David Garcia / 10-09-04
http://www.midiatatica.org/autolabs/blog/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1
08

In the concluding chapter of the second volume of Manuel Castells' magnum opus he declares that "it is in the back alleys of society, whether in alternative electronicnetworks or in in grass roots networks of communal resistance,
that I sensed the embryos of a new society.."

The new social movements "mirroring and counteracting the networking logic of domination", he identified earlier in the volume, have indeed proliferated, growing into a highly visible global movement, and to some degree,succeeding in propelling their values into the wider world, but his
hopes for"a new society" remain, for the time being, embryonic. But the backalleys he spoke of back then should not be overlooked for signs ofchange. In one such "back alley" in Itaquera, one of the many poor districts that make up the east zone, on the peripheries of Sao Paulo, some
thing strange has indeed been happening . . .

Among the market stalls and street traders a surprising number of high priced shops can be found selling furniture and consumer electronics. In one of these shops a minor consternation is occurring among the sleek sales-men
whose job is to induce the local populace into a lifetime of debt. On their expensive widescreen TVs, instead football or the media giant Globos endless diet of glossy soaps, through bursts of static the inflammatory graphic artist Latuff suddenly appears. He is instructing a group of group of wide
eyed youngsters how stamps can be used to print provocative political slogans on bank notes. He is followed by agroup of teenage girls (some as young as fourteen) teaching other kids how to avoid pregnancy and AIDS with a hilarious demonstration of condom use. But the TVs are quickly retuned
reinstating their normal function in the Favelas as narcotic dream machines.

These interruptions to normal service originate from a series of live pirate transmissions emanating from a party held just across the street. The party is part of 'finde' a series of events marking the completion of Autolabs an
experiment in transplanting tactical media labs in free software from the comparatively privileged networks frequented by well educated artists and activists into three districts: Ermelino matarazzo, Itaquera and So Miguel
Paulista, in the Eastern zone of the city.

Autolabs was initiated by artist Giseli Vasconcelos who moved swiftly to capitalize on the success of the first Brazilian tactical media lab of 2003. formed an alliance of artists, hackers andactivists to apply tactical media
principles to the Favelas of Sao Paulo. By the end of June 2004 were new three media centers have been established not only based not only on open free software but also on autonomous beliefs and practices. The fact that we
are not simply witnessing another NGO exercise in community education was evident by the fact that some of the instructors were winding up the project, with a live practical demonstration of how to make pirate
television.

>From February 2004 Autolabs have been teaching the principles and practices
of tactical media, where it most matters, and teaching it tactically.

Cannibals of the Tactical

"I am only interested in what is not mine" proclaimed Oswalde de Andrade in
the 1928 manifesto which launched the Brazilian literary movement
"Anthropofagia". Some of his rhetoric at first appears reminiscent of dada
or surrealism, another manifestation of the countless modernist movements
based on appropriation, juxtaposition or collage. But in the context of post
colonial Brazil we are looking at something more extreme, more violent, more
intimate, not so much a movement of appropriation as one of absorption, of
cannibalism. Andredes inspiration was the Tupi Indians warrior culture which
involved eating parts of the bodies of their enemies. To be eaten was a
great compliment to the fallen, as the Tupi warriors chose "not just any
enemy, only brave warriors_ They chose their others in terms of the vital
power imparted by their proximity.. They allowed themselves to be affected
by their others to the point of absorbing them into their bodies_" (3).

