nettime mailinglist

(Help to spread please)People of the World, rise up!!! Take the square!!! Take the streets!!! #GlobalrevolutionCALL FOR ACTIONS JUNE 19TH: (English, Arabic, French. Portugues, Bulgarian, Italian, Hungarian, Greek, Japanish, German, Castellano, Euskera, Catal??, Gallego)(ENGLISH)Call for actions June 19th: People of the World, rise up!!!We are the outraged, the anonymous, the voiceless. We were there, silent but alert, watching. Not gazing upward at the powers that be, but looking from side to side for the right time to unite with each other.No political party, association or trade union represents us. Nor do we want them to, because each and every one of us speaks for her or himself. Together, we want to design and create a world where people and nature come first, before economic interests. We want to design and build the best possible world. Together we can and we will. UnafraidThe first sparks started to fly in the Arabic countries, where thousands of people took over streets and squares, reminding their governments where the real power lies. The Icelanders followed, taking to the streets to speak their mind and decide their future. And it wasn't long before Spaniards occupied squares in neighborhoods, towns and cities. Now the flame is swiftly spreading through France, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Turkey, and the cries of peaceful demonstrators echo across America and Asia, where new movements are cropping up everywhere. Only a global revolution can confront global problems. The time has come for the woman and man in the street to take back their public spaces to debate and build a new future together.This is a call to the #Globalrevolution on 19 June. We're calling on people everywhere to peacefully occupy public squares and create spaces for debate, assembly and reflection. It's our duty to reclaim the public arena and together forge the kind of world we want to live in.People of the World, rise up!!! Take the square!!! Take the streets!!! #Globalrevolution+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(ARABIC)???? ????????????????, ??????????????????, ?????? ?????? ????????. ???????? ????????????, ???????????? ???????? ?????????? ?? ??????????. ???? ???????? ?????? ????????????,?????? ???????? ???? ???? ???????????? ????????????, ???? ?????? ??????????????, ?????? ???????? ?????????? ???????????? ???????? ???? ?????? ???????????????????? ?????????????? ?????????????? ?????? ?????????????????? ?? ???? ????????????????, ???? ?????????? ???????????? ???? ???????? ?????? ??????????, ???????? ?????? ???????? ???????? ?????????? ????????. ???????? ???? ?????????? ?????? ???? ?????????? ???????????? ???????? ?????? ?????????? ?????????????? ?? ???????????? ?????? ???????????????????? ????????????????????. ???????? ???? ?????????? ?? ???? ???????? ???????? ???????????? ???? ?????????????? ??????????????. ?????? ?????????????? ?? ?????????? ????. ???????????? ???????????????? ???????????? ???? ?????????????? ??????????????, ?????? ?????? ???????? ???????? ?????? ?????????????? ?? ?????????????? ?????????????? ?????????????? ?????? ?????????????? ??????????. ?????? ?????? ?????? ???????????????????????? ?????? ?????????????? ?? ?????????? ?????????? ?? ???????????? ???? ???????????????? ?? ???? ?????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ???? ?????? ?????????? ?????????????? ?? ???????????? ?? ??????????. ???????? ??? ??????? ?????????????? ?????????? ?????? ?????????? ?? ?????????????? ?? ???????????????? ?? ??????????, ???????? ?????? ?????????? ???? ???????????? ?? ???????? ?? ???????? ?????????? ?????????? ?????? ?????? ???? ???????? ??????????. ?????? ?????????????? ???? ????????????????, ???????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ???? ???? ???? ??????????. ?????? ???? ?????? ?????????????? ?????????????????? ?????????????? ?????????????? ???????????????? ?? ???????????? ?????? ????????????????.???????????? ?????? #???????????? ???????????????????? ???? ?????? ???? ?????????? ????????. ???????? ?????????? ???????? ?????????????? ?????????????? ?????????? ?? ???????????? ???????????? ???????????? ?? ???????????????? ?? ????????????????. ?????? ?????????? ???? ???????????? ?????????????? ?????????????? ?? ???? ?????????? ?????? ???????? ?????????? ?????????????? ????????????! ???? ????????????????!People of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(FRENCH)Nous sommes les indign??s, les anonymes, les sans-voix. Nous restions silencieux mais nous ??coutions, nous observions. Ce n'??tait pas pour regarder l??-haut, l?? o?? sont ceux qui tirent les ficelles, mais sur les c??t??s, o?? nous sommes toutes et tous, en train de chercher le moment o?? nous unir.Les partis, associations ou syndicats ne nous repr??sentent pas. Nous ne voulons pas non plus qu'il en soit ainsi, parce que chacun ne se repr??sente qu'?? soi-m??me. Nous voulons r??fl??chir tous ensemble par rapport ?? comment cr??er un monde o?? les personnes et la nature seraient au-dessus des int??r??ts ??conomiques. Nous voulons concevoir et construire le meilleur des mondes possible. Ensemble nous le pouvons et nous le ferons. Sans peur.Les premi??res manifestations de protestation ont commenc?? dans les pays arabes,o?? des centaines de milliers de personnes ont occup?? les places et les rues afin de rappeller au gouvernement que le peuple a le v??ritable pouvoir. Peu apr??s les irlandais furent ceux qui ont protest?? dans les rues pour s??exprimer et d??cider leur avenir; le peuple espagnol n??a pas tard?? ?? occuper les places des quartiers, des villages et des autres villes. Maintenant, la flamme de la contestation s'est propag??e rapidement ?? d??autres pays, comme la France, Gr??ce, Portugal, Italie et Turquie. Alors qu??elle commence ?? se propager en Am??rique Latine, elle commence ?? se manifester aussi dans d??autres parties du monde. Si les probl??mes sont globaux, la r??volution sera aussi globale, ou bien elle n??aura pas lieu. Le moment est venu de r??cup??rer nos espaces publics pour discuter et construire tous ensemble le futur.Le 19 juin nous appelons ?? la #Globalrevolution. Nous appelons ?? l'occupation pacifique des place publiques et ?? la cr??ation d'espaces de rencontre, de d??bat et de r??flexion. Il est de notre devoir de r??cup??rer l'espace public et de d??cider ensemble du monde que nous voulons.Prends la place!!! Prends les rues!!! #GlobalrevolutionPeople of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(PORTUGUES)Somos os indignados, os an??nimos, os sem voz. Est??vamos em sil??ncio mas escutando, observando. N??o para olhar para cima, onde est??o os que ficam com as rendas do mundo, sen??o para os lados, onde estamos todas e todos, procurando o momento para nos unir.N??o nos representam partidos, associa????es ou sindicatos. Tamb??m n??o queremos que seja assim, cada qual representando a s?? mesmo. Queremos pensar entre todos como criar um mundo onde as pessoas e a natureza estejam por cima dos interesses econ??mico. Queremos idealizar e construir o melhor dos mundos poss??veis. Juntos podemos e realizaremos. Sem medo.As primeiras fa??scas come??aram nos pa??ses ??rabes, onde centenas de milhares de pessoas tomaram as pra??as e ruas relembrando a seus governos que eles (o povo) s??o o verdadeiro poder. Logo foram os islandeses quem sa??ram ??s ruas para poder se expressar e decidir seu futuro; o povo espanhol n??o demorou em tomar as pra??as dos bairros, vilareijos e cidades. Agora a chama se estende rapidamente pela Fran??a, Gr??cia, Portugal, It??lia e Turquia, enquanto chegam ecos de Am??rica e ??sia e novos focos aparecem a cada dia onde seja. Se os problemas s??o globais, a revolu????o ser?? global, ou n??o ser??. ?? hora de recuperar os nossos espa??o p??blicos para debater e construir entre todas e todos o futuro.O dia 19 de Junho convocamos ?? #Globalrevolution . Convocamos ?? ocupa????o pacifica das pra??as p??blicas e ?? cria????o de espa??os de encontros, debates e reflex??o. ?? nosso dever recuperar o espa??o p??blico e decidir juntos o mundo que queremos.Tome a pra??a!!! Tome as ruas!!! #GlobalrevolutionPeople of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(BULGARIAN)?????????????????? ?????? ??????????????????????, ????????????????????, ???????? ?????? ????????. ?????????????? ??????????????????, ???? ????????????????, ????????????????????????. ???? ???? ???? ?????????????? ????????????, ?????? ???????????? ???? ???????? ?????????? ???????????? ???????????? ???? ??????????, ?? ???? ???? ?????????????????? ?????????????? ?????????? ??????, ???????????? ?????? ???????????? ??????, ???????????????? ?????????????? ?? ?????????? ???? ???? ??????????????.???? ???? ?????????????????????????? ????????????, ?????????????????? ?????? ??????????????????. ???????? ?????? ???????????? ???????? ???? ????????, ???????????? ?????????? ?????? ???????????????????????? ???????? ????. ???????????????? ???? ???? ???????????? ???????????? ???????????? ?????? ???? ???????????????? ???????? ???????? ?? ?????????? ???????????? ?? ?????????????????? ???? ?????????? ?????? ???????????????????????????? ????????????????. ???????????? ???? ???????????????? ?? ???????????????? ?????? ?????????????? ???? ???????????? ???????????????? ??????????????. ???????????? ?????????? ?? ???? ???? ????????????????. ?????? ??????????.?????????????? ?????????? ???????????????? ?? ?????????????????? ????????????, ???????????? ?????????????? ???????????? ???????? ???????????????? ?????????????? ?? ??????????????????, ???????????????????? ???? ???????? ?????????? ???? ?????????????? ???????????????????????? ???? ???? ???? ???????????????????? ????????. ???????? ???????? ???????? ????????????????????, ?????????? ???????????????? ???? ?????????????? ???? ???? ???? ?????????????? ?? ???? ?????????? ???????????????? ????, ???????????????????? ?????????? ???? ???? ???????????? ???? ???????????????? ?????????????????? ???? ????????????????, ???????? ?? ??????????????. ???????? ???????????????? ???? ?????????????? ???? ??????????????, ????????????, ????????????????????, ???????????? ?? ????????????, ???????? ?????? ???? ????????? ????? ?? ???????? ?? ???????? ?????????? ???????????????? ?????????? ?????? ???? ?????? ????????. ?????? ???????????????????? ???? ????????????????, ???? ?????????????????????? ???? ???????? ???????????????? ?????? ???????? ???? ????????. ?????????? ?? ???? ???? ?????????????????? ???????????????????? ?????????? ???? ???? ?????????????? ?? ?????????? ???????????? ???????????? ????????????????.???????????? ???????????? ???? #Globalrevolution ???? 19 ??????. ???????????????????? ?????? ?????????? ?????????????????? ???? ???????????????????? ?????????????? ?? ?????????????????? ???? ?????????? ???? ??????????, ?????????????????? ?? ??????????????????????. ?????? ???????? ?? ???? ???? ?????????????????? ???????????????????? ???????????????????????? ?? ???????????? ???? ?????????? ???????????? ?????????? ????????????.???????????????? ??????????????!!! ???????????????? ??????????????!!!People of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(ITALIAN)Siamo gli indignati, gli anonimi, i senza voce. Eravamo in silenzio, ma ascoltavamo, e osservavamo tutto. Ma non per guardare verso l'alto, dove ci sono quelli che guidano il mondo, ma intorno a noi, dove ci troviamo tutti e tutte; e stavamo aspettando il momento di unirci.Non ci rappresenta nessun partito, associazione o sindacato. E non vogliamo che sia cos??, perch?? ognuno rappresenta s?? stesso. Vogliamo pensare tutti insieme a come creare un mondo dove le persone e la natura stiano al di sopra degli interessi economici. Vogliamo progettare e costruire il migliore dei mondi possibili. Insieme possiamo farlo, e lo faremo. Senza paura.Le prime scintille scoccarono nei paesi arabi, dove centinaia di migliaia di persone hanno occupato le piazze e le strade e hanno ricordato ai loro governi, che loro sono il vero potere. Dopodich?? sono stati gli islandesi che scesero in strada per esprimersi e scegliere il proprio futuro; e poco dopo il popolo spagnolo ha occupato le piazze dei quartieri, dei paesi, delle citt??. Ora questo fuoco si estende rapidamente in Francia, Grecia, Portogallo, Italia e Turchia, mentre arrivano echi dall'America e dall'Asia e nuove fiamme si accendono dappertutto. Se i problemi sono globali, la rivoluzione o sar?? globale o non ci sar??. ?? ora di riprenderci i nostri spazi pubblici per discutere sul nostro futuro tutti e tutte insieme.Il 19 giugno chiamiamo alla #Globalrevolution. incitiamo l' occupazione pacifica delle piazze pubbliche e la creazione di spazi di incontro, dibattito e riflessione. ?? nostro dovere recuperare gli spazi pubblici e decidere insieme che mondo vogliamo.Toma la plaza!!! Toma las calles!!! #GlobalrevolutionPeople of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(HUNGARIAN)Felh??borodottak, n??vtelenek ??s sz??tlanok vagyunk. Cs??ndben maradtunk, de figyelt??nk. Nem az??rt, hogy felfele n??zz??nk, azokra, akik a fonalakat sz??vik, hanem az??rt, hogy oldalra figyelj??nk, ahol mi vagyunk mindannyian ??s keress??nk a pillanatot, hogy egyes??lj??nk.A p??rtok, egyes??letek vagy szakszervezetek nem k??pviselnek minket. De val??j??ban nem is akarjuk, hogy ??gy legyen, hiszen mindenki csak saj??t mag??t tudja k??pviselni. Arr??l akarunk egy??tt gondolkodni, hogy mik??pp tudn??nk egy olyat vil??got l??trehozni, ahol az emberek ??s a term??szet a gazdas??gi ??rdekek felett ??ll. L??tre akarjuk hozni a vil??gok legjobbik??t. Egy??tt meg tudjuk ezt tenni ??s meg fogjuk tenni. F??lelem n??lk??l.Az els?? t??ntet??sek az arab orsz??gokban voltak, ahol sz??zezrek vonultak az utc??kra, hogy eml??keztess??k a korm??nyt, hogy val??j??ban a n??p?? a hatalom. Nem sokkal k??s??bb az ??rek t??ntettek az??rt, hogy maguk d??nthessenek a j??v??j??kr??l ??s a spanyolok sem k??slekedtek, hogy az utc??kat ??s tereket birtokukba vagy??k.Mostanra az el??gedetlens??g l??ngja gyorsan tov??bbterjedt m??s orsz??gokra is, ??gy mint Franciaorsz??g, G??r??gorsz??g, Portug??lia, Olaszorsz??g ??s T??r??korsz??g. ??s ek??zben