[nettime-see] n5m4 Preliminary Program

[Ognjen Strpic <ognjen@mi2.hr>]

-------------------------------

A N N O U N C E M E N T


NEXT 5 MINUTES 4

International Festival of Tactical Media

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM

Amsterdam 11 - 14 September 2003

De Balie / Paradiso / Melkweg / Waag Society
NIM Montevideo / Imagine IC / SALTO

http://www.n5m.org


What is Next 5 Minutes?

Next 5 Minutes is a festival that brings together art, campaigns,
experiments in media technology, and transcultural politics. Next 5
Minutes revolves around the notion of tactical media, the fusion of art,
politics and media. The festival is organised irregularly, when the
urgency is felt to bring a new edition of the festival together.


How did this particular edition of the festival come about?

The fourth edition of the Next 5 Minutes festival is the result of a
collaborative effort of a variety of organisations, initiatives and
individuals dispersed world-wide. The program and content of the
festival is prepared through a series of Tactical Media Labs (TMLs)
organised locally in different cities around the globe. This series of
Tactical Media Labs started on September 11, 2002 in Amsterdam and they
continue internationally right up to the festival in September.
TMLs have been organised in: Amsterdam, Sydney, Cluj, Barcelona, Delhi,
New York, Singapore, Birmingham, Nova Scotia, Berlin, Chicago,
Portsmouth, Sao Paulo, Moscow, Dubrovnik, and Zanzibar.
The results of the various TMLs are published in a web journal, at:
http://www.n5m4.org


What are the main themes of N5M4?

The program of Next 5 Minutes 4 is structured along four core thematic
threads, bringing together a host of projects and debates. These four
thematic threads are:
"Deep Local", which explores the ambiguities of connecting essentially
translocal media cultures with local contexts.
"The Disappearing of the Public" deals with the elusiveness of the
public that tactical media necessarily needs to interface with, and
considers new strategies for engaging with or redefining 'the public'.
"The Tactics of Appropriation" questions who is appropriating whom?
Corporate, state, or terrorist actors all seem to have become effective
media tacticians, is the battle for the screen therefore lost?
"The Tactical and the Technical" finally questions the deeply political
nature of (media-)technology, and the role that the development of new
media tools plays in defining, enabling and constraining its tactical use.

The festival explores a variety of forms and formats, from low-tech to
high-tech, from seminars and debates to performances and urban
interventions, screenings, installations as well as sound projects and
live media, a pitching session, a tool builders fair and open
unmoderated spaces. Defining for tactical media is not the medium
itself, but the attitude towards media.

___________________________________


MORE INFORMATION:

How can I find out more about the festival?

By reading on in this document, but also by consulting the website of
the festival at: http://www.n5m.org
The site also contains a Frequently Asked Questions section that
addresses many practical questions you may have.

Further information can be obtained from the festival office:
info (AT)n5m.org

___________________________________


TICKETS:

How can I reserve tickets?

You can only reserve day tickets and passe-partouts, which give access
to all programs of the festival.

You can reserve tickets at: tickets (AT)n5m.org


Ticket prices:

Day Ticket: 20 Euro

Passe-Partout: 35 Euro

These tickets offer access to all venues and events, including the
evening programs.

Tickets for single programs are not sold, except for the evening
performance programs.

___________________________________


How to get accommodation?

In the beginning of August we will publish details on how to find cheap
and affordable accommodation close to the festival venues. Follow the
link "Accommodation" on the front page of our web site http://www.n5m.org


ANNOUNCEMENTS LIST:

Receive our announcements via e-mail!!
More information at:
http://www.n5m.org/mailman/listinfo/n5m4-announce

___________________________________


NEXT 5 MINUTES 4 - OVERVIEW OF THREADS & THEMES:


* THE DISAPPEARING PUBLIC

Full Info:
http://www.n5m.org/n5m4/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=7#dis-public



Introduction:

Interfacing with the public ?
There is no public, but where are our publics ?

