<nettime> ,nettimerZ R back in Croatia

[Zeljko Blace <zblace@alu.hr>]

It has been a whole year since last report
and to compress past year in a single email 
is becomming harder job. 
There is a trend of more people following nettime.
Is that a good sign? 

So ... a year in Croatian netcultural space
was marked by few big events:

___OTOKULTIVATOR - summer of 2001 started with occupation of 
ex-military fascilities on island of VIS, where 3 NGOs 
(one of tham being Multimedia Institute) organised a small oasis 
of art production, media activism, computer education and much more 
for 3 weeks and with over 200 people. Maybe this Island will be 
saved from both tourists and military fascilities! 
http://otokultivator.mi2.hr/

___ASU2 meeting in second week of September organised by LABinary.org
(with Joanne Richardson) in Labin, Istria with Ljudmila.org - Ljubljana and Pro.ba - Sarajevo. This was gathering of over 50 international artists, activists, theorists, technologist "kept away" for a week in small coastal city in attempt to connect not only activists with 
artists and computer geeks, servers with streamers and spaces of tactical importance, but also "East" and "West"... 
but, with these naive intentions + events on 11th of Sept. 
this goal was unreachable. 
URI:http://www.desk.org:8080/ASU2/

However it inspired recent...
___new.media.culture.week - CRITICAL UPGRADE, which was all
about RealityCheckForCyberUtopias, in Zagreb in first week of May.2002
Organised by Multimedia Institute (net culture club "mama") 
and Goethe Institute in Zagreb, it proved several things to both Croatian public and to Croatian nettimers: media and audience needed stars (and thay got tham with Brian Eno's generative video work and 
Jan Jelinek's music), while "netproleteriat" needed some kind of acceptance in cultural scene. Conference reader & exhibition 
catalogue will be published later this year.
URI:http://www.newmediaculture.net/

second exhibition of computer art "Re:Con" 
curated by radioqualia + marcell mars
presented work of I/O/D (UK), Christoph Kummerer (AT), AudioRom (UK),
delire (AU/NZ), Mongrel(UK)...
URI:http://re.mi2.hr/

This year's LastTuesday meetings in "mama" beside usual discussions
on, monopoly, culture on/off Internet, Copyright/left and outsourcing lagislative documents on web, also gave birth to IMC Croatia (October2001). 
URI:http://indymedia.mi2.hr/

Croatian audience comming to "mama" in past 12 months had a chance to meet: Michael Hardt, Douglas Davis, Stephen Shaviro, Douglas Ruskoff, Stephen Wright, Janos Sugar, John Grzinic, Marko Kosnik, Marko Peljhan, David Toop, Scanner, Walter van der Cruijsen, Carol Hobson & Lisa Moren, Eric Kluitenberg and many others...

On the official (state - governmental side):
__Ministry of culture formed a council for Media Culture -> 
mostly as political gesture as it stil managed to preserve current status of distant finnancier with no competence & interests in topics. 
__CARNet - Croatian Academic and Research Network became a member of GEANT alliance of academic networks which got tham upgrade to 155Mbps 
of connection to the internet. During that time Croatian commercial 
ISP became more less target of US and German telecoms, while national prowider of electricity is threataning to start selling electric wires to distribute access to the small companies and richer households... 
@ the moment Internet access with plain 56K modem in Croatia costs anything from 2/3 up to 8/3 EUR/hour. In the same time quality of service is not getting better since ISP's marketing predict that there
are allways "new" firsttime users. 

On the activists/political side:
__US is still on daily basis putting preasure on Croatia to change it's antiGM food policy (and open market for US junk food), who would have ever thought we are so important market ???
So campains are schedualed every few months with most creative ones done 11 months ago with 10 performers dressed in COWs showed documentaries (big screen) of animal mistreatment + the campain on 2nd of February 2002. organised by local anarchist movement in protests in front of US Embassy Zagreb
URI:http://boo.mi2.hr/anti-nato/

After 22 people were victims of US pharmaceutical company's (Baxter) 
bad equiptment Croatian public and media are finally more critical to imported US products and their quality. 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1600000/1600667.stm

Conference "Another world is possible" organised by association of NGOs from 18. untill 22. 4. 2002. proved that a more structured and theoretical approach can also work when fighting globalisation ...
URI:http://www.nuclearagenomadz.org/drugaciji/

As far es publishing goes, mainstream publishers finaly cought on the buzz of media theory, phenomenology of internet and "virtual" this and thats... so market is now well populated with books to read (and quality will come a long) in the future. With most succesfull publisher being:
URI:http://www.jesenski-turk.hr/

And last bat not least ... 
a duo of first Croatian web art experimentalists from 1997.
made another succesfull project (other than marrying and heaving 2 
kids in between) by winning FlashForwardAward in SF 2002,
which got tham on the limelight of national tv and number of magazines.
http://www.bulaja.com/FAIRYTALES/


best wishes from Zagreb 
today is national holliday and I can sleep longer :)

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