A series of website links to note for future reference from Memefest

Project Propaganda is an independent educational project, which aims to promote the production of theoretical text’s and to put progressive ideas into practice. A special focus is put on the social responsibility of mass communication and communication in the public sphere.
http://www.memefest.org


http://lokidesign.net

This site seves as a breeding ground and distribution point for the zine Four Minutes to Midnight, an experiment in collective self-publishing in the samizdat tradition. Based in the firm belief that the personal is political, the zine explores the possibility of genuine dialogue, bad poetry, small stories, vast dreams, and private pains, as means of advancing social change.

CREATIVITY WITH A CONSCIENCE

We know we could be using our talents to sell cheeseburgers or sneakers. But as message shapers and image makers, we choose to inspire, educate and move people toward action.
That’s why we concentrate on offering top-quality design, communication and strategy services to companies and organizations whose vision goes beyond turning the world into a strip mall. And while our clients range from world-wide activists like Amnesty International to corporations focused on sustainable business like Clif Bar, they all share our belief that in each of our actions there is potential for positive change.

Based in Washington DC and Berkeley, CA, our services include graphic design, web entertainment and campaign concepting and strategy.

http://www.freerangegraphics.com/

-ENGLISH VERSION BELOW-

La precarité toujours?
Over de Franse protesten, Flexmensen en onzekerheid als levensconditie.

ma 1 mei / 20.00 uur

Massale demonstraties, spoorlijnen geblokkeerd, universiteiten bezet: de Franse jeugd heeft met haar energieke protest het vraagstuk van de ‘precairheid’ in de massamedia gelanceerd. Slechts een paar maanden terug waren het de jongeren in de Banlieues die met niet minder confronterende actiemethoden hun kaarten op tafel legden. In Nederland is de term precairheid nog nauwelijks ingeburgerd. Precairheid, of “precarité” in het Frans, verwijst naar onzekere en flexibele werk- en levensomstandigheden die onze maatschappij in steeds sterkere mate kenmerken. Sociale bewegingen uit binnen- en buitenland hebben het thema inmiddels tot haar actiepraktijk gemaakt. In zo'n 20 Europese steden zullen op 1 mei EuroMayday parades worden gehouden tegen de bestaansonzekerheid van de nieuwe economie. Zij reppen over de opkomst van de Flexmens, de Brain- en Chainworkers als nieuwe sociale figuren. In Nederland is flexibiliteit al jaren een feit: een contract is altijd tijdelijk, zelden vast en nooit meer “for life” - geen vakbond die zich daar nog tegen verzet. Werk en inkomen zijn onzeker geworden, maar tegelijk heeft iedereen zijn vaste lasten, die allerminst flexibel zijn. Met de nieuwe zorgwet en een huurverhoging aan de horizon dreigt precairheid - zo lijkt het - ook in Nederland de norm te worden. Is de onrust in Frankrijk daarom een model voor Nederland en Europa, of gaat het toch vooral om een lokale aangelegenheid? Is precairheid in Nederland een issue, en zo ja, wat zijn dan de consequenties voor hoe we denken over werk, leven en politiek? Spelen de vakbonden überhaupt nog een rol op dit terrein? En bieden de nieuwe geflexibiliseerde werkverhoudingen niet ook kansen voor een meer autonome levensstijl? Op 1 mei, de traditionele Dag van de Arbeid, organiseert de Balie een discussie waar deze vragen aan bod komen met gesproken columns, film, debat en verslag van de Euromayday. Sprekers: Anne Querrien (Franse sociologe en urbaniste, redacteur van Multitudes) Rutger Groot Wassink (Historicus) Eddy Stam (Organiser bij FNV bondgenoten) Film: Organising the Unorganizable (32 min, VS 2004) Toegang | gratis

Aanvang | 20.00 uur
Voertaal | engels

Georganiseerd ism Flexmens.org en Greenpepper Magazine

-ENGLISH VERSION-

La precarité toujours?
On the French protests, new social subjects and insecurity as living condition.

Monday 1 May / 8pm

Massive demonstrations, blocked railway lines, occupied universities: the French youth succeeded with it’s energetic protests against the CPE to launch the issue of precarity into the mass media. Only months ago, youth in the /banlieues/ made their situation public, with action methods that were no less confronting. In the Netherland the term precarity is unknown. Precarity, or “precarité” in French, refers to unstable and insecure work and living conditions that have become more and more dominant in our “flexible” society.

Meanwhile, social movements from around the continent have made the topic subject of their daily political practice. On the 1st of May, Mayday, twenty European cities will be the site of Euromayday parades and protests of temp/net/flex workers and migrants against precarity, for flexicurity and citizenship. They allude to the rise of new social subjects, Brain- and Chainworkers, and the /precariat/ as a new, fragmented proletariat. In the Netherlands, flexibility has been the reality for years: contract are generally temporary, rarely permanent and never for life – and no trade union that is still opposed to that. Work and income have become more insecure, while everyone still has fixed basic expenses, that aren’t flexible at all. With the new privatised care system and a rise in rents coming up, it looks like precarity threatens to become the norm for more and more people in the Netherlands as well.

Is the unrest in France representative for the situation in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe, or is it a local reality? Is precarity an issue, and if so, what are the consequences for our thinking about work, life and politics? Do the trade unions still have any role to play? And can’t flexibilised labour relations offer the possibility of a more autonomous lifestyle?

On the 1st of May, Labour Day, de Balie will host a discussion on these questions and more. With spoken columns, film, debate and reports of the Euromayday parades.