Tactical media is latest invader to be consumed by the fine young cannibals
of Brazil. The process began when a group of three activists based in Sao
Paulo Giseli Vasconcelos, Tatiana Wells and Ricardo Rosas,responded to a
request that someone host a "tactical media lab" in Latin America. This
invitation, was posted on various lists (more in hope than expectation) by
the organizers of the Next 5 Minutes, the Amsterdam festival of tactical
media. Tactical media labs (which were held with varying degrees of success)
in various locations around the world. TMLs were a key element Next 5
Minutes, organization's attempt to both broaden its geographical compass and
decentralize its editorial process. In the event Brazils tactical media lab
(MdiaTtica) turned out to be more of a festival than a workshop, attracting
nearly four thousand visitors and considerable media coverage. But more
important than visitor numbers were the powerful new networks of possibility
and action which sprang up across the social and cultural divides of Sao
Paulo and continue to bear fruit. All this is even more impressive when one
realizes that the Sao Paulo TML was literally a "no budget festival". The
remarkable story of the festival and what it changed in Sao Paolo
can be found in Ricardo Rossass report. Nine months after Mdia Ttica,
Autolabs began. And in October 2004, less than two years of intensive
experimentation willbe marked by the exhibition DigitalFagiea which will
draw together manyof the disparate threads of Brazilian media tactics in a
major museumof media in the center of Sao Paulo. The title, DigitalFagia
plainly expresses the cannibalistic intentions of the Sao Paulo
groupconfirmed in the meeting to celebrate the completion of Autolabs when
someone declared (to enthusiastic response) their intention of seizingthe
Next 5 Minutes and making a Latin American edition of thefestival that would
be based in Brazil and take place within two years.

Exceptional Brazil

The Brazilian embrace of tactical media and Autolabs in particular cannot be
understood without reference to Brazils unique and contradictory media and
software politics. From some perspectives there could be no more hospitable
a soil for tactical media than Brazil. The national government has the
worlds most active and vociferous policy on free software and the creative
commons. And it isnot simply a matter of lip service There is currently a
bill beforethe Brazilian parliament to introduce a default creative
commonslicense for all immaterial labor generated in Brazil. The charismatic
minister of culture and popular musician, Gilberto Gill is proposing, (to
the consternation of his record company) to release his next CD under a
creative commons lisence. Hundreds of computer and media centers have been
opened providing high speed internet access to the the poor districts all
running on open source platforms andapplications.

One of the principal architects of these so called Telecentros, Sergio
Amadeu
is currently being sued by Microsoft for an interview in which he compared
them to "drug dealers", getting poor countries hooked by giving their
product
by starting out, giving theirproducts away.The minister of cultures long
term friend andassociate Claudio Prado (they were exiled together in France
during thedictatorship years) is now the driving force behind Polos Digitais
a new initiative from his ministry. Between presentations at the
Autolabs, Claudio Prado took me aside to describe his visionary program of
"PolosDigitais" which involves a high speed roll out hundreds of new
mediacenters with a training and guidance taking place in a large
"mothership" in the center of Sao Paolo. The program may well have been
influenced the Autolabs initiative as there were several meetings between
Claudio Prado and the Autolabs organizers. However a number of local
activists
remain critical of the Polos Digitais program, believing that the imminence
of regional elections means that anotherwise worthwhile initiative will fail
through excessive haste coupled to a lack of understanding of what will work
in practice. But still many of those who were part of Autolabs are willing
to
take a risk and accept invitations to be involved.

GloboVibrant

Tactical Media cultures benefit from the presence of a visible enemy of
demonic
proportions. Italy may have Berlosconi but Brazil has Globo.

