ryan griffis
Since 2002
Works in United States of America

ARTBASE (3)
PORTFOLIO (1)
BIO
Ryan Griffis currently teaches new media art at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He often works under the name Temporary Travel Office and collaborates with many other writers, artists, activists and interesting people in the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor.
The Temporary Travel Office produces a variety of services relating to tourism and technology aimed at exploring the non-rational connections existing between public and private spaces. The Travel Office has operated in a variety of locations, including Missouri, Chicago, Southern California and Norway.

Is MySpace a Place?


Networked Performance pointed me toward an interview (download in PDF)with Networked Publics speaker Henry Jenkins and Networked Publics friend danah boyd about Myspace. The site, popular with teenagers, has become increasingly controversial as parents and the press raise concerns about the openness of information on the site and the vulnerability this supposedly poses to predators (Henry points out that only .1% of abductions are by strangers) and the behavior of teens towards each other (certainly nothing new, only now in persistent form). In another essay on Identity Production in Networked Culture, danah suggests that Myspace is popular not only because the technology makes new forms of interaction possible, but because older hang-outs such as the mall and the convenience store are prohibiting teens from congregating and roller rinks and burger joints are disappearing.

This begs the question, is Myspace media or is it space? Architecture theorists have long had this thorn in their side. "This will kill that," wrote Victor Hugo with respect to the book and the building. In the early 1990s, concern about a dwindling public culture and the character of late twentieth century urban space led us to investigate Jürgen Habermas's idea of the public sphere. But the public sphere, for Habermas is a forum, something that, for the most part, emerges in media and in the institutions of the state:

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of this political confrontation was peculiar and without historical precedent: people's ...

READ ON »


SWITCH: Issue 22



Carlos Castellanos:

HI everyone. Just wanted to announce the new issue of SWITCH:

SWITCH : The online New Media Art Journal of the CADRE Laboratory for
New Media at San Jose State University

http://switch.sjsu.edu switch@cadre.sjsu.edu

SWITCH Journal is proud to announce the launch of Issue 22: A Special
Preview Edition to ISEA 2006/ ZeroOne San Jose.

As San Jose State University and the CADRE Laboratory are serving as
the academic host for the ZeroOne San Jose /ISEA 2006 Symposium,
SWITCH has dedicated itself to serving as an official media
correspondent of the Festival and Symposium. SWITCH has focused the
past three issues of publication prior to ZeroOne San Jose/ISEA2006
on publishing content reflecting on the themes of the symposium. Our
editorial staff has interviewed and reported on artists, theorists,
and practitioners interested in the intersections of Art & Technology
as related to the themes of ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. While some
of those featured in SWITCH are part of the festival and symposium,
others provide a complimentary perspective.

Issue 22 focuses on the intersections of CADRE and ZeroOne San Jose/
ISEA 2006. Over the past year, students at the CADRE Laboratory for
New Media have been working intensely with artists on two different
residency projects for the festival – “Social Networking” with Antoni
Muntadas and the City as Interface Residency, “Karaoke Ice” with
Nancy Nowacek, Marina Zurkow & Katie Salen. Carlos Castellanos,
James Morgan, Aaron Siegel, all give us a sneak preview of their
projects which will be featured at the ISEA 2006 exhibition. Alumni
Sheila Malone introduces ex_XX:: post position, an exhibition
celebrating the 20th anniversary of the CADRE Institute that will run
as a parallel exhibition to ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. LeE
Montgomery provides a preview of NPR (Neighborhood Public Radio)
presence at ...

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Art & Mapping



The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) has released a special issue of their journal, Cartographic Perspectives:
Art and Mapping Issue 53, Winter 2006 Edited by Denis Wood and and John Krygier Price: $25
The issue includes articles by kanarinka, Denis Wood, Dalia Varanka and John Krygier, and an extensive catalogue of map artists compiled by Denis Wood.

READ ON »


[-empyre-] Liquid Narrative for June 2006


Christina McPhee:

hi all, I am not sure we got this message out to Rhizome!

