Community Media Trust: Deccan

Experiments in Art Education in Luang-Prabang, Laos

The art school in Luang-Prabang, Laos has been holding media workshops. One was on graffiti.
http://b-lp.syntone.org/tag.html







Nathalie Magnan has been holding a video and photography workshop. Nathalie is a television producer and professor of video who lives in Paris. She is a former member of the "Paper Tiger TV" collective. Students have organized their photos into catagories:
À L'ÉCOLE, AÉROTRANSIT, DESSINS, DÉTAILS, ÉLÉVATION, FAUNE, FILLIOU AU LAOS, FLORE, FOOD, GRAFF, IMAGES D'IMAGES, KATAW, LES AUTRES, LES MOINES, LES UNS, MARCHÉ, MÉKONG/NAM, PAGODES/SACRÉ, PAYSAGES, PÉTANQUE, PRISE, ROUTE, TAKBATH, TUKTUKGALLERY, VILL(AG)E, VRAC, WATERFALLS

In this photo "bank" one can click on each catagory: http://banque.b-lp.syntone.org/

These two images are in the catagory "a l'ecole" (At School):

Clemencia Rodriguez and CINEP's First Video Project

..."The next day, sure enough, at sun up they were there with five mules to pick us up-- us and our very shiny, new video camera and so we got on the mules, Claudia on one mule and myself on another and we put the equipment on another one and up we went on an Andean trail until we found this community of small farmers (Samana Caldas) which was about two hours away. The plan for that day and the following days... to train them with video, for they had never operated not even a photography camera let alone a video camera."

Saving the Land with Video

"The Deccan Development Society is projecting a working model for the people oriented participative development in the areas of food security, ecological agriculture, and alternate education. It is also trying to reverse the historical process of degradation of the environment and people's livelihood system in this region through a string of land related activities such as Perma-culture, Community Grain Bank, Community Gene Fund, Community Green Fund and Collective Cultivation through land Lease etc. These activities, along side taking on the role of Earth care is also resulting in human care, by giving the Women a new found dignity and profile in their village communities. The Society is trying to relocate the people's knowledge in the area of Health and Agriculture."

The Deccan women's video workshops have active for over ten years. Deep Dish commissioned the women to update the documentary that they had made about their work in 1998. These are some excerpts from that initial documentary and statements by recent participants. Now, more than ever, the work they are doing is important. Their tapes of saving local seeds and their documents of biodiversity are crucially important in an era when "Free Trade" regulations are imposing corporate farming practices in rural India.

"The Deccan Development Society (DDS), is a two-decade old grassroots organization working in about 75 villages with women’s Sanghams (voluntary village level associations of the poor) in Medak District of Andhra Pradesh. The 5000 women members of the Society represent the poorest of the poor in their village communities. Most of them are dalits, the lowest group in the Indian social hierarchy. In 2001, the video and radio women formed themselves into a rural women’s media collective known as the DDS Community Media Trust which includes their own radio station. The DDS FM Radio is five year old and has canned nearly five hundred hours of programmes.

They predominantly work with issues like agricultural needs of semi-arid regions, education and literacy, public health and hygiene, environmental and ecological issues, biodiversity and food security, gender justice, local/indigenous knowledge systems and emphasis on traditional folk culture. The Community Media Trust (CMT) has an active community video and radio unit. They have been producing audios and videos for the past six years now. The radio station is very keen on a participative approach to media. Independent registration of the CMT validates that the station is moving towards self sustainability, community management and ownership. The content produced by the media trust reflects community needs by creating awareness and by promoting community participation."

For a photo essay about the Deccan work, go to the article by Alfonso Gumucio Dagron at: http://www.communicationforsocialchange.org/photogallery.php?id=390

EngageMedia

Happy Valley is a beautiful area of native bush, fragile wetlands and a thriving ecosystem of native birds and animals located on the West Coast of New Zealand, just North East of Westport. It is home to many threatened species including the Great Spotted Kiwi and the large native Patrickensis land snail.... and it is under attack from state-owned enterprise Solid Energy!(From a video on the EngageMedia website.)

EngageMedia is a video sharing site distributing works about social justice and environmental issues in South East Asia, Australia and the Pacific. It is a space for critical documentary, fiction, artistic and experimental works that challenge the dominance of the mainstream media. The growth of digital distribution tools mean distributing video online has become a viable option for artists and activists looking for ways to get their work out there. Huge potential exists within these new technologies to bypass the control of big media conglomerates and create our own distribution channels.

