When: October 12, 13, 14 and 15th 2006.
Where:
- Mercado da Ribeira - Centro Luiz Freire
- Casa do Turista / Olinda - Pernambuco
submidialogy
Some years ago, the elements (ideas, conceptions, practices, people)
that compose the current (so-called) Free Culture movement were appropriated by
the bureaucrat and the capitalist. The ones that made use of
the technologies and available media to the creation of actions that
provided the debate on new perspectives of possible social arrangements
(obtained by tools such as free licenses, networks of communication, open
source software), are today digested by the old apparatuses and social
mechanisms that once they have used and questioned. They
participated, many times unconsciously, in a
“socio-professional training” in order to occupy
the same functions established for the maintainers of a
system that is distant from what we imagine as a possible human grouping, even more distanced from freedom.
Moreover, this "class of the new" presents itself with difficulties to
spread out practices and ideas when this work gets far from urban,
technological, contemporary elements and a metropolitan conception,
leaving a gap between the possibilities and a superficiality on the
transforming potential of the available means and mediums. This fact blends the
force of ideas, making them also dangerously useful for the ones they fight
against. The dynamics become more banal, easy to be absorbed by the slavery of work and rationality.
It is not the technique that submits the production to the utilitarian,
bureaucratic or exculpatory logic, but the lack of the transgressive
conception of the actions in the production process. The questioning
does not make a profound study of the scope of the labour world - as a
critique to the essence of the exploration in a production process.
The technical development does not liberate; quite the opposite, it
intensifies the dependence and the submission of men and women to a
logic that should be eliminated. The technology does not retake the
debate to the right to laziness. It does not clearly point the
contradiction in the production world... but yes, places the magic of
the utilitarianism in a platform of raised sanctity, pure science, and
makes from the capitalism fantasy their own shout of criticism.
The critique to the labor society requires learning to be
fast, to sharpen and to direct critiques and actions; to be mutant in
the sense of escaping from the regulations, those which the capitalism
is the master in making. Power is different from force. And when
collective and distributed, it loses its oppressive characteristic and becomes the path of multiple wills. Then, it appears the
transforming critique and the action of ideas.
This way, many of the formats preached and used by the mentioned
technological appropriators and the media - the submidiatics -
are today in full use. At least to the numbers: 3,000 points of
presence of digital inclusion, 600 points of culture production, 200
independent groups of media production, 3,000 people had showed up.
Where exactly? This sudden appropriation by the governmental,
artistic, academic and institutional (associations, education
institutions, oscips etc) spheres look for, once again, disarticulating the
ideas and practices that enable the autonomy of all submidiatics.
The capitalism, agile and powerful, acts as a remodeling factor of
critiques and practices making the opposition practices forms of
renaissance and resurrection. Thinking that what is in crisis is
firstly the capitalism than its critique, can take us to incursion
in recurrent error, giving still more elements for its survival. The
critiques from 68 were transformed into companies manuals, the Indian
skirts become fetishes in fashion shows, free software becomes valuable
to technology companies.
Public politics thought to the collective knowledge production, access
to information, distribution of the means of production and
des-marginalization of social excluded deviate from its ministerial
programs and, certainly, more than half of all the places for production,
access, collective construction of knowledge and cultural sociability
are far from functioning as real spaces of exchange, learning and
discussion. Social institutions, their great majority, discover
keywords in the speeches; they deconstruct them from their significant
and reuse them as contents of stupendous projects and slogans of
promotional material. Artistic institutions search for way out to the
indifference of the common citizens towards the cultural elite –
every time smaller - with the adaptation of popular art, art of the
people. Or with the construction of small techno-scientific spectacles,
where everything is attraction and fetish: transistors, lenses,
monitors, hairs, and light.
It is necessary to think against the quickly consumable slogans and
fetishes and to understand how the concepts must supplant them. The use
of slogan is part of (des)intelligence process by the institutions and
its arms and people. And it becomes part of the empty and receptive
speech. Free culture, open knowledge become propaganda in shopping
centers. The description and the effect erase the comprehension and
critique.
Once more, cultural practices with subversion taste spread on the
island of dr. moreau, and, as in the book, they are hunted with nets
and dominated until their conditioning. And why not saying, esteem. In
order to later becoming the guard dog. The culture of the oppressed,
oppressing. It was not like that with the samba? the modernists? the
tropicália? What once was a rebellion of action and ideals
emerged from the collective realizations became tools to individual
access to platforms of the rotten social hierarchy that needs to be
constantly innovated and renewed to be maintained.
This way, we ask: how to move? What are the ideas and for the
maintenance of a collaborative construction of knowledge and enlarger
the social participation? How to plan future actions? And, mainly, how
to continue the mimicking of the collaboration culture beyond the
currency symbols, without the governmental and institutional
propaganda? Do you know your enemy?
In order to debate these and other questions, Submidialogia#2, a
laboratory for the radical practice of collaborative environment
construction will be held in Olinda, Brazil. Lectures, laboratories of
production, fm radio broadcast, television, the Internet, and the
delicious chat with cachaça among @ll submidiatics.
the idea
+bring different experiences - theoretical and practical - to get in touch with each other;
+play, from a new point of view, joins between theory and practices in the technological media;
+instigate theory over practices in order to these not become annulled by the utilitarian;
+instigate practice over theory, applying experiences in favor of a (sub) conception of the mediated technological apparatus;
+create a time space of technological practices and theories.
At last, which is the
IDEA that we have on acting in the Brazilian and international
mechanics / electronic / digital means?
“what we really
want, actually, is that the ideas become dangerous again”
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.