Laboratorium impressions

May 5th, 2006 by Peter

aab aav aab

The idea of the crealab was formulated inside a larger ESF framework; The Memory project, which has been supported and developed for one year by a european team of volunteers, proceeds from different experiences of collecting and emphasizing the data produced during the ESF. It aims to create a space of articulation and visibility of this multiple production.

The European Social Forum (ESF) is one of those spaces where the actors themselves produce their own data and reading of the event. Their productions become thus part of the process or unfolding of the event.

For the Athens EFS, the Memory project opened a laboratory
space, called *CREALAB*, aimed at involving the participants in the production, the
gathering and the streaming of multimedia traces of the event.

(Some) people involved: Julien aka Joke (streaming connectivity, web tv), Rachid Sadaoui (web radio DJ), Carole Faure (Altermundo / coloured lamps), Pierre George (proposal wall), Nuria Verges (free music), Jean-François (servers, hardware, technical chiefcoock), Alejandra (electronics / micro, transmitters, controllers), Mayo (activist research / free open tools), Yves (mapmaster), Sophie Gosselin (theory Apo33)

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Constant at European Social Forum

May 5th, 2006 by Peter

esf-poster.jpg

This year the European Social Forum has landed on the grounds of the former Olympic Village in Athens. On the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th of May 2006 many European social non-governemental organisations gather to participate in an extensive program of seminars, talks, workshops, concerts and presentations. Constant is part of the ‘Crealab’: a temporary laboratory initiated by the Nantes based art + media collective Apo33. The lab investigates ways to deal with the ‘memory’ of the ESF, the archives, databases, image and audio collections, the streamed programmes and online remains of digital workspaces and data gathered in previous editions of the ESF..
How to keep this information alive and meaningful for future use and interpretation? Is it possible to allow for multiple interpretations and subjective readings? The program with seminars, attending groups, speakers and issues addressed can be found on the website of the 4th ESF and more general info on the mainpage of the ESF.

” The European Social Forum is, alongside Genoa and Seattle, one of the major events of the movement against neoliberal globalization and war, deregulation of labor and poverty, climate change and environmental destruction, violation of democratic rights and sexism, racism and the threat of the far right. Tens of thousands of activists participated in the first, second and third European Social Forums which took place in Florence (2002), Paris (2003) and London (2004).

The same will happen in May 2006: thousands of activists from all around Europe will meet in Athens in order to discuss about the perspectives of “the movement of the movements”, exchange their experiences from their struggle and organize coordination and solidarity networks.

We have marched together against the G8, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Prague, in Genoa, in Evian. We took part, all together, in the siege of the European Union Summits in Thessalonica, Nice, Seville, Brussels. We met during the huge antiwar rallies on the 15th of February 2003, in the mass demonstrations against racism, in working class mobilizations defending pensions, public health and education, in rallies against the destruction of the environment, the “anti”terrorist laws and repression.

Today we are more confident that another world is possible, where people will be before profit.”

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Foley workshop – Bruitage – Geluidseffectenworkshop

March 31st, 2006 by wendy

Cybersoda – Fête de l’internet – Digitale week – Celebration of internet
On March the 22nd I gave a workshop in Interface3. My prime public was between 9 and sixteen years old. I started out by explaining a little what downloading is and where you can download films legally. I gave one example, also the source of my workshop, namely www.archive.org.
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Apo33 workshop

March 5th, 2006 by Peter

SInce yesterday, Constant is the happy owner of a PC reborn as an Apodio Multimedia GNU/Linux box. This distribution is developed by the Nantes based collective Apo 33. Thanks to Julien, Sophie and Jean-Francois who helped installing this beautiful collection of mainly audio – visual open softwares running on a Mandriva system at a workshop they made at Nadine, we have some exiting new tools to work with. Thanks Apo, much appreciated –> we’re looking forward to explore Apodio!
Pictures of the workshop:

apo1.jpg apo3.jpg apo4.jpg apo5.jpg apo6.JPG apo7.jpg apo8.jpg

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Fosdem 2006

March 5th, 2006 by Peter

Some images from the Free Open Source Developers European Meeting: Fosdem 2006 organised in the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, on February 25+26 2006.

stallman.jpg stallman2.jpg audience.JPG

Above Richard Stallman speeching. The founder of the GNU project, and the Free Software Foundation and the author of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL), the most widely-used free software license, which pioneered the concept of the copyleft, pointed at the danger of software patents and of course the importance of Free Software.

Also present in the corridor: members of the VLC development team demonstrating the cross-platform power of the VLC mediaplayer on a new Intel-Macintosh, running on MacOs. Compared to the inside of a PowerPC G5, the Intel version is nearly empty.

vlc.jpg macintel.JPG

Will you ever be able to run your favorite Linux distribution on this space-consuming machine you might wonder? People from the Mactel-project have Gentoo Linux running on Apple Intel-machines. The site Osxbook.com reports having Knoppix running on a Mac-Intel, as well as Windows XP inside VMware. Look at their site for details. Tweakers.net also reports that Red Hat is working on adapting its distributions for the Intel- Mac,

There seem to be future possibilities for having a fancy metal box with internal space for an extra book-shelve on your desktop.

