Festival Cultura Digital – Rio de Janeiro

While we justified our trip to Brazil as attending a conference, I will now openly admit that it was actually a festival. After three days of listening to all kinds of interesting projects and networking opportunities, I felt like my head was flowing over with information and new inspiration to take home again.
To give you readers some context: Festival Cultura Digital is an International encounter where different people, projects and groups present themselves in order to strengthen an international network of people working in the field. Three days full of experiences exchanges, workshops and keynote speakers such as Yochai Benkler, Michel Bauens, and Paolo Coelho amongst othersall treating the workings of the web, independent media, hacking and so much more. We were there, now known as ‘map:m()b’ to talk about mapping stories and community journalism.
We were scheduled only on the third day of the festival and therefore had the rest of the days to watch and learn from the other projects. Many interesting ideas passing the agenda. The festival hosted such an great amount of projects and initiatives that it was impossible for us to attend them all, however I do want to give you an impression of some projects to expect there.

Waste2No.
Waste2No project explores how the Internet of Things (IOT) can be integrated with Urban and domestic environments in order to enhance sustainability. In this stage, the project aims to create a website that allows people to share, sell and trade.
Waste2No plays in to the community feeling, of sharing things with people in your environment. It is an app where you can point out the things you can miss by scanning them and putting them in the object cloud. Consequently, people in your close vicinity do the same and when you need something you can look up through the app if people around you might be able to lend it to you. I liked this project very much having in mind the enormous amount of waste people produce. From my own obsession with recycling, I could only cheer for this project as not only do we prevent ourselves from buying everything, it will also increase the connections within a neighbourhood.

Chokepoint
This project aims to map ‘owners’ on the internet. Where are the control nodes of the service used by thousands of global citizens.
An Amsterdam based project that gives workshops on how the internet works. They for example teach children on how the network functions and ask critical questions such as:”Is the internet only turned off in a little circle, or in the whole country?” If there is still connectivity you can use that still to communicate. An important asset as we are ever more exposed to the Internet and more dependent of technology. Asking critical questions can’t start early enough and is done way too little!

As I mentioned earlier, there were many many more projects but I will keep the amount to be discussed here limited.

The second day was important for us as we would meet up with several people from the cartography group. As the schedule of Cultura Digital was quite chaotic despite the strict time schedules, we noticed that many of our ‘colleagues’ were as lost as we were. Eventually we decided to make our own network meetup and had a long and useful talk with Breno and Mariana, two members of a group called Mapas de Vista, an app in order to map on CMS systems such as Drupal and WordPress. After a short presentation of Leo, the more technical expert behind the system he got us convinced and in only a few mouse clicks, we destroyed our whole website. Obviously, as it was supposed to be a simple operation, it always turns out be not so simple in the end. Luckily, we were in the presence of the right people and were able to install the website the right way eventually. Even though not nearly finished yet, please feel free to have a peek at our new website: http://mapmob.org.

After that, all participants were invited to have a look in IPE, at Morro da Conceiçao, a digital culture space with a political notion. After a tour in a beautiful part of Rio, we were treated with a performance by a theater group treating gender topics amongst others.

The final day then, we were scheduled for a presentation that got completely on the background of all the interesting things to do. We spend the whole morning editing but managed to complete it at the due time. Unfortunately our attempt to upload it ended up a little buggy, but we’ll try soon again. Ellen prepared a last minute Portuguese presentation informing about our project Dreammachine.
And as we haven’t been updating you much lately, this is shortly what it’s about:
Our aim is to visualize dreams of youngsters in order to make them think out of the box. Not only do we believe dreaming is great and necessary to get yourself inspired to achieve things, at the same time we want to challenge them to use new techniques such as video and photo editing. Our experiences so far, in the Netherlands are that many of the kids still remain dreaming in terms of work and that only few talk about becoming happy. As well money seemed to be an important issue for many of the kids (often from Moroccan and Turkish descent).

The gran finale of Festival Cultura Digital was the arrival of old minister of Culture Gilberto Gil. Although I often don’t feel much for ‘the famous’ I caught myself laughing sheepishly as mister Gil patted me friendly on the back. A proud feeling of our first festival as map:m()b duo.

 

 

Librepensante/Free thinker

Touching Colombian ground again after my thesis felt like coming home again. The air, the people, the vendors, everything felt, sounded and tasted familiar. And of course, the good thing about coming back is to see old friends again. After a few days of acclimatizing I felt like I had never left.
And soon enough also I rolled into the familiar field of activists and artists again. On this Wednesday, contemporary artist and designer Hamilton Mestizo invited me to a conference in the Javeriana University. I got to know Hamilton during my thesis as a friend of a friend where he already told me about the project “Librepensante” several times, but it was only after this conference that I really understood what he was doing. Librepensante was a small collective aiming to establish a network between ‘things’: human and non-human, digital and non-digital. As we entered a little late to the meeting, Hamilton was already explaining about some of the projects they had done earlier. Although many of the projects were very technical in its execution and a little too far- fetched to understand for a non-technician , most of them had a strong conceptual idea behind it as well.

