Oxcars and FreeCultureForum 2011
Networks for a R-evolution
Three days to think about what the Internet has done for us, and what we can now do for it
2011 is the year when the consciousness of a global network has emerged. The massive and strategic use of social and digital networks has allowed the movement of citizen empowerment to step up a notch, and has facilitated a viral uprising of civil society in many parts of the world. The struggles to defend the Internet have shown to be a fertile breeding ground for such uprisings.
The #15M movement within the #spanishrevolution is organized online. By the same token, one of its biggest strengths is the feedback process that happens between the network and the streets, between the internet and the men and women gathering in streets and squares.
We have to continue promoting, facilitating and improving the efficient use of the Internet to achieve mobilization and direct participation.
During the previous edition of the FCForum it was already discussed that the intense struggles by civil society within the Spanish state to defend the Internet against the Sinde Law (a law to stop downloading) were the starting point for a larger action.
For 3 years now, the OXCARS and the FCForum, held in Barcelona, have provided international meeting spaces in which to build and coordinate common tools for issues regarding free culture and the Internet. The FCForum gathers the main organizations and active voices that are working on such issues, while it is also an open space for all those who wish to understand, deepen and participate in the responses before the pressing challenges that face our connected societies.
This year, the FCForum will focus, inevitably, on the experience of the 15M movement as a case study that can be exported to the global arena.
The intention of the FCForum 2011 is for all participants to analyze and build the best tools that the struggle needs at this point, both for its organization and for the impact it aims to have here in Spain, as case of study to be applied more globally.
Some of the questions that we will discuss this year are:
0. Which tools and methods of online organization and communication have allowed the emergence of the #15M movement? How can these practices be improved? How have social networks facilitated a change in the respect shown between people from different groups? What dangers threaten the neutral, open Internet which we know and want to preserve, at the local and global levels? How has the Internet facilitated the creation of new ways of producing and spreading culture? How can some of those methods become a way to avoid artists being used as an excuse to privatize the Web? What should we do with SGAE (the main management organization in Spain) now that its directives have been taken to court?
This gathering of 2 days will be preceded, as always, by the OXCARS, the biggest free culture event of all time. A great celebration of free culture that will serve as a warm-up event.
We believe it will be a very useful space for the empowerment of the movement.
We welcome and await you all.
This year we will be helped along in our discussions, amongst many others, by John Perry Barlow, who in 1996 lit the spark with his ‘declaration of independence in ciberspace’, Alex de la Iglesia, who stepped down from his post as Director of the Film Academy in protest against the Sinde law, as well as many of the hackers and people who have created tools to assist the actions of the 15M movement, such as the network N-1.cc.
Three days to think about what the Internet has done for us, and what we can now do for it .
Location
Thursday 27th October, 20.30 Oxcars Sala Apolo Barcelona
Friday 28th and Saturday 29th from 11h to 21h at the Rambla in front of Santa Monica and at Santa Monica, Drassanes metro stop
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