In more than one sense, the practices and promises of tactical media are
tied up with the idea that in the last decades we have witnessed the
disappearance of The Public. One big reason for this is the explosion of
heterogeneous media and heterogeneous media practices, and the fact
boundaries between media spaces have become increasingly porous (i.e.
between media domains that are nationally and culturally distinct).
Another reason is that the idea of " normal people ", on which the
concept of The Public relied, has been thoroughly undermined, not in the
least part because these people increasingly came and put themselves in
the picture, aided by media. (Thus, the differences among various not so
normal people can these days no longer be easily airbrushed out.)

Funnily enough, also for those media practitioners, artists and
activists, who feel enthusiastic about the disappearance of The Public,
the question of the public is no less acute ! In situated media
interventions, the particularity of context tend to take the foreground,
and precisely not a disembodied generality such as " The Public ". Here
margins count as a resource rather than as constraint, and they can and
should be celebrated as such. But when it comes to these kind of
projects, the question of who exactly one is interfacing with often
comes up as a pressing concern. A totally eclipsed public, that is, an
empty hall, an empty street, or empty chairs, many have found out, is
not an ideal situation either. And when the public " just doesn't get it
", we can't just dismiss the possibility that there may be a problem
with the performance itself. And what if one ends up " not liking "
one's public ? More importantly, a constructive picture of who or what
one is trying to prompt with a given media intervention, remains totally
crucial. While The Public has disappeared, we thus keep and should keep
asking where/who/what is the public?

In working with that question, the issue of the " erosion " of the
public domain, especially with the rise to dominance of commercial mass
media, and, it should be added, after the disappearance of The Public,
inevitably comes up. In this way, it is easy to get caught between
excitement about the disappearance of The Public, puzzlement about
appropriate publics, and resistance to the " erosion of the public
domain ". But, that last diagnosis might also prompt us to go and look
for the missing public, and try to conjure one up. The question thus is,
what are the techniques and tactics available, and which should be
developed, to make a public appear ?

Sections:

- Testimony and Witness
- Tactical Cartography: Diagrams of Power
(Visualising for the Public Eye)
- Archives of Resistance
- Critical Games
- Urban Interventions


Urban Interventions
http://www.n5m.org/n5m4/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=7#urban-int



Where else to find the public than in the streets? The move of
alternative and resistant media cultures out of the ghetto of the
internet into the streets is a rather obvious one. The tactic is
comparable to that of art moving beyond the museum and gallery space.
Invariably, as soon as such media-interventions leave the relatively
unfettered space of the net, or the sanctioned art spaces, and enter
public urban space, they encounter an entirely new set of conflicts and
constraints. Despite all these restrictions public urban space remains
one of the ultimate social interfaces that we want to question and
investigate at Next 5 Minutes 4.


- "Packing Geldershoofd" by Archeopteryx (Izhevsk)

The art group Archeopteryx from Izhevsk (Russia) proposes to execute
their project PACKING on the blind façade of one of the large High-rises
of the Bijlmer district (Amsterdam South East), called "Geldershoofd".
The high-rise will disappear within a few years as part of an urban
restructuring plan. The original idea of the Package action was to mark
9-storey housing blocks (the traditional Russian standardised housing
"boxes") in various Russian cities with giant painted protection labels,
normally used on transport boxes. The traditional meaning of these
labels is apparently projected onto the residents inside these "boxes",
urging to protect the people inside: DO NOT WET, DO NOT BREAK, HANDLE
WITH CARE.
http://www.n5m4.org/journal.shtml?118+575+1638


- "Escaping Oblivion" (Bus trip) / Tactical Tourism
A bus trip to sites of contestation in and around Amsterdam

During its entire history the city of Amsterdam has been a place where
lots of social, political, religious and cultural issues have been
contested. Primarily aimed at our international guests, but also with
the intention of informing a wider audience about the historical and
cultural context in which the Next 5 Minutes originated, this bus trip
takes you to a number off unusual or unexpected sites where the
sometimes invisible past of Amsterdam will be resurrected.


