Posts filed under 'announcements'
submidalogia is conference/event on the social, cultural and political possibilities of the digital media in brazil. last year the Waag Sarai exchange platform helped with getting the first edition on track (here is a report of submidalogia01 which took place in Campinas, Sao Paulo). submialogia02 will take place from october 12 to october 15 in olinda in the northern brazilian state of Pernambuco. here is a short fragment from the invitation:
The first Submidialogy conference, that took place in Campinas – SP, in October 2005, was derived of cooperation between India, Netherlands and diverse Brazilian groups. It was a joining of independent projects, the third sector, governmental, artistic and experimental to an international network of collaborators, searching above all to bring these different experiences to acknowledge each other. This year, it becomes an open festival, with lectures, production laboratories, fm radio broadcast, television, the Internet and the delicious chat with cachaça among @ll submiditics.
Submidialogy will aggregate talks, production and collaborative learning, as well as music, free radio, vj and independent media. These are some of the typical “tastes” that could be appreciated – without moderation – during the second edition of the conference.
Another characteristic of this festival is to investigate the social, cultural and political possibilities of the digital media, besides fomenting the dialogue (in)existent between theory – the scope of ideas, and the practices – the scope of actions.
Subjects as much as formats are still under construction, but are located in the inter-sections of culture, communication, resistance, re-signification, media, technology, art and tactics. In the construction page and by the dicussion list, you can take part of it. We invite you to help to organize this subversion and thus to share our ideas in different contexts and times, aiming future perspective, exchange of experiences, concepts, critical production and, maost of all, fun!
Don’t be shy to forward this invitation to other people that would possibly be interested.
October 2nd, 2006
One of the focus points of the Waag Sarai Exchange Platform in 2006 was supposed to be the Middle Eastern Region. Since the beginning of the year we have been working with partners in Beirut in order to do research into new media practices in Lebanon and the region. These activities have come to a (hopefully temporary halt) as a result of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah. A couple of us are involved with and attempt to organize a global webcast calling for an immediate end to the violence and destruction. here is the announcement:
“I DON’T WANT TO BE PART OF YOUR CONFLICT (BUT I AM)”
Global Webcast, Saturday, August 12 2006, 9-11 PM (CET)
http://beirut.dischosting.nl | http://streamtime.org
Outraged at Israel’s ongoing aggression on Lebanon – which since July 12 2006 has killed over 900 people (mostly civilians), displaced nearly one million people (1/4 of Lebanon’s entire population), and wrecked Lebanon’s infrastructure and economy – we say: khalas! enough!
We call for an immediate end to the violence and destruction. We call on the international community to open its eyes – and on you to make your voice heard.
With our fellow activists, artists and other bloggers in Lebanon – and input from Iraq – we will produce a collaborative global webcast on Saturday August 12, from 9 to 11 p.m. Central European Time/10-12 p.m. Lebanon time
This unique free style web jam around ‘frequently raised despair’ will be produced at Waag Society in Amsterdam by Streamtime’s Cecile Landman, Jo van der Spek, Geert Lovink and Jaromil in collaboration with Tarek Atoui, Nat Muller, Paul Keller and many others.
The Global Webjam will consist of an audio and video stream, and feature live interviews and conversations, video clips, cartoons and blog blurbs, soundscapes, DJs and VJs, a lively mix of information, art, protest, party and reflection.
Wahid el-Solh, a Lebanese DJ based in the Netherlands, will provide us with the unrivalled nightlife ambiance of Beirut.
We see this as a precedent for future collaborations – to create a platform fitting the spirit of Beirut, in defiance of war, and in search for solidarity.
We shout out for our friends in Lebanon and elsewhere to contact us if they want to join, share, participate in and contribute with their recent experiences and productions.
Contact the team in Amsterdam with all your questions, suggestions, contributions at: beirut@dischosting.nl
If you are in Lebanon and you want to contribute you can also contact Tarek in Beirut: atouitarek AT yahoo DOT fr mobile: +961-3-190985
If you have material to contribute please upload it to our ftp server: ftp://dischosting.nl (username: upload password: streamtime)
Skype: streamtime-khalas | cileland | jo-streamtime
Chat: freenode #nida
Telephone: +31206279661 (Solidarity Fund X-Y)
This event is funded and facilitated by Solidarity Fund X-Y and initiated by Streamtime.
Founded in 2004, Streamtime is an international support campaign for Iraqi bloggers and engages with tactical media initiatives of artists and activists throughout the Middle East.
Technorati Tags: beirut, lebanon, protest, webcast, war
August 5th, 2006
Raqs Media Collective : ‘There Has Been a Change of Plan’ (Selected Works 2002-2006) | Nature Morte Gallery, A 1 Neeti Bagh, New Delhi, August 5 – 26, 2006
Sometimes, adjustments have to be made. Schedules need calibration. There are contingencies, questions, obstinate demands, weak excuses, strong desires. You return to the city you never left. You pause, take stock. Sit still and let a conversation begin. Maybe?
Around you, aeroplanes sit on wooden platforms in a wilderness like widows on a funeral pyre. Clocks measure fatigue, anxiety and modest epiphanies across latitudes. A door to nowhere stands obstinately against the sky. All your cities are a blur.
“Do you like looking at maps?”
Meanwhile, measures are taken, shoes lost and found, ghost stories gather, the city whispers conspiracies to itself, the situation is tense but under control. Someone offers you a postcard.
Now: Let’s see what happens.
Raqs Media Collective is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition in Delhi – ‘There Has Been A Change of Plan’ at Nature Morte Gallery. The exhibition features selected works (2002 – 2006) in the form of cross media installations with networked computers, objects, postcards, video, sound, prints and projections.
Works exhibited include: ‘Lost New Shoes’, selections from ‘A Measure of Anacoustic Reason’, ‘Location (n)’, ‘28.28 N / 77.15 E :: 2001/02 (Co-Ordinates of Everyday Life, Delhi 2001-2002)’, ‘Erosion by Whispers’, ‘Preface to a Ghost Story’ and ‘There Has Been a Change of Plan’.
