INTRODUCTION

AIRE INCONDICIONAL The emergence of community-based and migrant e-strategies in Southern Europe 14. FEBRUAR - 04. APRIL 2004

The main focus of <AIRE INCONDICIONAL> is the visualisation of media tactics which have emerged from a specific southern european historical and cultural background. We undestand these strategies as a mean for breaking down boundaries between the political, the social, the cultural and the artistic fields that mark media practices. The exhibition which forms part of <AIRE INCONDICIONAL> shows critical concepts and projects with a focus on media strategies dealing with the effects of globalisation, migration and the informational revolution on Southern Europe. <AIRE INCONDICIONAL> is a partly mobile exposition, facilitating it’s installation in a variety of spaces. Following the concept of mobile media tactics, the portable part of <AIRE INCONDICIONAL> allows the project to tour to different cities making an interaction between the authors and activists travelling with the exhibition and the local publics possible. In workshops, discussions and projects initiated during the exhibitions, debates about the presented ‘southern strategies’ will be encouraged. The contents shown in the exhibition are furthermore placed at the disposal of the public: placed within the exhibition there will be copy-stations enabling the public to copy the contents of the exhibition –be it audio or visual documentations, texts, images, music– and then take these contents home.

In documentations, workshops and debates, <AIRE INCONDICIONAL> visualises the media and communication strategies that have emerged from a specific southern european context (historical background). The exposicion combines the points of view of activists, community groups and artists and historically contextualises their critical ideas on tactical media, open content, border and migration politics and experiments with media technology, combining art, politics and media strategies. The exhibition is structured along three core thematic threads, contextualising them before the southern european historical/cultural background. The host of projects, debates and activities is grouped along these three thematic threads: <VIRTUALISATION OF BORDERS> explores the possible feedback loops between physical and information space focusing on projects that adopt a critical view on migration and border politics. By opening up a debate on the virtualisation of political and cultural borders, we hope to encourage the emergence of community based and migrant e-strategies dealing with the possibilities that arise through new technologies for the cultural and social representation of migrants and minorities in Southern Europe.. <HOME(WIRE)LESS> questions the possibilities in using new technologies such as public wireless networks to redevelop and repolitisize public space. How can activists and artists create tactical interventions to open up public responses and discourse about the new social realities in southern europe and how can they create new social relations? <DRIVE-IN BURN-OUT> explores the different alternatives to copyright and the distribution structures that have emerged with them: Concepts of alternatives to copyright are discussed in projects and documentations included in the exhibition. More directly however, a notion of a free culture of information and knowledge becomes manifest in the format of the exhibition itself: the contents of the exhibition come with the proposition of copy and paste. Visitors can choose contents they like, copy them, and recycle them in own projects. <AIRE INCONDICIONAL> explores a variety of forms and formats, from audio-visual documentations to instalations, from interventions into public space to work sessions and presentations, from free distribution of open content music to live concerts.