Please join our guests this month, Dene Grigar (US), Jim Barrett
(AU/SE), Lucio Santaella (BR), and Sergio Basbaum (BR) , with
moderator Marcus Bastos (BR), for a spirited discussion of "Liquid
Narratives" ----- digital media story telling with a dash, perhaps,
of 'aura' .

Here's the intro from Marcus:

The topic of June at the - empyre - mailing list will be Liquid Narratives. The concept of 'liquid narrative' is interesting in that it allows to think about the unfoldings of contemporary languages beyond tech achievements, by relating user controlled applications with formats such as the essay (as described by Adorno in "Der Essay als Form", The essay as a form) and procedures related to the figure of the narrator (as described by Benjamin in his writings about Nikolai Leskov). Both authors are accute critics of modern culture, but a lot of his ideas can be expanded towards contemporary culture. As a matter of fact, one of the main concerns in Benjamin's essay is a description of how the rise of modernism happens on account of an increasing nprivilege of information over knowledge, which is even more intense nowadays. To understand this proposal, it is important to remember how Benjamin distinguishes between an oral oriented knowledge, that results from 'an experience that goes from person to person' and is sometimes anonymous, from the information and authoritative oriented print culture. One of the aspects of this discussion is how contemporary networked culture rescues this 'person to person' dimension, given the distributed and non-authoritative procedures that technologies such as the GPS, mobile phones and others stimulate.

READ ON »


state of the planet infographics


stateoftheplanet.jpg
a small collection of beautiful information graphics documenting the current state of the planet.
see also gapminder & 3d data globe.
[seedmagazine.com]

READ ON »



Discussions (909) Opportunities (8) Events (16) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

ready.gov and new signage


this is fairly funny, or maybe it's just nerves.

http://www.titaniumcounter.com/temp/emergency/

best, ryan

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DISCUSSION

FWD: Hactivist Re-Code Press Release


********************
** HACTIVIST_NEWS **
********************

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 18, 2003

Announcing Re-Code.com
www.re-code.com

Re-Code Your Own Price!

Promotional Video
www.re-code.com/videos.html

RE-CODE.COM is a free web service that allows its
customers to share
product
information and create barcodes that can be printed
and used to re-code
items in stores by placing new labels over existing
UPC symbols to set
a new
price - participating in an act of tactical shopping.
RE-CODE.COM at
its
core is a shared database, updateable by our
customers. Participation
is
free and requires no special membership agreements or
software
download.
After entering the website, customers can choose to
search and view
information in our database currently or add their own
collected data
to the
system. Using our custom Barcode Generator
application, barcodes are
drawn
in real time and made available to the user.

If you like to save money, you've come to the right
place! Our unique
process of shared database building based on
preshopping, recoding, and
postshopping, enables you to pay only what you are
willing to for the
name
brand products you want. In the process, we save our
customers millions
and
millions of dollars! Here's the inside scoop on how
our revolutionary
'Re-Code Your Own Price' service works.

Our customers and community members, travel to their
local chain stores
to
collect information about the products the stores
carry, when possible
noting major brands and their generic equivalents.
Using our convenient
downloadable Data Collection Sheets, RE-CODE.COM
customers are able to
easily note UPC ID number, name, product packaging,
and price. This
information can then be easily added to the
RE-CODE.COM supercomputer
to
help build a shared database. The process of adding
original item UPC's
and
prices to RE-CODE.COM is known as postshopping.
Postshopping is
critical in
building a large database of products for each area of
the country. A
database which is both ours and yours!

It's a simple concept, but by recoding a product's
original UPC barcode
with
another item sold at the same store's code, and with a
much more
acceptable
price, enables tremendous savings for you the
customer. By planning
your
store purchases in advance, and logging on to our
website, you can
engage in
the process of preshopping. Preshopping's value is
determined by you
the
customer, as you search our database for the prices
you want to pay at
the
stores you plan to shop at. Be sure to take note of
packaging materials
for
each product to make the recoding process simpler.
Either generate
product
barcodes on the fly using our custom Barcode Generator
application,
view
search results and cut, copy, and paste resulting
barcodes into any
graphical layout utility, or find a Pre-formatted
Barcode Sheet for a
store
near you. After locating the codes you want in one of
these three ways,
simply print your barcodes at home onto label paper
available at most
office
supply or electronics stores and cut out your codes in
preparation for
re-coding. We encourage our customers to re-code brand
name items with
generic item codes. Through this process, the customer
pays a more
reasonable price for what is a quite similar product.
It is best to
make
only slight adjustments such as these to avoid the
notice of our
competitors - the chain stores and the major brands
they carry.