- Mobile Transgenic Fast-Food Test Lab
Critical Art Ensemble and Beatirz da Costa
http://www.critical-art.net/biotech/index.html

- Aar Paar Project
Collaborative Public Art Project by Artists in India and Pakistan
http://www.members.tripod.com/aarpaar2/02.htm

___________________________________


* DEEP LOCAL

Full info:
http://www.n5m.org/n5m4/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=7#deep-loc


Introduction:

Globalisation is renowned for its de-localising effects, as
trans-national business and policies erode local cultures and harness
them for their own ends. But, far from extinguishing locality,
globalisation as a process also invites the creation of new kinds of
localness. "In this process of producing new localities the global is
constantly being reformulated as a summary of singular new localities."
The spread of telecenters, and urban digital culture projects are
forceful examples of recent experiments in trans-locality. On the one
hand, the adaptation of digital and other media to local contexts serve
urgent needs : here it is decided among others who will and will not
participate in digital cultures and in what ways. But these projects
also provide opportunities to unearth fixed assumptions, and propose
forms of situated activism and embedded innovation, as opposed to
lab-based forms of "research and development".

Sections:

- New Landscapes for New Media
- Language
- Enduring Post Communism: Networks of Patronage
- Laboratory Italy
- Bodies of Globalisation
(Global AIDS activism and the multitudes)
- Freedom of movement == Freedom of information?

___________________________________


* THE TACTICS OF APPROPRIATION!

Full info:
http://www.n5m.org/n5m4/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=7#approp


Introduction:

>From its earliest articulations, tactical media practitioners have
always recognised "appropriation" as one of the prime constitutive
elements of the tactical. From the re-purposing of the fruits of the
consumer electronics industry,(exploiting video's forensic immediacy to
institute a subject centred realism) through to later phases of new
media tactics, as evinced by the work of groups like RTMark, and the
practices of logo tinkering, and imposturing, blossoming on the Net.
Thus rather than complaining about the speed with which our tactics are
stolen it is time to recognise that tactical media has been in the
appropriation game all along.

Indeed it is in the precise moment of appropriation that power
becomes momentarily visible. And here lies the opportunity for the
balance of power to be re-defined, for the weak once again to turn the
tables on the strong. Appropriation is the name of the game. The
important question is who appropriates whom?

There are some who would rather seek solace in the belief that a new
social movement is emerging from the formation of alliances between a
multitude of heterogeneous critical groups and micro-movements. But
those who believe that mass movements are immune from appropriation
should observer the ease with which Chirac together with a coalition of
EU member states have appropriated the mass peace demonstrations to
legitimise their geo-political stance visa a vie America. The scope and
logic of appropriation are infinite. Here as elsewhere power exists both
where it is enacted and where it is being challenged

If appropriation is indeed one of the crucial operators of media
politics, the question how that condition can be effectively addressed
(rather than escaped from), is especially important. So we can ask
questions like: in what ways are opposition politics these days
constrained by logics of appropriation? and how can we conceive of
appropriation as something that enables instead of threatens
antagonistic politics?

Sections:

- Tactical Media in Crisis
(Strategies for Tactical Media)
- The Indymedia Debate
- Uses and Abuses of the Language of Human Rights
- Contestational Science
(Reconfiguring Scientific Networks of Power)
- Tactical Media from the "Dark Side"

___________________________________


* THE TACTICAL AND THE TECHNICAL

Full info:
http://www.n5m.org/n5m4/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=7#tactec


Introduction:

Increasingly the new right wing political movements in Europe and
elsewhere have created their own tactical media. Adopting the same
principles of resistant comments to main-stream politics, and as in the
case of altermedia.info even the (web-)styling of indymedia and other
open publication platforms, to involve the audience in their narrative
and promote reactionary politics. In Amsterdam some conservative Muslim
groups have been using the open public channels on the local cable
system to distribute fundamentalist satellite television programs
originating from the Middle East, camouflaged within the highly
multi-cultural programming of the open channels on Amsterdam cable-TV.
Is the "dark side" learning the tricks of the trade from the benevolent
media tacticians? Are these tactics inherent to a specific form of politics?