Raqs Media Collective
Technorati Tags: art, delhi, india, raqs
July 29th, 2006
In about one and a half months time the fourth edition of the berlin based conference series Wizards of OS will begin. this years edition will has the subtitle ‘Information freedom rules’ and will see active partiscipation from a number of the groups and individuals involved in the Waag Sarai Exchange Platform. Volker Grassmuck one of the conferences editors writes about this year’s topics :
Wizards of OS 4 – Information Freedom Rules | International Conference, 14-16 September 2006, Berlin
Not even 60 days to go before the Wizards of OS 4. This time it will take place in Columbia Hall, one of Berlin‘s greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll venues, so WOS4 is bound to rock. In fact, netlabels and how they manage to make a buck with free bits is going to be one of WOS4’s featured topics. Some of the most knowledgeable people in the
field including book authors Janko Roettgers and Mo Sauer, and Magnatune’s John Buckman will be discussing this fascinating new phenomenon. It will give us ample opportunity to rock your minds and bodies, not the least at the free music netlabel parties.
That’s free as in speech, not as in beer. But even that old wisdom has become more complex since you will be able to *buy* free beer as well. Now don’t get me wrong, WOS is not turning into a beer conference, even though beer-to-beer networking will be as important as ever. WOS will stay firmly rooted in the universe of bits where Information Freedom Rules. But which freedom, and which rules? Freedom is essential. Money matters. It brings forth laws and licenses, social and cultural networks implemented in technology and in business models. On the opening key-note panel of WOS4, Cooking Pot Markets (Rishab Ghosh) will meet the Network Economy (Hal Varian) and the Wealth of Networks (Yochai Benkler). With all those rules framing freedom there will also be no shortage of unruly behaviour, more of which in the next announcement.
WOS4 will be three days packed with panels, workshops and parties – five days, in fact, if you include the workshops at Tesla, c-base, New Thinking and Humboldt University before and after the conference proper. And there will be even more specials and projects like Wikipedia, Freifunk and Debian presenting themselves throughout the conference.
A novelty at WOS4 is the “Show des Freien Wissens“. The German- language programme is directed at a mostly young audience of those curious about where all this free culture is coming from and what they can do for you. So if your kid brother, your neighbour or your mother keeps bugging you about these things, send them here. TV anchor Helge Haas will lead them through an entertaining and enlightening afternoon, addressing what they always wanted to know about free knowledge but never dared to ask.
Finally we are happy to announce that the video and audio documentation of WOS3 is now completely online. You can revisit the 2004 highlights like the launch of the German Creative Commons licenses or the deep geek debate on the Unix paradigm and beyond. Maybe you want to download them to your mobile player for easy listening on the beach. In any case it’s a nice opportunity to get in the mood for WOS4.
Don‘t miss it. Register now.
Technorati Tags: berlin, conference, wos
July 29th, 2006
The Delhi Film Archive and Films for Freedom, in association with Max Mueller Bhavan and the Sarai Programme at CSDS, Delhi take pleasure in inviting you to “Free Speech & Fearless Listening: The Encounter with Censorship in South Asia”.
The three day roundtable to discuss the challenges confronting cultural producers in the South Asia region will be held at the Max Mueller Bhavan (Goethe Institute), Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi from February 22-24, 2006. This will be preceded by a ‘curtain raiser’ called “Interrogating Censorship” on February 21 at 4 :00 pm at Sarai.
Independent documentary filmmakers, journalists, writers and other professionals have struggled to create spaces for images, words and ideas that find little support with governments or market-driven corporations. Meanwhile the transformed nature of information flows at the cusp of the late 20th and early 21st Century has rendered inadequate national territories as exclusive sites of study or debate. As newer technologies of production and dissemination generate an unprecedented amount of information, there are simultaneously greater demands for restrictions on speech from state, non-state and corporate players. The proposed ’roundtable’ is an attempt to acknowledge and understand the circulation and curtailment of speech in the South Asia region and will attempt to engage with the transformed mediascape to understand how images and information are being created or erased.
We look forward to your participation and contribution in what we hope will be an on-going conversation. Please find attached the Proposed Schedule and List of Participants. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us at delhifilmarchive@gmail.com
For the Delhi Film Archive
Amar Kanwar / Anupama Srinivasan / Atul Gupta / Gargi Sen / Gurvinder Singh/ Kavita Joshi/ Nakul Sood / Rahul Roy / Raj Baruah/ Ranjani Mazumdar/ Saba Dewan / Samina Mishra / Sanjay Kak / Sanjay Maharishi / Sabeena Gadihoke / Sameera Jain/ Sherna Dastur/ Shikha Jhingan/ Shuddhabrata Sengupta / Shohini Ghosh / Shubhradeep Chakravorty / Uma Devi)
Feb 22-24 Max Mueller Bhawan, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi / tel 23332 9506 Feb 21 Sarai Programme / CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi / tel 2396 0040 Information: delhifilmarchive@yahoo.com
Schedule of Events
Day 1 : 21 February 2006 Tuesday, Sarai CSDS, Rajpur Road
4:00 – 7:00 P.M. : Interrogating Censorship Andres Veiel (Berlin) Jitman Basnet (Kathmandu/ Delhi) Malathi Maithri (Pondicherry) Sudhir Pattnaik (Bhuvaneshwar) Vinod Jose (New Delhi) Chair Shuddhabrata Sengupta
Day 2 : 22 February 2006 Wednesday, Max Mueller Bhawan, Kasturba Gandhi Marg
9:30 – 10:00 A.M. : Opening Remarks Rahul Roy / Delhi Film Archive
10:00 – 11:30 A.M. : Reports from the Region Hassan Zaidi (Karachi) Jitman Basnet (Kathmandu/ Delhi) Prasanna Vithanage (Colombo) Tanvir Mokammel (Dhaka) Tenzin Tsundoe (Dharamsala) Video Intervention: May Nyein (Burma) presented by Nem Davies Chair Amar Kanwar
12:00 – 1:30 P.M. : Framed by The Law Lawrence Liang (Bangalore) Sara Hossein (Dhaka) Discussants: Jitman Basnet / Prasanna Vithanage / Hassan Zaidi Intervention: Shahid Amin (Delhi) Chair TBA
2:30 – 4:00 P.M. : Court Encounters PA Sebastian (Mumbai) Sara Hossein (Dhaka) Discussants: Lawrence Liang / Prasanna Vithanage Chair Prashant Bhushan
4:30 – 6:00 P.M. : Silences from Srinagar & Shillong Aijaz Hussain (Srinagar) P G Rasul (Srinagar) Robin S Ngangom (Shillong) Tarun Bhartiya (Shillong) Intervention: Parvaiz Bukhari (Srinagar) Chair Sanjay Kak
6:00 P.M. : Screening Black Box Germany (102 min) dir: Andres Veiel (director present) discussant: Shuddhabrata Sengupta