kezd terjedni Latin-Amerik??ban ??s a vil??g m??s orsz??gaiban is. Ha a probl??m??k glob??lisak, a forradalom is az lesz. A pillanat el??rkezett, birtokba kell venn??nk az utc??kat ??s tereket, hogy besz??lgess??nk ??s egy??tt l??trehozzuk a j??v??t.J??nius 19-re teh??t a #Globalrevolution-ra h??vunk. Arra h??vunk, hogy b??k??sen foglaljuk el a k??ztereket, teremts??nk tal??lkoz??si lehet??s??geket ??s vitassuk meg a legfontosabb k??rd??seket. A mi feladatunk, hogy visszaszerezz??k a k??ztereinket ??s egy??tt eld??nts??k, hogy milyen vil??got szeretn??nk.Foglald el a tereket ! Foglald el az utc??kat !People of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(GREEK)?????????????? ???? ????????????????????????????, ???? ????????????????, ???? ??????????????. ?????? ?????????????? ???????????????? ???????????????? ?????? ?????????????????????????? T?????? ??????????????????. ?????? ?????????????????? ?????????? ???????????????????? ???????? ??????, ???????????????? ?????? ?????????????????? ??????????????, ???????? ?????????? ?????????? ?????????? ?????????? ??????, ???????????????????????? ???? ?????????????????? ?????? ?????????? ?????? ???? ???????????????? ???????? ??????.???? ?????? ?????????????????????????????? ???????? ??????????????, ???????? ??????????????????, ???????? ??????????????????. ???????? ???? ??????????????, ???????????? ?? ?????????????? ???????????????????????????? ?????? ?????????? ??????. ?????????????? ???? ?????????????????? ?????? ?????????? ???? ?????? ?????????? ???? ???????????????????????????? ???????? ?????? ??????????, ???????? ???????????????????? ?????????????????????? ?????????????? ???????? ?????????????? ?????? ???????? ???????? ???????? ?????? ???????????????????? ????????????????????.???? ?????????????????? ?????????????? ???????? ???????????????? ?????????? ???????? ???????????????? ?????????? ?????????????????? ???????? ???????????????? ?????? ?????????? ?????????????? ???????????????????? ?????????? ?????????????????????? ?????? ?? ???????? ???????????????? ?????? ???????????????????? ??????????????. ???????????? ???????????? ???? ???????? ???? ????????????????, ?????????????????????????? ?????? ???? ?????????????????????? ???? ???????????? ????????. ????????, ?? ?????????????????? ???????? ?????????????? ???? ?????????????? ???????? ???????????????? ?????? ??????????????????, ?????? ???????????? ?????? ?????? ????????????. ???????? ?? ???????????????????? ?????????????????? ?????????????? ???????? ????????????, ???????? ????????????, ???????? ???????????? ?????? ?? ?????? ?????????????? ?????? ?????? ???????? ?????????????? ?????? ???????? ???????? ???????????? ???? ?????????? ???????????? ?????? ??????????????????????. ???????? ????????, ???? ???????? ?????????????? ?????????? ?????? ????????????, ?????????????? ?? ???????? ?????? ????????. ???????? ???? ???????????????????? ???????????????????????? ?????? ?????????????????? ????????????????, ?????? ?? ???????????????????? ???????????? ???? ???????????? ???? ?????? ?????? ??????????. ????????????, ???? ???? ?????????? ????????????. ???????? ???????????? ???? ???????????????????????????? ???????? ?????????????????? ???????????? ?????? ???? ?????????????????????? ?????? ???? ???????????????????????????? ???????? ?????? ???? ???????????? ??????.???????? 19 ?????????????? ?????? ?????????????? ???????? ?????????????????? ????????????????????. ?????? ?????????????? ???? ?????????????????? ???????????????? ???????? ???????????????? ?????? ???? ?????????????????????????? ???????????? ????????????????????, ?????????????????? ?????? ??????????????????. ???????????? ???? ???????????????????????????? ???????? ?????????????????? ???????????? ?????? ???? ???????????????????????? ???????? ???????? ???? ???????????? ?????? ??????????????. ???????????? ???????? ????????????????, ???????????? ?????????? ??????????????! ?????????????????? ????????????????????. ???????? ?????? ????????????, ??????????????????????.Take the square!!! Take the streets!!! #GlobalrevolutionPeople of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(JAPANISH)???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????6???19?????????Globalrevolution?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????!!!?????????????????????!!!People of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(GERMAN)Wir sind die Emp??rten, die Anonymen, die Stimmlosen. Wir waren da, ruhig aber aufmerksam, am beobachten. Nicht um nach oben zu schauen, wo andere die Z??gel der Welt halten, sondern von den Seiten, wo wir den richtigen Moment gesucht haben um uns zu vereinen.Wir vertreten keine politischen Parteien, Verb??nde oder Gewerkschaften. Ebenso wenig wollen wir das, weil jeder sich selbst vertritt. Wir wollen zusammen eine Welt schaffen, wo die Menschen und die Natur an erster Stelle sind und nicht die wirtschaftlichen Interessen. Wir wollen die bestm??gliche Welt schaffen. Gemeinsam k??nnen wir es und wir werden es tun. Ohne Angst.Die ersten Funken haben in den arabischen L??ndern gespr??ht, wo tausende Menschen auf den Stra??en und Pl??tzen protestiert haben, um der Regierung daran zu erinnern, wo die Macht eigentlich liegt. Die n??chsten waren die Isl??nder, die auf die Stra??en gingen, um ihre Meinung zu sagen und ??ber ihre Zukunft zu entscheiden Und es hat nicht lange gedauert, bis das spanische Volk Pl??tze in St??dten und Gemeinden besetzt haben. Nun verbreitet sich diese Flame rasch auch ??ber Frankreich, Griechenland, Portugal, Italien und der T??rkei und es findet Anklang auch in Amerika und Asien, wo neue Demonstrationen ??berall ausbrechen. Nur eine globale Revolution kann globale Probleme bek??mpfen. Es ist die Zeit gekommen, unsere ??ffentlichen R??ume zur??ckzufordern, um zu diskutieren und um eine ne ue Zukunft zusammen zu schaffen.Das ist ein Aufruf f??r die #Globalrevolution am 19. Juni. Wir fordern die friedliche Besetzung von ??ffentlichen Pl??tzen und die Schaffung von R??umen f??r Dialog, Diskussion und Reflexion. Es ist unsere Pflicht, den ??ffentlichen Raum wieder zu besetzen und ??ber die Welt zu entscheiden in der wir leben wollen.Besetzt die Pl??tze! Besetzt die Stra??en!People of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(CASTELLANO)Llamamiento para la movilizaci??n del 19-JSomos l< at >s indignad< at >s, l< at >s an??nim< at >s, l< at >s sinvoz. Est??bamos en silencio pero a la escucha, observando. No para mirar hacia arriba, donde est??n l< at >s que llevan las riendas del mundo, sino a los lados, donde estamos todas y todos, buscando el momento de unirnos.No nos representan partidos, asociaciones o sindicatos. Tampoco queremos que as?? sea, porque cada cual se representa a s?? mism< at >. Queremos pensar entre tod< at >s c??mo crear un mundo donde las personas y la naturaleza est??n por encima de intereses econ??micos. Queremos idear y construir el mejor de los mundos posibles. Junt< at >s podemos y lo haremos. Sin miedo.Las primeras chispas prendieron en los pa??ses ??rabes, donde cientos de miles de personas tomaron las plazas y calles recordando a sus gobiernos que ell< at >s son el verdadero poder. Luego fueron l< at >s islandeses quienes salieron a las calles para expresarse y decidir su futuro; el pueblo espa??ol no tard?? en tomar las plazas de barrios, pueblos y ciudades. Ahora la mecha se extiende r??pidamente por Francia, Grecia, Portugal, Italia y Turqu??a, mientras llegan ecos de Am??rica y Asia y nuevos focos aparecen cada d??a por doquier. Si los problemas son globales, la revoluci??n ser?? global o no ser??. Es hora de recuperar nuestros espacios p??blicos para debatir y construir entre todas y todos el futuro.El d??a 19 de junio llamamos a la #Globalrevolution. Llamamos a la ocupaci??n pac??fica de las plazas p??blicas y a la creaci??n de espacios de encuentro, debate y reflexi??n. Es nuestro deber recuperar el espacio p??blico y decidir junt< at >s el mundo que queremos.Toma la plaza!!! Toma las calles!!! #GlobalevolutionPeople of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(EUSKERA)Haserre gaude, ez dugu izenik, ez dugu hitzik. Isilik geunden, baina adi, begira. Ez gora begira, aldeetara baizik, guztiok gauden lekura, batzeko unearen zain.Ez gaitu inolako alderdirik, elkarterik edo sindikaturik ordezten, eta ez dugu halakorik nahi, nork bere burua ordezten baitu. Guztion artean, pertsonak eta izadia interes ekonomikoen gainetik egongo diren mundua nola sortu pentsatu nahi dugu. Ahalik eta mundurik onena sortu eta eraiki nahi dugu. Guztiok batera lor dezakegu eta lortuko dugu. Beldurrik gabe.Herrialde arabiarretan sortu ziren lehenengo txinpartak, ehun milaka lagunek, boterea herriarena dela bertako gobernuei gogorarazteko, plazak eta kaleak hartu zituztenean. Ondoren, islandiarrak kalera atera ziren bere ezinegona adierazteko eta bere etorkizuna erabakitzeko eta, handik gutxira, espainiar herriak auzo, herri eta hirietako plazak hartu zituen. Orain, ziztu bizian hedatzen ari da sugarra Frantzia, Grezia, Portugal, Italia eta Turkian barrena, Amerika eta Asiatik heltzen den oihartzuna aditu eta egunetik egunera foku berriak nonahi agertzen diren bitartean. Arazoak globalak badira, globala ere izan beharko du iraultzak, edo ez da gertatuko. Dagozkigun espazio publikoak berreskuratzeko garaia da, guztion artean etorkizuna eztabaidatu eta eraikitzeko.Ekainaren 19an #Globalrevolution. iraultza egiteko deialdia zabaltzen dugu. Plaza publikoak modu baketsuan hartzera eta topaketa, eztabaida eta gogoetarako lekuak sortzera deitzen zaituztegu, espazio publikoa berreskuratzea eta nahi dugun mundua erabakitzea gure eginkizuna baita.Har ezazu plaza!!! Har itzazu kaleak!!! #GlobalrevolutionPeople of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(CATALA)Crida per a la mobilitzaci?? de el 19-J.Som els indignats i les indignades, els an??nims i les anonimes, els i les sinveu. Est??vem en silenci per?? a l'escolta, observant. No per a mirar cap amunt, on estan els i les que governen el m??n, sin?? als costats, on estem totes i tots, cercant el moment d'unir-nos. No ens representen partits, associacions o sindicats. Tampoc volem que aix?? siga, perqu?? cadasc?? es representa a si mateix. Volem pensar entre tots i totes com crear un m??n on les persones i la naturalesa estiguen per sobre d'interessos econ??mics. Volem idear i construir el millor dels mons possibles. Junts i juntes podem i ho farem. Sense por. Les primeres espurnes es van prendre en els pa??sos ??rabs, on centenars de milers de persones van prendre les places i carrers recordant als seus governs que ells i elles s??n el veritable poder. Despr??s van ser els islandesos i les istandeses qui van eixir als carrers per a expressar-se i decidir el seu futur; el poble espanyol no va tardar a prendre les places de barris, pobles i ciutats. Ara la metxa s'est??n r??pidament per Fran??a, Gr??cia, Portugal, It??lia i Turquia, mentre arriben ecos d'Am??rica i ??sia i nous focus apareixen cada dia per onsevulla. Si els problemes s??n globals, la revoluci?? ser?? global o no ser??. ??s hora de recuperar els nostres espais p??blics per a debatre i construir entre totes i tots el futur. El dia 19 de juny cridem a la #Globalrevolution. Cridem a l'ocupaci?? pac??fica de les places p??bliques i a la creaci?? d'espais de trobada, debat i reflexi??. ??s el nostre deure recuperar l'espai p??blic i decidir junts i juntes el m??n que volem. Pren la pla??a!!! Pren els carrers!!! #Globalevolution+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es(GALLEGO)Somos os indignados, os an??nimos, os que non temos voz. Estabamos en silencio, pero ?? escoita, observando. Non para mirar cara arriba, onde est??n os que levan as rendas do mundo, sen??n cara aos lados, onde estamos todas e todos, buscando o momento de unirnos.Non nos representan partidos, asociaci??ns nin sindicatos. E tampouco queremos que nos representen, porque cada un se representa a si mesmo. Queremos pensar entre todos e todas como crear un mundo onde as persoas e a natureza estean por enriba dos intereses econ??micos. Queremos idear e constru??r o mellor dos mundos posibles. Xuntos podemos, e far??molo. Sen medo.As primeiras chispas saltaron nos pa??ses ??rabes, onde centos de miles de persoas tomaron as prazas e r??as lembrando aos seus gobernos que eles son o verdadeiro poder. Logo foron os islandeses quen sa??ron ??s r??as para expresarse e decidir o seu futuro; o pobo espa??ol non tardou en tomar as prazas de barrios, vilas e cidades. Agora a chama est??ndese rapidamente por Francia, Grecia, Portugal, Italia e Turqu??a, mentres chegan ecos de Am??rica e Asia e cada d??a aparecen novos focos en distintas partes do mundo. Se os problemas son globais, a revoluci??n ser?? global ou non ser??. ?? hora de recuperar os nosos espazos p??blicos para debater e constru??r entre todas e todos o futuro.O d??a 19 de xu??o chamamos ?? #Globalrevolution. Chamamos ?? ocupaci??n pac??fica das prazas p??blicas e ?? creaci??n de espazos de encontro, debate e reflexi??n. ?? o noso deber recuperar o espazo p??blico e decidir xuntos o mundo que queremos.Toma a praza!!! Toma as r??as!!! #GlobalrevolutionPeople of the World, rise up!!!+ Infos:https://takethesquare.net/Contacts: squares-cF6LsJQjnDvYWVxUurTLyOKnY7ZGds9/< at >public.gmane.org#Globalrevolution< at >takethesquareMap of actions: http://www.thetechnoant.info/19j/http://www.democraciarealya.es??????`??.(*??.??(`??.?? ??.????)??.??*).????`????????????*???????? Mayo Fuster Morell ??.??.??*??`??????????`??.(??.????(??.??* *??.??)`??.??).????`????Research Digital Commons Governance: http://www.onlinecreation.infoPh.D European University InstitutePostdoctoral Researcher. Institute of Govern and Public Policies. Autonomous University of Barcelona.Visiting scholar. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute. Open University of Catalonia (UOC).Visiting researcher (2008). School of information. University of California, Berkeley.Member Research Committee. Wikimedia Foundationhttp://www.onlinecreation.infoE-mail: mayo.fuster-tSBZotL4Eu8< at >public.gmane.orgSkype: mayonetiPhone Spanish State: 0034-648877748

