Self-Organisation: Counter-Economic Strategies (2006)

The book Self-organisation / counter-economic strategies was initiated by the artists’ group Superflex, but it is not about them. It is about the many approaches to the creation, dissemination and maintenance of alternative models for social and economic organisation, and the practical and theoretical implications, consequences and possibilities of these self-organised structures. The counter-economic strategies presented here are alternatives to classical capitalist economic organisation that exploit, or have been produced by, the existing global economic system.

Essays by ten writers cover a wide cross-section of activity, from new approaches to intellectual property and the implications of the free/open source software movement to political activism and the de facto self-organisation embodied in informal architecture and the so-called black economy.

Self-organisation/ counter-economic strategies is not a comprehensive overview or an attempt to unify these diverse interpretations. It is intended as a toolbox of ideas, situations and approaches, and includes many practical examples.

Commissioned texts include Will Bradley on GuaranaPower, Anupam Chander & Madhavi Sunder on fan fiction and intellectual property, Bruno Comparato on the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil, Mika Hannula on self-organisation and civil society, Alfonso Hernández on the barrio of Tepito in Mexico City, Susan Kelly on “What is to be done?”, Lawrence Lessig on problems with copyright law, Marjetica Potrč on parallelism and fragmentation in the Western Balkans and the EU, and Tere Vadén on the future of information societies, plus interviews with Craig Baldwin (A.T.A. Gallery, Other Cinema), Brett Bloom (Temporary Services, Mess Hall), Sasha Costanza-Chock (Indymedia), Adrienne Lauby (Free Speech Radio News), and Nigel Parry (Electronic Intifada).

Editors Will Bradley, Mika Hannula, Cristina Ricupero, Superflex
Publisher Sternberg Press, 2006
Producer NIFCA, Nordic Institute of Contemporary Arts; with The Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki; The Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Montana, Denmark
NIFCA publication # 28
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Licence 2.5
ISBN 1933128135
336 pages

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Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss (ed.): Mashup Cultures (2010)

This volume brings together cutting-edge thinkers and scholars together with young researchers and students, proposing a colourful spectrum of media-theoretical, -practical and -educational approaches to current creative practices and techniques of production and consumption on and off the web. Along with the exploration of some of the emerging social media concepts, the book unveils some of the key drivers leading to participatory engagement of the User.

Mashup Cultures presents a broader view of the effects and consequences of current remix practices and the recombination of existing digital cultural content. The complexity of this book, which appears on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the international MA study program ePedagogy Design – Visual Knowledge Building, also by necessity seeks to familiarize the reader with a profound glossary and vocabulary of Web 2.0 cultural techniques.
With contributions by Axel Bruns, Brenda Castro, Doris Gassert, David Gauntlett, Mizuko Ito, Henry Jenkins, Owen Kelly, Noora Sopula & Joni Leimu, Torsten Meyer, Eduardo Navas, Christina Schwalbe, Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss, Wey-Han Tan and Tere Vadén & Juha Varto.

Publisher Springer, 2010
ISBN 370910095X, 9783709100950
Length 256 pages

review (Mike Mosher, Leonardo Reviews)

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REFF RomaEuropa FakeFactory (2010) [Italian]

The reinvention of the real through critical practices of remix, mash-up, re-contextualization, reenactment

Romaeuropa FakeFactory is an act of artistic and technological hacking, a platform for global discussion and a performance that, beginning in 2009, has dealt with the themes of active, critical and creative innovation, confronting the management of cultural and technological policies related to these areas. The story begins with the opening of the Romaeuropa WebFactory, a digital art competition launched in 2008 by the Romaeuropa Foundation (Fondazione Romaeuropa) and Telecom Italia. Oppressive copyright conditions, such as the unilateral transfer of the rights to the works submitted and a ban on the use of techniques like mashup, cutup, remix but conversely giving the Romaeuropa Foundation and Telecom Italia the right to remix the works, inspired the creation of a Fake capable of becoming a point for multi-disciplinary analysis of the possibilities offered by freely available knowledge, contents and resources: a chance to reverse the logic of the competition and bring to light the contradictions, limits and implications of such a typical, reactionary cultural policy.

“Remix the world! Reinvent Reality!” is one of the principal themes that has inspired the REFF, from an act of détournement and cybersquatting – that brought to life the creation of a remix skills competition determining in 2009 a reversal of the Romaeuropa Foundation and Telecom Italia’s policy on the management of intellectual property rights – to the presentation of REFF’s instances and methodologies to the Cultural Commission of the Italian Senate (Commissione Cultura del Senato della Repubblica Italiana), up to the current production of the REFF book, as a global effort to create a working business model that implements the concepts and demands expressed by the RomaEuropa FakeFactory. Supporters of the REFF are found all over the world: over 80 partners among universities, artists, academies, associations, hackers, researchers, designers, journalists, politicians, magazines, networks, activitst, art critics, architects, musicians and entrepreneurs together with all the people who share a belief that art, design and new technologies can unite towards a critical, yet positive vision of a world that can create new opportunities and new ways of being, collaborating and communicating.

English version to be published soon.

Authors
Publisher (Fake Press)
Publisher (Derive Approdi)

Foreword by: Bruce Sterling
Edited and produced by FakePress and Derive&Approdi
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike 2.5 Italy.

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