Checking out is simple. Many stores even offer self
scanning checkouts.
This
is of course the easiest way to scan your re-coded
items undetected. In
situations where this is not available, cashiers will
assist you
through
their workplace boredom by only listening for a beep
as they scan your
item
rather than noticing the product name which their
register might
display.
Again, if recoding brand name products using their
generic equivalents'
UPC
codes, it is likely that the registers product name
displays will not
appear
all that different. In one test, both Kellog's Frosted
Flakes ($3.39
US) and
Better Valu Sugar Frosted Flakes ($1.69 US) appear
with the word Flakes
in
their name at the register. This helps the cashier to
remain focused on
the
beep rather than the product name as they scan away
your savings. Of
course,
this requires some flexibility on your part, but this
is what allows
you to
save up to 40% on brand-name products every day.

Press Contact / Interviews:
press@re-code.com

URL:
www.re-code.com

PR Image downloads:
www.re-code.com/pr

Promotional Video
www.re-code.com/videos.html

* We in no way endorse the theft of products or
services. Re-code.com
was
created as satire. We intend only to make aware the
prevelance of
barcodes
and begin a critical discussion about what their
pervasiveness means.
This
is not a product designed to be used in any malicious
or illegal
manner. Any
such use is strictly prohibited. You should not use
any of the barcodes
available from this site for any illegal activity.
They are here for
your
amusement only.

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DISCUSSION

Re: Video Game as Political Propaganda


hi,

> Has there every been a video game
> released that is tied into a specific political
> goal?

http://www.goarmy.com/aagame/
best,
ryan

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DISCUSSION

so that's victoria's secret...


http://www.whatisvictoriassecret.com/

someone just sent me this not so subtle web
detournment.
i'm waiting on someone to utilize the "Angels"
campaign given the current situation...
take care,
ryan

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
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DISCUSSION

Bookchin/Massu interview


sorry for 'stealing' this from nettime, but thought it
would be of interest to people here that might not
read nettime.
ryan

Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 07:49:07 -0800
From: N Bookchin <natalie@action-tank.org>
Subject: <nettime> Interview with Isabelle Massu

Hi nettimers,

I know its hard to think about much right now except
for the actions of
the axis of evil: Blair, Bush and Aznar, but for a
diversion, here is
an
interview I did with freedom I mean french artist and
activist Isabelle
Massu in the fall for 2002 for a spanish journal Red
Digital You can
read
it in spanish with illustrations here:
http://reddigital.cnice.mecd.es/3/entrevista_comp_2.html

best,
natalie

Isabelle Massu: Between Two Worlds: An Interview with
Natalie Bookchin

Isabelle Massu (isa@aux2mondes.org ) is an artist
currently working on
a
Net art project called aux2mondes. She has a
longstanding involvement
with
public art and alternative media. In 1995, she
collaborated with
Margaret
Tedesco on a year-long collaboration with a group of
homeless people
from
San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness. Parlor
Game: a Popular
Version
was a series of board games depicting the city rules
and regulations
San
Francisco's homeless had to bypass or confront in
order to survive. Six
different board games represented the different issues
and branches of
the
association such as Housing - Not Borders and Shelter
Outreach. The
games
were displayed as posters on Market Street in downtown
San Francisco,
and as an insert in the coalition's newspaper "Street
Sheet"
(www.sf-homeless-coalition.org).

In 1996 Massu joined the French feminist association
Les Penelopes
(www.penelopes.org) which had, at the time, the only
significant
Internet
presence representing the feminist movement in France.
They produced a
newsletter and a Web TV program offering world news on
women's issues
and
feminist analyses of neo-liberal globalization. Les
Penelopes is
more
than a media outlet; Massu traveled throughout Africa,
Europe, and
Latin
America giving workshops to women on media literacy
and the strategic
use
of new technologies.