How the net traps us all in our own little bubblesAn invisible revolution has taken place is the way we use the net, but the increasing personalisation of information by search engines such as Google threatens to limit our access to information and enclose us in a self-reinforcing world view, writes Eli Pariser in an extract from The Filter BubbleEli PariserThe Observer, Sunday 12 June 2011http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/12/google-personalisation-internet-data-filteringFew people noticed the post that appeared on Google's corporate blog on 4 December 2009. It didn't beg attention – no sweeping pronouncements, no Silicon Valley hype, just a few paragraphs sandwiched between a round-up of top search terms and an update on Google's finance software.Not everyone missed it. Search-engine blogger Danny Sullivan pores over the items on Google's blog, looking for clues about where the monolith is headed next, and to him, the post was a big deal. In fact, he wrote later that day, it was "the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines". For Danny, the headline said it all: "Personalised search for everyone".Starting that morning, Google would use 57 signals – everything from where you were logging in from to what browser you were using to what you had searched for before – to make guesses about who you were and what kinds of sites you'd like. Even if you were logged out, it would customise its results, showing you the pages it predicted you were most likely to click on.Most of us assume that when we google a term, we all see the same results – the ones that the company's famous Page Rank algorithm suggests are the most authoritative based on other pages' links. But since December 2009, this is no longer true. Now you get the result that Google's algorithm suggests is best for you in particular – and someone else may see something entirely different. In other words, there is no standard Google any more.It's not hard to see this difference in action. In the spring of 2010, while the remains of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, I asked two friends to search for the term "BP". They're pretty similar – educated white left-leaning women who live in the north-east. But the results they saw were quite different. One saw investment information about BP. The other saw news. For one, the first page of results contained links about the oil spill; for the other, there was nothing about it except for a promotional ad from BP. Even the number of results returned differed – 180 million for one friend and 139 million for the other. If the results were that different for these two progressive east-coast women, imagine how different they would be for my friends and, say, an elderly Republican in Texas (or, for that matter, a businessman in Japan).With Google personalised for everyone, the query "stem cells" might produce diametrically opposed results for scientists who support stem-cell research and activists who oppose it. "Proof of climate change" might turn up different results for an environmental activist and an oil-company executive. A huge majority of us assume search engines are unbiased. But that may be just because they're increasingly biased to share our own views. More and more, your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click. Google's announcement marked the turning point of an important but nearly invisible revolution in how we consume information. You could say that on 4 December 2009 the era of personalisation began.With little notice or fanfare, the digital world is fundamentally changing. What was once an anonymous medium where anyone could be anyone – where, in the words of the famous New Yorker cartoon, nobody knows you're a dog – is now a tool for soliciting and analysing our personal data. According to one Wall Street Journal study, the top 50 internet sites, from CNN to Yahoo to MSN, install an average of 64 data-laden cookies and personal tracking beacons each. Search for a word like "depression" on Dictionary.com, and the site installs up to 223 tracking cookies and beacons on your computer so that other websites can target you with antidepressants. Open a page listing signs that your spouse may be cheating, and prepare to be haunted with DNA paternity-test ads. The new internet doesn't just know you're a dog: it knows your breed and wants to sell you a bowl of premium dog food.The race to know as much as possible about you has become the central battle of the era for internet giants like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. As Chris Palmer of the Electronic Frontier Foundation explained to me: "You're getting a free service, and the cost is information about you. And Google and Facebook translate that pretty directly into money." While Gmail and Facebook may be helpful, free tools, they are also extremely effective and voracious extraction engines into which we pour the most intimate details of our lives. Your smooth new iPhone knows exactly where you go, whom you call, what you read; with its built-in microphone, gyroscope and GPS, it can tell whether you're walking or in a car or at a party.While Google has (so far) promised to keep your personal data to itself, other popular websites and apps make no such guarantees. Behind the pages you visit, a massive new market for information about what you do online is growing, driven by low-profile but highly profitable personal data companies like BlueKai and Acxiom. Acxiom alone has accumulated an average of 1,500 pieces of data on each person on its database – which includes 96% of Americans – along with data about everything from their credit scores to whether they've bought medication for incontinence. And any website – not just the Googles and Facebooks of the world – can now participate in the fun. In the view of the "behaviour market" vendors, every "click signal" you create is a commodity, and every move of your mouse can be auctioned off within microseconds to the highest commercial bidder.As a business strategy, the internet giants' formula is simple: the more personally relevant their information offerings are, the more ads they can sell, and the more likely you are to buy the products they're offering. And the formula works. Amazon sells billions of dollars in merchandise by predicting what each customer is interested in and putting it in the front of the virtual store. Up to 60% of US film download and DVD-by-mail site Netflix's rentals come from the guesses it can make about each customer's preferences.In the next three to five years, says Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, the idea of a website that isn't customised to a particular user will seem quaint. Yahoo vice president Tapan Bhat agrees: "The future of the web is about personalisation… now the web is about 'me'. It's about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalised for the user." Google CEO Eric Schmidt enthuses that the "product I've always wanted to build" is Google code that will "guess what I'm trying to type". Google Instant, which guesses what you're searching for as you type, and was rolled out in the autumn of 2010, is just the start – Schmidt believes that what customers want is for Google to "tell them what they should be doing next".It would be one thing if all this customisation was just about targeted advertising. But personalisation isn't just shaping what we buy. For a quickly rising percentage of us, personalised news feeds like Facebook are becoming a primary news source – 36% of Americans aged under 30 get their news through social-networking sites. And Facebook's popularity is skyrocketing worldwide, with nearly a million more people joining each day. As founder Mark Zuckerberg likes to brag, Facebook may be the biggest source of news in the world (at least for some definitions of "news"). And personalisation is shaping how information flows far beyond Facebook, as websites from Yahoo News to the New York Times-funded startup News.me cater their headlines to our particular interests and desires. It's influencing what videos we watch on YouTube and what blog posts we see. It's affecting whose emails we get, which potential mates we run into on OkCupid, and which restaurants are recommended to us on Yelp – which means that personalisation could easily have a hand not only in who goes on a date with whom but in where they go and what they talk about. The algorithms that orchestrate our ads are starting to orchestrate our lives.The basic code at the heart of the new internet is pretty simple. The new generation of internet filters looks at the things you seem to like – the actual things you've done, or the things people like you like – and tries to extrapolate. They are prediction engines, constantly creating and refining a theory of who you are and what you'll do and want next. Together, these engines create a unique universe of information for each of us – what I've come to call a filter bubble – which fundamentally alters the way we encounter ideas and information. Of course, to some extent we've always consumed media that appealed to our interests and avocations and ignored much of the rest. But the filter bubble introduces three dynamics we've never dealt with before.First, you're alone in it. A cable channel that caters to a narrow interest (say, golf) has other viewers with whom you share a frame of reference. But you're the only person in your bubble. In an age when shared information is the bedrock of shared experience, the filter bubble is a centrifugal force, pulling us apart.Second, the filter bubble is invisible. Most viewers of conservative or liberal news sources know that they're going to a station curated to serve a particular political viewpoint. But Google's agenda is opaque. Google doesn't tell you who it thinks you are or why it's showing you the results you're seeing. You don't know if its assumptions about you are right or wrong – and you might not even know it's making assumptions about you in the first place. My friend who got more investment-oriented information about BP still has no idea why that was the case – she's not a stockbroker. Because you haven't chosen the criteria by which sites filter information in and out, it's easy to imagine that the information that comes through a filter bubble is unbiased, objective, true. But it's not. In fact, from within the bubble, it's nearly impossible to see how biased it is.Finally, you don't choose to enter the bubble. When you turn on Fox News or read The New Statesman, you're making a decision about what kind of filter to use to make sense of the world. It's an active process, and like putting on a pair of tinted glasses, you can guess how the editors' leaning shapes your perception. You don't make the same kind of choice with personalised filters. They come to you – and because they drive up profits for the websites that use them, they'll become harder and harder to avoid.Personalisation is based on a bargain. In exchange for the service of filtering, you hand large companies an enormous amount of data about your daily life – much of which you might not trust friends with. These companies are getting better at drawing on this data to make decisions every day. But the trust we place in them to handle it with care is not always warranted, and when decisions are made on the basis of this data that affect you negatively, they're usually not revealed.Ultimately, the filter bubble can affect your ability to choose how you want to live. To be the author of your life, professor Yochai Benkler argues, you have to be aware of a diverse array of options and lifestyles. When you enter a filter bubble, you're letting the companies that construct it choose which options you're aware of. You may think you're the captain of your own destiny, but personalisation can lead you down a road to a kind of informational determinism in which what you've clicked on in the past determines what you see next – a web history you're doomed to repeat. You can get stuck in a static, ever- narrowing version of yourself – an endless you-loop.And there are broader consequences. In Bowling Alone, his book on the decline of civic life in America, Robert Putnam looked at the problem of the major decrease in "social capital" – the bonds of trust and allegiance that encourage people to do each other favours, work together to solve common problems, and collaborate. Putnam identified two kinds of social capital: there's the in-group-oriented "bonding" capital created when you attend a meeting of your college alumni, and then there's "bridging" capital, which is created at an event like a town meeting when people from lots of different backgrounds come together to meet each other. Bridging capital is potent: build more of it, and you're more likely to be able to find that next job or an investor for your small business, because it allows you to tap into lots of different networks for help.Everybody expected the internet to be a huge source of bridging capital. Writing at the height of the dotcom bubble, Tom Friedman declared that the internet would "make us all next-door neighbours". In fact, this idea was the core of his thesis in The Lexus and the Olive Tree: "The internet is going to be like a huge vice that takes the globalisation system … and keeps tightening and tightening that system around everyone, in ways that will only make the world smaller and smaller and faster and faster with each passing day."Friedman seemed to have in mind a kind of global village in which kids in Africa and executives in New York would build a community together. But that's not what's happening: our virtual neighbours look more and more like our real-world neighbours, and our real-world neighbours look more and more like us. We're getting a lot of bonding but very little bridging. And this is important because it's bridging that creates our sense of the "public" – the space where we address the problems that transcend our narrow self-interests.We are predisposed to respond to a pretty narrow set of stimuli – if a piece of news is about sex, power, gossip, violence, celebrity or humour, we are likely to read it first. This is the content that most easily makes it into the filter bubble. It's easy to push "Like" and increase the visibility of a friend's post about finishing a marathon or an instructional article about how to make onion soup. It's harder to push the "Like" button on an article titled "Darfur sees bloodiest month in two years". In a personalised world, important but complex or unpleasant issues – the rising prison population, for example, or homelessness – are less likely to come to our attention at all.As a consumer, it's hard to argue with blotting out the irrelevant and unlikable. But what is good for consumers is not necessarily good for citizens. What I seem to like may not be what I actually want, let alone what I need to know to be an informed member of my community or country. "It's a civic virtue to be exposed to things that appear to be outside your interest," technology journalist Clive Thompson told me. Cultural critic Lee Siegel puts it a different way: "Customers are always right, but people aren't."The era of personalisation is here, and it's upending many of our predictions about what the internet would do. The creators of the internet envisioned something bigger and more important than a global system for sharing pictures of pets. The manifesto that helped launch the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the early 1990s championed a "civilisation of Mind in cyberspace" – a kind of worldwide metabrain. But personalised filters sever the synapses in that brain. Without knowing it, we may be giving ourselves a kind of global lobotomy instead.Early internet enthusiasts like web creator Tim Berners-Lee hoped it would be a new platform for tackling global problems. I believe it still can be, but first we need to pull back the curtain – to understand the forces that are taking the internet in its current direction. We need to lay bare the bugs in the code – and the coders – that brought personalisation to us.If "code is law", as Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig declared, it's important to understand what the new lawmakers are trying to do. We need to understand what the programmers at Google and Facebook believe in. We need to understand the economic and social forces that are driving personalisation, some of which are inevitable and some of which are not. And we need to understand what all this means for our politics, our culture and our future.Adapted from The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser.# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