Speakers:
Anne Querrien (Franse sociologe en urbaniste, redacteur van Multitudes)
Rutger Groot Wassink (Historian)
Eddy Stam (Organiser with FNV bondgenoten)

Film:
Organising the Unorganizable (32 min, VS 2004)

Entrance | free
Start | 20.00 hours
Language | English - Dutch

The program can be followed via live-stream at: http://www.debalie.nl/live Organised with Flexmens.org en Greenpepper Magazine

Recent Work : Amsterdam4Free

Recent one colour poster for the following event that Greenpepper Porject and Flexmens have come together for...


Reclaiming the City - In two parts

On Sunday 9 and Monday 10th of April the Hamburg Umsonst (Hamburg for Free) collective will come to Amsterdam. They liberate goods to challenge the dominion of money in an increasingly gentrifi ed and privatised metropolis. Together with the Flexblues collective from Liège (Belgium) and Flexmens (Amsterdam), they will tell us about their plans for the Euromayday parades against precarity and for new social rights.

Part 1:
Sunday 9 April, 20h -
‘For Free’ Workshop
Why do we have to pay for taking a bus, go swimming, eat, or watch a movie? A wave of ‘for free’ campaigns has spread across German cities these last years. Hamburg Umsonst has organised free dinners in university restaurants (to protest against rising food and studying costs, students and teachers joined in) and a free night in the local cinema. Members of the collective will give a workshop with an update on the latest proletarian shopping techniques and other methods to reconquer our collective joy of life. With the launch of the guide “shoplifting for beginners”.

Part II: Monday, 10 April -
MAYDAY MAYDAY!
The Euromayday is a European network of media hacktivists, rank-and-file unions, self-run and squatted youth centers, critical mass bikers, student groups, syndicalist collectives, immigrants’ associations, assorted commies, greens, anarcos, gays and feminists. They have given life to a MAYDAY PARADE taking place in many European cities the afternoon of May 1st, to protest against the growing precarity and for new social rights. In Hamburg last mayday around 5000 people went on the streets, in the Netherlands two small actions took place. Hamburg Umsonst members will give a short introduction on the development and context of the Euromayday in Germany: the restructuring of the German welfare state and labour market, the rise of 1 euro jobs and the criminalisation of migrants. With fi lmclips of last year’s parades.

Plantage Doklaan 8-12, Amsterdam

For more information, see www.flexmens.org

'The Art of Free Cooperation' and communicating with scribus open source desktop publishing

About
These images are an overview of the process of developing a basic page and type grid for the book 'The Art of Free Cooperation' (Edited by Trebor Scholtz and Geert Lovink, Autonomedia) and also of learning Scribus. These are primarily showing excersises in testing Scribuses handling of hyphens & justification, and a test with getting the stylesheets working. This has been challenging as Scribus is a work in progress and some of the features such as 'word spacing' and finer points of the hyphenation settings are still in development (a process that will be directly advantaged through the close feedback loop between the design of this book and the development team of scribus - mostly happening through the scribus project community email list and wiki).

Bibliography:
Ive included a bibliography for these images as they are primarily informed by a few select sources...
- Scribus Community Mailing List
- Thinking With Type, Ellen Lupton
- Grid Systems in Graphic Design, Josef Muller-Brockman
- Book Typography, Ari Rafaeli

Specs:
Typeface: Sabon (Adobe), 9.5 pts, Leading 12.5 pts
Trim: 6" x 9"

*MEMEFEST 2006- MARKING HALF A DECADE OF CREATION, SUBVERSION, AND RESISTENCE!*

Memefest, the International Festival of Radical Communication-born in Slovenia and rapidly reaching a critical mass worldwide- is proud to announce its fifth annual competition. Once again, Memefest is encouraging students, proffesionals, writers, artists, designers, thinkers, philosophers, and counter-culturalists to submit their work to our panel of renowned judges. This year, jury members will among others include Richard Barbrook, esteemed author, research pioneer, radio vigilante, and critic of neo-liberalism, radical designers and activists Sandy Kaltenborn, Kernow Craig, Paul Shoebridge and Jason Grant, Clinical Psychologist and "Bag news" blog author Dr. Michael Shaw and design critic Kenneth Fitzgerald.

Students who work with the written word can respond to Richard Barbrook's own article /The High-Tech Gift Economy/ , which makes the ominous but relevant claim that, because of the realities of market capitalism, the utopia of an anarcho-communist gift economy on the internet is a deluding fiction, while artists and graphic designers can create static and interactive works in response to /The Declaration Towards a Global Ethic/ , a call to "spiritual
arms" and the creation of a collective consciousness.

*Non-students* and those whose work doesn't fit in the box of conventional communications can enter the the visionary Beyond… category , where the name of the game is challenging
mainstream practices and beliefs! Absolutely anything innovative, either written or visual, is acceptable, so long as it challenges mainstream modes of communication. Check out some examples and the winners from the 2005 and 2004 sites! *Beyond… is open to non-students as well!*

Memefest occurs almost completely online at www.memefest.org , and all entries will be available for full access and commentary in the site galleries. In 2005, Memefest received almost 500 entries from participants of every continent on the globe ('cept Antarctica). We hope to get bigger, and to spread more of those good infectious ideas, so keep thinking- and producing.

Check out the beta version of our 2006 web site for more information:
www.memefest.org

* Deadline for submissions is May 20th 2006. *

Subvert, Create, Enjoy!
Organizers of Memefest 2006

www.memefest.org
Contact us : memefest at memefest dot org