Day 3 : 23 February 2006 Thursday, Max Mueller Bhawan, Kasturba Gandhi Marg
10:00 – 11:00 A.M. : “Private” Censorship Andres Veiel (Berlin) Chair Shuddhabrata Sengupta
11:30 – 1:30 P.M. : Locating Hate & Censorship Deepak Mehta (Delhi) Sara Hossein (Dhaka) Shohini Ghosh (Delhi) Intervention: Arundhati Roy (Delhi) Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Delhi) Jawed Naqvi (Delhi) Chair Dilip Simeon
2:30 – 4:00 P.M. : Writing The Body and Mind Malathi Maithri (Pondicherry) Sanjay Srivastava (Delhi) In Conversation: Shuddhabrata Sengupta & Shohini Ghosh Chair TBA
4:30 – 6:00 P.M. : Fiction in The Censor’s Web Anurag Kashyap (Mumbai) Prasanna Vithanage (Colombo) Tanvir Mokammel (Dhaka) Vimukthi Jayasundara (Colombo/Paris) Chair Ranjani Mazumdar
6:00 P.M. : Screening Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land) dir: Vimukthi Jayasundara (director present)
Day 4 : 24 February 2006 Friday, Max Mueller Bhawan, Kasturba Gandhi Marg
10:00 – 11:30 A.M. : Voices made invisible Anil Chamadia (Delhi) Ravi Kumar (Chennai) Sudhir Pattnaik (Bhuvaneshwar) Intervention: Vimal Thorat Chair Gargi Sen
12:00 – 1:30 P.M. : The Business of Censorship CP Chandrashekhar (Delhi) Jawed Naqvi (Delhi) Najam Sethi (Lahore) Paranjoy Guhathakurta (Delhi) Chair TBA
2:30 – 4:00 P.M. : Towards a “Counter Culture” Amar Kanwar (Delhi) Hassan Zaidi (Karachi) Sudhir Pattnaik (Bhuvaneshwar) Mukul Mangalik (Delhi) Chair Saba Dewan
4:30 – 6:00 pm : Open Space
6:00 P.M. : Screening Purahanda Kaluwara (Death on a Full Moon Day) dir: Prasanna Vithanage (director present)
List of Speakers and Panelists
Aijaz Hussain, Srinagar currently writes on politics and business for India Today and Business Standard from Srinagar. Before this, he wrote for about four years for the Daily Excelsior, a regional newspaper published from Jammu. He has also worked briefly for CNBC-TV18 television network. Besides these he has been reporting on assignment for Associated Press. Aijaz Hussain has an MA in Mass Communication & Journalism (1999).
Andres Veiel, Berlin is one of Germany´s most important documentary filmmakers. His breakthrough documentary Balagan (1993), was a portrait of a controversial Israeli theatre group. His subsequent film, The Survivors (1996) investigates the suicides of three young men. His highly acclaimed Black Box Germany (2001) received the European Film Award for best Documentary, and was released in numerous German movie halls. His latest film Addicted to Acting (2004) won the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Anil Chamadia, New Delhi is a writer and columnist, who has been a commentator on political and social issues for almost all the major Hindi dailies – Jansatta, Navbharat Times, Hindustan, Amar Ujala and Dainik Bhaskar. He also writes a column on the electronic media for the literary magazine Kathadesh. As a Special Correspondent/Writer with Business India Television’s TVI channel, he has also produced more than 1000 news bulletins for prime-time news.
Anurag Kashyap, Mumbai is a writer turned director and his writing credits include several Hindi films like Paisa Vasool (2004), Jung (2000), Kaun (1999) and Satya (1998). He has written dialogues for Main Aisa Hi Hoon, (2005), Yuva (2004), Nayak : The Real Hero (2001) and Shool (1999). Anurag Kashyap¹s directorial debut Paanch (Five) (2003) has been twice refused a clearance certificate by the censor board. His film Black Friday (2004) on the Mumbai blasts has also run into censor problems.
Arundhati Roy, New Delhi is a writer, and the author of the novel, The God of Small Things. Collections of her political essays have been published in India as The Algebra of Infinite Justice and The Ordinary Person¹s Guide to Empire.
C.P.Chandrashekhar, New Delhi is Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi. He has taught at the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is an economic columnist for Frontline and Business Line. His publications include Crisis as Conquest: Learning from East Asia (Tracts for Our Times 12, Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2001) and The Market the Failed: Neoliberal Economic Reforms in India, (Leftword Books, New Delhi, 2002/2004) both co-authored with Jayati Ghosh.
Deepak Mehta, Delhi is a Reader in the Department of Sociology, University of Delhi. He is the author of Work, Ritual, Biography: A Muslim Community in North India (OUP 1977). Since 1994 he has been researching on violence between Hindus and Muslims in Bombay.
Dilip Simeon, Delhi taught at the History Department of Ramjas College, Delhi from 1974 till1994. His work on the labour movement of southern Bihar was published as The Politics of Labour Under Late Colonialism (1995). As part of the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan (Movement Against Communalism) he participated in a campaign for communal harmony and justice for the victims of the 1984 carnage in Delhi. Dilip has been a visiting scholar at the universities of Surat, Sussex, Chicago, Leiden and Princeton. From 1998 till 2003 he worked as senior research fellow on conflict issues with Oxfam (India) Trust in Delhi, and is now chairperson of the Aman Trust, which works to understand and reduce violent social conflict.
Hassan Zaidi, Karachi is an award winning journalist and filmmaker, who has been associated with the Pakistani monthly Herald, Geo TV, Singapore’s Channel News Asia, and Star News. He currently works as a producer-correspondent for NBC News and writes for a number of international papers (including India Today) and has produced radio packages for the BBC’s Urdu service. He has directed a number of documentaries, music videos and shorts, and the feature film Raat Chali Hai Jhoom Ke. He is currently Director of the KaraFilm Karachi International Film Festival.
Jawed Naqvi, New Delhi is a former Chief Reporter of Gulf News and News Editor of Khaleej Times, and a veteran journalist who has also worked for many years with Reuters in Delhi. He has covered wars from frontlines in Iran, Iraq, Western Sahara, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Jaffna. After the nuclear tests of 1998, he embarked on a mission of cross-border journalism, campaigning against nuclear madness and human rights abuses. He writes as a freelance journalist for the Karachi Dawn and the Dhaka New Age. Occasionally writes for Tehelka and appears as an analyst for TV channels
Jitman Basnet, Kathmandu is a lawyer and journalist by profession, and has been editor and publisher of Sagarmatha Times a national monthly magazine published from Kathmandu, and Cine Hotline. In Sep 2002, he was arrested by the Maoists but eventually released. In Feb 2004 Jitman Basnet was arrested by the Royal Nepal Army and was in detention for about 10 months. The reason for his arrest was an article that he had written about the army¹s violation of human rights. Subsequent to his release he was forced to escape from Nepal, and at present lives in exile in Delhi.