(There is much more to say about this--and there will be--but this is the first article in English about the cuts in the Dutch arts budget. There will be a debate about this in parliament on June 27. The proposal as it is laid out here is not final, but in a few weeks there will be one. The exact implications for institutions like Waag Society, V2 and Mediamatic are not yet known. The article below only deals with visual arts in a narrow sense (read: 'contemporary arts') but the remnication in other sectors such as theatre are even more damaging. /Geert)http://svenlutticken.blogspot.com/2011/06/slash-burn.htmlSven Lütticken: Slash & BurnOn Friday afternoon June 10 the Dutch secretary of state for culture, Halbe Zijlstra, published his policy plan for coming years. In contrast to the official recommendations given to him by the Raad voor Cultuur (an advisory body), the cutbacks will not be spread out over a number of years, but will take immediate effect in 2013. The budget for visual art will shrink from 53,3 to 31 million. If Dutch politics is marked by a tension between populist rhetoric and neoliberal dreams of market-driven excellence, this paper is dominated squarely by the latter, though it takes the form of a kind of scorched earth politics that will find the approval of Zijlstra’s de facto coalition partner, Geert Wilders’ PVV.Among the more damaging and destructive decisions is the complete cutting of funding for the following (which in most cases will mean their disappearance):-The so-called post-academic art schools; these include the De Ateliers, the Rijksakademie and the Jan van Eyck. These institutions have been instrumental in fostering international exchange among young artists and a less anti-intellectual, more discursive culture in the Dutch art world. They offer a number of young artists (and, in the case of the Jan van Eyck, theorists) a stimulating context for residencies during which they can continue to develop their practice. Their disappearance would leave a gaping hole.-The NIMK (formerly Montevideo), an institution for video and media art. It seems that museums should simply take over the collection. Media art as a field with specific requirements is history—a history that will of course not be written, for the happy people of Polderland under VVD, CDA and PVV have no need for history. A national canon is more than enough.-All but six “presentation institutions” (as local jargon has it). To be precise, six of these institutions will be allowed into the “Basisinfrastructuur” and get structural funding. Others will be left to fend for themselves (for specific projects, they may be able to get incidental funding from a diminished Mondriaan Fonds—the merged Mondriaan Stichting and Fonds BKVB). On the Metropolis M website, Dominiek Ruyters speculates that these six institutions will be Witte de With, de Appel, BAK, Marres, Noorderlicht, De Vleeshal. Some of these names would seem to be on the list mainly because of a holy cow called “cultuurspreiding” (spread of culture). This cow is worshiped with particular zeal by Zijlstra’s Christian democratic collation partners of the CDA. In short: art for the provinces, where the CDA’s remaining voters reside. Hence (supposedly) Noorderlicht in Groningen, De Vleeshal in Middelburg and Marres in Maastricht. That the first two in particular are far less relevant than a number of institutions based in the main cities is is irrelevant. It has also been decided that each of the main cities can only have one institution in the Basisinfrastructuur, so if De Appel is in this means automatically that no other Amsterdam-based institution can be, for that reason alone. What was that thing about excellence again?-SKOR, the Dutch foundation for public art and its journal Open. The Sekula and Burch film the Forgotten Space, which I review in the new Texte zur Kunst, would not exist without SKOR. While I have been extremely critical of the Dutch tradition of "public art" in which art is often supposed to stand in for the social, in recent years SKOR has started to develop in an interesting way. It is now called "Foundation for Art and Public Domain," indicating the transition from a narrow understanding of “public art” to a more fundamental engagement with the notion of publicness in different fields, virtual as well as physical. Open, published by SKOR, spearheaded this transition under Jorinde Seijdel’s editorship, and it has been a rare local publication (published in a Dutch and an English edition) that can articulate important issues and shape debates in a way that goes beyond the horizon of neo-provincialism.The Dutch art world is marked by a plethora of frequently complacent institutions and an arcane array of subsidy channels, so some downsizing need not be disastrous. However, almost halving the budget is patently disproportionate and wantonly destructive. What's more, in many ways this plan is an unholy alliance of ideological dogmatism and cowardly compromises. Excellence and the market, yes, but let’s not forget about the people in the province of Zeeland. Let’s glorify international success as the ultimate proof of excellence while abolishing the Rijksakademie and the Jan Van Eyck and turn Holland into a stagnant backwater. Let’s claim to be confident that “the market” can fix things on short notice and stand by the dogma that noble private patrons are just itching to support the arts while showing our contempt for these arts with every gesture and every utterance, suggesting that potential patrons would really be better off buying a yacht.There is an odd proposal in Zijlstra’s plan to offer support for fifty “top talents,” again using the language of excellence; but if these are the top talents, shouldn’t they of all people be able to fend for themselves, according to Zijlstra’s logic? And where will these talents be allowed to develop if not at the Jan van Eyck or the Rijksakademie? Far from stemming purely from the need for financial cutbacks, these are punitive and vindictive measures that appear to be designed to destroy all that stands in the way the reduction of art to mind-numbing blockbuster events and glossy decoration. Nothing could be more political and ideological than this brand of economism.Meanwhile, the situation at the universities is hardly less grim. Suddenly notions such as "the knowledge economy" and "creative industries," which have been crucial shibboleths of the Dutch version of social-democratically inflected neoliberal politicy-making, don’t seem to be worth a penny. Or rather, they show their true face: they always were at the service of imposing a relentlessly economistic logic on education and art, resulting in a re-establishment of strong class divisions. Either you can afford education and art or be educated in the arts), or you can’t. Bright young art and humanities students today face becoming a lost generation. That’s the culture of excellence for you: social engineering under the guise of letting “the market” take its "natural" course.

BEHIND THE NEWS with Doug Henwood"Best Music on an Economics & Politics Radio Show"Village Voice Best of NYC 2005After a long interval, new material on my radio archive<http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html>:June 11, 2011 Vincent Reinhart at the Council on Foreign Relations on Greece and the political trick of austerity (thanks to the CFR for allowing broadcast; full event here) • Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia, on all the great political developments in South AmericaJune 4, 2011 Another Hoover interview: Morris Fiorina on American public opinion and the nonexistence of the “culture war” • And in non-Hoover content, Yanis Varoufakis updates the Greek and EU crisesMay 28, 2011 Hoover Institution special. Two interviews from my week as a Hoover media fellow. Paul Gregory on Russian politics (Putin vs. Medvedev) • Terry Moe on school “reform” (i.e., charters, testing, unionbusting, etc.)May 14, 2011 Deepa Kumar, author of this article, on political Islam [The last 20 minutes of the broadcast version of this show was devoted to fundraising for KPFA. If you like what you hear, please donate.]they join:---------April 16, 2011 Joel Schalit, author of this piece, on Israeli identity and the problems with saying that the country may be turning “fascist” • Michael Heaney, co-author of this paper, on how Obama demobilized the antiwar movement • Roger Lowenstein, author of The End of Wall Street, on the financial crisis and its aftermathApril 9, 2011 Carrie Lane, author of A Company of One, on how unemployed tech workers see themselves (as heroic, self-reliant questers, mostly) • Adolph Reed on the uselessness of TV liberals, the limits of spontaneity in politics, and the sponginess of race as a politlcal and analytical categoryMarch 19, 2011 Abe Sauer, who’s been covering Wisconsin for The Awl, on Walker, the protests, privatization • Steve Early, author ofThe Civil Wars in U.S. Labor, on the fights in & around Andy Stern’s SEIUMarch 12, 2011 Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus, on the spurious and destructive fantasy of a link between vaccines and autism • reprise of a 2006 interview with the splendid Robert Fitch, who died on March 4, about his book Solidarity for Sale and the role of corruption in the sad decline of American unions (and a brief memoir of his work)March 5, 2011 Jodi Dean, keeper of the I Cite blog and author of Blog Theory, interviewed in December on what digital culture is doing to us, returns to tell us how events in Cairo and Madison may have changed her mind • Joel Rogers of the University of Wisconsin on that state and its labor uprisingFebruary 5, 2011 Lance Lochner, author of this NBER paper, on the social returns to education (lower crime, better health) • Vijay Prashad of Trinity College on the Egyptian revolutionJanuary 29, 2011 Mark LeVine of the University of California–Irvine (and author of Heavy Metal Islam) and GIlbert Achcar of SOAS (and author of The Arabs and the Holocaust) talk (separately) about the popular uprisings in the Middle East • Bhaskar Sunkara on the new magazine he edits, JacobinJanuary 22, 2011 Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, on what the web is doing to our brains and minds • Robert Fatton, author of Haiti’s Predatory Republic, on Baby Doc’s return, the failure to recover from earthquake, the horrid class systemJanuary 15, 2011 Mark Ames, author of Going Postal and editor of The Exiled, on Tucson and how the U.S. is like a decaying Russia • Jefferson Cowie, author of Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, on the 1970s---Doug HenwoodProducer, Behind the NewsSaturdays, 10-11 AM, KPFA, Berkeley 94.1 FM"best music on a show about economics & politics" - Village Voicepodcast: <http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/radio-feed.php>iTunes: <http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73801817>or <http://tinyurl.com/3bsaqb>Facebook page: <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Behind-the-News-with-Doug-Henwood/104198236341205>."blog": <http://lbo-news.com/>

