Temp Media Lab

TEMP, a Temporary Media Lab
Kiasma, Museum for Contemporary Arts, Helsinki, Finland
October 8 - November 14, 1999

"The third Temporary Media Lab [after Hybrid Workspace, Kassel, 1997, and Revolting, Manchester, 1998] will take place in the project space on the fifth floor of the Kiasma, the Helsinki contemporary arts museum, which opened in June 1998. The media lab will be open for five weeks. In principle, the space will be open for the general audience a few times a week when lectures, debates, on-line conferences, net.radio casts are being given there. The main focus of the lab will be to produce content and concept offered both by local and by international groups. Each group could do a presentation, party, (press) conference at the end of each week to inform the audience about the outcomes of their working period, perhaps in collaboration with different halls and institutions outside Kiasma, depending on the group and the topic." (source: anouncement email)

Program:
Cross the Border, October 8-16
Designing the Future State of Balkania, October 17-23
"The workshop can be seen as a follow-up of an initiative developed during the Syndicate meeting in Budapest in April 1999"
Sources:
http://www.code-flow.net/museum/balkania-org/
http://www.code-flow.net/museum/balkania.html
Linux Land/Nokia Country, October 24-30
Baltic Sea Media Space & Net.Radio October 31-November 4
Co-ordinator: e-lab, Riga, Rasa Smite
"The more practical part will consist of live net.radio/streaming audio web-casting sessions and the planning of an Xchange net.radio meeting in August, 2000 in Riga."
eko.katastrofi, November 5-7
Exhibition of the results, November 9-14

"Five groups each worked on five different topics (www.kiasma.fi/temp). First came a newly formed European network of groups working on issues of refugees and illegalized emigrant workers. The group organized and coordinated the demonstration held in Tampere during the Euro summit on this delicate political topic (see: contrast.org/border). In december this group again gathered in Amsterdam where this network was officially founded, with participants from even more countries. Balkania was the name of the second gathering. Twenty media artist from South-East Europe discussed the situation in their region after the Kosov@ conflict and drew (negative) utopian images to bypass the current dramatic situation in the Balkans. The third, all Finnish group focussed on the technology policies in Finland itself. "Nokia Country/ Linux Land" dealt with the growing power of this telecommunications giant on the one hand, and a free operating system on the other. What influence is Nokia have on the ever shrinking welfare state? And is power really challanged with the introduction of open source software such as Linux, which originates in Finland? During the fourth group a Nordic/Scandinavian/Baltic network of media labs and media arts institutions was created, with a special emphasis in the program on the difficult situation in Belarus. Two events marked the closing of temp: a one day conference on the urban condition in Asia, organized in conjunction with the opening of the Cities on the Move exhibition in the same Kiasma building, and an environmental web-base game, open for public participation. Temp finished with a small exhibition of the results.

To close with, some general remarks. Some groups and individuals are making a good use of the facilities on offer, others do so in a lesser way. So what? The temp media lab concept is not an army setup or a content factory. It is just a model, connected to similar initiatives and situations, such as the Polar Circuit in Lapland ANAT's summerschools in Australia, the recent workshop in Ljudmila (Slovenia) of Virtual Revolution and obviously Oreste at the Venice Bienale of 1999. Digital media arts and culture are all in a flow. Our social networks are unstable media and the outcomes are hard to predict in the short run. But I am convinced that temp media labs are a strong motor behind the networks of digital culture we all envision. The temporary, local truth has made it worth the effort to organise such events. Time and time again, until the format runs out of energy and we all know, by intuition, how to set up networks, servers, sites - and most of all: how to deal with the all too human flaws in communication." (G. Lovink)

Resources:
http://mail.v2.nl/v2east/1999/Sep/0037.html - workshop announcement
Geert Lovink: The Importance of Meetspace, Nettime, January 2000.

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