In 1999 Massu became a member of La Compagnie,
(www.la-compagnie.org),
an
artist collective and an exhibition space in the heart
of downtown
Marseille, in a neighborhood called Belsunce. The
majority of
Marseille's
substantial North African residents live and work in
Belsunce, which
has,
since the nineteenth century, received immigrants from
across the
Mediterranean. Belsunce and Marseille are both
currently the targets of
local and European Union funded "rehabilitation"
initiatives, the
latter
known as the Euromediterranee Project.
Approximately one and a half
billion Euros are being invested in Marseille with the
hopes of
transforming the city into a booming commercial center
and a tourist
attraction. This is the largest amount ever given to a
European city by
the EU, and the funds are being allocated for downtown
real estate
development and restoration projects, aimed at
attracting international
investors and businesses. Downtown is being "cleaned
up," pricing out
its
current occupants to make room for a new population of
professionals,
businesses, and tourists. A new high-speed train
linking Paris to
Marseille has been installed.

Marseille's considerable immigrant population and its
rampant
unemployment
and poverty are an aftermath of another era's
commercial (and more
overtly
racist) enterprise, French colonialism. During the
height of
colonialism
in the nineteenth century, Marseille, nicknamed `Porte
de l'Orient,'
flourished as the main port for travel and trade to
the French
colonies.
Throughout the twentieth century, immigrants,
primarily from the
Maghreb
countries of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, were
recruited to France as
"guest" workers. Men were shipped over without their
families and
offered
deplorable living conditions to discourage settlement
when the work ran
out. Recruitment and immigration accelerated in the
1960s during
France's
economic boom and into the 1970s, when an estimated
two million North
Africans immigrated to France, many remaining in
Marseille.

With the end of colonialism, activities around the
port of Marseille
began
to dwindle, ushering in widespread unemployment. The
end of the
Algerian
war in 1962 brought massive migration from the newly
independent
country,
including about 150,000 pieds-noirs, French citizens
who had settled in
Algeria, returning to their homeland. Many of the
guest workers who
had
stayed on after their work had finished were permitted
by the French
government to send for their families. With the sudden
increase in the
population, unemployment and poverty, already a
problem in Marseille,
became endemic. The middle class began to abandon the
city, leaving the
poor and the immigrant population to deal with its
crumbling
infrastructure.

In 1999, Massu her current collaborators inherited La
Compagnie from a
collective of artists who had previously run the
organization for five
years. The new collective began to put considerable
effort into
defining
their role and position in relation to the uneasy
situation in
Belsunce.
Their goal has been to bring diverse cultural
activities to the
neighborhood, but they are also very cautious of the
role their
existence
can play in accelerating the gentrification process.
They have
initiated,
supported and developed a variety of projects
including aux2mondes.With
aux2mondes Massu and her collaborators are developing
an on-line game
and
archive exposing the gentrification strategies of the
city and the
current
situation in Belsunce.The rules of the game will be
inspired by city
and
state political rules and regulations. They are
planning the release
date
to coincide with the inauguration of a new public
library in Belsunce,
a
major event and symbol of the "rehabilitation"
project.

Natalie Bookchin: What brought you to live and work in
Marseille?

Isabelle Massu: I lived in San Francisco for 10 years.
In 1996, I
decided
it was time to return home, and spent a year looking
for places to
live. I
am originally from Paris and didn't want to go back to
a place that
felt
so familiar. I visited a friend in Marseille and fell
in love with the
city. Part of my attraction was that, like San
Francisco, Marseille
is a
cosmopolitan port city, and although it is France,
it doesn't look
and
feel like the rest of the country. Mediterranean
culture is very
present.
It is a very intense city, partly due to its
geographical positioning
at
the edge of the continent. After all the orderliness
and quaintness of
San
Francisco, I was looking for a city with more of an
edge. Marseille is
the
second biggest city in France, yet had been generally
disregarded by
the
French government until recently. It is the only city
left in France
where the downtown is poor and the immigrant
population, the majority
of
which is Algerian, lives in the center of the city.
The two other large
French cities, Paris and Lyon, have already
"rehabilitated" and
gentrified
their centers, which are now richer and whiter, and
the immigrants have
been pushed to the suburbs.

