of the theater makers. The technological encounter performs with a different form, not as consumer product, but that of activator, tactical spy, the feature of the global flow of information capital, often unrecognized.

This article is describing the state of urgency, the harsh existence and astonishment for such cases where limitations in the freedom of expression are daily routine in one of the most forgotten corners of Europe. Read the full article here

Ksenija Glavc opened Natasa’s car and illustrated layers and dimensions of car-repair and Emeli Ronhdale showed how queered fashion can be, something that does not only reveal an attitude of dissent and confronts the fashion world, but also that opens a dialog with the intimate and the hidden. Using scars as simply attaching red marks for cloth decoration can be very subtile in action, but an exploration of terror and  violence.

Also a new book was launched by Marina Grzinic and Rosa Reitsamer (eds): “New feminism: worlds of feminism, queer and networking conditions” with 60 contributors intervening on radical issues about global capitalism, migration and the relation to representation - at the marginal level.

In addition a public action performance took place in the streets of Ljubljana inspired by Noha Ramadan’s work “the body as a site of action”.

Coming back to the theme of this blog, I’ve imagined firstly how to led a way to link and to connect with the city, the landscape of the urban culture we are living in. the second red line was the necessity to research the recreation of spaces, definitions of physical embodiment, art and technological installations within media, that could somehow confront the theme of do it yourself, low cost and low tech tools employed as resources for energy detonators. In the spirit of rediscovering the mutuality of media techniques and their resource of electric tentacles, some sort of path emerge in observing how artists and media developers experimented in their own terms with technology - especially with their open circuits. Then, when observing such media objects and installations, their specificity was not that of the art for its sake, but instead was building on some sort of empowerment and eco-sensitivity. This has in some way transformed notions of media and the logic of mechanics as a cultural, economical or political necessity. The possibility of employment of such objects in everyday life deserves a reality momentum and attention. In this process I’ve rediscovered sound and desing as resources for creativity; Miya Masaoka’s (musician, composer and sound artist) most recent intervention consists of recording sounds on a 2-way radio transmitter adapted on recycled material and tools, in a water pond located in Central Park, New York City. One of the main ideas of the project Air Detritus has been to synchronize the outcome of physical embodiment through its sensory sound effect using spatial movement, its perceptiveness to nature and external aural emotions. The engagement of Miya Masaoka sound installation helped create ideas in the quest for the development of objects and tools, which can trigger communication between organisms. See also her other project Pieces for plants, where with the help a midi and a synchronizer, she orientates the movement of plants causing them to psychologically respond to sounds.

Today I’ve found the review blog from The critic, a copy writer living in Burkina Faso about the book The silent graphic novel (Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Giacomo Patri and Laurence Hyde, Firefly Books, 2007)  What has strike me is the genre, which recalls much of the early cinema (indeed silent in its form), where the contour of the selection of frames and flow of images reflects so well the style of the silent comic writer.  Indeed, this type of graphic collection, a true “socialized art scheme” says the critic, addresses verbal and visual experience from angles truly unconscious in a way, despite the overall implications of the medium used, with its reputation to persuade audience, the novel interpretation does explore realms of confrontation across symbolic forms of language (codes included). Indeed, this series devotes its attribution and discovery of the medium form and the social engagement that comes from it, as the review says:  “Taken together as a whole, these four works are indeed a graphic witness. They bear testimony both to past movements of solidarity and social justice, as well as document the development of the graphic novel. In collecting these seminal and rare works, Walker and Firefly Press have done an invaluable service exposing newer readers to the form in its infancy. In a market glutted with pituitary cases in spandex, the reintroduction of real life concerns is a necessary tonic.”

I’m assisting and covering the live performances of Radio Oltranzista during the week 25-31 january, ready to tun into futurist poetry talk and scream…listening to the art of noises, the Futurist manifesto performed by UNOROSSO yesterday evening, a live recitation that reminds a verse of cirindillincci, (an excerpt from the futurist sho vlummia poem by Marinetti)yesterday, Fred and Fruity have set up the radio station at De Balie, Amsterdam, which is broadcating on 105.6 FM in Amsterdam and is also streamed online. The radio will be covering Weerwoord festival, the Leidseplein literary festival - authors, talks and readings, poetry, live music……Marinettiprisoner of compromises,sweet, and crude

 the story of stuff is a video with a clever graphic style. It explains very efficiently about the whole chain of production and consumption. Where does all the stuff we use, buy and dump go? Well, the link with her ipod from the beginning of the video does certainly reminds of all the toxic ipod dumps in India. Now, if the story of stuff could be put on a loop for 10 hours and played over and over and over again on all the big screens around the world, would that be efficient? could be worth a try to dig into the management of huge multikulti companies? could there be some TVnews ritual, which would not cover news about murders and football, but would only play this video???could there be an introduction video that plays each time you enter a shopping street or a shopping mall? what difference would it make if you would travel and decide to make a donation for planting trees for each kilometer of wasted fuel in our atmosphere?  Donna Metzlar wrote this about her small inquiry in the waste situation in the Netherlands:now in the netherlands incineration is possible, but in the rest of theworld it nearly isn’t. so that means that all those old computers, tv’s,printers, mobile phones and so on go straight into landfills. for me thatis a pretty depressing scenario.anyways. one last anecdote from tonight. in naples, italy, they have asurplus waste problem. there’s no incinerator and no land left to fill.and the politicians are in a bind. so “they” made some deal with theincinerator company in rotterdam, which the city council sold two yearsago to some private company for a Lot Of Money. and soon it will all betransported by Train to rotterdam to be dealt with!? 

Migrating architectures are an exploration in ethnographic research and recycling, which stimulates further notions of design and connectivity.  Here toys and low tech electronic gadgets are adapted to the idea of their material and cultural migration, which might questions definition of vernacular activities of such objects adopted in daily unspecific uses. Re:Orient is an exhibition by Adam Somlai-Fischer and collaborators, running until january 2008 at the Hungarian institute in Paris.  This video shows the exhibition made for the Venice Biennale (2006) engaging visual and sounds traveling synergies of connected playgrounds.