Sections:

- Radio Space "wireless in your psyche"
- Paper tactics and the Revenge of Print
- Recuperating Video's Meaning
- The Tactical Media Tool Builders Fair

The Tactical Media Tool Builders Fair

Next 5 Minutes 4 will host a mini-fair of tools developed by artists and
activists, running continuously during the entire festival. At any time
three or four projects will be presented simultaneously in the
fair-space by the makers themselves who will be up for questions and
discussion. The emphasis of the fair space will be focused primarily on
streaming media, wireless media, open source publication tools and
tactical gizmo's. However, also artists' devices that can be used by
others and conceptual tools can be presented in the space.

Presentations rotate every few hours. An exact schedule of projects and
presentation blocks will be published at the festival. Some of the areas
covered by the fair include:

- Updates on Streaming Cultures

A meeting ground for tactical streaming media, artists, activist,
net.audio, hybrid media experiments. The streaming media mini-fair is a
follow-up to and update of the successful net.congestion festival, held
in Amsterdam in October 2000 - What has changed since, where has the
field moved after the commercial streaming industry collapsed and
virtually disappeared?
See also the archive of net.congestion: http://net.congestion.org

- The Desire to be Wireless

A special focus area will be the domain of wireless media and the
cultural forms that spawn from it. The technology of wireless networks
has become democratised in many ways, nit just via cell phones. There
are a number of projects that experiment with the possibility of using
wireless networks to provide free access to the internet in public space
(the so-called wireless commons). We wish to explore this terrain via a
series of performances and experimental projects. Besides offering
interesting avenues for artistic experimentation the wireless
technologies also offer opportunities for new forms of low-cost mobile
reporting, as well as to set up local networks in places where a 'wired'
infrastructure is not available.

- Open Source Publication Tools:

A host of open source publication tools have hit the gift-market,
content management systems, on-line databases, weblogging software,
schedulers, reporting tools, web zine tools, and even complete on-line
video editing systems. A selection of some of the most noteworthy
publication tools will be presented in this section.

- Tactical Gizmology

Beside software tools some activist have also focused on creating
machines for tactical intervention work. IAA's pamphleteering robot and
graffiti writer are famous examples of such tactical gizmo's, but also
repurposed consumer electronics and robotics appliances allow for all
kinds of unforeseen uses....

___________________________________


WORKSHOPS

Next 5 Minutes 4 will host an extensive series of workshops that will
focus in a more concentrated setting on various aspects of the overall
festival program. The workshops will have a more practical and
'hands-on' character. The workshops will feed on the availability of a
unique group of highly experienced practitioners and specialist brought
together for the festival in Amsterdam from many different countries.
The main workshop locations will be the Waag Society, Imagine IC
(Amsterdam South East), the Artlab of Montevideo and a dedicated and
fully equipped workshop space at the Melkweg. The workshops will start
in the days prior to the festival and will extend for two days beyond
the three main festival days, thus making available a full week for the
workshop program.

The registration for workshops will be open for festival participants
and audience, but is limited to a maximum number of participants. Where
possible audience facilities will be made available for people who want
to follow the workshops as listeners. At the 2000 net.congestion
festival we discovered that the interest for this possibility was
surprisingly large.

The exact scheme of workshops including dates, themes and locations will
be published well in advance of the festival.

Themes will include:
- Open Source Streaming Tools
- Multimedia Archiving & Databases
- Open Source Publication Platforms
- Digital Story Telling
- IPL for the Digital Domain and Censorship
- Hybridising Media (tactical combinations of radio, TV, internet &
satellite technology)
- Wireless Media
- Satellite Technology
- Tactical Gizmology
- Contestational Robotics - IAA & Hakctivist
http://www.hactivist.com/cdl_mission.html
http://www.appliedautonomy.com/
- TV Hacking - prepared with Kees Stad

___________________________________


PITCHING SESSION

Find people to work with!!!!

The pitching session is an attempt to create a place were media
tacticians can find collaborators for whatever project they happen to be
working on. A meeting ground where people can pitch conceptual,
practical, technical, artistic or activist projects to find the
expertise they are missing - the expertise that YOU are missing!!

Contact the production office in time for the pitching session. This
will provide a unique opportunity for finding the collaborator you
dearly missed, or the project you would love to work on, but you didn't
know existed. Create your own solutions! Pitch at Next 5 Minutes 4 and
find your unknown other.....