The first example was a doll that would run on solar energy. The task for kids was to take care of it and reply to the demands of the doll. Thinking about Tamagotchi a little bit, I guess you could consider this the organic, child labour free and environment friendly version.

Another project that I liked very much was related to urban gardening, the growing of plants and flowers in urban settings with a touch of technology to it. For those who are familiar with the city of Bogota, know that air pollution is very prominent in most of the busy areas of the cities. Therefore, the group Librepensante thought of a way to purify the air. Walking around with a cart of herbs and CO2 consuming plants, one of the participants of the project would walk around in town breathing in the only bit of fresh air available in its surroundings (see picture). The other aim of the project was to explore alternative uses of ordinary products and utensils. Fruit, connected to electrodes was used to generate energy and a Playstation joystick used as a bike bell.

This new way of “product hacking” made me realize something about the society we live in. Do we actually know the things we are using? Or have we just become passive and uncritical consumers? If a lemon can create the same effect as a battery, what more is my smartphone capable of that I have no idea of?

Video of the Feria Free Book Intervention

Below you find the video I edited of our intervention at the Bogota Book fair.

Hacking the Bogota Book Fair from Fei An Tjan on Vimeo.

With much thanks to Camilo from Cartografías Sonoras and Andres.

Hacking the Bogota Book Fair

Today I got a little sidetracked from my project in the sense that it wasn’t necessarily linked to my project at Antena Mutante. In no case was it useless though as I spent the day with my newly made friends Camilo Cantor, from Cartografías Sonoras and Andres Melendez at the “Feria del Libro” (Bookfair).

I knew that especially Camilo was up to something, though I wasn’t quite sure what it was yet; something with tiles and hacking the Bogota book fair, but the how or what remained in the dark. So driven by curiosity, I met both Camilo and Andres at 3 o’clock this afternoon in Andres’ living room. As soon as I arrived I was put to work and unexpectedly, I spend my whole afternoon Photoshopping a QR code (picture). Now for those who wonder what that is, the term only became clear to me as well while doing my ‘homework’. Apparently, for the less media savvy under us, there exists a technique to transform all text into a matrix bar code, called Quick Response code (QR) and which can be generated through the Kaywa Reader website amongst others. Once you take a picture of this code with your smart phone (or a special barcode reader), it will automatically convert the code into text, for example a PDF file. And that was exactly what it was, a PDF file of “Free Culture” by Lawrence Lessig, as well as “Free Software, Free Society” by Richard Stallman. Shortly said, both authors criticize the new way of making law which is often influenced by the large corporations that care more about their profits than about the free exchange of ideas.

Now why choose the bookfair as there are already so many books available? That was exactly it, all the books “available” were for sale and in that respect they were not really available to many people. That afternoon, Camilo told me many of the college kids were forced to visit the bookfair as a school trip, all nice, but probably none of them would have the money to actually buy a book. It was all about copyright and therefore the Book fair was the perfect place to do a small intervention such as this one. Camilo wanted to promote the idea of shared and free culture and as a real Dutch, I was thrilled by the idea of ‘free’.

From 3 o’clock in the afternoon until 7 o’clock in the evening we spent time designing, printing, cutting and sticking paper on tile, then tile on wall in order to complete our mission. Once we entered the fair, we’d have to make sure there were no cameras or security people watching us, as we would probably be kicked out of the fair immediately again. But all went smooth and we managed to stick four tiles on the walls of the toilet, near a waiting bench and on some random pass through walls until we were out of the glue of which we were dependent for our action.

But how effective is such an action really? I couldn’t find concrete numbers of Smartphone users in Bogota, but considering that in the whole month that I was here I saw only a handful of people actually using a Smartphone, I figured it couldn’t be that many.  The problem according to Camilo was rather that people that do have a Smartphone in Colombia often do not know how to use it. They still use it to call, text and surf the Internet, but do not know how to profit from it to the fullest. So the aim of the interaction was, apart from the fact that people could download the books for free, to maybe create some awareness as well about the possibilities of smartphones. And just in case, we added the link to download the book as well. Another thing that might be interesting is to automatically generate some sort of tagcloud from all the people that would actually use the QR code in order to retrieve the book, or create a platform where people can leave messages, so you can see the effect of your action. but I guess that will remain a challenge for the next intervention.

Amsterdam, interested?