Lawrence Liang, Bangalore is a researcher at the Alternative Law Forum a collective of lawyers who work on various aspects of law, legality and power. Lawrence has been working on a research project on the politics of intellectual property in collaboration with Sarai/CSDS, and is also very interested in the intersection of law and culture. He has recently completed a monograph on censorship and cinema in India called The Public is watching (for PSBT).
Malathi Maithri, Pondicherry is a Tamil poet (and activist) whose poems are considered highly inventive in the Tamil context. Her published collections include Sankaraabarani 2002, Neerindri Amaiyaathu Ulagu 2003, and Neeli 2005. Her articles, serialized in the magazine Theranathi, encouraged many young woman writers to identify and articulate their silenced voices and are published as Viduthalai Ezhuthuthal (Writing the Freedom) 2004. With her fellow poet Kirushangini she published an anthology of modern women¹s poems Paratthal Athan Suthanthiram. She is the founder secretary of Ananku, a forum for feminist activities.
Najam Sethi, Lahore is an eminent Pakistani journalist, editor, and news media personality and Editor-in-Chief of The Friday Times and The Daily Times. An aggressively independent journalist, Najam Sethi and his publications are often in trouble with Pakistani governments. He was imprisoned by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a case that evoked an international outcry that eventually pressured the government to release him.
P.A.Sebastian, Mumbai is a lawyer working in the field of civil liberties and democratic rights of the people since 1977. In the Bombay textile strike he filed 28 writs of Habeas Corpus to secure the release of trade union workers. He has also fought a celebrated case of illegal land allotment to Judges of the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court. He has written articles for several journals including the Economic & Political Weekly.
Prashant Bhushan, Delhi is a public interest lawyer and activist who has been involved in Public Interest Law and activism involving issues of corruption and accountability, the environment, and human rights. He has been on the governing bodies of several public interest organisations including the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, the Committee on Judicial Accountability, and the Citizen’s Forum against Corruption. He has also authored The case that shook India Bofors: the selling of a nation, and writes in various publications on issues of public interest.
P.G.Rasool, Srinagar has been writing in Urdu for the past fourteen years, in a weekly column on current affairs in Kashmir Uzma (Greater Kashmir) the Urdu weekly published from Srinagar. He has also authored a book titled Kashmir 1947 (Urdu). The book looks at the events of 1947 and the origins of the Kashmir issue. Rasool is widely respected for his probing and dispassionate analysis of events and political commentary. P G Rasool is a postgraduate in Mass Communication & Journalism from the University of Kashmir.
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Delhi started his career as a journalist in June 1977 and has worked with Business India, BusinessWorld, The Telegraph, India Today and The Pioneer. And with TV18 for almost six years where he anchored a daily interview and discussion programme called ‘India Talks’ on the CNBC channel. He has also directed a number of documentary films including Idiot Box or Window of Hope and University of Delhi: A Haven of Learning. He is co-author (with Shankar Raghuraman) of A Time of Coalitions: Divided We Stand, (Sage India 2004). He is currently Director of the School of Convergence.
Prasanna Vithanage, Srilanka directed his first film Sisila Gini Gani (Ice on Fire) 1992 won nine OCIC (Sri Lanka) Awards including Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress. His second feature Anantha Rathriya (Dark Night of the Soul), 1996 won a Jury’s Special Mention at the First Pusan International Film festival. Pawuru Walalu (Walls Within) 1997 won the Best Actress Award at the Singapore International Film Festival 1998. His feature Purahanda Kaluwara (Death on A Full Moon Day) 1997, won the Grand Prix at the Amiens Film Festival. Initially banned by the government of Sri Lanka, it has since become the most successful film in the half century long history of cinema in Sri Lanka. Prasanna has just completed his fifth film ŒIra Madiyama¹.
Ravi Kumar, Pondicherry is a writer, essayist and translator, who started the critical magazines Nirapirikai (The Spectrum) and Dalit, which does not limit itself to dalit literature or dalit issues, but focuses on other writings/cultures. He is the editor of Bodhi, the Tamil dalit history quarterly. He also wrote the life of Malcolm X in a serialized form for Dalit Murasu (run by the Dalit Media Network) and the revived history of the so-called untouchable poet, Nandanar, which is carried in serialised form in Thai Mann (run by Dalit Panthers of India). In association with the journalist S.Anand, he has recently started the alternative publishing house, Navayana. He is a former President of the People¹s Union for Civil Liberties, Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu.
Robin S Ngangom, Shillong is a Manipuri English poet and a translator of Manipuri writing. He has published two volumes of poetry, and edited Anthology of Contemporary poetry from North East. His latest collection of poems is being published by Chandrabhaga Press. He currently teaches in Shillong
Sanjay Srivastava, Delhi is a social anthropologist, currently on leave from Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. His key publications include ‘Constructing Post-colonial India. National Character and the Doon School’ (1998), ‘Asia. Cultural Politics in the Global World’ (2001, co-author), ‘Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes’ (2004, contributing editor), and, ‘An Education of the Passions. Sexuality, Consumption and Class in India’ (In Press).
Sara Hossain, Dhaka is a lawyer practicing in the high court division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. She is actively involved with Ain o Salish Kendra [law and mediation centre], and the Bangladesh Legal Aid & Services Trust, a national legal services organisation. She earlier worked with Interights, and International Human Rights Law Centre, London. Her publications include Honour Crimes, Paradigms and Violence against Women (co-edited with Lynn Welchman), Zed Press, London 1995. She has acted in a number of cases involving the censorship of films, or banning of publications
Shahid Amin, Delhi received his D.Phil. from Oxford University and is currently Professor of History at the University of Delhi. Among his publications are Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992 (1995) and Writing Alternative Histories: A View from India (2002) as well as several seminal essays in Subaltern Studies – of which project he is one of the founding editors. He is the editor of A Concise Encyclopaedia of North Indian Peasant Life (2005), the co-editor, with Gyan Pandey, of Nimnvargiya Itihas, Bhag Ek, Bhag Do (1994, 2001), and has also written the Hindustani dialogues of the feature film Karvan directed by Pankaj Butalia. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Stanford, Princeton, and Berlin.
Sudhir Pattnaik, Bhuvaneshwar, is Editor of Samadristi an Oriya fortnightly news magazine and is Chairman of Independent Media – an alternative media group consisting of filmmakers, writers and journalists who work for developing alternative media initiatives in Orissa.