When I came to Marseille I moved to Belsunce, a small
neighborhood
sandwiched between the main train station, the
entrance to the city's
freeway, and the port. Belsunce brought back familiar
feelings and
sensations of growing up in the suburbs of Paris. When
I was six years
old, my stepfather decided to move to the projects,
which was typical
of a
French proletarian family in need of a bargain
apartment. The projects
had
just been constructed, and were being sold as
attractive, new, and
modern.
This was the 1970s and the projects were also being
used for
temporarily
relocating some of the newly arriving Algerian
population. We were in
the
minority as so called Francais de souche, (roughly
translated as "old
stock or native French). This was the first time I
encountered
immigrants,
and I witnessed a lot of racism. The immigrants were
seen as intruders.
Their religious practices, which were completely
unfamiliar to us, were
seen as evil and barbarian. From the dead lamb in the
cellar to the
henna
on my friend's hands and feet, I had a lot of
questions that were never
answered by my family or school. France's role in
Algeria was not
discussed. We learned about World War II, but never a
word was
mentioned
about what amounted to almost a century of French
colonization. No one
talked about the protectorates, yet the schools were
suddenly filled
with
kids from these places. Returning to Belsunce in
France in 1996
reminded
me of the confusion I felt as a child, and I began to
think about the
situation as an adult. I felt very comfortable in
Marseille, feeling
that
I simultaneously belonged and didn't belong. I knew
there was something
in
this that I wanted to investigate, but I didn't know
exactly what form
that investigation would take.

NB: You left France when you were twenty-two and spent
ten years, much
of
your adult life, as an immigrant in San Francisco. Now
you are back in
France, and carry an American and a French passport.
You have worked in
activist organizations as an artist, and in artist
collectives as an
activist. You are attracted to Marseille as a city
located between the
north and the south, between France and North Africa.
Your project
aux2mondes resides between physical and virtual
spaces. It seems that
you
value the "in-between" not as a transitional space,
but a place to
locate
oneself and one's work. Can you talk about your
interest in the
"in-between?"

IM: I don't know if it's an interest as much as a way
of being in the
world, something that I have had to be all my life. I
don't want to be
too
psychoanalytical, but I will say that the first
"in-between" was
between
my mother and my father, who divorced when I was very
young and lived
in
different places. It was between the two of them that
I really found
myself, and still do. I have always been drawn to the
interstices,
whether
it is between places or identities. To be "in-between"
is to not have a
closed-in, secure, or fixed position. Maybe it's not
a very determined
way of being in the world, but for me, any other
position is too
constraining. Being fixed in one position does not
allow you to see the
other side, whereas being "in-between" allows for
movement and insight.

And of course one can talk about the strategy of the
"in-between" in
aux2mondes. The project is based in Belsunce, where
most people are
between two worlds, between Algeria and Marseille,
between the secular
state of France and the religious state of Algeria,
between being
welcomed
as a citizen and being an illegal alien. But the
in-between aspect of
the
project really lies in how it structures and defines
public space.
aux2mondes looks at both the limits and possibilities
of physical
spaces
and the virtual spaces. We are using the Net as a
public space to
reinvent
situations, propose alternatives, and denounce the
progress of
gentrification. aux2mondes needs both spaces: the
physical space of La
Compagnie is a direct and critical link with the
people who are
threatened
by the gentrification.

NB: Marseille seems to be trying to erase Belsunce. If
the local
population is made invisible, there is no need to
address them. Can you
talk about how aux2mondes works against this process?

IM: The city, the state, and the newspapers praise the
expansion of
urban
renewal plans. The process is said to be socially,
economically, and
culturally enriching, but for whom? The rhetoric is
always addressed to
a
privileged population, as if the population being
displaced did not
exist.
Politicians describe this center as the "throbbing
heart that it once
was"
before the arrival of the immigrants. The politician's
goal is revealed
through their vocabulary: rehabilitation, restitution,
reanimation,
reorientation, reinforcement, resurrection, and above
all re-conquest.
We
intend to give a more realistic picture of the
so-called "enhancement"
of
a city. By collectively writing another story, we
reiterate the
universal
droit de cite.

