Tag Archives: networks

MAHILA/WOMEN – short film

name: Politics of Change project, short film, year start: 2009, year end: 2009, techniques: highdef video + sound, english spoken, subtitles Nl, Barefoot Solar Engineers

In MAHILA, the filmmaker steps between different worlds, going from West to East, from urban to rural surroundings. Her encounters with the experiences and observations of rural Indian women provoke reflection on the process of empowerment. In an artistic ethnography we see and hear how they are using education, technology and politics to redefine their destinies. As we trace the filmmaker’s memories we are taken into questions about story-telling. How are the women fighting to get their stories heard? Can the filmmaker tell other women’s stories?

A film about grassroots activism, eco-technology and networks of women.
A film about the Barefoot Solar Engineers.


Mahila/Women – 26:00

Summer 2006, a few months after I met Mr. Vasu Srinivasan at the Luminous Green Symposium organised by foAM, I decided to develop a project on the Women Engineers of the Barefoot College and the Women of Tilonia.
Diving into the matter, I quickly made up that a documentary movie had to become the central issue in the project. My interest for the women Solar Engineers and the Mahila Samiti women of Tilonia comes out of a personal involvement that links art, women empowerment, ecology, technology and social engagement.

Introduced to the Barefoot College project, I was struck by certain similarities between my own relatively protected work environment and the specificities of the trainings/workshops in Rajasthan.

Brussels

Okno, a Brussels-based artist-run organisation for media, art and technology, focuses on social art and community-based technological research projects. To be more specific: current projects research the implementation of sustainable energies as solar/photovoltaic and wind energy in community-based city- and meshnetworks and public space art projects.
Belgian and international artists work together in a DIY-approach and during the decentralised workshops the sharing of knowledge is an important factor to come to valuable results.

Tilonia

The solar engineer training at Barefoot College, India has a similar structure: productivity results from collective work; the learning environment is open and decentralised and knowledge is passed on in a bottom-up and hands-on way.
From start on, the decision to step into the solar project is community-based. The village selects and delegates its future women engineers for a 6 months training, and every village family engages itself to pay its share in the remuneration of the engineers to set up and maintain the village solar system. January 2008 I went a first time to Barefoot College to meet and interview the solar engineers. There I discovered that the solar workshops are only a very small part in a much bigger story concerning the empowerment of the women in question.

networks wintercamp in amsterdam

Winter Camp is an event, organized by the Institute of Network Cultures and will take place 3-7 March ‘09 in Amsterdam. Network Cultures Winter Camp will be a mix of presentations and work spaces with an emphasis on getting things done. It will be a four-day program of work spaces and plenary presentations, in which a dozen networks can work on their specific current topics. Continue reading

POC WORKSHOP REPORT

Politics of Change was a gathering in Brussels during a 3-day workshop arranged by so-on and hosted by okno, both cultural organizations composed of several members engaged in different aspects of the artistic creation.
The call, made by the filmmaker and activist Annemie Maes, had different goals. One of them was to reflect on topics as gender and activism in the cultural field, another was the sharing of common technical tools to be used for sharing and spreading the word. One of the main issues we confront today as artists, thinkers and activists, is the fragmentation of our landscapes and the difficulty of access to mainstream media.

The artistic and cultural field remains a field where only a few actors achieve a mega status and become icons. Which strategy should be used to raise the number of multiplicators and create networks to get support and collaboration?
The participants in the workshop came from different fields, writers, students, filmmakers, anthropologists, journalists, visual artists, economists, researchers.
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thoughts – lipika bansal

[flashvideo filename=https://so-on.annemariemaes.net/SO-ON/films/skype-interviews/lipika.flv height=262 width=448 image=https://so-on.annemariemaes.net/SO-ON/films/skype-interviews/lipika01.jpg /]
skype-interview from Delhi with Lipika Bansal, researcher and educator at Waag Society Amsterdam.
streaming movie — 12:30 // free art license CIK.

I am Lipika Bansal. Born, raised and based in Amsterdam from Indian origin. I studied international communications and science and technology studies. During both studies I looked at the influence of technology on society. My first study focused on ICT in developing countries and my second study looked into technologies such as biometrics and rfid and the acceptance in society of these privacy sensitive tools. Continue reading

representation – kristin prevallet

Today I am remembered as ghost, bloodsucker, banshee who fooled the camera because I have no reflection. I could go underground and no one would notice, fool Interpol and travel the globe: Johannesburg, Brussels, New York. I learned from Matsumoto to burn the tips of my fingers in order to rip off my prints. I learned to look into one person’s face and see the world. I saw myself in the world, and traveled through people’s faces. I am a ghost, and they are aliens. We are all aliens in our own home towns. There is no record of me. My passport shows me blurred into the background. I am dream-man, and I have oceans in my mind. I had a dream about a book thick and old, called UFO stories. I pulled it from the shelf and instantly knew aliens were asking me questions. They wanted to know about my home town in the global village but I couldn’t read the words:

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POC WORKSHOP REPORT

Politics of Change was a gathering in Brussels during a 3-day workshop arranged by so-on and hosted by okno, both cultural organizations composed of several members engaged in different aspects of the artistic creation.
The call, made by the filmmaker and activist Annemie Maes, had different goals. One of them was to reflect on topics as gender and activism in the cultural field, another was the sharing of common technical tools to be used for sharing and spreading the word. Continue reading

POLITICS OF CHANGE – WORKSHOP

Politics of Change is a research project in which artists, theorists and activists reflect on innovative ideas, contributions and solutions which support distributed and grassroot structures. This reflection takes place through a program of free discussion and dialogue and is documented in a multimedia archive-installation.
The focus is on the role of women at the core of these communities.
Drawing on a wide range of artistic and theoretical approaches, Continue reading

chain reaction : upgrade! skopje

The third international Upgrade gathering will be taking place in Skopje, Macedonia, September 11-14, 2008.

Chain Reaction is the annual exhibition and symposium presented by the Upgrade! International organization for 2008. The gathering, which will involve curators and artists from the Upgrade nodes that are working in 27 cities, and which is aimed at both fostering inter-network communication and collaboration as well as exposure of art and ideas to a broad public audience. In Skopje the gathering incorporates an exhibition, symposium and publication as well as a programme of screenings and performances. Continue reading

xmedk//okno session :: sustainable networks

The okno-session on sustainable networks spreads out over the totality of the xmedk-media ecologies week, from april 20 till april 25.
This workshop week at PAF, St.Erme/FR is the final touch of a month-long research into sustainable meshnetworks. It’s the cherry on the cake of a long research.

At the St.Erme/Okno studio we organise mini-workshops that cover following topics:
– setting up a mesh network with the asus-routers
– flashing the asus routers with linux (kamikaze)
– connecting arduino’s to the asus
– the choice of sensors and connecting them to the arduinos
– reading and interpreting the sensordata with python
– power the network with alternative energy:
– build a custommade windmill for the physical location
– integrate existing solarpanels
– run artistic projects on the sustainable network

pictures of the xmedk-st.erme-sessions in april 2008:
xmedk – day01, 2008
xmedk – day02, 2008
xmedk – day03, 2008
or you can download the pdf of the sustainable networks-report by clicking this link.

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