Just as openness about sex, drugs can lead foreigners to mistake the
Netherlands for an open and progressive society the same error could be also
be made about "Partido dos Trabalhadores", the Workers Party that currently
holding power in Brazil. The radical approach to the creative commons may be
a fact but it does not signal a wider social program of a radical nature. In
fact the sense of betrayal among those I met in Sao paulo was palpable.
Pablo Ortellado of Indymedia Brazil articulated the general disappointment
by describing how "Partidodos Trabalhadores" had been "as good a political
party can be". It had succeeded in uniting the radical splinters of the left
into a coherent party with a real chance of power, only to transformitself
into another pragmatic thirdway social democratic party,forever shying away
from any radical choices that would disturb the status quo. All this has
left the radical left more disillusioned than most, to the extent that a
vast mega city on the scale of Sao Paulo couldo nly muster 7000 marchers in
the protests that preceded the Iraq war. Rightly or wrongly much of this is
laid at the door of Globo. Given the scale of Brazil and its hegemonic
dominance of Globo must be counted one of the most powerful media empires on
the planet. Like Berlosconis empire Globo is far more than just TV. Every
conceivable media from print publishing is covered. Globos power to
determine the outcomes of elections and influence key policy decisions on
the fly is well documented. The power of Globo has been well documented in a
BBC documentary -Beyond citizen Kane-, a program that remains officially
banned within Brazil although still it is continuously downloaded and has
acquired the status of a piece of samisdat in the last days of the Soviet
Empire. Globos endless diet of soap operas and news has an extraordinary
grip over the popular imagination. The power of televisionin Brazil is
evident simply by the forest of aerials and satellitedishes across the
rooftops of the shanty towns. Even the poorest of the poor have television,
in fact, statistically, a poor family in Brazil is more likely to own a TV
than a refrigerator.

During a number of both private and public discussionin the event which
marked the completion of Autolabs, skeptical voices were raised about the
importance of making media when the realissue was class and poverty. Wasnt
it time to re-instate the economy as the master signifier? When I put this
point to the free radiowarriors and activists of Sube-media they rejected
the propositionwithout a moments hesitation. Brazil, they insisted was a
mediatized society of a particularly virulent nature in which vast swaves
ofthe population were literally narcotized by Globos diet of soapoperas.
When I questioned this view as an over-determinstic about theeffects of
media they responded by saying sure people will criticizeand talk back to
the media but always from the passive position asthey flip through the
options on their remote. For these Brazil requires a tactical essentialism
for tactical media. A direct operational Do It Yourself Media. What
Latuffcalls it media viet cong, people re-making their own reality
throughmaking their own media. Yes open source and creative commons was
allvery fine but what is needed is more fundamental transformation in
thestructures of existing broadcast media ownership and use. And forall the
high minded initiatives this is simply not on offer. Even the muchvaunted
Telecentros in their view are part of a misguidedbelief in the power of
information alone has to create change. This wasthe foundation of the
Autolabs critique of the Telecentros offeringlittle other than access to the
net. So what if its all run on Linux if all that the visitors do is chat and
go to Globo websites or the porno?

New Networks of Possibility, "possibilsm"

Given the mind-numbing scale of the problems of Brazilit is not surprising
that I did not meet many optimists duringmy brief stay but neither, in
truth, did I encounter many out and out pessimists. instead I was confronted
with a seemingly endless talent forimprovisation, for seeing (or creating)
possibilities. Against all oddsthis is the land of what I only half jokingly
started calling the landof "possibilism" In some ways Autolabs could be seen
as Giseli Vasconceloss possibilist interpretation of her dissatisfaction
with thelimitations of both the Telecentros and the Tactical Media labs. She
sought to fuse the radical aesthetic, organizational and pedagogic potential
of tactical media with the willingness of the Telecentros movement tobring
media tools and connectivity to poor districts of Sao Paulo. In conversation
with the other organizers of the Tactical Media Lab,Tatiana Wells,
researcher and information architect specialized in hypermedia, and Ricardo
Rosas, writer, net-critic and web-master of Rizoma.net, Giseli Vasconcelos
set about developing a detailed model of the kind of centers they wanted to
see. The centers that would beformed out of a close working relationship
with people from the"periphic communities" geared to helping them create
their own Autolabs,learn how to maintain and actively use re-cycled machines
to make their ownmedia "developing visual, sonic and textual sensitivities,
making socialactions of collective utility possible" 2.

Despite the energy and talents of the group, they felt they needed to work
through organizations who were already embedded in the eastern zone. But to
beginwith no one was willing to commit themselves. Eventually abreakthrough
came in the form of La Fabricca an NGO linked to Fiat who saw away of
relating a youth action project they were committed to with theintentions of
the Autolabs. In the event what looked soon began to souras La Fabriccas
institutional agenda and beaurocratic requirementscame close to destroying
the project. However at the outset none of this was yet apparentand with the
endorsement of the NGO the organizers assembled animpressive network of
partners.