Tomorrow Tuesday June 14 2011 is INET New York. For those of youcoming in person, we look forward to seeing you! For the rest of you- here are the remote participation details:* Webcast: http://www.livestream.com/internetsocietychapters* Transcription: http://www.streamtext.net/text.aspx?event=ISOC* Questions: http://inetny.backchan.nlThere is no need to register for remote participants - all arewelcome. For those unfamiliar with backchann.nl, one can not only askquestions but also vote on questions already asked. There arechatrooms associated with both the transcription and the webcast. Forthose wishing to comment via twitter the hashtag is #INETny - to lookat comments see http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23INETnyHere'a brief schedule (times are EDT = UTC+4):09:00 Opening remarks09:30 Keynote + Q&A: Sir Tim Berners-Lee10:30 Panel: Pushing technology boundaries12:00 Lunch13.00 Keynote + Q&A: Vint Cerf13:30 Panel: People Power15:00 Keynote: Lawrence E. Strickling15:20 Panel: New Privacy Models16:30 Closing discussion17:30 EndThe full agenda is on http://bit.ly/inetnyagendaMore info: http://isoc.org/nyinet

Hi with the outstanding victories in referendum, almost 27 millions of italians have rejected Berlusconi laws on private water ecc.. but most on the law to protect him from the numberless trials he is involved.The Berlusconi Empire is ( incredible!!!) trembling. Milano is back to centreleft!!!!After 20 years of Lega and Berlusconi!So is Naple and, peculiarly important, little Novara, one of the nests of Lombard Integralism.Will Rome Fall????Who will be the Tigellino that will betray the unfamous Nero?Let's hope for a regular cloak & daggers or rather a late Empire Epics, reread by Tarantino.Lorenzo

There may be some interest in this context...MGurstein.wordpress.com: The Dead Hand of (Western) Academe: CommunityInformatics in a Less Developed Country Context I'm just back from a variety of recent travels--lecturing, workshopping,seminaring, meeting with academics and researchers in various parts of theAsian less developed countries (LDCs). Specifically I was invited todiscuss community informatics with academics/researchers in 3 universitiesin 3 rather different regions of Asia.In reflecting on these meetings I realized the very strong strain ofconsistency in our discussions. In each instance, the academics, almost allof whom had recent Ph.D.s from research universities in Developed Countries(DC's) returned home to find that their recently acquired skills and areasof expert knowledge were of little direct value in their home environments.More http://wp.me/pJQl5-6Z

"Tomgram: William Astore, American Militarism Is Not A Fairy TalePresident Obama recently reshuffled his top Washington warriors, sending CIA Director Leon Panetta, a man who knows Congress well, on to the Pentagon to replace retiring Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In turn, the president is bringing in General David Petraeus, present Afghan War Commander, former Centcom commander, and former Iraq War commander (as well as ? Bush?sgeneral?), to run the Agency.Whatever the local politics involved, and the Petraeus appointment ensures that the potentially popular general will be on the political sidelines for campaign year 2012, these moves catch the zeitgeist of our Washington moment. Since the bin Laden assassination, in which U.S. military special operations forces ?commanded? by Panetta took out the al-Qaeda leader, a new face of American war, ?where sovereignty is irrelevant, armies tangential, and decisions are secret,? has been emerging according to Foreign Policy in Focus analyst Conn Hallinan.With the latest news ( revealed last week by the New York Times) that the U.S. has launched a significant ?intensification? of its secret air campaign against Yemeni tribesmen believed to be connected with al- Qaeda, the U.S. is now involved in no less than six wars. Count ?em, if you don?t believe me: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and what used to be called the Global War on Terror.

Bryan Bishop <kanzure-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> Jun 07 02:26PM -0500 ^ https://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/DARPA-SN-11-44/listing.html Synopsis:Added: Jun 03, 2011 4:42 pmSpecial Notice (SN) DARPA-SN-11-44SUBJECT: Living Foundries Industry DayDATE: June 28, 2011REGISTRATION DEADLINE: June 21, 2011Registration Website: https://safe.sysplan.com/mto/livingfoundriesTECHNICAL POC: Dr. Alicia Jackson, DARPA/MTO Living Foundries Industry Day, DARPA-SN-11-44 The Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) of the Defense Advanced ResearchProjects Agency (DARPA) is sponsoring an Industry Day for "LivingFoundries," a new DARPA program. The goal of the Living Foundries program isto apply an engineering framework to biology to harness its use as atechnology and drive its advance as a manufacturing platform. In turningbiological production into an engineering space where the only limit is thecreativity of the designer, Living Foundries aims to enable on-demandproduction of new and high-value materials, devices and capabilities for theDepartment of Defense and establish a new manufacturing capability for theUnited States. Because of the multidisciplinary nature of Living Foundries, DARPA islooking to engage the wider research community from fields both outside andinside the biological sciences to develop new ideas, approaches and tools toovercome current limitations and to create revolutionary capabilities. Current, primitive examples of engineering biology rely on an ad hoc,laborious, trial-and-error process, wherein one successful project does notinform subsequent, new designs. This approach combined with the complexityof biological systems restricts current, one-off efforts to modifying only asmall set of genes and constructing simple, isolated genetic circuits andmetabolic pathways. Consequently, we are limited to producing only a smallfraction of the vast number of possible chemicals, materials, and livingsystems that would be enabled by the ability to truly engineer biology.Through an engineering-driven approach to biology, Living Foundries aims tocreate a rapid, reliable manufacturing capability where multiple cellularfunctions can be fabricated, mixed and matched on demand and the wholesystem controlled by integrated circuitry, opening up the full space ofbiologically produced materials and systems. Key to success will be thedemocratization of the biological design and manufacturing process, breakingopen the field to those outside the biological sciences. In order to achieve the vision of Living Foundries, new tools, technologiesand methodologies must be developed to transform biology into an engineeringpractice, decoupling design from fabrication and speeding the biologicaldesign, build, test cycle. These include: design tools that span fromhigh-level description to fabrication in cells; modular genetic parts thatallow a combination of systems to be designed and reproducibly assembled;methods for developing and fine-tuning new genetic parts and systems;well-understood test platforms, "cell-like" systems and chassis that readilyintegrate new genetic designs in a predictable fashion; next generation DNAsynthesis and assembly techniques; and tools that allow for routine systemcharacterization and debugging, among others. Further, these technologicaladvances and innovations must be integrated to prove-out and push theboundaries of biological design towards the ultimate vision of point-of-use,on-demand, mass-customization biological manufacturing. The Industry Day will be held at the Capitol Conference Center in Arlington,VA on June 28, 2011. Directions to the Capital Conference Center can befound at http://www.thecapitalconferencecenter.com/. The goals of the Industry Day are: (a) to introduce the research community(industry, academia, and Government) to the Living Foundries vision andgoals; (b) to encourage and promote teaming arrangements among potentialresearch organizations that have the relevant expertise, facilities, andcapabilities for executing research and development responsive to the LivingFoundries program goals; and (c) to facilitate interaction betweeninvestigators who may have capabilities to develop elements of interest andrelevance to the Living Foundries goals. The Industry Day will includeoverview presentations, a poster session to facilitate interaction and teambuilding among participants, and an opportunity to interact and presentcapabilities and concepts to government personnel in closed-door sidebarsessions. There is no fee for any Industry Day activities. Registration is limited bythe venue capacity (maximum of 100 attendees) and early registration isstrongly recommended. Organizations are limited to two attendees; however,in the event that the Industry Day is oversubscribed, DARPA reserves theright to limit participation to 1 attendee per organization. Theregistration cutoff date is June 21, 2011, at noon ET, or once attendancecapacity is met, whichever comes first. An on-line registration form,preliminary workshop agenda, citizenship verification form, foreign nationalvisit request form, meeting details, and hotel information for the workshopcan be found at the following registration website,https://safe.sysplan.com/mto/livingfoundries. There will be no on-siteregistration. Posters: Appropriate teaming will be a critical element in responding to ananticipated DARPA Living Foundries solicitation. Industry Day participantsare strongly encouraged to prepare poster abstracts describing areas ofcapabilities in order to facilitate communications, interactions, andteaming discussions during the poster session. Poster abstracts must besubmitted by June 21, 2011, at noon ET. Poster abstracts must include abrief (1 page) narrative description of capabilities. Responders may findabstract submission guidance at the registration website. Poster abstractssubmitted in response to the Special Notice will be considered publicinformation and will be provided on a public website. Sidebars: Attendees who wish to describe their capabilities in a closed-doorsession with government personnel are required to submit an abstractdescribing their research and capabilities using the guidelines providedbelow; there will be a limited number of sessions depending on schedule,with each session lasting no more than ten minutes. Areas of interest include new tools, technologies and methodologies totransform biology into an engineering practice and manufacturing platform,decouple biological design from fabrication and speed the biological design,build, test cycle. Examples include: design tools that span from high-leveldescription to fabrication in cells; modular genetic parts that allow acombination of systems to be designed and reproducibly assembled; methodsfor developing and fine-tuning new genetic parts and systems;well-understood test platforms, "cell-like" systems and chassis that readilyintegrate new genetic designs in a predictable fashion; next generation DNAsynthesis and assembly techniques; tools that allow for routine systemcharacterization and debugging; and the integration of these capabilitiesfor the rapid design and development of new biological systems and products,among others. DARPA appreciates responses from all capable and qualified sources includingbut not limited to universities, university affiliated research centers, andprivate or public companies. Sidebar session abstract responses should adhere to the followinginstructions:1. All submissions must be made electronically (as described below), and bein either Adobe PDF or Microsoft Word format.2. Cover Page (1 page)a. Titleb. Organizationc. Responders technical and administrative points of contact (names, mailingand e-mail addresses, phone and fax numbers)3. Technical Ideas (up to 2 pages of text with up to 4 pages of appendedfigures and diagrams)a. Executive summaryb. A discussion of the capability/challenge addressed (from yourperspective) that is key to realizing the vision of Living Foundriesc. Technical response. Your discussion should address the following: What isyour proposed innovative technology/concept? How does it address thespecific capability/challenge that you identified? What is its improvementover SOA? What extensions or advances are needed to achieve the LivingFoundries vision?4. An optional list of citations, including URLs, if available.5. Company brochures and promotional materials are not of interest. DARPA will employ an electronic upload process for response submissions. NOCLASSIFIED INFORMATION SHALL BE INCLUDED IN THE SPECIAL NOTICE (SN) ABSTRACTRESPONSE. Responses to this SN are due no later than noon ET on June 21,2011. Responders may find submission guidance at the registration website. This SN is issued solely for information and potential new program planningpurposes; the SN does not constitute a formal solicitation for proposals orproposal abstracts, any so sent will be disregarded. In accordance with FAR15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted bythe Government to form a binding contract. Submission is voluntary and isnot required to propose to subsequent Broad Agency Announcements (if any) orresearch solicitations (if any) on this topic. DARPA will not providereimbursement for costs incurred in responding to this SN. Respondents areadvised that DARPA is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of theinformation received, or provide feedback to respondents with respect to anyinformation submitted under this SN. DARPA intends to publish the Living Foundries BAA prior to the scheduledIndustry Day. However, DARPA is not obligated to publich the BAA prior toconducting the Industry Day or to publich an associated BAA at all. If andwhen published, the BAA will be made available - at a minimum - on theFederal Business Opportunies (FBO) website. Questions regarding this event may be directed to DARPA-SN-11-44-x2gd2czT5dl4mq39ihy3YQ< at >public.gmane.orgPlease refer to the "Living Foundries Industry Day" in the subject line.Contracting Office Address:3701 North Fairfax DriveArlington, Virginia 22203-1714Primary Point of Contact.:Dr. Alicia JacksonDARPA-SN-11-44-x2gd2czT5dlmR6Xm/wNWPw< at >public.gmane.org - Bryanhttp://heybryan.org/1 512 203 0507 <tel:1%20512%20203%200507>

