de Vasim, the site for Oddstream

I’ve been in the beautiful city of Nijmegen for four days now, and the Oddstream festival is getting underway. It’s been an exciting and busy time as I’ve been jumping between mentoring an amazing group of international media students and activists while also participating in Memefest‘s Mapping Socially Responsive Communication workshop. The evenings have been spent reaquainting myself (ie. drinking and drinking some more) with some old friends and collaborators (from declarations days!) and meeting many new ones. My head is swimming, and though genuine insight has yet to set in, I wanted to get some words and images out nonetheless.

The first meeting of (some of) the Memefest mentorship crew. Left to right: Jason Grant, Sandy Kaltenborn, Vida and Mina(!), Frederic Dubois, and Inês Nin.

The Nijmegen centre

Editorial meeting with part of the international media team

Assigning tasks

The media training has been an energetic and inspirating process. Co-organised by several amazing artist/media collectives (namely Loesje, Pink Sweater, and Masta), it brings together 25 communicators with the goal of creating the media coverage for the festival in print, video and online. I had the chance to present the ideas behind memefest to them, as well as a brief overview of my own work, and am now helping them out with conception and design ideas. As the festival is getting started, they’re on a frenetic daily production schedule, and the energy in the office and at the site is palpable.

The Memefest workshop is an interesting counterpoint to the production driven media training. Groups of participants and mentors are working on creating visual maps that demonstrate theories of socially responsive communication (in contrast to market driven communication). The diverse backgrounds of the participants (cultural, philosophical, professional) is creating a fascinating dynamic of discourse and leading to some very interesting discussion. It’s been an intensive process and I’m very much looking forward to the results.

The site itself, de Vasim, is something to behold, a massive discarded factory space sandwiched between a power station, an industrial park and the Waal river. It’s been impressive to see the artisans behind the scenes evolve the site from a barren landscape to an exciting and inviting festival venue, packed with several stages, art installations and fairgrounds.

Interactive video scultpure by Matthias Oostrik

Amongst other things, it’s really opened my eyes to the politics of public/private space and the lessons to be learned from a rich european culture of squatting. I wish these things were possible in Montreal, and its definitely something I’ve now added to my (long) list of things to fight for.

While I finish this post, I’m listening to Paulo Hartmann present at Memefest’s Inspiration day, a full day of presentations by some of the most avant-garde communications practioners around. I’m so grateful to have this opportunity to meet so many amazingly talented, friendly and collaborative people, and to learn about all the great organisations involved. The possibility of new international collaborations has got me so excited, and I feel really empowered in this moment.

Much more soon…