Tenzin Tsundoe, Dharamshala is a writer-activist born to a Tibetan refugee family in India. After graduating from Chennai, he crossed the Himalayas on foot to enter Tibet, where he was arrested by the Chinese border police, and after three months in prison in Lhasa, was pushed back to India. He has been widely published in a range of Indian and foreign publications and has won the first-ever Outlook-Picador Award for Non-Fiction in 2001. Since 1999 Tsundue has worked with Friends of Tibet (India) in 1999 as its general secretary. In January 2002 he scaled the scaffolding to the 14th floor of the Oberoi Towers in Mumbai to unfurl a Tibetan national flag and a banner which read “Free Tibet” down the hotel’s façade while China’s Premier Zhu Rongji was inside addressing a conference of Indian business tycoons. In April 2005, he repeated this feat during the Bangalore visit of the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao.
Tarun Bhartiya, Shillong is an activist with the freedom project Shillong. A Hindi poet with published work in Samkalin Bhartiya Sahitya, Pahel, Hans, Akshar Parv, and the Sarai Reader. Tarun is also a filmmaker whose work in progress is called Tourist Information for Shillong (four parts done – fifth being thought about). He has worked for NDTV and Campkins Camera Centre (a camera shop). Currently Tarun Bhartiya is founding-member of alt-space, an open space for culture and politics in Shillong.
Tanvir Mokammel, Dhaka is a filmmaker with several award winning documentaries and feature films to his credit. His features include Nadir Nam Modhumat (The River named Modhumati) 1995 which received three national awards and Chitra Nadir Pare (Quiet Flows the river Chitra) 1998 a feature film on the destiny of a Hindu family in East Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947. It received seven national awards including best film, best story, best script writing, best art direction and best director of the year. Lalsalu (A tree without roots) 2001 centers on the life of a Mullah who establishes a false shrine in a remote village in Bangladesh and received eight national awards including the best film, best script writing, best cinematography, best sound and best director of the year. His latest feature Lalon 2004 is based on the life and persona of the mystic song-composer Lalon Fakir. His documentaries include Hooliya (Wanted), Smriti Ekattor (Remembrance), Achin Pakhi (The unknown bard) and Karnaphulir Kanna, (Teardrops Of Karnaphuli), a documentary on the plight of the indigenous people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, a film that has been banned by the Government of Bangladesh. Tanvir Mokammel is a prolific writer who has taught film and film appreciation at the Viswa Sahitya Kendro and Standford University. He is the Director, Bangladesh Film Institute.
Vimal Thorat, Delhi is a well-known writer in Hindi who teaches the language at the Indira Gandhi National Open University. She is deeply concerned with issues of marginalisation, and deprivation of the dalit people and her pioneering work has brought to the forefront the special deprivation and status of Dalit women . She was the President of the Dalit Writer’s Association and gave the fledgling group a dynamic direction. She is associated with many national and international human rights organisations.
Vimukthi Jayasundara, Srilanka As a 28-year-old Vimukthi became only the second filmmaker from Sri Lanka to compete for an award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005. Jayasundara¹s film Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land) competed in the Un Certain Regard section and received the Caméra d¹Or, Cannes¹s award for first-time filmmakers. Jayasundara worked in the advertising industry and wrote film reviews before studying at the Film and Television Institute of India from 1998 to 2001. Returning to Sri Lanka, he joined the Government Film Unit and made The Land of Silence, a black-and-white documentary about the victims of Sri Lanka¹s civil war. In 2001, he received a grant to continue his film studies in France at Le Fresnoy. As a student there Jayasundara made Empty for Love (2002), a short film that was selected for Cinéfondation, the student category at Cannes.
Amar Kanwar Rahul Roy Ranjani Mazumdar Saba Dewan Sanjay Kak Shohini Ghosh Shudhabhrata Sengupta are film-makers and members of the Delhi Film Archive
February 20th, 2006
The conference Submidialogy to be held in Campinas, Brazil form 28 to 31 october 2005 is part the Waag Sarai Exchange Platform, which exists since 2001 and had included brazilian researchers and artists as fellows in 2004, when a project was developed and presented in Bangalore, India. In 2005 the collaboration focusses on the exchange of knowledge and practices between the member of the platform in India, Brazil and the Netherlands. Apart from the Conference there has been a research residency of Brazilian practitioners at Sarai/Cybermohalla in Delhi and a publication on new media practices in Brazil is currently edited in Sao Paulo.
One of the goals of the conference is to explore the connection between theory and effective action on the critical use of ICTs.
The proliferation of technological resources raises questions that don’t have yet a theoretical approach by humanities and arts. The speed of innovation requires fast thinking and the observation of different socio-cultural practices becomes fundamental for a wide and current perspective on the emergence of the new behaviours of the newborn technological culture.
With the conference we want to create a forum to for exchange between new media practitioners the academic world social movements/activists. The conference will showcase and discuss a borad range of artistic¸technological and political practices, in order to foster a new perspectives on ICTs and related research, thus creating a different field of approaches, connected to the daily life, to politics and to ways of acting in small and big communities, making innovative use of ICTs.
In line with the objectives of the platform we want to challenge the dominant corporate, technocratic and commercial viewpoints of the technology discours with by highlighting cultural, political and artistic actions, through an immersion in ideas created from practices and daily uses of these resources.
The current situation in Brazil offers a unique perspective on these question as the government has embraced the principles of open source software, open content and knowledge production to an extend that is unparalleled in other national settings. For us it is important to get a better understanding of this situation but also to find instruments and structures to make these experiences accessible to others.
The core themes of the conference are divided in: (1) technology (2) politics and network action and (3) arts
Methodology
The conference will present three core themes, as a reference of the subjects being discussed. From the invitations until the conference, the organizers and participants interfere on multidisciplinary subjects, suggesting, changing and optimizing the conference, through collaborative tools available on the websites platform.xemele.org and midiatatica.org/wakka.
The public of the conference will be composed of guests, observers and participants. The guests will join one panel each, contributing through interventions on the desired subjects. The observers can participate on the panels, through questions and suggestions, that can be accepted by the participants. The participants will lead the discussions, sharing knowledge and experiences with the public.
The guests, that come from differente fields of knowledge, will make presentations on their specific areas. After that, the participants start a collective conversation over the core and transversal themes under the responsibility of the mediators (3 a day), that will keep the rhythm of the discussions.
The selected themes must be included on the main subjects, creating a context for creative, useful and propositive discussions. In that sense, the mediators have the responsibility of anchoring the conversations on the experiences of participants and guests, providing the environment for the flow of conversations.