Street Protests are Still Hot

It became once more clear to me that protesting here is a lively business. This friday, there was another intervention on the streets of Bogota organized by the students of several universities to remember Nydia Erika Bautista. Latter was part of a student organization called M19 in he 80´s, which at that time was still known as guerilla insurgent movement. During that period, many people have disappeared without judicial orders, under which Nydia Erika Bautista who was tortured, raped and eventually murdered.

The 3rd, 4th, and 5th of may, students from several universities gathered to remember the cruel actions of the state and protest against more impunity. Antena Mutante was there as well to support the students technically and audiovisually. As well did I see many of the people that I met during other interventions, such as Diego, from Desarme and Esteban, whom I met through Antena Mutante and is involved in working with political prisoners in Bogota. More and more do I see how this small group of like minded people appeal to each other to make these interventions reality. Erik and Diego made provided for the speakers, Ali the laptop and cables for music and everyone else that was there helped carrying, connecting and transmitting untill every passant tuned his or her head.

In the next video, the students ´reclaim´ the streets with music and humor which drew a lot of attention from the bystanders. Police was present, but did not interfere and all the actions were allowed to the extent that it did not completely disturb the traffic. I doubt whether such action would be permitted in Holland, but time of mass protest and activism often just seems far away. People complain, but don´t do much about it and there remains a mentality of: ¨someone else will fix it¨. In that respect we can learn from whatever happens here, the creativity of the protests and the way people still believe in change.

Escratche Street Intervention from Fei An Tjan on Vimeo.

Live Transmission of Labour Day in Bogota

Labour day is celebrated big in Colombia, with a capital B. Only in Bogota, 25.000 people hit the street to protest against the government of seated president Juan Manuel Santos Calderón. From students to taxi drivers and even neo-Nazis, we saw them all pass the streets’ catwalk. Antena Mutante had planned an urban intervention on Plaza de las Nieves, one of the squares of Bogota, together with SurdelCielo, an initiative of young rappers.

"Heroes exist in Colombia, they don't use weapons."

The idea was as follows: At 8 AM, we would all gather on the square to set up the installation, DJ turntables, waterproof tent (it rains a lot), and of course, the computer and cameras. The performance would be filmed by 2 cameras and then be transmitted live over the Internet. The day before, I went with the Antenas to one of the syndicates on the square to borrow their Internet connection. Other than in the Netherlands, WiFi is not yet available on every corner of the street. The location of the intervention was therefore dependent on the accessibility to Internet. Talking to Jimmy earlier, he told me that all their events were dependent of this fact, and some agreement with either an organization or friend was needed in advance in order to transmit.

It occurred to me that tactical media, at least in Colombia is restricted to technical possibilities available. Especially when interventions are politically charged, you can imagine that not all organizations are happy to offering their services. And while setting up the installation, the laptop happened not take the Internet signal very well, which prevented the MC’s to rap online. To make matters worse, the computer crashed which made transmission completely impossible. 1 hour later, Jimmy returned with another computer and the transmission was successful for the rest of the day, but I realized then how fragile such interventions are and how one little error can mess up a lot. Media activists will always be restricted and limited to the possibilities that technology brings along and they will always be somehow dependent on neo-liberalist practices. Be it not for the hardware itself, then it will be Internet access, cable companies, etc.

Antena Mutante could therefore be seen as some sort of social lab, trying to explore the network that makes up ‘the social’. Regarding the intervention, the planned effect was accomplished as over 300 people had watched the website. And for those who think 300 is not that much, numbers in this case is not what it’s about. Even if it were only 2 people that would have paid attention, that means that the mission had succeeded. Of course, the more the better, but the idea is to explore the network, to interrupt, to turn heads and maybe even to shock. And the reactions were overall positive, people passed, applauded, watched and continued their own struggle. That’s what an intervention’s about, and an intervention it was…

I added a small impression of one of the tensest moments of that day. Most of the time it wasn’t as bad, but in waves people got aggressive with the police. I ate a good amount of tear gas, but in the end, it was worth the experience. In the video, note also the music, where Rastro kept singing only a few metres away from the violence.

Bogota – 1 de Mayo – Antena Mutante and Sur del Cielo from Fei An Tjan on Vimeo.

Students Reclaiming the Streets

A week has gone by since I’ve been in Bogota, and I can’t use another word than chaos. Everything is chaos, the house I lived in the past few days, the weather, the streets and above all, the traffic! I forgot again how zebras never work in South America and that cyclists never get priority over honking cars. On top of that, Bogota built the Transmilenio which was supposed to be a new, better and improved network of buses, but what in reality turns out too be yet another disaster. And then, suddenly, there was silence.