___________________________________


THEORY SLAMS

At a few key-points in the program we will invite some of our most
articulate guest to compete in making their urgent message heard in the
frame of a three-minute each theory slam contest. Every contestant has
to convey the urgency of whatever she / he has to say within the next
three minutes after receiving the go: verbal gymnastics for tactical
media theorists!

___________________________________


PERFORMANCE PROGRAMS

Next 5 Minutes 4 wishes to continue the tradition of bringing together
extensive performance programs with radical art and media experiments
that transcend the traditional contours of regular art and media
production. In the spirit of the infamous Low-Tech Show of the previous
edition and the very successful performance programs of the
net.congestion festival, we want to invite performers from around the
world that challenge the traditional frameworks of art and media
production. Besides the four evening programs that are planned in the
main festival locations (Paradiso, Melkweg, Balie), we are also looking
for unconventional interventions into the public city space of Amsterdam
(Urban Interventions).

The TML process has so far delivered a long list of performers from many
different countries and regions even beyond the sites where the various
TMLs were organised.


- A completely safe environment....

A completely safe environment is a co-production of De Balie and
Paradiso, which is produced independently, but will be presented in the
frame of the Next 5 Minutes festival.
The evening program is an ironic challenge to the current security mania
that has seized public discourse not only in the United States but also
increasingly in horrifically safe countries such as The Netherlands. For
the evening a barrage of security equipment and procedures will be
installed at the entrance of the Paradiso venue to ensure a perfectly
tranquil environment inside. This completely safe environment will,
however, be continuously scrutinised by various advanced surveillance
and tracking technologies that are aimed at ensuring a perfect safety
for such an environment. The project is an attempt to find out what is
required to create such a perfectly safe space and turn this into a
visceral experience for the visitor.


- Voicing Resistance: Hip Hop as Political Culture

A performance night devoted to Hip Hop as a site of resistance that has
long left its roots in the North American urbania. The performance night
will bring together musicians and collectives from the USA (Code Red),
the Beta Bodega Coalition ý Latin America, Brazil, as well as from urban
France, Amsterdam South East, and other contested environments.


- fem snd

Due to the heavy under-representation of women in electronic music and
dj culture, the fem snd party will focus on the aspect of giving female
artists the opportunity to perform their work. Male artists are also
most welcome if their work contributes to the gender discourse.

Another aspect of the party will be not to try to attract attention by
big names but more by extraordinary quality. Particularly emphasis is
placed on artists who besides doing their own artistic work, are also
active in political contexts, and in building networks and platforms for
other artists.

The focus is on experimental electronic club music looking for
ground-breaking conceptual and technical innovations. Wherever possible
we will take into consideration the role that electronic music played in
triggering the economic aspects of the Net, and questions of copyright.

Further details of the program will be released on the web site in the
coming weeks.

___________________________________


SCREENINGS

All three main festival locations (Balie, Melkweg, Paradiso) are
equipped with superb screening facilities and spaces for film and video
in various formats. For the festival special cinema programs will be
compiled that will bring together experimental artistic productions,
do-it-yourself documentaries, local media productions from around the
globe, and political cinema. These thematic programs seek in part a
connection with some of the thematic threads in the festival programs.
We will also search for hybrid combinations of cinema and video
screenings with some of the performance programs that will be part of
the festival, including combinations of screened materials and live
performance. Such hybrid combinations will be a special focus of the
screening programs.

Show & Tell:

More important even than the formal screening programs of Next 5 Minutes
are the possibilities created for festival participants to show and
exchange materials amongst themselves during the festival. Special
informal screening spaces will be installed where impromptu one to one
or one to few screenings can be arranged. Furthermore the TAZ spaces
will all be equipped with screening facilities to enable impromptu group
screenings.

___________________________________


MEDIA LIBRARY

The Media Library will be a permanent space in the festival that hosts a
collection of media productions with a specific social, cultural or
political agenda. Media of crisis, criticism and opposition. Media that
provide an antidote to the world as we see it represented in mainstream
media and current geopolitics. The Media Library can be accessed by any
festival participant during the festival.

