Geneva03 WSIS? WE SEIZE! - Press Release
08.Dec.03 - PRESS CONFERENCE TAKES PLACE MONDAY 8 DECEMBER, 11:30 at: l'Espace de Forde, l'Usine, 11 rue de la Coulouvrenière, Geneva.
What's WSIS?
The World Summit On Infomation Society (WSIS) takes place in Geneva from the 10th - 12th December, 2003. While the official agenda of this UN/ITU Summit talks about free access to information, the digital divide and equality of opportunities, in reality its doors are closed, its discussions exclusive and the agendas of those who attend it concealed. What is more, the right to demonstrate and protest has been suspended in Geneva at this time as the usual parade of despots and tyrants fly in to Switzerland to define policy for their own citizens, and the rest of the world, based on the agendas of corporate multinations, media conglomerates and infrastructure owners.
About geneva 03
Geneva03 is a temporary network of groups and individuals set up to carry out agitational, educational and communications work during both the G8 and the WSIS. You can contact us on 00 41 (0) 22 327 16 13, or by email.
Autonomous media
Geneva03 considers it critical to show, during such a display of media power and control, that independent groups and people have the ability to create their own media, to share media, self publish, build networks and communicate freely and autonomously. That is why we have titled our events during this time WSIS? WE SEIZE! We do not consider that negotiation and supplication before the altar of the UN will produce information autonomy for all. Instead, we are taking our autonomy now, using the means and technologies at our disposal: the Internet, peer to peer networks, Free and Open Source Software, community wireless infrastructures, pirate television and radio and streamed media. Beyond questions of communications technology, We Seize! seeks to open a wide-ranging discussion on the new social conditions that constitute today's world about which the WSIS has little or nothing to say: media concentration, expansive intellectual property regimes, casualised and immaterial labour and migration.
Communication: more than a right
We insist that this urge to speak, to hear and be heard, is irrepressible. The Geneva03 collecitve returns to Geneva following major attempts at repression during the G8 this year, in which the collective were targetted by police whilst running an independent media centre. No charges were brought against the collective, because- whatever the establishment would like to believe- it is still lawful to freely express ourselves. We must, however, continue to exercise this ability, to expand and test it in diverse situations, if we are not to lose the freedom and potential that defines us as people.
Communication, language and information are essential to understanding both control and liberation in this new millenium. They are simultaneously the site of the most repressive and totalitarian suppression and disciplining we have seen since the 1950s and, we believe, the basis of a powerful, growing autonomous movement. Ultimately this movement must cut to the very heart of communication: for what we are able to articulate, we are able to create. We must speak of a new world without fear, and with all the creativity, energy and commitment we can find.
Geneva03 events
See geneva03.net for all locations
Strategic Conference (S-CONF)
9th & 10th Dec
10am -> 6pm
@ Le Theatre de L'Usine
more
Taking place as part of the WSIS? WE SEIZE! events and actions in Geneva, the WE SEIZE! Strategic Conference (S-CONF) will take the form of two days of open discussion and short presentations. S-CONF welcomes local Genevans, WSIS delegates, NGO members and info-activists alike to join the debate. The conference is intended to provide allow everyone involved to explore the key issues involved in information politics today and to gain a better understanding of this fledgling movement.
Polimedia Lab
11th, 12th, 13th Dec
@SIP (Workshops)
more
A space for learning, sharing and experimenting with media. Open to all from the 11th December, providing free access to machines and skills.
High Noon / Geneva03 LiveStream
9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th Dec
@Studio4, Usine & SIP
more
HighNoon is a three day streaming event that projects remote interventions from all over the globe on the world summit on the information society in geneva. instead of reporting from the summit to the rest of the world HighNoon works as an interface that confronts and exposes the rhetorics of the summit by contributions uploaded by activists from around the globe.
geneva03.org