On Carrera 7, one of the bigger streets that runs through the city, where you normally can’t even see the other side of the street due to cars and smog, you could suddenly hear the birds whistling (those who didn’t die from co2). A student organization was the reason of the silence and ‘reclaim the streets’ was the first thing that went through my head.

I couldn’t help it, but if you’re 24/7 behind your laptop, there’s little other to think of than: ‘thesis, thesis, thesis’. The students were protesting against the privatization of the universities, which would make education even less affordable and the gap between poor and rich even bigger. To me, it seemed interesting that they were allowed to protest on such an important way through the city while the demonstration was relatively small. Although the main idea of the students was maybe not to oppose capitalism and the car as its main mode of transportation, it indirectly added to this debate. After reading both Soja and Sassen I started thinking of how to frame this manifestation spatially, where the students would ”take the control over the production of our lived spaces.” Even though they might not reach the effect to stop the privatization of the university, the effects of this couple hours intervention of the street, at least to me and I bet to many drivers with me, was tangible.

I am starting to get the concept of the Antena Mutante more and more, in a city of control as big as Bogota, it is the little things that matter. And maybe all the localities can eventually indeed form a more global multiplicity. Viva la Resistencia!

Sources:

Saskia Sassen. “Local Actors in Global Politics.” Current Sociology, July 2004, Vol. 52(4): 649–670 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi

Edward Soja. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-imagined Places. (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996.

Digital Inclusion in Violent La Loma

In my second week in Medellín I spent some time on my project with Hiperbarrio. The organization tries to reach social inclusion through means of digital media in several depressed neighbourhoods in Medellín. By giving workshops in photography, blogging, podcasting and the use of free software, they try to keep the youngsters off the streets. Their methods are based on the idea of sharing knowledge, where anyone that can add something should give a workshop to the others to share that knowledge. Free culture therefore plays a very important role in keeping the organization sustainable.

This Tuesday I went to La Loma, an area even behind la Comuna 13, about which I blogged in an earlier post. The problem with this area is that it has been home to about all the violence and corruption that you can think of. As the area is located in a gray area of what is considered La Comuna 13 and San Cristobal, order and state presence have been largely absent. This led to the forming of gangs, paramilitaries, left wing insurgents such as FARC that have long used the area for their drugs-related businesses at the expense of the inhabitants. When I arrived everything seemed calm, but Henry, the coordinator of the program knew to tell me that this could change any day. In the library of La Loma I speak with Andrés, an ex gang member that has now dedicated his life to his work at Hiperbarrio. I’m guessing he is around my age, 23, 24 maybe. Hiperbarrio, in which he enrolled 2,5 years ago, saved his life he says. Before that he was mainly involved in the gang life trying to ‘protect’ the ‘invisible borders’ that mark the region of La Loma. In Hiperbarrio he entered another reality where it was about collaboration, learning and being critical to the society they live in. He is now one of the coordinators that implements this program in another area in Medellín, using one of the public libraries as their weekly meeting points.

Another project that I was particularly interested in was related to Cartographies. Gabriel Vanegas, the sub-director of Hiperbarrio told me that they are now trying to map the area of La Loma, with all its streets and institutions to establish themselves on the map (photo): “If you search for La Loma now, you often get an area that seems to be just woods, but it’s more than that, and it is important for the people here that they do not become forgotten”. And who better to tell you where to go than the people that actually live in the area? The project therefore makes special use of the locals to draw up the map: “with cameras and pencils, we send the kids out on the street to create their vision on the neighbourhood. And although a slow and tedious process, it is advancing.”

Talking about cartographies also reminds me of the final results of LabSurLab. I know I already went a little too excessive over this, but I can’t help sharing one more video. Most of the participants were already involved in similar projects across the world such as AntenaMutante, Platohedro, No2Somos, Cartografías Sonoras and Hacktitectura to name some.

This is the video that used the song of Yhiel, the young rapper I commented on earlier. The cemetery where many of the victims of Operación Orion Rest In Piece stands central because in the end, it doesn’t matter to which class or group you belong to, we all end up the same…

Cartographies in Medellín, La Comuna 4 y 13

On the Meipi Map you can find the complete result of all the videos shot during LabSurLab presented as cartographies.

Cartography Workshop Presentation

These are 2 of the videos that were made during the 5 day workshop ‘Cartographies’ @ LabSurLab, Medellín. Within these days, several groups went into la Comuna 13 to interview people, and record memorable places. Artists, activists, academics, hacktivists, rappers, video producers; all worked together to make it happen in just 5 days. Nice fact is that most of the music in the video is produced by local rappers of Comuna 13. In one of the other videos, a song was used by Yhiel, the young rapper that got killed by the ‘sicarios’, or hitmen, only about a few weeks ago. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, it’s worth watching: