[P2P-F] Fwd: reSource for transmedial culture: Statement of interest

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tatiana Bazzichelli <tbazz at transmediale.de>
Date: Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 10:42 PM
Subject: reSource for transmedial culture: Statement of interest
To: tbazz at transmediale.de
Cc: Daniela Silvestrin <ds at transmediale.de>


reSource for transmedial culture
Statement of interest & call for collaborations

The reSource is an initiative of transmediale - festival for art and
digital culture, Berlin in collaboration with CTM/DISK GbR and Kunstraum
Kreuzberg/Bethanien, on the search for further partners during 2012.

## reSource - A new initiative of the transmediale festival

The reSource for transmedial culture is a new framework for transmediale
festival related projects that happen throughout the year in the city of
Berlin. It is an initiative that extends into ongoing activities with
decisive touchdowns at each festival. Within the aegis of facilitating
collaboration and the sharing of resources and knowledge between the
transmediale festival in Berlin and the local and translocal scene engaged
with art and digital culture, the objective of the reSource for transmedial
culture is to act as a link between the cultural production of art
festivals and collaborative networks in the field of art and technology,
hacktivism and politics.

This statement of interest is directed mainly to local and international
artists, cultural producers, hackers, activists, and gender-situated
communities active in the city of Berlin and in the broader field of net
culture regionally and internationally, to co-develop experiences which
invite exploration, experimentation and reflection. By generating a set of
questions and issues which are addressed to local and translocal
communities within (and beyond) digital cultural production, the main idea
is to develop mutual exchanges of methodologies and knowledge, as well as
project-space experiences, investigating new ways of forming a cultural
public and producing a meta reflection on strategies of collaborative
actions.

The launch of the reSource will take place at transmediale 2012 through
different project disseminations such as workshops, talks and performances.
It will in itself be an important feature of the 25th anniversary of the
transmediale, looking into the future while acknowledging the importance of
the festival as an accessible and dynamic forum for the translocal art
scene as well as for interdisciplinary cultural producers and researchers.

The reSource launch at transmediale is anticipated by a beta-reSource event
on November 16-18, 2011 at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK)
organised in partnership with the Digital Aesthetics Research Center (DARC)
of Aarhus University and the Vilém Flusser Archive. After transmediale
2012, the reSource will extend its activity in collaboration with two main
partners: CTM/DISK, proposing a series of open events held in the spring
2012, and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, organising a public event in
August 2012, which will show the results of the first phase of
collaboration and sharing within the context of the reSource for
transmedial culture.

This statement of interest is thought as a call for collaborations to
involve a number of additional projects and partners towards the creation
of a distributed platform during 2012 and further, envisioning the festival
form as a peer-production context of knowledge and research.

## reSource - A year-round distributed project

If a source is the beginning, or origin of something, reSource is used in
this context as a starting point from which a distributed sharing process,
and a common executable (artistic) program, is produced. The aim of the
reSource for transmedial culture is to be distributed in a form that
extends into an ongoing, year-round activity with touchdowns at each
festival. This form includes both its executable files, and its source
code. Source codes are useful to modify a program or understand how it
works. Taking this notion more broadly, in the framework of the reSource
for transmedial culture, the objective becomes to develop a networking
distributed platform and an (executable) meta reflection on the meaning and
the practices of networked art, hacking and collaborative art production
within the context of an international art festival.

Starting from the assumption that the increasing commercialisation of the
contexts of sharing and networking is currently transforming the meaning of
art and participation, what should be the answer of artists, activists and
hackers working on a critical dimension of networking? And if hacker and
artistic practices are developing in the context of a deep transformation
of the meaning of participation, often reflecting a precarious cultural and
economical configuration, what is the responsibility and the role of
cultural institutions engaging with art and digital technologies, towards a
critical articulation of culture production? In Berlin, hacker, activist
and artistic practices are very much realised outside the realm of artistic
institutions. Some of those practices are contributing to transform the
economy and the cultural asset of the city, but they are also becoming easy
targets to be exploited by the market. However, this is not only a local
phenomenon: At this present time, while financial markets are deeply
influencing the development of cultural production and, more generally, our
daily life flexibility, direct participation and common engagement are
becoming pervasive business logics. The progressive involvement of users in
the production process generates new possibilities of interaction among
peers, but also of hierarchical control.