To begin with there was the critical participation "Metareciclagem" a group
who recondition re-assembleand upgrade discarded computers connecting them
together intofunctioning networks. In the context of Autolabs they were
responsible forassembling the networks of re-cycled machines, all running on
freesoftware and teaching how to maintain the equipment. IndymediaBrazil
(one of the most active and impressive Indymedia collectives inLatin
America) were involved teaching online mobilization andcollaboration Aspects
of the underlying pedagogic methodology was provided by TheDigital
Story-telling Collective (Collective de HistoriasDigitais) and Museum of the
Person (Museu da Pessoa), both of which are"devoted to collecting everyday
histories of ordinary people,teaching digital storytelling". But the most
anarchic and truly tactical elements were provided by Submidia/Radio Mute
(Radio Muda FM), a free radio collective of activists who were taught free
radio/web-radio programming, as well as providing numerous impromptupirate
TV transmissions during the closing stages of theproject. Finally the
remarkable Interfusion, a group from the east zone,who (on a zero-budget
gift-economy basis) create large scale street parties and free raves on the
periphery of Sao Paulo.The only new equipment purchased for Autolabs
werethree new computers (one for each lab) to act as servers and
soundequipment. Uniquely this was paid for by UNESCO who normally only pay
forhuman resources.

Confronting NGO Reality

With three well resourced centers in place and animpressive network of
expertise available everything appeared auger well butthe moment the doors
opened the real problems began. Problems thatperhaps should have been
foreseen The plan was that in the early stages of Autolabsparticipants would
be paid a small wage to attend. The only entry criteriawas for inclusion was
the not unreasonable one of poverty but the resultwas wild oversubscription.
The instructors were quite simplyoverwhelmed with hundreds of participants
wanting attention. Many ofthe kids simply turned up for the money and
occasionally accessed theweb sites of popular TV programs and chatted. But
the essentialproblem was the sheer numbers made meaningful connections all
butimpossible. Added to which there were intense difficulties with the
beaurocratic constraints demanded by the NGO in a context which required
theutmost flexibility and perpetual improvisation. This was the low point of
the project, a point whenmany of those involved thought Autolabs would fail.
But fortunatelythis was not a hit and run event, there was a long term
commitment.Slowly, almost imperceptibly things started to
improve.Unsurprisingly the real improvements began when there was no longer
money topay the participants to attend. Only the motivated studentsremained
and finally there was time and space for realcommunication and teaching to
happen. Projects of real value gradually started toemerge, a hip hop outfit
set up their own website and mix their CDs inthe lab, a free radio group has
formed, a group of teenage girls manyof whom have been pregnant are taking
their safe sex message around theschools in the east zone.

The Autolabs are now being taken over as part of the Telecentros program and
the most motivated of the kidsare being employed as monitors, and these are
kids who learnttheir skills on the basis of open source principles and
practice. This issome way off the lofty goals of truly autonomous centers,
theconnection with Telecentros is seen by many as to big a compromise.But
the jury is still out on the kind of Telecentros they will become. A lot
will deepen on what values will be passed on by the students who went
through the Autolabs training and whether the contacts will be maintained.
There is also evidence that the Autolabs critique of the existing Autolabs
has been taken on board by the ministry in their new roll out of the Polos
Digitais program Center and Periphery Finde, the concluding event of
Autolabs had a number of international visitors speaking in the
comparatively lavish surroundings in one of the buildings belonging a
powerful and to a degree benevolent national cultural institution; SESC.
One of the visitors,invited to speak was the cultural and political theorist
Brian Holmes, in one part of a wide ranging talk, he astutely identified one
of the biggest challenges faced by the Autolabs project. He described the
challenge posed when alliances between corporations and state
institutionseffectively neutralize critique by creating dependency.

