[Cu-wireless] Re: Radfest panel w/ SM

[Sascha Meinrath]

Alright, let's keep it to three -- Sarah, myself, and Bob.  This will
leave 15 minutes for each panelist and 45 minutes for Q&A.  I think we
have things fairly well wrapped up on this.

--Sascha

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004, Bob McCannon wrote:

> All,
> I have made some changes in the abstract and my description below - in CAPS.
> As I have said before, 90 minutes is not enough time for 45 minutes of
> questions AND four people. Having been on hundreds of panels, I suspect
> that what will happen is the panelists will run over and the questions
> will suffer. If Patrick is serious about 45 minutes of questions, we
> need to keep it to three.
> Bob

> >> PANELISTS:  Sarah Kanouse, Bob McCannon, Sascha D. Meinrath
> >>
> >> ABSTRACT:  In the last three years, synergies among Independent Media
> >> Centers and allied organizations have increased dramatically -- many
> >> of these media collaborations are utilizing new technologies, NEW
> >> STRATEGIES AND NEW IDEOLOGIES to distribute information, educate the
> >> public, and support the Global Justice Movement. This session will
> >> focus on these synergies, paying particular attention to cutting edge
> >> technological initiatives and new forms of radical participatory
> >> media.
> >>
> >> SARAH KANOUSE INTEREST: Practitioners of political and cultural
> >> resistance have always struggled to find ways to inhabit and modify a
> >> world largely created by the very forces they are resisting. As
> >> modernity passed into the postmodern and capital expanded from an
> >> early industrial model to a late service/consumer model, public space
> >> has become increasingly privatized and commodified. Some politically
> >> engaged cultural workers have sought more subtly disruptive methods
> >> of occupying physical, discursive, and relational spaces in order to
> >> confront and reshape them. These practices, which I describe as
> >> "viral resistance," have not arisen so much to supplant other forms
> >> of resistance, which continue to exist with arguably diminished
> >> success, but to perturb, disrupt, and reimagine spaces in which
> >> people might encounter something closer to democracy.  This paper
> >> defines and describes viral resistance through an analysis of the
> >> cultural work of Krzysztof Wodizcko, Emily Jacir, Indymedia, and
> >> Temporary Services.  The analysis also addresses critically the
> >> promise and shortcomings of the approach from both aesthetic and
> >> instrumental perspectives.
> >>
> >> BOB MCCANNON INTEREST:  I am Director of the THE LARGEST AND MOST
> >> ACTIVE MEDIA LITERACY GROUP IN THE US, THE New Mexico Media Literacy
> >> Project (NMMLP). I AM ALSO Treasurer and a founding Board member for
> >> A NEW, RADICAL MEDIA EDUCATION ORGANIZATION, the Action Coalition for
> >> Media Education (ACME). BOTH GROUPS take an activist view of media
> >> education and think that media reform should be a major part of MEDIA
> >> EDUCATION. I WILL USE A MULTIMEDIA DATABASE TO SHOW some of the
> >> cutting edge CONCEPTS AND technologies that we have created and
> >> demonstrate some of the REVOLUTIONARY curricular examples and methods
> >> that we use to interest students and adults in media SKILLS, ISSUES,
> >> MEDIA reform and participatory democracy.
> >>
> >> SASCHA MEINRATH INTEREST:  I am interested in the synergies among
> >> researchers, activists, and community organizations, particularly the
> >> developement and implementation of new, community-empowering
> >> technologies. I have overseen logistical support for numerous media
> >> projects worldwide - often working closely with people in many of the
> >> world's "hot-spots."  I am the co-founder of the Urbana-Champaign
> >> Independent Media Center Foundation and work with two software and
> >> website development companies Eggplant Active Media Worker Collective
> >> and Acorn Active Media Foundation, which I founded and whose mission
> >> is to develop software and build websites to support the Global
> >> Justice Movement. Currently, I am the project manager for the
> >> Community Wireless Network which is building software and hardware to
> >> create community-owned, not-for-profit broadband networks in cities
> >> and towns throughout the world.