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Octavia Butler R.I.P.

February 28th, 2006 by wendy

This weekend Octavia Butler died.
Who, you might say: Wikipedia on Octavia
Her page on Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
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Preparing presentation De Taalpolitie

January 24th, 2006 by fsnelting

DSC00186.JPG DSC00190.JPG

Together with Roger Teeuwen we spent a day wallpapering long lists of auto-generated terms. The wallpaper is part of the presentation of De Taalpolitie (The Language Police) which will open on January 26 in Witte de With (Rotterdam, The Netherland) as part of the Exploding Television programme.

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Workshop on performing identity

January 13th, 2006 by Peter

thursday january 12
OT, Rotterdam, Netherlands

52 Rotterdam students of the Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam who will be the crew for the project ‘The Language Police’, took part in a workshop on performing identity. With guest actor Jamal Boukhriss who perfomed his monologue ‘alone against the world’, and hosted by theatercompany Onafhankelijk Toneel the workshop offered strategies for exploring one’s alter ego’s and possible selves. The result of the workshop is a series of videoportraits in which the students present ‘who they are’. These introductions will be shown in Witte de With, from 26 januari onwards, and mark the start of the process of investigating usage and alternatives for te word ‘allochtoon’. Images of this workshop can be viewed in the image repository.

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Cinéma et féminisme

December 19th, 2005 by laurence

Comment la question féministe travaille-t-elle le cinéma ?

Mardi 20 décembre à 20 heures
Petit Théâtre Mercelis, rue Mercelis 13, 1050 Bruxelles
entrée libre

Soirée inaugurale à l’occasion du programme d’études féministes organisé
dans l’enseignement artistique par Sophia (Réseau fédéral d’études
féministes) et Constant (Association arts et media) avec la participation de La Cambre (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels) et de l’Ecole de Recherche Graphique (sous réserve).

Deux films

Saute ma ville de Chantal Akerman, 13’ (1968)
Chantal Akerman, avec son premier film, explore une forme d’être-là,
éparse, où le rapport-au-monde humain, régulé, a été littéralement
explosé. Abolition de soi, explosion de soi.

Maintenant d’Ines Rabadan, 18’ (2002)
Dans un autre genre, une explosion de soi non par l’abolition mais par
l’imagination. Ou comment Else employée dans une usine de poupées brise le
cercle de sa vie.

Deux interventions

Approches féministes du cinéma
par Geneviève Van Cauwenberge, Chargée de cours à l’Ulg

L’exposé retracera l’évolution de la théorie féministe du cinéma aux
Etats-Unis à partir de «Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema», le texte
fondateur de Laura Mulvey paru en 1975. Il montrera en quoi les films de
Chantal Akerman, en particulier «Jeanne Dielman», ont nourri la réflexion
féministe Outre-Atlantique dans le domaine du cinéma.

De l’intuition du temps et du sens interne – d’Akerman aux réalisatrices
contemporaines.

par Muriel Andrin, Maître de conférences à l’ULB, l’UIA et la Cinémathèque
Royale

Dès la réalisation de ses courts-métrages et surtout de « Je, tu, il, elle
» et « Jeanne Dielman », Chantal Akerman a repensé l’idée du temps au
cinéma. Cette nouvelle approche atteint à la fois l’environnement
domestique des personnages mais également la représentation des corps et
de leur gestion de l’espace. Si elle a été posée il y a plus de 25 ans, la
question du temps filmique et de son rapport à l’espace et aux corps est
toujours d’actualité et fait l’objet d’un retravail constant par les
réalisatrices contemporaines (Jane Campion, Claire Denis, Naomi Kawase,
etc.). Dans un contexte aux enjeux sociaux, politiques et culturels
extrêmement différents, qu’est-il advenu de cette intuition temporelle ?

Avec le soutien du Collège des Bourgmestre et Echevins à l’initiative de
Sylvie Foucart, Echevine de la Culture, du Patrimoine et de la Petite enfance .

Merci à Need Productions

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Structure 16/10

October 16th, 2005 by laurence

1. At the beginning
“Perhaps this installation aims to be just that kind of altar: the sheer exposure to film magic, free from anecdote or direct emotions, where the viewer may hang around, pick something of the perpetual flame, brood over these adventures of black-and-white, change perhaps my images against his or hers, replace Catherine Belkhodja’s beautiful face by a closer and dearer face, and go away with an imaginary picture unrolling within his/her deep inner screening room with that untranslatable feeling we Germans call Sehnsucht, and we Brazilians saudade, and the rest is silence.” Silent Movie, Chris Marker
Selected Memories
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