No bar on this front: Technology can aid accountabilityBy Frederick NoronhaA BarCamp held in Gurgaon recently showcased a number of new initiativesfocused on technology, transparency and accountability, from ways tominimise corruption in dealings with government to ways to track power cutsGoogle plus techies,* jholawalas* and good intentions. What happens when allmix on the ninth floor of a Haryana highrise? What emerges is a BarCamp thathappened in June 2011.Don't get mislead by the term 'bar' in the name. Of course, Google'scafeteria is generously stocked; but it's not about liquor. BarCamps areuser-generated conferences (or un-conferences). They're a less formal, orquite informal, meet-up.As the Wikipedia reminds us, the first BarCamps focused on early-stage webapplications, and were related to free software or open source technologies,social protocols, and open data formats. The format has also been used for avariety of other topics, including public transit, healthcare, and politicalorganising.In Gurgaon -- the second-largest city in the Indian state of Haryana, some30 km south of the Indian national capital of New Delhi, and one of Delhi'sfour major satellite cities -- the BarCamp focussed on technology,transparency and accountability.It was held by Accountability Initiative, a research initiative that "aimsto improve the quality of public services in India by promoting informed andaccountable governance".Founded in 2008, Accountability Initiative (http://www.accountabilityindia.in/) has been attempting to developinnovative models for tracking government-led social sector programmes inIndia. The Centre for Policy Research, a research institute and think-tank,is the institutional anchor for this initiative."It is now widely accepted that greater transparency -- access toinformation and data on the day-to-day functioning of government -- is keyto creating accountable and effective governance systems," arguesAccountability Initiative.It says India's Right to Information Act (2005) has played a significantrole in strengthening transparency by "committing the government to bothpro-actively providing citizens with information and also responding tospecific information requests."The Act has met with much success -- RTI applications are growing by theday. But there still remain "concerns related to quality, and reliability ofinformation and data provided." Besides, there are still many gaps in thegovernment's efforts to proactively disclose information and data of publicrelevance."Technology is one of many tools that can help address these gaps. There aresome incredible initiatives taking place across the world on openinggovernment data and on getting data to work for ordinary citizens," arguesAccountability Initiative.This BarCamp was aimed at creating a "platform for technologists to sharethese technologies and contribute to the debate on strengtheningaccountability and transparency."Among the technologies and attempts on display were the Jan Lokpal Bill(deliberative democracy and internet tools) with Paul Culmsee ofhttp://www.cleverworkarounds.com/.WikifyIndia (http://www.wikifyindia.com/) is a new non-profit initiative,run completely by volunteers, which seeks to "make interactions with thegovernment faster, less expensive and less prone to corruption". It does soby providing complete and accurate information on procedures and collatingexperiences (aggregating the wisdom of the crowds).WikifyIndia is founded by Sohel Bohra and Anish Chandy.prsindia.org is an attempt at "strengthening the legislative process bymaking it better informed, more transparent and participatory." Founded in2005, the independent research initiative works with Members of Parliament(MPs) across party lines to provide research support on legislative andpolicy issues. "Our aim is to complement the base of knowledge and expertisethat already exists in government, citizens groups, businesses, and otherresearch institutions," it says.Dinesh Shenoy has been part of Palantir. Palantir has developedhttp://AnalyzeThe.US <http://analyzethe.us/> which allows anyone to toexplore vast amounts of data, including key datasets from www.data.gov. Itallows anyone to develop a picture of the complex flows of resources, money,and influence that affect how our government functions. This "democratisesanalysis".Another participant, Vinay Kumar, is chief strategist at digitalgreen.org.It aims to improve the social, economic and environmental sustainability ofsmall farmer livelihoods. Explains Digital Green: "We aim to raise thelivelihoods of small-holder farmers across the developing world through thetargeted production and dissemination of agricultural information viaparticipatory video and mediated instruction through grassroots-levelpartnerships."Delhi-based Tuhin Sen is Lead Strategist at the Global Development Network,and comes from a rich background in advertising. The GDNet knowledgebase isa comprehensive internet portal to development research produced indeveloping countries.Other interesting ideas were there too. Siddharta Jain is promoting aone-stop government portal. Pranesh Prakash of the Bengaluru-based Centrefor Internet and Society has promoted open data. Open data is the idea thatcertain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish asthey wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanismsof control.Raman Chima of Google offered an insight into the new tools for open-datacoming from a US multinational already known for Internet search, cloudcomputing and ad technologies.Aditya, Ritwik and Dhruv outlined their plans for an RTI (right toinformation) portal. It's important that all the information emerging fromthe government should be sharable and visible to all. Not just the personmaking the query.Gaurav Dhir believes open data can be used to build better cities, andpoints to examples like Helsinki. IITian Shailesh Gandhi, RTI campaignerturned central information commissioner, dropped hints on how technologycould make governance more transparent in India.Ekgaon.com's Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya has a vision of using mobiletechnology for making rationed-commodity supply to the poor more efficient,and less leakage-prone.eGovernments Foundation was set up in 2003 and is based in Bangalore. ManuSrivastava and team offer products dealing with property, grievances,financials, births and deaths, city websites, work, GIS, and infrastructurecomponents.NIC, the Government of India institution, has also undertaken e-panchayatand a number of other initiatives, which have perhaps received lessattention than deserved.transparentchennai.com meanwhile aggregates, creates and disseminates dataand research about important civic issues facing Chennai, including issuesfacing the poor.Journalist Nikhil Pahwa raised issues of transparency and the media, whileRishab Verma's theme was open data initiatives across the world. Otherthemes ranged from the public information infrastructure (Sukhman Randhawa),the national election watch online initiative (Trilochan Shastry), makingvoting in India trustworthy, social accountability (Yamini Aiyar),uncovering business and politics links (Rohit Chandra), among others.One of the interesting if new initiatives is a mapping of power-cuts andelectricity failures across India. Using an East African-origin tool,Ushahidi, Ajay Kumar set up the powercuts.in website, which simply yeteffectively notes where people are reporting power cut problems from.Organisers of the BarCamp suggested that technology solutions could be"significantly enhanced" if they are developed in consultation with "peopleworking on the ground, people who deal with the challenges of our currentgovernance systems in India".Their BarCamp was intended to "initiate a conversation" between technologyspecialists and people working on the ground. Through the camp, their goalwas to "create a space" where people can share their knowledge about howbest to "use new technologies to make our government really work for thepeople."In Google's brightly-coloured cafeteria -- with even chairs in its "Googlecolours" of bright red, yellow and blue -- ideas were shared and linksforged. The challenge would be to take such initiatives forward and keepthem going.*Frederick Noronha is a Goa-based writer who focuses on technology anddevelopment.**Infochange News & Features, June 2011**http://bit.ly/it2Xf8*

HiThe New Media Art Organisations funding in Netherlands has ben since morethen 20 years a model for working in art and media and with many issuescentral to contemporary art, and showing how necessary is the Istitution'spresence in a full development of cultural reasearch.This model has allowed a great amount of experiences that have contributedto shape contemporary art and media, as well as new music, newcomunications, inter/relationships with other cultures, etc...V2, Waag, Mediamatic, Steim, Nimk, Balie etc.. (and all the Universities'work related to them!) really defined concepts and structures of extrememodernity.This important platform of thought and actions has produced the mostinteresting and stimulating experiences.We must find a way to show the dutch government to defend their outstandingcultural work and defend those important achievements.Prof Lorenzo TaiutiUniversity La Sapienza Roma Italy

Hope this new opportunity is of interest to folk on the list... get in touch if you've got any questions...AHRC Collaborative PhD Studentship: Curating electronic arts festivals: site responsive strategiesFine Art Department, Newcastle University in collaboration with AV FestivalThis is an exciting opportunity to undertake PhD research into the curatorial strategies of electronic arts festivals, with an emphasis on their relationship to site.Using AV Festival as a case study, this project will analyse the curatorial strategies of electronic arts festivals, with a view to developing new modes of curatorial practice. It will focus on the issues of curating across multiple geographical areas, working critically with technology, and the challenges of commissioning new site-specific work. It may also explore the role of festivals in supporting artistic practice, publishing, archiving, critical debate and open culture.The studentship is tenable for up to 3 years (full-time) or up to 5 years (part-time). A full or partial award is available. A full award covers fees only. If you are a part time student, support is pro rata. All applicants should comply with AHRC residency critieria. The studentship is available from 26th September 2011.Further details concerning eligibility are available via the AHRC website at: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Documents/GuidetoStudentFunding.pdfFor further particulars and full application details: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate/funding/search/list/cda01Closing date for applications and references: 18 July 2011. Interviews will be held on 28 July 2011.Rebecca ShatwellDirector, AV FestivalEmail: rebecca-/DCgJHCI1NCNh5sztAGhWQ< at >public.gmane.orgNext AV Festival is March 2012: go to www.avfestival.co.uk to subscribe to our e-bulletin for regular updatesOr find us at www.facebook.com/AVFest

This article by Lars Bang Larsen in Mute's latest issue (Vol 3 #1) should be of interest to many nettimers ... it investigates the delicate balance between (negative) feedback as a means of creating static systems of control and (positive) feedback as autopoietic and anti-disciplinary means... both of which intersect and play off each other in the political and cultural forms of the cold war period....http://linkme2.net/pnAnti-Disciplinary Feedback and the Will to EffectBy Lars Bang LarsenThe recursive forms of feedback made strange bedfellows out of cold war cybernetics and tripped-out psychedelia. In a reworking of a talk given at the Showroom gallery's Signal:Noise event, Lars Bang Larsen reads counter-cultural ‘good vibrations' literally and politically*See also:Mute Vol 3 #1 - Double Negative Feedback'Double Negative Feedback' expresses the hope that the chaos unleashed by the cybernetic loops of financialisation, post-Fordist production and networked life might not only be entropic and exploitative. The noise generated by 'positive feedback' also takes the form of the explosions we are seeing in the Arab world, the anti-disciplinary uses of cybernetic control systems, the 'shared precarity' of compositional improvising, and the ripples of a political organising that no longer assumes a common identity but instead acknowledges our common vulnerability.http://www.metamute.org/en/magazine/mute-vol-3-1-double-negative-feedback

