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Next 5 Minutes: Tactical Media

Conference and Exhibition

Amsterdam & Rotterdam, 18-21 January 1996

Next 5 Minutes: Tactical Media is a conference and exhibition
project about tactical media, due to take place on January 18th -
21st, 1996, which is being organised by De Balie, Paradiso,
V2_Organisatie, the Society for Old and New Media and the Centre
for Tactical Media in collaboration with other national and
international organisations.

Next 5 Minutes: Tactical Television (1993) Next 5 Minutes:
Tactical Media is a sequel to the first Next 5 Minutes which took
place at the beginning of 1993. Under the heading of 'tactical
television' it brought together television makers from different
parts of the world. The festival presented media initiatives and
productions that were not simply providers of often vital
information, but that were also a means through which people could
make their unmediated voices heard.

Next 5 Minutes: Tactical Media

Next 5 Minutes: Tactical Media will continue to develop many of
the themes and relationships that emerged in the first conference,
broadening the scope towards the more inclusive notion of
'tactical media' which also implies more recent developments, esp.
the rapid growth of electronic networks, and which concentrates on
the crossing of boundaries between old and new media. Tactical
media producers from mainstream companies, activists from social
movements, theoreticians, media artists and computer activists
will meet, show their productions and work together during the
conference. In a series of public presentations, discussions,
workshops and exhibitions we will examine critical areas, dilemmas
and fault lines in contemporary media.

Topics

The conference is subdivided into four distinct but closely
related topics:  tactical research; public domain and access;
metaphorical languages; net criticism.
1. The means and ends of tactical research are the theme of a
series of presentations from television, radio, phone and computer
networks, which question the information monopoly as practised by
mainstream broadcastingorganisations and individual or corporate
experts.
2. As 'democratisation' is one of the central claims associated
with the tactical media, we will have to assess critically to what
extent it can actually be achieved. In this context we also want
to discuss the effects that tactical media have on the
reconfiguration and revitalisation of our notions of community, as
well as the technical, political and ethical=
 aspects of public access and large-scale local connectivity.  In
addition we propose to use the conference to scrutinise several
legal, political, economic and ethical issues about the state
policy concerning public and commercial broadcasting.
3. For us the question of metaphor is not abstract. It includes
and goes beyond issues of representation and asks the strategic
question, what language shall we use. We have therefore made the
third theme of the conference the use of metaphorical languages.
Current metaphors, like the socio-spatial metaphors of digital
cities and electronic superhighways, or the biological metaphors
of the media ecology of cyborgs and memes, will be evaluated.
4. Finally the conference will strive to introduce the concept of
Net criticism. We imagine this as a form of reflexive critical
consciousness about the contents and practice of the
communications culture as it has been affected by the emergence of
the Net. It will be an investigation of language and metaphor in
the electronic age, and it should strive to formulate aesthetic
and ethical categories for net and media discourse. The continuous
involvement of visual artists with the interrogation of metaphors
places their work at the heart of the development of a political
poetics for the media age.

Programme Elements

Next 5 Minutes will have the benefit of three very different kinds
of buildings for large-scale public debates, screenings of movies,
installations, as well as for more intimate workshops about
specialised subjects. While De Balie en Paradiso in Amsterdam will
function as central discussion and workshop locations,
V2_Organisatie in Rotterdam will open the festival with a central
presentation. During the conference, V2 will organise a series of
events and an exhibition of contemporary art projects which
explore the social, political and aesthetic potential of the
tactical media in new and challenging ways.  There will be
continuous (live where possible) radio and TV programmes which
will be linked to national television stations. Participants will
have access to the Next 5 Minutes library and archive, as well as
to local and translocal computer networks. Information about N5M2
will be distributed twice daily in an on-site and on-line journal
made by our own team of journalists. The combined journal and
network shall play a vital role in maximising connectivity between
the locations in the two cities.

Call for Participation

Next 5 Minutes will open a Web-site and electronic newsgroup (URL:
http://www.dds.nl) to inform about the conference, collect
information about tactical media-projects and discuss topics with
possible participants. Everyone is kindly invited to participate
in the process of gathering information about new projects and
developments in the tactical media.

Please contact the production team

N5M@dds.nl (Sjoera Nas & Andreas Broeckmann) De Balie, Production
Team N5M, Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10, 1017 RR Amsterdam, The
Netherlands.  Phone 020 - 62 33 673, fax 020 - 63 84 489.

Production Team:

Andreas Broeckmann (V2_Organisatie), David Garcia (Centre for the
TacticalMedia), Menno Grootveld (VPRO), Geert Lovink (Centre for
the TacticalMedia), Sjoera Nas (De Balie), Caroline Nevejan
(Paradiso, Society for Old and New Media), Marleen Stikker
(Digital City, Society for Old and New Media).

Organising Institutions:

De Balie, Paradiso, V2_Organisatie, Centre for the Tactical Media,
Society for Old and New Media.

In Collaboration with:

ACS-i, Ars Electronica, Desk.NL, The Digital City, Hoeksteen TV,
International Institute for Social History, Internationale Stadt
Berlin, Salto, VPRO a.o.

Forwarded by
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