EngageMedia aims to demystify and provide access to these new technologies, create an online archive of independent video productions using Creative Commons licenses and form a peer network of video makers, educators and screening organisations. Full Project Brief Our core aims are
* To assist individuals and groups producing thought-provoking and
informative media focused on social and environmental issues
distribute their work.
* To develop the digital media and Internet skills of independent
video makers and marginalised communities.
* To foster a regional network of producers, to assist each other in
producing and distributing their work in the South East Asia and
Pacific region.
* To produce an online video delivery platform under a free software
license that others are free to use and modify for their own media
projects.

OK.Video Militia Workshops

OK.VIDEO MILITIA WORKSHOPS by Anna Helme —2007-07-16
EngageMedia has partnered with the OK.VIDEO Militia Jakarta International Video Festival at the National Gallery of Indonesia to distribute the festival videos online, present an online video training for video artists and participate in a discussion about video activism. This article by Reza 'asung' Afisina, the Workshop Program Coordinator, explains the objectives of the OK.VIDEO Militia series of video workshops conducted in various towns and cities in Indonesia, capturing the 'quintessence' of each area by asking participants to explore their own questions about their social, political and physical surroundings using the medium of video.

OK.VIDEO MILIITA WORKSHOP Videos from the workshops are listed here to watch and download from EngageMedia:
http://www.engagemedia.org/ok-video-militia/

[ENGLISH] OK. Video Militia workshop has the objective to empower the people, by using the video as a medium for expression, for research, and for reflection on the social phenomena. Therefore, the workshop also develops the "quintessence" of each city and town where the workshop is held. We conducted simple researches about the places, regarding the physical aspects or, especially, the socio-cultural aspects, to gain some descriptions about them. We then present the many problems we found to the participants, we re-present them --is it true what the mass media and many people have been thinking about their place of residence? We then asked the participants to explore questions that had never been posed about their environment, and we then developed these questions together and discussed how to present those questions and problems using the medium of video.

Prior to that, we have prepared workshop modules, which we designed to be presented in seven days. The modules consist of an introduction to the history of video, its relevancy to the socio-political and cultural situations, and also about the OK. Video festival which ruangrupa holds every two years since 2003. There are also modules about the introductions to the technical aspects of the video and also about a simple editing process.

Many participants thought that to make a video work they had to be able to do some video editing using the computers, something that they still found difficult. Here we only came up with very simple editing concepts, because we preferred to develop editing concepts that are out of the technical aspects, i.e. how to develop an idea using the characteristics of the video medium. However, in some places where the participants had not been familiar with the context and technical aspects of the video medium, we presented our modules in reverse, i.e. we delivered the technical introductions first, then the theories. That was why we had to create flexible modules.

The interesting thing in the workshop was to see how the participants intimately play around with the videos. They tested the medium first prior to deciding whether their ideas would be suitable for, say, the camera in a mobile phone, which turned out to have such a low resolution that would be difficult to transfer; or they wondered what if they used the technique of stop-motions as a simple animation technique. They knew that each video-based recording equipment has its own characteristic that must be adapted to their ideas. Many participants then decided to collaborate to develop their ideas, and a lot of fresh new ideas emerged during the process. Many of the participants found distinct visual styles that are able to describe their cities using various approaches, whether as documentary works, simple animations, statements, or a play of visual imagination.

The participants had actually known their towns and cities very well in their daily lives, it is now just how to help them own the awareness to 'record' these cities. We challenge them to keep trying all the technical possibilities of the video using many recording media, introducing various ways of 'recording', from the simplest one like writing a daily journal, notes, sketches, up to video recording. The awareness to 'record' would be able to help them express their critical attitude in observing changes, turning them into new forms of expressions, thus enabling these participants to know and adapt better to the changes and then pose these questions again using the medium of video, which would then trigger more forms of expressions in never-ending explorations.

[BAHASA INDONESIA] Workshop OK. Video Militia ini bertujuan memberdayakan masyarakat, dengan menggunakan video sebagai medium ekspresi, alat penyelidikan, dan refleksi atas fenomena sosial. Karena itu, workshop ini juga mengembangkan "inti karakter" setiap kota tujuan workshop. Kami melakukan penelitian sederhana mengenai kota, baik secara fisik maupun, terutama, kondisi sosial-budayanya, demi mendapatkan gambaran karakter kota itu. Berbagai permasalahan yang kami temukan kemudian kami tawarkan kepada peserta, kami sandingkan kembali --tepatkah pemberitaan media massa maupun anggapan banyak orang mengenai kota mereka? Kami lalu mengajak peserta untuk menggali sejumlah pertanyaan yang selama ini tak pernah diungkapkan tentang lingkungan mereka, lalu kami kembangkan bersama, bagaimana mengangkat ragam permasalahan itu melalui medium video. "Video sed non credo" / "I see it, but I don't believe it"

Reza 'asung' Afisina, Workshop Program Coordinator OK. Video Militia - 3rd Jakarta International Video Festival 2007