At the time of the next G8 in Évian (France), and of the second European Social Forum in Saint-Denis (France), we hold it as necessary and possible to formalise levels and forms of co-operation between alternative media at a European level.

* * *

If diversity is one of the richness of alternative communication vis-à-vis the monotony of dominant media, it is also obvious that we currently bitterly miss collective visibility and legibility: the legitimate dispersion of alternative information production processes, and the multiplication quite as legitimate of diffusion channels (peculiarly on the Web), produce in the same time an effect of jamming, in the absence of a minimum of pooling of resources, and a capacity of action.

In fact, each one produces for his own medium (radio, Web, video, etc.), for circuits altogether limited to geographical, linguistic and/or subjective determined surfaces, and with - eventually - few capacities or will of transversality. What's the point of making a video of the No Border demonstration in Strasbourg to diffuse it only on Indymedia Melbourne because... one is an Australian video-activist? What's the point of making French emissions at the time of the ESF of Florence to broadcat them only in Italy because... you are an Italian radio?

We can reasonably consider that there lies a true loss of energy... and a collective political weakness of alternative media as a whole.

However, each one of us is carrying rich and diversified experiments, each one of us accumulated a capital of savoirs and means, each one of us more or less innovated in the forms and the contents of "another" information, which is not subject to the rules of commercial profitability and power plays. It is this collective intelligence of which each one of us holds a negligible share which must be put in production.

What we propose, at the time of G8 and ESF, it is to try out the first productive forms of co-operation between alternative media; first forms of installation of a collective transnational production network, in the respect of political and subjective differences and autonomy in each initiative. It will be above all a question of giving ourselves the common technical and political means to create transversality so that alternative media speak together as a thousand convergent voices, in other words to produce a polyphonic expression of movements.

For the moment we have started working on several tracks:

1) The creation of a collective online access point between alternative media, which would make it possible to give visibility to the various productions generally dispersed in various points of the network. Something which is much more than one simple "gate", but a common channel of multilingual and multi-media diffusion of information via a mutualized posting system.

2) the installation of a database of "real time" information: a repository where could be progressively posted productions of sounds, images, videos, texts, freely diffusable (under copyleft licence). It is clearly a question of allowing all those who produce information (reports, accounts, testimonys) to reach possibilities of diffusion far beyond the simple posting on one precise Web site, or one precise free radio.

3) The participation to a Forum of alternative media, which would be held in parallel of the ESF of Saint-Denis, and which would be the occasion first of all to initiate a process of exchange of savoirs and competences, and would also make it possible to stabilize levels of transnational co-operation between radios, TVs, Web sites, etc.

These devices of productive co-operation between alternative media must in addition be accompanied by a work on free tools for information production. In particular: tools of audio streaming or Web posting, or production of files using of the open standards (what excludes for example .doc or .wmv).

We could also plan to open fields of experimentation for "new" devices of communication around the use of free software. As far as we are concened, we peculiarly think about:

- a flexible system of Web posting, for example with a "footbridge" between electronic mail and databases, making the posting of information possible under conditions where the access to the means of electronic communication sometimes happens to be difficult ;

- a system of "communicating" databases, allowing to create centres of decentralised resources, distributed on several servers, and several territories;

- the creation of mobile and light structures of electronic communication around the use of wireless connections (WiFi).

We know that other collectives work on other projects, like audio/video satellite diffusion, or mobile units of diffusion.

All that fits in a non-exhaustive list of possible projects, to suggest that co-operation between alternative media must also tend to produce free tools (and fittings of tools), adapted to our specific needs and our desires of communication. Each one of us should bring his contribution in proposals, of availability, in lines of codes, etc.

* * *

During days of Genoa, the experiment of Radio GAP (at the Italian level) for example, has shown according to us the advantage of a minimum of common work and resource sharing. It is this type of experiment which we would like to punctually try out on all the fields of intervention and production of alternative information and communication in Europe. Because, vis-à-vis the deafening silence of dominant media, the thousand and one murmurs of alternative media must make the song of free information heard.

Paris, February 1st 2003
samizdat.net


To work collectively on these questions, and many others more, we thus invite you to join us on the multilingual mailing list mediactivism_l. Contact:  samizdat@samizdat.net

In addition we will soon launch the site mediactivisme.net to advance this project like public proposal in the movements.