nettimers,Soory for cross-posting. This comment on a huge discussion currently waging on the Spectre listfolows up on the ISEA discussions and the waning of public infarstructures for experimental and media arts, etc..I thought this was relevant enough to also post it here, it's just a sketch, a line in flight so to say...bests,eric-----------Dear Spectrites,A fascinating discussion is emerging in (late) response to the funding cutbacks in the UK, NL, and now Slovenia. Without wanting to take anything away from what has been said so far, I would like to introduce a slightly different angle to the discussion. Because this is all still in becoming, it necessarily has to be sketchy.That public funding for arts, especially the experimental arts and media arts / networked arts, are under increasing pressure is not really new - the scale and acceleration of austerisation is, obviously. Seeing for a long time the shifting funding priorities (from an 'arts' or slightly more autonomous designation to the 'economistic' notion of 'creative industries - a bit more about that in respect to the situation in The Netherlands at the end) it was clear that alternative models of sustainability for the kind of practices that are at least close to my heart should be probed and developed.In 2008 we started this discussion around the rapid growth of on-line collections of audio visual material and their public accessibility with the Economies of the Commons conference series, inspired by the term that Felix Stalder had originally suggested to us. The conferences provide a relevant constellation of heritage, archive, as well as independent initiatives, producers, cultural and arts organisations and representatives of (public) broadcasting. This is an on-going discussion and exploration.The idea in rough terms is to investigate how in view of the unreliability of public support structures (as has become abundantly clear now, but remember we started this discussion in 2007/8, alternative support structures can be constructed for these kind of experimental and public access practices and resources that still retain the ideals of accessibility, of publicness, of sharing, of free exchange (free as in unfettered - not 'gratis').Documentation of the first ECommons conference:www.debalie.nl/dossierpagina.jsp?dossierid=208416Website of ECommons 2:www.ecommons.euThere are different layers to this undertaking. One important step is to understand what kind and how value is created in situations where no immediate transaction takes place when having access to the resources, productions, gatherings, exchanges we are studying. Here the figure of the commons (a highly anglosaxonian notion and not 'common' in The Netherlands at all), comes squarely into view. It is possible through this notion of shared resources, the commons, to tap into a rich experience and body of both practical work and excellent (economic) theory that has been developed in the commons movement suis generis, by a.o. Ollstrom and Hess and many others.The figure of the commons identifies a third economic logic, next to that of the Market and Public (State) support, that is highly productive in a multitude of situations to resolve problems of access to resources, knowledge, skills, means of production, reputation building (important for the general art economy / market that is essentially a reputation economy), distribution infrastructures and more. The commons is not an ant-thesis to the market, nor is it replacement for public support structures, much rather it is complementary. Current debates about crowd funding that have suddenly become popular (surprise!?) are hopelessly beside the point, they reflect the simple logic of established cultural institutions who see their public funding go down and want to compensate this monetary loss simply by extracting more money from 'the crowd' - rather than rethinking the nature of their own practice and ways of working. We can see that this will lead nowhere as 'the crowd' will no t be willing to supplement dwindling public arts funds, meanwhile not getting anything new and not getting a stake or a new kind of involvement in the organisations and their cultural output. In other words, this short term strategy amounts to the same as simply raising the prices of your ticket sales, and we know what the result of this will be, raise them too much and the audience will stay away.After two conferences (2008 and 2010) and extended discussions in the local and international environment the main observation that I take from the Economies of the Commons debate is that new realities are forcing cultural organisations to both rethink how they work and how they raise support for their activities. Replacing public funding with a commons based revenue stream will not work, while complete commercialisation will de the death trap for what makes this cultural activity most valuable (i.e. public accessibility, active dialogue, reuse and remix, critical engagement of the aesthetics and politics of experimental and media arts).Therefore it seems that hybrid models of practice need to be developed very urgently. Public funding should not be discarded, but should be fought for and where possible reinstated in the future, if current cutback plans are indeed effected (as it looks now they will be). But next to that more robust support structures need to be developed that range from shared resources and infrastructures (inter-institutional), a more active community centric relationship between cultural organisations and their public beyond the prismatic jargon of crowd funding and crowd sourcing - i.e. based on genuine relationships of mutual interest and not seeing 'the crowd' as an amorphous body from which to suck the blood for a vampire-like existence as a non-living / non-dead entity, AND a critical look at (y es!) monetisation of the value created in arts and cultural contexts through established and emerging market mechanisms - not for the sake of profit but for the sake of sustaining that what is truly valuable and keeping it open and accessible.From what I see evolving now none of these three channels will deliver on their own (public support, the commons, the market). So, if we are to be serious about the future of the practices we have so long been involved in, my feeling is that only a complementary strategy will point a way ahead, however difficult and frustrating that route will be. So far the ECommons conferences have not produced a single model of how to effect a new and sustainable strategy, but they do more than simply raise the question. Where the focus during the ECommons events has been on heritage / archives / on-line resources, the Free Culture Forum (FCF) in Barcelona has moved in its last edition towards the question of economic sustainability of commons based or free culture practices from the perspective of the producer - a first document in this direction can be found here:http://fcforum.net/en/sustainable-models-for-creativity/declarationFCF is now in the process of launching a new research initiative to try and substantiate the suggestion made in the declaration of the 2010 edition (and will reconvene in 2011 also). Hopefully this research can be developed to further strengthen the attempts at building new hybrid and more robust and sustainable support models in view of an untrustworthy state that capitulates to the pressure of a global reconfiguration of the international economy on the one hand, and market fundamentalism on the other.It is clear at least that the discussion is both economic and political, but I think we cannot wait anymore for the state to get its act together, and should move forward into the domain of what has long been called the post-governmental condition.------------On the situation in The Netherlands:While I sympathise with all attempts locally to address the funding cutback in the arts sector in The Netherlands, and actions to amend its potentially disastrous effects, when looking at the specific domain of new media culture or e-culture (as it is named in NL), it would be wrong to assume that the current policy proposal is somehow irrational or ill-conceived, or not properly thought through. Quite on the contrary, the suggestions made by the state secretary are the perfectly logical culmination point of a shift in discourse and funding priorities well underway before the financial crisis, which is supposed to be the root cause of this austerity operation.Already during discussions in preparation for the infamous Practice to Policy conference (Towards a New Media Culture in Europe, 1997), policy makers at the Ministry of Culture repeatedly voiced their concern that an entirely new sector of cultural and artistic activity around the new media would place a disproportional burden on the public budget for culture. It was more or less unthinkable that this could be payed for at the expense of existing cultural infrastructures (slash the Opera's for new media culture? - not an option). Consequently other funding opportunities needed to be identified, ranging from a closer alignment with industry (art and industry), education (formal and informal learning), and the social and care sector (social quality). Only a cross-sectoral approach, tapping i nto the resources available in these different sectors would be able to resolve the investment needs to let the new media culture field blossom.And actually this strategy worked quite well - the Waag Society with its foot simultaneously in culture, innovation, education and care is the living embodiment of this idea.A few years down the road, however, the creative industries meme (under influence of Blairite Britain and third way politics - also highly popular in NL) started to gain traction. Creative Industries as an idea provided policy makers with the ideal solution to this infrastructure problem for new media culture: Public money would not be simply public funding - spend once and it comes back to you next year - but instead presented itself as an investment opportunity, where new initiatives could be set up that would sustain themselves in the market and that would even generate a substantial contribution to the general economy offering a profitable payback for society and the government (through tax revenues).Obviously, the creative industries meme was a much more attractive proposition for these overburdened policy makers than new media culture or arts. We have seen in policy making, debates, writing, discourse that words such as 'art', 'autonomous', 'culture' have all been side-lined, while 'experimentation' now became a natural part of 'innovation', making it subservient to an implied economic logic or expected economically beneficial long term effects. Art and economy became a popular subject for a state secretary of culture about two policy generations ago, and she was herself coming from the business community, not from public administration, let alone the arts field.The current transformation of the separate sectors of design, architecture and e-culture into 'creative industries', baptised with a new investment fund is in no way a contradiction of this trend, but instead its absolutely logical culmination. This new labelling is more than a mere semantic exercise - it is deliberate strategy to eradicate 'autonomous experimentation' and make cultural production subservient to an economised market logic. It is also an effective tool for the complete depolitisation of art.Critics in The Netherlands, again I sympathise with their criticism, have absolutely no stance to claim that this is a sudden or a new development, that the arts sector (not just the media arts / new media culture) could not see this coming. Already in 1999 / 2000 former director of De Balie Chris Keulemans and design critic Max Bruinsma wrote an extensive series of well researched and argued essays for Dutch national daily De Volkskrant critiquing the 'economisation of culture', right about the time when at De Balie itself we were developing the Tulipomania DotCom conference (2000) at the instigation of Geert Lovink. Warnings that the economisation of culture meant a disregard for the enormous societal value of autonomous experimentation in the arts and its ambiguous and often untraceable trickle down effects in society (and economy), in favour of short-term economistic market driven view of cultural supply and demand structures.Only when the cutbacks were finally announced did the art world spring into some kind of action (street protests in the Fall of 2010) and now is facing dramatic consequences of well over a decade of inaction and unwillingness to critically engage the shifting discourses in policy formation and politics at large. In the current situation the arts world is set back by miles and needs to play a hyper-urgent catch up game, most likely unable to prevent as yet immeasurable damage.It is important, when developing a critique or actions aimed at challenging these policies, to understand where they come from and how they are formed - they do not just appear randomly and out of nowhere. Obviously it is never too late to spring into action - but is VERY late!As for myself, I will not actively protest but support any well argued critiques, for the rest I'd rather spend my time building alternatives.Bests,Eric

From the NIMK Newsletter: Media Art, We CareThe Dutch Secretary of state for culture, Halbe Zijlstra, has published his policy plan for the coming years on June 10th. In contrast to the official recommendations given to him by his advisory board, the Raad voor Cultuur, these historic cutbacks will not be spread out over a number of years but will take immediate effect as of January, 2013.Next to the devastating effect for the whole field of emerging arts and innovation, this means that the Netherlands Media Art Institute is facing a 100% cut in its structural governmental funding.Ever since the foundation of MonteVideo gallery in 1978, the Netherlands Media Art Institute has specialized in media and electronic art that seeks the creative possibilities of contemporary media and technology. Today we are an internationally renowned and all- round cultural organization, active and recognized in the areas of creation, presentation, research and conservation.The collection of the Netherlands Media Art Institute comprises over 2,000 works of more than 500 (inter)national artists and is the beating heart of the Institute. Historically, international exchange has always been an essential part of media art. At this moment, we annually distribute works from our collection to up to 35 countries worldwide. The total spectrum of activities includes exhibitions, education and research, and a high level of international cooperation.Through such diverse functions, the Institute fulfils its role as intermediary for the media art sector: building bridges between artists, art institutions and the public: a center of expertise that makes its resources widely available.Contrary to all recommendations and expectations we are now facing major challenges in keeping the Institute alive in order to remain an active leading player in the field of art, technology and innovation.We are very much aware that the days of individualism are history. Alliances within and beyond the arts, partnerships and shared leadership will be key to help us through these unstable economic, political and social times.The Netherlands Media Art Institute, being a valuable node in an international network, believes in the strength of this Institute, the sector and the potential of the artists and our partners. We are dedicated to invest all of our energy and efforts to keep media art vibrant and alive.We welcome your response! We'd like to hear your opinion about NIMk and about the current situation. Send your response to info-eEClSRvOMNE< at >public.gmane.org and we publish it online or use the responsbox online (only for facebook users): http://nimk.nl/eng/media-art-we-careImportant linksResponse by the art and new media institutions Steim, V2_, Mediamatic, De Waag Submarine Channel, WORM and NIMk: http://nimk.nl/eng/response-new-media-and-art-institutions-to-govermental-cuts-source-of-innovation-is-eliminatedDe Zaak Nu: http://www.dezaaknu.nl/nieuws/2011/06/15/dear_mr_zijlstraSign the online Petition: http://petities.nl/petitie/bezuinigen-op-cultuur-zonder-alle-feiten-nooit

Datapoints re: the Hockey Riot in Vancouver observed after the game finished for about an hour.1. The gender ratio was roughly 50-50.2. Women seemed as aggressive as men.3. At least half the folks had cameras of one sort or another and wereconstantly taking pictures.4. The crowd overall was cheerful.5. Lots of alcohol and marijuana but not a lot of falling down drunk people.6. Almost no one was covering their faces.What does that sound like. To me it seems rather more like a concertaudience than the makeup of a serious riot.I think the key things though was the gender equality, the cameras, thegeneral good cheer and the uncovered faces. What made this different from a rock concert was the presence of the police.They were costumed differently from normal rock concert security-kitted upin riot gear complete with black uniforms, shields, weapons etc.etc.But nor was this Seattle, the G20 Toronto or Tahir Square. These folksweren't afraid of being seen and recognized, they were going out of theirway to be recognized and they wanted that recognition, captured andpresumably re-presented to the world via SMS, Facebook or Youtube and the tvnews.This wasn't a riot. It was a performance with much of the violence as far asI could see it being done for photo capture and transmission rather than outof deviltry, rage or simple youthful destructiveness. On one of the newsshows a reporter passed along a story that the original truck which wasburned near the hockey rink had been deliberately brought to the site andleft exposed there so that it could be torched should the Canucks lose.What is televised will not be the revolution.