Analysing the topology and the effects of artistic and hacktivist practices
in decentralised social networks implies a reflection on power structures,
business methodologies as well as on the relationship between art and
economy. The social media and social networking phenomenon brings about
contradictions and ambiguities. The subject of social networking is
constantly transforming, and requires both a theoretical and empirical
involvement of researchers and artists, theoreticians and practitioners
before it can be fully understood. It becomes necessary to rethink concepts
such as innovation and disruption, co-optation and opposition, as a mutual
feedback loop, and a two-way disruption.

## reSource - A shared knowledge laboratory

The reSource for transmedial culture aims to work towards the creation of a
shared knowledge laboratory within transmediale, and a project for local
and trans-local distributed networks by organising events, workshops and
talks involving artists, hackers, activists, researchers and cultural
producers active in the city of Berlin and abroad. The aim of the reSource
is to involve communities that not only engage directly with network
technologies, but that are also critically reflecting on decentralised and
distributed strategies of networking and anti-hegemonic practices, from
hackers and activists to feminist, queer, transgender and porn communities.

Within this framework, the reSource statement of interest poses the
following objectives:
- To rethink the concepts of (social) networking, collaborative practices,
innovation and participation, through the creation of a platform of
distributed networks involving grassroots communities of hackers, artists,
performers, activists, curators and cultural producers;
- To apply the concept of disruptive innovation to the art field so as to
open up a critical perspective on the “network economy”, working in
collaboration with local and translocal communities in Berlin and abroad,
trying to understand how the market works after de-assembling its
strategies and mechanisms of production;
- To generate disruptive modalities of art production after the emergence
of social media, reflecting on distributive decentralised and socially
engaged contexts of participation and innovation;
- To analyse the concept of transmedial culture, investigating creative
approaches across digital and analogue media, reflecting on the
intersections between cultural production, networking and disruptive art
practices;
- To reflect on the strategies of networked art and hacktivism, by
developing an empirical methodology based on mutual exchanges between the
members of the (post-) media art scene, cultural producers and researchers
in the field of the humanities.

The analyses of these subjects necessarily imply sharing methodologies
whereby artists, hackers, activists and researchers join together to form
practice-oriented contexts of reflection and give feedback to both theory
and practice through an interdisciplinary, distributed and polyphonic
approach. Artistic and hacker practices are thought therefore both as a
resource for producing cultural innovation, but also as a strategic
challenge to generate media criticism – and a meta reflection on artistic
production in the framework of digital culture and network economy.

This statement of interest must be imagined as an initial input and a
starting point for further collaboration on the analysis and the production
of disruptive hacker and artistic practices in the framework of (social)
networking, but also as an input to generate a collective investigation
into the practice of networking as an art strategy – and an applied
research method.

Contacts:

Tatiana Bazzichelli: tbazz at transmediale.de
reSource concept and programme developer

Daniela Silvestrin: ds at transmediale.de
reSource programme assistant

More info: http://www.transmediale.de/**beyond/tm-resource<http://www.transmediale.de/beyond/tm-resource>

-- 
Tatiana Bazzichelli // reSource concept and programme developer
in/compatible // transmediale 2012, 31 Jan - 5 Feb 2012 //
http://www.transmediale.de

join the conversation on the transmediale IRC channel
// server: irc.freenode.net | channel: #transmediale | port: 6667

transmediale | festival for art and digital culture berlin
Klosterstr. 68 10179 Berlin, Germany | fon +49 30 24749 761 | fax +49 30
24749 763
Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH
Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender Volker Heller | Geschäftsführer Moritz van Dülmen



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