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radio Nettime: N5M: Indymedia and...
plagio - 06.09.2003 16:16
so with Next5Minutes/TacticalMedia up next week, some discussions seem to sort of open...
television
radio
people
&
the mediacity
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2003 15:54:00 +0200
From:  cilela@tiscali.it
Subject: FW: call for a campaign to save amsterdams free media/
From: "geert lovink"
To: "Nettime-l"
Subject: call for a campaign to save amsterdams free media
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 13:47:59 +1000
(posted to nettime-l with the permission of the authors. there are efforts under way to get this campaign up and running. a lot of the communication will in the first instance be coordinated via nettime-nl. more information such as email addresses, lists and blogs will be available next week
during the next five minutes festival.
/geert)
From: "David Garcia"
"Help Amsterdam Free Media" campaign.
Over recent months there have been many discussions, naturally in Dutch, of
the progressive destruction of Amsterdam's unique legacy of community access and independent media networks. This hatchet job has been achieved by a combination of ruthless corporate greed, the lack of knowledge and (frankly) incompetence of local politicians, (supposedly the guardians
of the uniquely local democratic freedoms of expression) and the (almost total) apathetic cultural, social and political media makers and artists that have used Amsterdam's media but seem unwilling to put up a real fight
when it is threatened. To demonstrate the dimension of what is being lost here let me make a direct comparison.
In London at Hyde Park Corner there is something called Speaker's Corner. It is known around the world that any one can turn up and stand on a soap box and say what they like. If Speakers Corner were to be snuffed out by a powerful real-estate developer, and
simply re-located without warning to a suburb (it is situated in a prime piece of London Real estate worth millions) with the icompetence or worse connivence of local politicians, it would warrent more than an
indifferent shrug it would cause a national (and maybe international) outcry. But the
equivelent decimation in the common space of the media landscape so far illicits bearly a ripple of public indignation.
There are a few voices raised in anger notably of media artist and activist
Mauz who for more than a year has been a Jeremiah warning (with an astute
technical analasys of the weapons being mobilised against our local media
culture) there have been a few others.
Next 5 Minutes began a decade ago as an event which was built around
"Tactical Television". N5M would not have happened without a uniquely local media culture generating certain forms of media freedom and energy that made Amsterdam briefly "a pirate utopia for tactical media". This week the final embers of those freedoms were snuffed out as the company managing the cable networks UPC changed -with little or no warning- the frequencies
by which Amsterdam TVs are tuned to the community access channels. At a stroke
the carefully nurtured viewing publics of Amsterdam's community media makers were instantly decimated as few people know how to (or are willing) to re-tune their TV sets. And meanwhile the organisation SALTO which is the appointed guardian of the community access dimension continues to sail
on with its ambitious projects as though nothing has happened. Community access TV makers will continue to beaver away but public has left the building forgetting only to turn off the lights.
The current edition of Next 5 Minutes, Amsterdam's festival of Tactical
Media has coincided with these developments. Of all the editors of N5M only Menno Grootveldt has fully embraced the implications of these developments
he has been the only one of us editors who fought hard for a debate on the crisis (well the crisis was probably years ago, we are far to late) of Amsterdam tactical media.
Time to admit that Menno and Mauz should have been heeded long ago and that we must use the festival to (at least try) to reverse the tide of indifference. Time for a campaign. Time for important programs and
long-time users of Amsterdam's media including PARK, Belisma but above all Hoeksteen (including all the politicians of all parties that have benefited from that platform and social network) to stand up for Amsterdam's media freedoms.
Although little valued at home, Amsterdam's tactical and community media projects has a significance way beyond the boarders of the city. Next 5 Minutes is one of the events that made people outside of the Netherlands
aware of our the city's remarkable media structure as a unique laboratory for cultural experimentation. A campaign against the its summary extinction by corporate greed must be launched at the Next 5 Minutes and if possible be internationalised.
Our enemy may not be an obvious tyrant like Milosovic shutting down a local radio station like B92. It is a less obvious, faceless and even more dangerous enemy a - winner takes all capitalist fundementalism-
ruthlessly crushing oppositional media. After the Help B92 campaign we now
desperately need a "Help Amsterdam's Free Media" campaign.
David Garcia
--
Hi David,
But also I would request you also mention the repression on the Free radios.
Not just in Amsterdam/ The Netherlands, because i see many simularities
with the capitalist globilisation threath to Public Access TV in Amsterdam.
Actually the Radio situation is even worse, since the government decided to sell FM band frequencies to the highest bidder. This auction was ealier this year and now, September 1st, is is in full effect: Much more of the same commercial rubbish on the Dutch airwaves, by stations owned by foreign
multinationals.
Free, non-commercial, UNSUBSIDIZED Stations, who have been running independently, autonomously for more than TWENTY years are forced off the air, peacefull sinceer people who do nobody any harm are being
criminalized and getting harsh juridical punishments after decennia of being
tolerated / accepted by authorities & the public. While they do the contrary of
criminal activities: They dont steal anything, THEY GIVE! ( volunteer radio work
with art, alternative music, and information for cultural and social communities.)
In fact the only Radiostations left on air in the Netherlands WITHOUT commercial breaks in programming are ILLEGAL by law!!
And again, the Netherlands is not unique on the planet in all this, maybe even the capitalistic globalisation crushing free/open media is even a bit late here... But if we cannot even save it here (with the relative 'strong Amsterdam potential), where can we? It is a major threath to real
democracy (iI can get more specific about this if wanted). Amsterdam is good as a
basis to help it save or even return anywhere on the planet.
I'll write more later,
bye for now.
Groetjez,
MauzZ
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