The intention is to work during the whole conference with the possibilities of network collaboration and with the idea of work process, making the choice for subjects and example of collaboration based on ICTs. Articulating the presence of guests and participants from many diverse fields of work and research and promoting the dialogue between practices and theory and the different conceptions of technological manipulation disperse in local experiences is a positive effort looking for the creation of new landscapes for either theoretical approaches and practical actions. Guests range from members of free radios to game developers, including teachers, art collectives, NGOs from the north of Brazil and many others. Parallel to the panels and discussions, an artistic exhibition will take place in Casa do Lago, with real examples of production involving ICTs.
Expected outcomes:
1) Re:cognize the brazilian initiatives that mix theory and social practices and contribute to the formation of new ideas that can turn into a base for the creation of new actions and structures on the politic, cultural and social fields.
2) create an exchange between Brazilian, Indian and European practitioners
3) raise academic attention to questions such as the new cultural practices mediated by ICTs.
4) Increment the multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary conversation between humanities and the new technological questions.
more information at midiatatica.org/conferencia and submidia.radiolivre.org/submidialogia
September 1st, 2005
Incommunicado 05 is a two-day working conference that will attempt to offer a critical survey of the current state of ‘info-development’, most recently known by its catchy acronym ‘ICT4D’. Not too long ago, most computer networks and ICT expertise were located in the North, and info-development seemed to be a rather technical matter of knowledge and technology transfer from North to South. While still popular, the assumption of a ‘digital divide’ that follows this familiar cartography of development has turned out to be too simple. Instead, a more complex map of actors, networked in a global info-politics, is emerging.
Different actors continue to promote different – and competing – visions of ‘info-development’. States with emerging info-economies like Brazil, China, and India form south-south alliances that challenge our sense of what ‘development’ is all about. New grassroot efforts are calling into question the entire regime of intellectual property rights (IPR) and access restrictions on which commercial info-development is based. Commons- or open-source-oriented organizations across the world are more likely to receive support from southern than from northern states, and these coalitions are already challenging northern states on their self-serving commitment to IPR and their dominance of key info-political organizations.
Actors no longer follow the simple schema of state, market, or civil society, but engage in cross-sectoral alliances. Following the crisis of older top-down approaches to development, corporations and aid donors are increasingly bypassing states and international agencies to work directly with smaller non-governmental actors. While national and international development agencies now have to defend their activity against their neoliberal critics, info-NGOs participating in public-private partnerships and info-capitalist ventures suddenly find themselves in the midst of a heated controversy over their new role as junior partner of states and corporations.
Long considered a marginal policy field dominated by technology experts, info-development is embroiled in a full-fledged info-politics, negotiated in terms of corporate accountability, state transformation, and the role of an international civil society in the creation of a new world information order.
NGOs in Info-Development
We have become used to thinking of NGOs as ‘natural’ development actors. But their presence is itself indicative of a fundamental transformation of an originally state-centered development regime, and their growing influence raises difficult issues regarding their relationship to state and corporate actors, but also regarding their self-perception as representatives of civic and grassroots interests. Why should they sit at a table with governments and international agencies, and who is marginalized by such a (multistakeholder) dynamic of ‘inclusion’ dominated by NGOs?
After WSIS: Exploring Multistakeholderism
For some, the 2003-5 UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is just another moment in an ongoing series of inter-governmental jamborees, glamorizing disciplinary visions of global ICT governance to distract from other info-political struggles. For others, WSIS revives ‘tricontinentalist’ hopes for a New International Information and Communication Order whose emphasis on ‘civil society actors’ may even signal the transformation of a system of inter-governmental organizations. Either way, WSIS continues to encourage the articulation of agendas, positions, and stakes in a new politics of communication and information. Following the effort to actively involve civil society actors in WSIS activities, the idea of an emergent ‘multistakeholderism’ is already considered one of the key WSIS outcomes, yet many are sobered by what appears to be the consensualist minimalism of incorporating critical positions in ever more encompassing final statements and action plans.
Info-Corporations at the United Nations
The controversial agreement between Microsoft and the UNDP, issued at a time when open source software is emerging as serious non-proprietary alternative within ICT4D, is just one in a series of public-private partnerships (PPP) between corporations and the UN. As the UN reaches out to Cisco, HP, or Microsoft, many argue that these cooperations are simply an expansion of the PPP approach to international organizations, and should be assessed on their respective terms. Others suggest, however, that these developments are indicative of a much more fundamental transformation of the UN and its member organizations, and point to the sobering outcome of the almost-no-strings-attached Global Compact, widely criticized as multilateral collusion in corporate ‘bluewashing’, the Cardoso Panel on UN-Civil Society Relations and its controversial definition of civil society, or the ongoing controversy over a new set of international standards for corporate accountability.
WIPO and the Friends of Development
As the international info-economy has come to revolve around intellectual property rights, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has asserted its status as a key player in matters of info-development. Overseeing the implementation of international IPR regulations, the little-known agency has been calling for an expansion of the dominant IPR regime and generally supports euro-american strategies of bypassing multilateral negotiations through an aggressive ‘TRIPS-Plus’ bilateralism. But recently, the agency has been targeted by a global campaign, lead by a group of southern states, to change its limited agenda.
Aid & Info-Development after 9-11
What is the status of aid in the promotion of ICT4D, and how have ICT4D actors responded to the politicization and securitization of aid, including the sale of security and surveillance technologies in the name of info-development? To what extent does info-development overlap with new info-infrastructures in the field of humanitarian aid (ICT4Peace)? Are global trade justice campaigns a response to classic development schemes?
ICT4D and the Critique of Development
The critique of development and its institutional arrangements – of its conceptual apparatus as well as the economic and social policies implemented in its name – has always been both a theoretical project and the agenda of a multitude of ’subaltern’ social movements. Yet much work in ICT4D shows little awareness of or interest in the history of such development critique.
Instead, techno-determinist perspectives have become hegemonic, and even many activists believe that ICT will lead to progress and eventually contribute to poverty reduction. Have development scepticism and the multiplicity of alternative visions it created simply been forgotten? Or have they been actively muted to disconnect current struggles in the area of communication and information from this history, adding legitimacy to new strategies of ‘pre-emptive’ development that are based on an ever-closer alliance between the politics of aid, development, and security?
Are analyses based on the assumption that the internet and its promise of connectivity are ‘inherently good’ already transcending existing power analyses of global media and communication structures? How can we reflect on the booming ICT-for-Development industry beyond best practice suggestions?