Throughdependency they harness the dynamic present in new social
movements.He described the problems of resisting the subtle forms of
compromiseand self censorship that arise whenever economic dependenciesare
created with even the most benign institutions.He then went on to describe
some of the possible formsof resistance, key among them was, to seek, at all
costs to maintainautonomous structures alongside any relationships
toinstitutions, and to take active steps provide for the continuous
developmentfor critical and autonomous forms of knowledge The fact that
Autolabs was involved in just such arisky high wire act was evident in the
very structure of this the finalevent.

Finde was divided, on the one hand, between events and organized visits to
the Autolabs themselves in the Eastern Zone and on theother hand with
discussions and presentations in the comparativelylavish surroundings of the
SESC auditorium. After months of work themakers of Autolabs were able to
reflect on the outcomes of the project inrelationship to wider (and more
international) discussions of art,political theory and media tactics.The
events in the SESC auditorium kicked off with twosessions, on media streams
and printed matter, organized and partlyhosted by the artist Grazilia
Kunsch. These were free wheelingsessions made up of individual
presentations, extended discussions withrapid-fire web and chat links based
on real-time associations generatedby the discussions and presentations.
Meanwhile, just as the day beforeat the party in the Eastern Zone, all the
proceedings were transmittedlocally by Sube-medias pritate TV.Some of the
sharpest discussions took place in the session on printed matter and
revolved around alternative economic models. Kunsch described how one of her
publications was made up of a printed description of how it would be funded.
A small sum would be asked from people who would in return receive a
certificate entitling them to a copy of the book on its completion.

Something like a hundred of these certificates had to be sold for the
production costs to be covered. Kunsch saw these contributions as neither
gift nor purchase but as a collaboration. These early sessions inevitably
reflected something of Kunschs own substantial but elusive practice. Each
session explored the potential of art and a wider media culture to generate
various and multiple forms of socialization; forms ofsocialization which
nevertheless allowed for contradictions, antagonismsas well as the desire to
be present, conscious, and somehow ..coherent.Part of her current work,
developed in partnershipwith Jorge Menna Barreto involves research aimed at
recuperating the work of Brazilian artists who were practicing in the 1970s
during theyears of the dictatorship. She and others like her are beginning
to actually oppose the amnesia of the current generations holiday
fromhistory.

Translocality (A Place of Flows)

In the end the decision for so much of the final event of Autolabs to held
in
the center of the city at a prestige locationcan seem puzzling when one
remembers that the project originated from adesire to go in the opposite
direction, to leave the centers of powerand go to where people are trapped
by poverty outside of the loops ofprivilege And it has to be said that there
were times when those withthe most at stake were largely absent from the
grand auditorium and itspresentations.But the heroic struggle to make such
Autolabs actually happen should be enough to prevent anyone from
interpreting theoccasional lapse as bad faith. But there is another factor
at work: the organizers always understood that to go "deep local" was part
of widerstrategy to reconfigure and re-empower the local by connecting it to
a different kind of globalism. Indeed the reason that Autolabs was not
completely appropriated by the entrenched local power brokers was that the
organizers never lost touch with the autonomous forms of knowledge arising
from their relationship to that other globalize, global networks of
resistance. In Autolabs (and in "backalleys" elsewhere) it is these
"translocal" connections are helping to forge a new understanding of the
structure of the local, part of a wider change in the nature of "place" and
its evolving relationship toidentity. References still to be organised.

1. The Information Age:Economy, Society and Culture.Volume II The Power of
Identity

2.
http://www.n5m4.org/journal.shtml?118http://www.midiatatica.org/autolabs/speak_english.htm

http://www.n5m4.org/journal.shtml?118+3174+39052. Critical
Art Ensemble in an interview talk of whatthey call "tactical essentialism".
When this is employed peoplecan successfully use universal binaries the
social solidarity that canestablish the social solidarity that can in turn
produce resistantmovement. The women's movement, black power, gay
activists=====