This is in some respects how we are depicting the
situation as a game
in
aux2mondes: like most popular games, we are recreating
a real
situation.
Think of Monopoly, Sim City, Europa, games involving
commerce, city
planning, colonization. In aux2mondes, the city and
state political
rules
and regulations are our sources of inspiration. We
are inventing
another
site, inventing a "counter" Belsunce,another Belsunce,
another public
space, one where we could strategically play with
equal opportunities
to
win or lose, one where voices could be heard, a public
space where one
could interfere, exchange, network, a non-static net
within the net. It
is
the Net, and it is fluid, not fixed in space or time,
allowing us to
continue the story we are experiencing here, and to
invent other
stories,
strategies, and challenges, as the gentrification
process continues
here
and everywhere.

"the population in downtown is for the most part
people with a very low
income; we need to crush this phenomena."
la Marseillaise (local newspaper) 24.05.96

NB:You are now in your second year of working on your
project, yet do
not
seem to be in any hurry to publish anything on the
Net. Can you talk a
bit
about your work process?

IM: The whole first year we did extensive research
into the historical,
social, and political situation in Belsunce. We have
been conducting
workshops and interviewing people who are or have
lived in the
neighborhood. For a year, Martine Derain and I have
been working with a
group of local women. Other members of the collective
are working on
other projects and workshops, such as Johanne
Larrouze who organizes
workshops for kids and adults that relate to the
events taking place in
our space. She and David Bouvard, another member of
the collective, are
working on a mini festival of Scopitone films for next
year. Scopitone
films were the 1960s precursor to today's music
videos. They were
distributed on 16 mm film with sound and shown on a
Scopitone film
jukebox, found in bars across France. Joanne and David
are focusing on
scopitones made for immigrants. Most of them were
about working hard in
France, leaving the country, wanting to go back or
wanting to remain. A
lot of them had strong sexual connotations, perhaps in
an attempt to
entertain lonely male workers who were brought over
without wives and
families.

Debates and lectures at La Compagnie often address
problems in the
neighborhood, such as the local economy, as well as
national and
international issues such as rehabilitation projects
in other cities
and
how other collectives and associations work with
immigrants. We also
have
an artist residency program, which tries to introduce
an outside
perspective on the situation. Martine and Dalila
Madjhoub, two members
of
La Compagnie, are currently working on a proposal for
a public art
piece
in Belsunce in collaboration with two French
architects. Their
extensive
research on city politics will be added to the
database of aux2mondes,
as
will the work of the others mentioned above. We are
calling the archive
and database of aux2mondes "The Library." It will
mirror the "real"
library currently under construction, which is viewed
as a major symbol
of
the gentrification process in Belsunce. Its strategic
geographical
position is supposed to placate the local population.
However, it will
also attract students from nearby and newly
constructed universities,
which are attracting a younger generation to the area.
They will
probably
be among the first new settlers in Belsunce.
Therefore, as most locals
would agree, this library is not really for them.

"When you go to Aix Street, they give you low income
housing for around
3000frs. What does it mean? It's not the poor people
who are going to
live
there, especially with "Marseille-habitat". If you
want an apartment
they'll know where to find you one, a one room in
Belsunce or a 6 room
apartment in the north of Marseille. The choice of
course is quickly
made!"

"La Cite de La Musique, they did not build it for
us. The minimum you
need to pay for classes for your kid is 400frs!! I'm
telling you, this
is
not for usS The library, I don't think it's gonna be
for us either, I
really don't think so!"

Fatima Rhazi, resident of Belsunce, 2001

NB:Can you talk about the workshops you have been
running with the
women
from the neighborhood?

IM: The workshops came partly out of my feminist
experience, and from
working in a neighborhood where public space is mainly
inhabited and
controlled by men. Women appear primarily in private
spaces, mostly at
home. What really stood out for me is their
invisibility. Muslim and
Algerian women are doubly invisible: they are
invisible as Muslims and
Algerians in France, and invisible as women in Muslim
culture.