New Axes of Info-Capitalism
We are witnessing a shift from in the techno-cultural development of the web, from an essentially post-industrialist euro-american affair to a more complexly mapped post-third-worldist network, where new south-south alliances are already upsetting our commonsensical definitions of info-development. Examples include the surprising extent to which a ‘multilateral’ version of internet governance has been able to muster support, the ‘tropicalization’ (Gilberto Gil) of open source approaches, and new alliances on the politics of ipr (WIPO Development Agenda). Info-development, that is, has ceased to be a matter of technology transfer and has become a major terrain for the renegotiation of some of the faultlines of geopolitical conflict – with a new set of actors. While the question remains whether such a ‘tricontinentalist’ shift really affects established dependencies on ‘northern’ donors, it’s certainly time for a first assessment of the agenda and impact of some of the new players and their alliances.
FLOSS in ICT4D
Pushed by a growing transnational coalition of NGOs and a few allies inside the multilateral system, open source software has moved from margin to center in ICT4D visions of peer-to-peer networks and open knowledge initiatives. But while OSS and its apparent promise of an alternative non-proprietary concept of collaborative creation continues to have much counter-cultural cachet, its idiom can easily be used to support the ‘liberalization’ of telco markets and cuts in educational subsidies. What is the current status of OSS as idiom and infrastructural alternative within ICT4D?
Accountability and the Critique of Representation
The decade-long controversy inside the ‘NGO community’ on issues of accountabilty is also affecting actors in ICT4D. The singularity of network environments and the particular brand of info-politics it has facilitated suggest, however, that common approaches to ‘accountability’ cannot simply be transferred into the context of the post-representative politics of network(ed) cultures. So beyond embracing stakeholder consultation and participation, what is ICT4D’s original contribution to one of the core concepts in the renewal of development as a project?
The New Info-Politics of Rights
After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the bilateral order, the discourse of human rights has become an important ‘placeholder’ for agendas of social change and transformation that are no longer articulated in ‘third worldist’ or ‘tricontinentalist’ terms. In the field of communication and information, major NGOs and their network ‘campaigns’ have also decided to approach WSIS-related issues by calling for ‘new rights’, paralleling other trends toward a juridification of info-politics more generally.
Nuts and Bolts of Internet Governance
One of the few areas where WSIS is likely to produce concrete results is internet governance (IG). The IG controversy revolves around the limits of the current regime of root server control (ICANN/US) and possible alternatives, but it is also significant because it signals the repoliticization of a key domain of a technocratic internet culture that long considered itself to be above the fray of ordinary info-politics.
Media & Migration
Some of the organizations active in the WSIS process lost their accreditation because participants used their visa to say goodby to Africa. Widely reported, the anecdote suggests that media and migration form a nexus that is nevertheless rarely explored in the context of ICT4D.
May 1st, 2005
Waag Society / for Old and New Media (Amsterdam) and the Sarai Programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (Delhi) have initiated a platform for collaboration on media culture. This has come out of an on-going, long standing collaboration between the Waag Society and Sarai since 2000. Waag Society / for Old and New Media was founded in 1995 as a laboratory for research and development of cultural applications of technology. Since then it has grown into a knowledge institute in the field of new media with many national and international work-relations. Its driving force is the interaction between technology and culture. Since its establishment in 2000 as a programme of CSDS, Sarai has grown into one of South Asia’s best known initiatives on media, urban culture and the public domain. Composed of both scholars and practitioners, Sarai’s work cuts across various disciplines and networks, and exists in collaboration with partners in India and around the world.
The Waag-Sarai collaboration since 2000 has focused on building links and collaborations between programmers, designers, scholars and theorists between Europe and Asia. From its inception, the exchange has been driven by a vision for certain shared values. In elaborating the idea of the exchange, we would like these values to be maintained, discussed and disseminated in a wide arc of initiatives. In particular, we are concerned to reiterate the following:
- Importance of the public domain
- Access to media tools and innovation in media practices
- Interdisciplinary research (between research and practice, and across disciplines)
- Setting up contexts for creativity and exploration of expressive means.
- A critical reflection on the nature of collaboration between different cultures
We have been particularly concerned to address issues of inequality; hierarchies of knowledge and of access, and a dialogue based cultural practice. Here we particularly emphasize the importance of an engagement with the immediacy and concreteness of local circumstances and possibilities.
We should reiterate that our understanding of ‘new’-media derives from the particular historical configurations: these include those of innovation under conditions of large scale inequality, creative uses of existing old media, and thriving informal networks in the societies of Asia, Africa, the middle East and Latin America.
We would like to draw upon this experience of Waag-Sarai collaboration, and the institutional knowledge gained during this process to encourage other emerging initiatives in the South. As part of this the Waag-Sarai platform is proposing two short term Fellowships to support proposals for emerging initiatives in the South focusing on the themes outlined above.
The short-term fellowships are intended as seed money during which successful applicants are expected to produce a document, which includes the following:
- A vision statement and long-term plan
- A network architecture
- A space design
- Collaboration with other networks.
The fellowship is designed to help initiatives produce a coherent plan, rather than set up the centre or network itself. The grant amount is a total of 3,000 Euros and will run for six months.
The final document will be presented at a public workshop in Bangalore, India in November 2004. The Waag-Sarai platform will cover the costs of travel and board to Bangalore for the successful applicants. The workshop in Bangalore will also enable the applicants to investigate possibilities for future collaboration with the Waag Sarai Exchange Platform on the basis of the presented plan.
The proposal should be mailed to exchange-platform@waag.org. Last date 31st March, 2004. The Fellowship will commence from 1st May,
Exchange Platform Board
February 24th, 2004
Over the last three years, The Waag-Sarai Exchange programme has focused on building links and collaborations between programmers, designers, scholars and theorists between Europe and Asia. This facilitated jointly developed bodies of knowledge, skills such as interface design, systems design, low tech solutions, and research collaborations as in workshops and publications (including a variety of printouts, from wall papers and broadsheets to readers and books).
We would like to draw upon this experience, and the institutional knowledge gained during this process to propose an elaborate design in order to encourage initiatives in a wider orbit for the exchange. This comes from an understanding of the success of the independent fellowship programme undertaken by Sarai to enable the setting up of new initiatives in research and practice in the field of media, city and public domain and the participation of Waag Society in ’social software’ projects and programmes on non-exclusion, The fellowships aimed to enable those without institutional support, but with clear orientations, methods and work plans to engage in focused projects which they would normally have found difficult to sustain. In a number of instances young people without substantial work experience but with great energy and initiative were selected, often leading to the start up of substantial and innovative research. Our hope is that this model can be extended to develop stable forms to sustain research and practice in different locations.
