<nettime> geneva03: g8 and wsis

[Florian Schneider <fls@kein.org>]

GENEVA 03:
Media activists invite to a first preparation meeting on
April 5th and 6th in Geneva (CH)
http://www.geneva03.org


At two separate occasions Geneva (Switzerland) and the area of the
Lake Leman will host global summits that reflect the pending dramatic
changes in the world in very challenging ways: Early June 2003 the
yearly G-8 meeting will take place in Evian, a few kilometers across
the border to France. The second event from December 10-12 2003 is the
UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that will be held in
the Palexpo conference center of Geneva.

Unlike the G-8 summit with its clear agenda of confrontation, the WSIS
is a rather ambiguous meeting of thousands of governmental, corporate
and non-governmental entities. The summit, organized by the
International Telecommunication Union (ITU), is supposed to shape the
future of a worldwide communication regime also known as the
"information society".

While the G-8 gathers the leaders of the richest and most powerful
governments and corporations plus approximately ten thousand of their
accomplices, the WSIS represents the other, not less important side of
Empire: a system of world hegemonic power that is blurring the
distinction between formal and informal bureaucracies, explicitly
including the civil society and the NGOs as a broad base of global
governance.

= Interventions at G-8 and WSIS =

It is easy to attack the corporate agendas of the telecommunication
and deconstruct the "access for all" NGO rhetoric. Rather then
demasking the liberal "digital divide" agendas, the real question WSIS
puts on the table is how cultural and political differences can be
worked out in a post-nation environment such as the Internet.  It is
time to map the power of the new communication structures without
having to call for national regulatory regimes.  What radical models
are there, beyond the sweet dreams of a "civil society", that take up
some of the global challenges that emerge out of the new media
structures?

Over the past weeks activists and artists with different backgrounds
ranging from indymedia centers to the noborder-networks, from the free
software movement to community media, from grassroots campaigns to
hacker culture have been widely discussing how to make appropriate
interventions during both events, the G-8 and the WSIS.

When net activism and the global protest movement, all sorts of
counter activities and parallel events connect and link up into a
strong and powerful conceptual framework, one can indeed envision a
series of actions and activities, that reveal the a new potential of
struggling: Refusing and resisting both, war and info war, border
management and digital rights management, restrictions of the freedom
of movement and constraints of the freedom of communication. Let's
leave the false dichotomies between "real" and "virtual" behind us and
both shape and subvert the technologies that are now part of
everyone's life.

= First prep-meeting on april 5th and 6th =

In order to exchange ideas, concepts, and blue prints for all sorts of
actions and activities around the two GENEVA03 summits we invite you
to attend to a first meeting on the weekend of April 5th and 6th,
2003, in Geneva/Switzerland.

During this meeting we would like to discuss what at the first glance
might be seen as a compulsory program. For the G8-counter-activities
one could expect protest as usual: mass demonstrations and road
blockades, counter-summit and counter-information, criticism and
repression. Nevertheless the communication between the many different
events, between protest villages, counter-summits and direct actions,
between local and remote participants might play an extraordinary
important role.

The activities around the WSIS in December 2003 might look like the
freestyle dance of a movement of movements. While the representatives
of governments and non-governmental organizations do only talk about
networking, we are going there to actually practice it. When the
leaders of the nation-states negotiate about the digital divide, we
are struggling for free and unfettered access. As they shiver with
piracy, we are sharing our skills and capacities, resources and
experiences. Though the corporations desparetely try to control the
flows of material and immaterial goods, we reclaim the world as the
invention and creation of the multitudes.

Let's squat the air and drown the Geneva summits into Wifi-clouds!
Let's civilize the sky and occupy the satellites for community media!
Let's flood the fiber networks with contributions from all over the
world! Let's turn the NGO talkfests into jam sessions of liberated
technologies! Let's spread the virus of tactical media and circulate
the images and narratives of a global movement of movements! Let's
celebrate the freedom of independent communications with a festival of
conferences and workshops, local and remote events, parties and
parades! Let's open a thousand media bazaars and celebrate the untamed
channels! Let's cast the night away and corroboree in Geneva, December
2003.

Please register for the preparatory meeting at:
info@geneva03.org

Check out the WikiWiki and contribute to the GenevaGlossary
http://www.geneva03.org

Written and developed by: Dee Dee Halleck, Michael Hardt, Jamie King,
Hagen Kopp, Susanne Lang, Geert Lovink, Florian Schneider, Pit
Schultz, Alan Toner and many other activists from Indymedia Centers
in Geneva and Switzerland, as well as France, Italy and Germany

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