Al Jazeera's "Control Room"

Ronda Hauben

The documentary "Control Room" [1] opened in NYC on Friday night May
21, 2004. The opening weekend shows were sold out, and the reviews in
the NY press encouraged people to see the film and to take it
seriously. On the surface, "Control Room" appears to be a film about
the Arab language media organization Al Jazeera and their coverage of
the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The actual focus of the film
is, however, considerably more profound.

"Multitudes, Creative Organisation, and the Precarious Condition of
New Media Labour"

Fibreculture Journal

Call for Papers

Post-Fordist techniques of flexible accumulation coupled with the
widespread use of new communications media have had a profound impact
on the organisation of social relations. In recent years the
"Creative Industries" have emerged across the UK and Ireland, United
States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Europe and Asia as the
new idiom
by which governments, the culture industries and the higher education
sector engage in the management of populations. The primary mission
of the Creative Industries is to extract an economic value from a
heterogeneous array of cultural practices.

Accompanying the self-valorising rhetoric of the Creative Industries
is an intensification of the precarious situation of cognitive
labourers — a mode of engagement that is common to those working in
both symbolic production and the more menial tasks associated with
the service industries. While the specific forms of exploitation of
labour-power vary across industries and along the lines of class,
gender, ethnicity, age and geography, all precarious labour practices
generate new forms of subjectivity and connection, organised about
networks of communication, cognition, and affect.

These new forms of co-operation and collaboration amongst creative
labourers contribute to the formation of a new socio-technical and
politico-ethical multitude. The contemporary multitude is radically
dissimilar from the unity of "the people" and the coincidence of the
citizen and the state. What kinds of creative organisation are
specific to precarious labour in the era of informatisation? How do
they connect (or disconnect) to existing forms of institutional life?
And how can escape from the subjectification of precarious labour be
enacted without nostalgia for the social state or utopian faith in
the spontaneity of auto-organisation?

This issue of the Fibreculture Journal is interested in receiving
individually and multi-authored contributions that may adopt the
following expressive forms:

* theoretical interventions

* reflexive empirical studies of precarious labourers

* personal accounts by those working in new media and related
industries

Sarai Reader 04: Crisis/Media

We are happy to announce the print and web publication of Sarai Reader 04: Crisis/Media.

Crisis/Media, the fourth publication in the Sarai Reader series, examines issues of global crises — (war, civil conflict, terrorism and state terror, the deep instabilities of everyday life, technologies of surveillance and political life, threats to the freedom of expression) — and critically analyses the representation of these crises in the media. Are the crises in the media also instances of crises of the media? Have current forms of media practice lost the ability to articulate questions of conflict and contention, other than in terms of crises? Can media practitioners evolve
forms of practice that are not beholden to the idea of Crisis?

The Sarai brings together several distinguished critical voices, as well as new, emerging writers from all over the world (and especially from South Asia) to attend to ideas, situations, contexts and dillemmas related to crises and the media.

Submit to Blacked-Out Media

A project of the New York City Indymedia Video Collective, Blacked-Out Media is a 28-minute weekly television series that provides alternative news media and is an experimental showcase for creative video works that reject the homogeneity of mainstream media and culture as a whole. The show is divided into projects that cover a range of themes and tactical forms that as a whole, fit into a documentary news-based structure. Each project is organized by show producers or working groups that take responsibility for curating works that fit in the larger structure.

Anarcha People's History Project
2004 Summer Tour Schedule

The Anarcha Project is a people's history project that
seeks to increase women + trans' voices in our current media and for the
historical record. The Project, when complete, will consist of a book
comprised of selected interviews, a video archive of all the interviews
and the website, which will include audio portions of some interviews.

The Anarcha Project is hitting the road again, this time around the
NorthEast/eastern plains. I would love to come to your community and
talk to anarchist and antiauthoritarian people (mostly women and trans
folks, although this definition is not set in stone). I have interviewed
people from all over the west coast, the southwest and in a bit of the
mid-southern US.

"Cannes Stands to Cheer Story of Che's Road to Revolution"

Hugh Davies, Telegraph

As the 20th century's most romanticised revolutionary,
Ernesto "Che" Guevara, dead since 1967, is being
immortalised in a rash of new films led by a British-backed
epic based on his writings. At two screenings in Cannes
yesterday, audiences reacted with standing ovations.

"FCC vs. SFLR:

Round One Ends Inconclusively!"

San Francisco Liberation Radio

On Friday April 30th San Francisco Liberation Radio had our first day in
court. The matter we were debating was very specific and only touched on
all the deep constitutional issues which are at play,
instead it focused sharply on the simple process by which the FCC gained an
entry and seizure warrant.

"European Manifesto for Minority
Community Media" Petition Campaign

Sign the European Manifesto for Minority Community Media & support your
(local) media!

Surf to www.multicultural.net and add your
name to the hundreds of media professionals and organisations, minority
organisations and activists, politicians and concerned individuals who
already signed.

hydrarchist writes:

"A Global Sense of Place"

David Garcia

A Report from the Eterea 2
Meeting of Italian Tactical Television Makers. From March 25-28th, 2004 the second major gathering of the Telestreets took place
in Sennegallia.
Here are some notes from a short visit to the world of Telestreets.

Background

Telestreet, the latest wave in the rich history of Italian media activism,
has been fairly widely reported on this list and elswhere but some of the
basics are worth revisiting briefly.

Telestreets are semie-legal micro-broadcasters, literally street TV makers
using small transmitters to send programes that mostly reach no more than a
few blocks. Telestreets range from making their own local items to capturing
the programming (such as big football matches) from the commercial satellite
operators and re-broadcasting them for free on Telestreet networks.

"Life Beyond the Market" Contributions Sought

Greenpepper Magazine

GREENPEPPER is an Amsterdam-based environmental and social justice
magazine focusing on direct and autonomist action.

To coincide with the Life After Capitalism conference to be held in New
York City in August 2004 the theme one of the upcoming issues of the
magazine is LIFE BEYOND THE MARKET.