Next 5 Minutes has been putting out calls for such media productions
widely, but the submission is still open. The productions that you will
send to us will become part of the so-called media-library. After
conclusion of the festival they will become part of the Next 5 Minutes
Visual Archive, which is kept at the International Institute for Social
History in Amsterdam.

Contributions can be selected for special screenings at the festival,
for broadcasting on local cable TV and for broadband internet
distribution, in which case specific permission will be asked from the
maker. We will accept contributions on all carriers (SVHS, Betacam,
cd-rom, miniDV, dvd, pal/ntsc/secam, 16mm, 35mm, etc.) (VHS welcome but
not preferred).
Any length, any language.

More information is available via the production office (info (AT)n5m.org)

___________________________________


NEXT 5 MINUTES TV

Starting 3 weeks before the festival Next 5 Minutes TV will air twice
per week a live studio program co-produced with SALTO the local
Amsterdam TV organisation, with studio guest and hosted by Erik van der
Schaft, director of SALTO. During this period media productions from the
Media Library will be aired every night between 00.00 and 02.00 hours on
Amsterdam Cable TV.
During the festival itself Next 5 Minutes will generate an intensive
program of live broadcasts from the Hybrid Media Studio, interviews with
festival guests, live broadcast from festival programs, and edited
festival reports.

___________________________________


HYBRID MEDIA STUDIO

As in previous editions, Next 5 Minutes is more than an event for
presentation and debate about media, it is also an event where a lot of
media-output is produced on site. The nerve centre of the media
production during N5M4 will be the Hybrid Media Studio. The concept
takes the fusion of different media-forms within a hybridised digital
media network as its starting point. Radio, television, internet,
wireless transmission, satellite and other forms of electronic media
production continue to exist in their own right, but they are also more
and more often combined into expanded media formats that involve two or
more media at once. The Hybrid Media Studio brings these different
media-forms together in one space, and connects them to all available
media-infrastructures. Amsterdam offers unique possibilities for
non-commercial free media programming on local TV and radio, as well as
various web-casting facilities. From the Hybrid Media Studio continuous
live programming will be fed to local media outlets, to international
(satellite-) outlets, to national broadcasting organisations, and to
local media partners in other cities in the world. What makes the studio
hybrid is its trans-genre approach, and its trans-local distribution.

___________________________________


OPEN SPACE / TACTICAL AUTONOMOUS ZONES (TAZ)

An element first introduced in the third edition of Next 5 Minutes in
1999 that we wish to foreground more are the Tactical Autonomous Zones.
These are un-programmed but fully equipped presentation spaces where
participants can sign up themselves for a presentation. The idea is to
create open zones in the festival for impromptu presentations and
gatherings, spaces for contestation and difference. Registration for the
TAZ is open to all festival participants and works on a first come first
serve basis.

Proposals for the TAZ can be sent to the production office as of Monday
July 21st, via: taz (AT)n5m.org

___________________________________


N5M4 - EXTENDED
A friendly post-festival networking environment

Next 5 Minutes is always over-programmed because of the urgency of a
multitude of concerns that characterise a world in permanent crisis.
What is lost is the space for informal encounter and exchange of ideas,
and the time to create new coalitions for the future. Since for
logistical budgetary and many other reasons it is impossible to resolve
the desire for such a less pressured environment within the festival, we
have created a post-festival meeting place and work environment, ideally
suited for working sessions and networking meetings. The location of
this meeting is the artist-run imitative "Het Buitenland" just outside
the city of Amsterdam, which includes a small camping site.

The site of Het Buitenland will be equipped with basic networking
facilities as well as meeting rooms and other requirements. The main
function of this post-festival meeting is to set-up new co-operative
projects, start longer term working relations and develop new
collaborative networks between festival participants. Further
information on the meeting will be posted on the announcement list of
Next 5 Minutes, the web site and are available through the production
office.

Buitenland:
http://www.buitenland.org

___________________________________


Next 5 Minutes 4 Production Office:

c/o De Balie
Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10
1017 RR Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Tel. +31.20.55 35 171
Fax. +31.20.55 35 155
http://www.n5m.org
e-mail: info(AT)n5m.org

________________________________________

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