On the basis of the experience of the exchange, the system of independent fellowships and the collaboration with worldwide non-exclusion initiatives, we would now like to initiate a process that works towards a multi-nodal understanding of the exchange in its next phase. By this we mean a process, which will go beyond the original partners, into support to a number of new initiatives. The Waag-Sarai Exchange will into transform to a Platform.
From its inception, the exchange has been driven by a vision for certain shared values. In elaborating the idea of the exchange, we would like these values to be maintained, discussed and disseminated in a wide arc of initiatives. In particular, we are concerned to reiterate the following:
- Importance of the public domain
- Access to media tools and innovation in media practices
- Interdisciplinary research (between research and practice, and across disciplines)
- Setting up contexts for creativity and exploration of expressive means.
- Reflection on the nature of collaboration between different cultures
We have been particularly concerned to address issues of inequality; hierarchies of knowledge and of access, and a dialogue based cultural practice. Here we particularly emphasize the importance of an engagement with the immediacy and concreteness of local circumstances and possibilities.
We should reiterate that our understanding of ‘new’ media derives from the particular historical configurations: these include those of innovation under conditions of large scale inequality, creative uses of existing old media, and thriving informal networks in the societies of Asia, Africa and Latin America. It is this range of practices and possibilities that we plan to address. The exchange programme strengthens the relationship between these informal networks and the informal networks in the North. It is this range of practices and possibilities that we plan to address.
We plan to do so by going beyond the initial framework of the Sarai-Waag exchange, to help initiate and assist new nodes based on ethical and normative principles of equal collaboration and respect to diverse interests of future partners.
How will this happen
In May 2003 Sarai-CSDS and Waag Society have initiated a Board for the Platform which will start to research and locate new initiatives whose work can open up discussions on media experience and practice and that are strongly oriented to the local circumstances of power and inequality in their societies. We especially wish to stress the importance of contemporary transformations in rapidly changing urban situations.
Based on our experience, we wish to cultivate work in the following fields. Each node will involve rigorous cross-disciplinary research and imaginative strategies of public engagement:
- Globalisation of media at the level of everyday life
- Media creativity and expression in unequal societies
- Innovative strategies for access to media tools
- Open networks and databases for knowledge and culture commons
- Legal innovations for access to knowledge and media networks in a globalising world
- Open collaborative software tools
Formats of collaboration
Fellowships: the Sarai-Waag Platform will institute fellowships and residencies which fall within the thematics of the Platform agenda. The Fellowships will also be used to give seed support to potential platform components. In general, organisations rather than individuals will be supported. In some cases, where individuals are facilitating networks, support may be considered. Technical support. The Platform will provide technical support to independent initiatives which fall within the thematic domains. Support may include list and web hosting and network consultancy. This will be located at the Waag Society. Workshops and Conferences. The Platform will collaborate with like minded organisations and networks in organising workshops and conferences on themes of
the Exchange Platform board
May 10th, 2003
This workshop, organized by the Waag Society and Hivos, is to take place in the framework of the Waag-Sarai Exchange Programme. Its main intention is to discuss the possible advantages of a more focused use of Open Source Software (OSS) solutions within the context of development cooperation programs. The workshop seeks to gather Open Source practitioners and advocates from both South and North who are active within the field of development cooperation and related activities. We aim at providing possibilities for common discussions, the exchange of technical and other knowledge and concrete co-operations between participants form diverging regional backgrounds. Parts of the workshop aim at reaching a larger (local) audience consisting of persons who are interested in this issue and especially representatives of development NGOs as well as (Dutch) policy makers.
At this stage we have identified 4 thematic threads that will structure the workshop. (These threads can be changed should other issues emerge later during the preparation process).
1 – Exchange of experience:
Throughout the entire workshop we want to provide a setting for the exchange of experiences and co-operation among the participants. While concrete issues of this thread will depend on the interests and experiences of the participants there are a few issues that can already be identified at this moment: The localization of interfaces and applications, Open source based streaming techniques and network architectures. At the beginning of this thread the participants should present their individual projects.
2 – Advocacy:
This thread focuses on the importance of Open Source Software in the context of development cooperation. The intention is to come up with a coherent and more well founded position paper (’manifesto’) on the advantages of using OSS in development cooperation programs. While the resulting paper is intended to be used in order to propagate the use of OSS among development cooperation organizations, it can also be used as an input into the discussion around the role of OSS that have risen with regard to the WSIS taking place in December in Geneva. The idea is that the organizers of the workshop prepare a draft position paper that will be circulated among the participants well before the workshop. This draft will be partly based on the results of a study on the use and possibilities of OSS in East-Africa that is currently being undertaken by Hivos. The draft will be discussed and amended during the WS and presented to the public on the last day.
3 – Facilitation:
This thread focuses on the question how the use of Open Source Software can be facilitated by providing solutions that are easy to use, manage and support. Are there technical or organizational solutions and approaches that allow for a easier implementation of open source solutions in situations characterized by limited computer literacy and/or predominant use of proprietary software architectures?
This thread also focuses on the conditions for actual OSS production (coding): How can conditions be created that stimulate the creation of OSS solutions in the South. It seems important to steer clear of a discussion that views the South primarily as consumers that download fee software because of is inherent advantages (being cheaper/more flexible/less restrictive).
This thread will likely have the form of a discussion round with the possibility of a more ‘hands-on’ follow up session.
4 – OSS in relation with Intellectual Property Rights.
This thread focuses on the obvious and not-so-obvious linkages between advocacy and usage of OSS and issues related to (the protection of) so-called ‘Intellectual Property’ (IP). It is obvious that OSS challenges both the market position and the ideological dominance of the IP format. Less obvious is the way proponents of IP propose to counter the ‘menace’ of OSS. Besides luring major users (especially governments in the South) to prefer proprietary ITC solutions through positive, and sometimes negative, incentives, proponents of the IP format are also trying to ‘decertificate’ (even to the point of making it illegal) OSS solutions by raising the twin spectre of commercial disorder and liability failures. These ‘FUD’ (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) strategies are supplemented by attempts to, well, basically steal OSS solutions when these are insufficiently protected by IP laws themselves (which OSS try to sidestep, eg with GPL agreements). Finally a fierce ideological battle is waged, both to beef up the shaky foundations of ‘Intellectual Property’ itself, and deligitimize OSS, and basically anything related to the ‘Public Domain’ (fair use, open research, etc) as ‘piracy’
The workshop will take place at the Waag Society in Amsterdam from Monday the 2nd of June to Thursday the 5th of June.
April 2nd, 2003
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