Hi Florian and Matzeconsider the italian point of view. In this moment, and after a process lasted at least 10 years, research inside University is practically zero ( in all fields ) .And there are practically no structures that can bridge between private spaces, industries and cultural systems.The Media platform in Holland represented a good model to cross over between all those spaces.Digital culture is by now inside the mass culture.But who is going to make research?Mr. Google or Mr. Facebook?I doubt.Best and CiaoLorenzo

Dear Mr. Zijlstra,Honoured members of the Lower House,The memorandum announced by the Secretary of State today does notsignal a new beginning, as he indicated earlier, but simply the end of aninternationally valued cultural climate, unparalleled anywhere in the world.For Thorbecke – the spiritual father of the Secretary of State Zijlstra, orat least of his party – the policy was the result of a long-term vision. Hesaw the political manager as the designer of the age, who interpretshistorical lines and develops a vision for the future on that basis.Compared with his predecessor, the measures proposed by the Secretary ofState pale into insignificance. They choose short-term results which do nottake into account historically acquired benefits and social developments.One prominent Dutch collector called the Secretary of State’s memorandum anew “iconoclasm”. This comparison is striking and appropriate. The field ofthe “visual arts” is crippled in and by this memorandum, with fatalconsequences for the public.We live in a culture of images. Knowledge and information mainly circulatein the form of images. Art, and the visual arts in particular, are theperfect field for teaching us to deal with things we do not yet know andproviding us with unexpected visions and horizons. The visual arts relate ina self-conscious and critical way to the ubiquitous image. Therefore it isincomprehensible for a government which wants to prepare its citizens for apromising future to decide to remove the part of the social system whichguides the public in this respect. The extremely hard approach adopted inrelation to the sector of the visual arts (a reduction from 53.5 million to31 million) is not supported in this memorandum by either logical or factualarguments.Amongst other things, the Secretary of State has decided:• to halve the budget of the Mondriaan fund;• to drastically reduce the number of presentation institutions in theBIS from 11 to 6. The institutions which are no longer in the BIScannot go to the Mondriaan fund either, and therefore have no chanceof survival;• to no longer provide any subsidy for art magazines;• to put a complete stop to the government subsidy for functions whichare now carried out by biennial Manifesta, SKOR | Foundation for Artand Public Domain, the sectoral institute Premsela, Virtual Platform,the Netherlands Media Art Institute;• to put a stop to financing post-academic education for artists in theAteliers, Rijksakademie voor beeldende kunsten (Royal Academy forVisual Arts), European Ceramic Work Centre and the Jan van EyckAcademie;• to only support the continued development of 50 visual artists whohave proved themselves as top talents in the next four years;• to halve the individual basic stipends and working grants for artists,and to COMPLETELY stop the present subsidies which serve to provide anincome.The direct and immediate effects of these measures for the PUBLIC whichwants to see and experience contemporary art are catastrophic:• The makers, producers and artists form the basis of the culturalinfrastructure. After all, with no artists, there is no art. Nosubsidies or insufficient subsidies for artists to focusprofessionally and full time on creating work means that there will beno innovative work.• No post-academic education means there will be no growth of newartists who excel and can represent the Netherlands abroad. Removingthis function will immediately lead to a reduction in the provision ofDutch presentation institutions, so that the Netherlands will lose itscompetitive position. This will result in the total impoverishment ofthe art market in the Netherlands and to a weaker position of theDutch galleries on the international art market.• A minimal number of presentation institutions means that the new artwill not find its way to the public and will remain locked up instudios and warehouses. The Dutch and international public in theNetherlands will not be able to see any innovative art.• Removing an institution such as SKOR means that the presence of art inpublic spaces – democratic and by definition “anti-elitist”, becauseit is accessible to everyone free of charge – will decline.• Closing an institution such as NIMk means that a valuable, partlydigital heritage – video art and film art and media art – will becomefragmented and will no longer be accessible to the public.The innovative part of the field of the visual arts, which also determinesthe international image of the creative Netherlands, cannot survive withouta financial injection from the state.The current cultural system which was definitively torpedoed today hasproduced artists and curators who are currently making an internationalfurore and are, amongst other things, a focal point in the current biennalein Venice – the world championships of the visual arts.For example, the work of Navid Nuur has pride of place on the front cover ofthe official catalogue of the Venice Biennale. Like Amalia Pica, who livesin the Netherlands, he is taking part in the central exhibitionIlluminations. Their colleagues, Praneet Soi, Yael Bartana, Wendelien vanOldenborgh, Han Hoogerbrugge, Aernout Mik, Libia Castro, Olafur Olafsson,Edwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen, play a major role in the pavilions ofIndia, Poland, Denmark, Roma, Iceland and Dropstuff respectively. TheDutchman Guido van der Werve can be seen at the same time in the context ofthe Future Generation exhibition, where the Ukrainian Victor Pynchuck isshowing the way to the talent of the future. It is not only Dutch artistswho are a glittering presence in Venice this year; their fellow curators arealso prominently present. No fewer than five curators working in theNetherlands are furnishing pavilions this year. The Marres director, GuusBeumer, is responsible for the Dutch pavilion, the BAK director MariaHlavajova is doing the Roma Pavilion, the freelancer Maria Rus Bojan isdoing the Romanian pavilion, the SKOR director, Fulya Erdemci, is doing theTurkish pavilion and the Appel tutor, Henk Slager is doing the GeorgianPavilion.The achievement of these artists and curators were made possible due to theexistence of a cultural system which has cherished experimentation,innovation, the development of talents and an international focus up to now,and made it possible (financially). They were able to develop their work andtheir practice due to investments by the state of the Netherlands. Theseinvestments are now bearing fruit and showing results in an “export product”of which the Netherlands can be proud. This system is recognized andcelebrated all over the world because of its efficiency and future- orientedapproach.The Secretary of State’s memorandum shows that the cabinet is thinking onlyof what is producing immediate results today, and not about what cangenerate “value for the future”. We all know that there is not only a today,but also a tomorrow. We would like to see that in tomorrow’s Netherlandsthere will be still be a great deal of contemporary art and historicalheritage which can be seen frequently. We hope that the Lower House sharesthis desire and will oppose a policy that looks only at today.The boards of directors, managements and representatives of:De Zaak Nu – on behalf of the presentation institutionsSKOR | Foundation for Art and Public DomainFonds BKVBNGA – Dutch Gallery AssociationManifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary ArtNIMk – Netherlands Media Art InstituteThe post-academic institutions – de Ateliers, Rijksakademie and the Jan vanEyck AcademieThe collector Martijn Sanders and the patrons Maurice van Vaalen and RobDefaresThe artists’ action group, ‘Schuilen in het Rijks’FNV Kiem, trade unionDe Federatie van Kunstenaarsverenigingen (Federation of ArtistOrganizations)

Dutch coup d'état in art and cultureAppeal for response!www.dezaaknu.nlwww.schadekaart.nlLast week in a memorandum titled "More than Quality," the State Secretary for Culture, acting on behalf of the Dutch government (a minority government of liberals and Christian Democrats, whose hold on power relies on the support of Geert Wilders's anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV)) announced his new "vision" for the field of culture, which represents nothing less than a violent and sweeping political manoeuvre aimed at the very notion of culture and art, its role in society, and its place within the democratic sphere. With the exception of but a handful of "top international institutions" that will be spared, the entire field of internationally focused and future- oriented artistic experimentation, innovation, education, and development, which has distinguished the Netherlands and given it a leading international position in the field for many decades, is to be demolished practically overnight. Instead of preserving the values of experimentation, risk, and vision, the memorandum leaves us with rhetoric about "strengthening the responsibility and resilience of citizens" and letting "the market" take its "natural" course.To be clear: Dutch professionals in the field of art and culture are aware of the fact that some cuts in funding are necessary given today's economic situation and that a recalibration of support may be called for. Furthermore the cuts in arts funding might seem of lesser importance in light of what is happening, with the same brutality, in the fields of healthcare, social reform, education, the media and scientific research, among others. However it is in solidarity with all these realms that we raise our voices in disagreement about the sweeping, overreaching, and devastating broad cuts proposed.Speaking from the position of our field, we find it essential to point out that what we are facing is in fact an end of an internationally valued cultural climate, which we dare say is unparalleled anywhere in the world. In and outside of the Netherlands, the art world has benefited from the existence of a cultural system of generosity towards the artistic and cultural imagination of the future, which today finds itself under threat of extinction. We must articulate our disagreement with these developments, and our resistance to them together, in order to prevent the following from happening:In the fields of art and culture, the budget will shrink by 200 million Euros; for visual art it means going from 53,3 to 31 million on an annual basis, taking immediate effect in 2013. Amongst other things, this will lead to:• A 50 % cut in the budget for stipends and working grants for artists;• A 50% cut in the budget of the Mondriaan Foundation, the body e.g. responsible for supporting international projects;• A dramatic reduction of the number of contemporary visual arts institutions receiving state support (which currently include Witte de With, De Appel, BAK, Marres, etc.) from 11 to 6;• A total withdrawal of all support for art magazines;• The end of government subsidies for functions now fulfilled by the Manifesta Foundation, SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain, and the NiMK – Netherlands Media Art Institute;• The end of all public financing of the post-academic education for artists offered in places such as the Ateliers, Rijksakademie voor beeldende kunsten, European Ceramic Work Centre, and the Jan van Eyck Academie.Given this dramatic situation of the annihilation of government support for broad sectors of the internationally-recognized Dutch contemporary art field, we hope that you—our international colleagues— will respond fiercely and immediately to this extermination of our future heritage by signing this letterand returning it to us. We will hand over all letters to State Secretary Halbe Zijlstra.Ann Demeester, Guus Beumer, Maria Hlavajova, Arno van Roosmalen, representing De Zaak Nu, various institutions and individuals in the contemporary visual arts all of whom are concerned about the future of the whole cultural field in the Netherlands.For more info see:www.dezaaknu.nl andwww.schadekaart.nl

Re: New cultural policy in the Netherlands and the future of Open, Cahier on Art & the Public DomainDear friends of Open,The recent announcement that governmental funding of SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain will be stopped by 2013 means that the existence of Open, as a project of SKOR, is also threatened.On 10 June, the Dutch Secretary of State for Culture Halbe Zijlstra (VVD) presented the new cultural policy and the measures that are to be implemented in this regard. Under the pretext of economizing, an unprecedented intervention in the Dutch cultural system is being perpetrated. This above all seems to be an ideological modification of a social-liberal cultural policy into one that is neoliberal and populist. The extreme extent of the cutbacks (more than 30% for the visual arts!), the rapidity with which these must be implemented and the radical choices that have been made (whereby the Secretary of State has completely ignored the advice of the Netherlands Arts Council) would appear to confirm this. The new concept for art and culture is primarily aimed at efficiency, market processes and large audience reach.In the visual arts, not only are fusions being forced and budgets cut in half, but governmental funding of various renowned institutions is being completely stopped. This is not just the fate of SKOR, but also that of the Netherlands Institute for Media Art (NIMK), Manifesta, the Rijksacademie, Jan van Eyck, De Ateliers and six of the eleven prestigious Dutch exhibition institutes. Art journals and magazines will no longer be subsidized.Open is a groundbreaking SKOR project with an independent editorial team. It is published by NAi Publishers in collaboration with SKOR, and since 2004 has been an esteemed international platform for experimental and interdisciplinary thought on art, culture and the public domain. Open publishes profound, in-depth essays and is not aimed at a wide audience. It is not profitable and has but a small market. It is unique and invaluable. How Open can possibly manage to survive without SKOR in the current neoliberal and populist Dutch climate and its denuded cultural landscape is difficult to imagine right now…Your declaration of support is urgently needed, and SKOR and Open are calling on you to make a stand against the present, fatal developments. We ask you to sign the digital petitions below before 20 June. And please forward them within your network!On 27 June, the new cultural policy plan will be discussed in the Lower House of Parliament. We will keep you informed.Many thanks and kind regards,Jorinde Seijdel & Liesbeth MelisEditor in Chief and Editor of Open, Cahier on Art & the Public DomainPetition SKOR/OPEN in Dutchhttp://petities.nl/petitie/waar-is-de-kunst-in-de-openbare-ruimte-geblevenPetition SKOR/OPEN in Englishhttp://www.skor.nl/artefact-5543-en.htmlGeneral petition against the cutbacks in the artshttp://petities.nl/petitie/bezuinigen-op-cultuur-zonder-alle-feiten-nooitRelevant links- Slash & Burn, blog Sven Lütticken (English), http://svenlutticken.blogspot.com/- Platform Dutch art organizations, www.dezaaknu.nl- Letter by united Dutch art organizations to Halbe Zijlstra (English), http://www.skor.nl/article-5520-nl.html?lang=en