The women would come to La Compagnie with their kids.
The men from the
neighborhood would come and go, but some women kept on
coming back. We
began to develop friendships, while simultaneously
developing a series
of
workshops. They wanted to learn how to use the
Internet. It seemed that
after one year what was most important to them had to
do with
communication: email and forums. The Net became a way
for them to have
a
voice and to access information on their own, without
having to rely
solely on television or reports of the outside world
by the men.

For some, the interest was to feel closer to their
home country, and
they
would participate in online forums dedicated to
Mzabite culture (a
group
well known for its puritanism in Algeria). The
anonymity in this
context
allowed "feminist" voices to come out. These were
forums where it
appeared
that only men were chatting, but, as would happen in
an ideal public
space, they were suddenly filled with women's voices,
challenging
misogynist beliefs in a very direct manner.

Later on, as they became more at ease with the use of
computers, the
women
started to write their own stories of their arrival in
Belsunce. They
trusted that their voices would be heard but their
identities never
revealed-some of them are illegal aliens in France.
We will make audio
and text material from the workshops available in
aux2monde's Library.

NB: Tell me about the funding of aux2mondes. Are your
funders aware of
your intentions?

IM: We have been given fairly substantial funds from
the city and the
Ministry of Culture despite the fact that Marseille
doesn't have much
money for culture and the arts. I believe that this
has to do, in part,
with our strategic location in Belsunce and our
potential as artists in
the neighborhood to placate the population.
Politicians believe that if
people are distracted by culture they wont need to
dwell on the
unpleasantness of their situation. The cultural
events are supposed to
act as a crutch, to compensate for what the city is
not offering them-a
decent education, parks, and playgrounds. None of this
exists in
Belsunce.

In a neighborhood which has been labeled as
disreputable, La Compagnie
bridges the different populations throughout the
various events we
organize in Belsunce. As artists, we have to be very
diligent about
what
we are offering in this context. We need to constantly
look very
critically at our own position and the one placed on
us by the
government,
which believes it is useful to have a public art space
in this
"targeted"
neighborhood. We are not fooling ourselves into
thinking that we can
restrain gentrification that has been happening for
over ten years. But
at
the same time, we are not willing to fully satisfy our
funder's
expectations, and we refuse to permanently occupy the
position they
outline for us, though at times this position is
unavoidable. For the
most
part we have been free to do as we please, but I
suppose aux2mondes
will
trigger a lot of political debate once it is online.

NB: Why do you assume that gentrification is
inevitable? Is there any
attempt, from your group or others, to resist the
rehabilitation
project,
which could prove to be disastrous to the hundreds of
immigrants living
and working in the neighborhood?

This rehabilitation project has been studied by
sociologists, urban
planners, and the city for quite some time now, and
has convinced much
of
the population that it is being done in their
interest. And some of it
probably is, but lies and promises are being used
successfully as
strategic weapons. For example, the city is offering
families the same
rent to move into the projects on the edge of the city
as they now pay
to
live in Belsunce. This could be seen as a good
opportunity for some,
but
others, like old and single men living in cheap hotels
(a substantial
portion of Belsunce's population), do not want to be
displaced or
isolated
one from one another. The working population does not
want to have to
commute long distances to work in downtown Marseille.
Why should they
have
to be the ones to move to the projects?

Resisting an underhanded, tricky government is more
challenging then
one
that is blatantly violent. Some groups are organizing
to inform people
of
their rights as citizens and tenants, but there is not
much being done
for
the illegal immigrants. It is difficult to fight for
people's right to
stay here when technically they do not have such
rights. Our form of
resistance is at times made up of small daily
gestures. We are offering
a
critical perspective, and that is in itself an act of
resistance.
aux2mondes has no pretenses about changing the world,
and locates
itself
in between activism and art. But from both
perspectives the intention
remains the same: making its participants visible.
That is our plot in
the
game.

www.aux2mondes.org
The first part of the project will be on-line October
2003.

Edited by Claire Barliant and Natalie Bookchin

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