Slavo Krekovic

 

Five years have passed and we can have a look at some of the independent, non-corporate publishing initiatives in Slovakia. They emerged around and after Y2K and can be seen as examples of grass-roots cultural practices in post-communist Central Europe. How can we describe the complicated processes that link different communication media with their content-creators, readers, participants and communities? Virtual publishing spaces such as message-board-type MUDs or editable Wikibased websites have promised freedom of expression but also new collaborative approaches and participative ways of content creation. Specialized and personal newsletters are trying to keep people informed. Furthermore, for the last couple of years, the bloggers' movement has been competing with traditional publishing institutions.And,in the space between, there are still independent publishers dealing with contemporary culture, creativity, society and technology.

It seems that everywhere there are nodes of creativity with their own life-cycles.They reflect the decentralised nature of the net.They also can be geographically defined, but usually it is ideas that bring people together and technologies that enable them to communicate, even across distances.Art servers,webzines,real and virtual cultural spaces and meeting points, creative groups: if we observe them from outside, we notice that these nodes suddenly start to shine. And, usually, they exist just for a while. However, in this period, they attract people looking for something new and/or suffering from information hunger. Some of them also want to express themselves, to participate and become involved in the creative processes - and a new community is born. Or, it can also work the other way round: there is a group of creators, writers, artists or activists, who want to establish a presentation platform for their work. Or, as we can see, there might be just a single person wanting to share something. It is not by accident, that in the post-net society, such initiatives are closely connected to electronic culture, reflecting the relationship of technology and society. They are acting outside the mainstream, specialized and critical, building enthusiastic communities around themselves.

These communities circulating around servers or magazines can be purely virtual but, in a small country like Slovakia, they are mostly real face-to-face relationships of people with similar interests. Furthermore, communities around creative nodes overlap and people behind these nodes are aware of their context and other surrounding nodes. Therefore, creating links and (net)working together is very common. People are involved in several projects at the same time, often combining aspects of information distribution (printed or online), organizing events or running a cultural space. After our years of experience, we know that online publishing has many advantages. It is a low-cost, potentially high-influence, alternative to commercial media, allowing a high degree of participation on content creation. It allows subjective writing (blogs, personal newsletters) and is very suitable for "quick" and time-limited info (e.g. about up-coming events). One of the most prolific features is interactivity with recipients, which stimulates feedback and is richer and faster than traditional media. Independent online media have their specific and specialized content profile (art, creativity, technology, culture), allowing personalization (content filtering, skins) and full-text database searching.

 

Prielom webzine

 

Hyperlinks and all multimedia formats can be included, contributing to high degree of contextualisation. On the other hand, our experience with online publishing proved that this medium is not very suitable for long texts and it cannot provide "long-term accessibility" of information that printed ones do. After a wild, anarchistic and subcultural phases, we see that some of the projects "localizing" accessible technologies have survived; others are dead or have been transformed into something different.

Hysteria.sk server hosting the Prielom webzine has been the most important hackers' and hacktivists' node since 1997. Focusing on alternative approaches and perspectives on technology (also featuring aspects of privacy, freedom and other social issues connected to technological development), the community around Hysteria has also been experimenting with wardriving and other unorthodox social and technological practices. From 2000 to 2002 the server was shut down, but afterwards it became active again.

Closely related to hysteria.sk (and running on the same hardware) was the portal message.sk, the first important website dealing with technology-related art and that started in 1999. Its roots were in the PC demo scene and although it stopped its main activities in 2003, it is still functioning as an archive of works in different media (net.art, demos, photos, videos, animations, texts). Message.sk was run by Zden, founder of the Satori innovative group of "multimedia workers".

One of the Satori members, Dusan Barok founded the koridor.sk portal in 2000 with Nino Hybal (later koridor.org). It combined a cultural webzine, events calendar and database-guide to media, places and music bands. Koridor.sk was one of the important attempts to create an art server/cultural portal, in 2002 it dissolved into another projects.

In late 2001, Kyberia.sk server started as a webzine about technology,art, philosophy and related topics, which later became the biggest message-board-type multi-user domain, fostering freedom of expression, creativity and trying to realize some of the cyber-cultural utopias. Nowadays, kyberia.sk is the most important community server (with thousands of registered users), and still trying to keep a distance from the usual chat-rooms. Users create message boards in which creative output is valued (Kyberia has become a real phenomenon: also most of the active members of other projects listed here have an account there).

34.sk, originally a presentation website of the 3/4 REVUE cultural magazine founded in 1999, has become, in a way, a continuation of several sections of Koridor.sk. Nowadays, it features not only short info about the printed magazine, but also online-only articles, an event guide, a link section and, recently, a blog section with short personal texts and comments. 34.sk is focusing on contemporary creativity in the post-net society and it has its own content management system, allowing the site to be edited by a group of people related to the 3/4 printed magazine. Linking virtual space with printed medium, 34.sk is slowly evolving towards a complex, participatory, half-open virtual communication platform.

Another hybrid model, combining a traditional medium with a new communication channel, is the radioart.sk web project.This is the only nondiy example on this list, carried out by a state-owned FM radio station (Experimental studio). Radioart.sk is exploring all forms of sound art related to electricity and features different types of content (articles, audio archive, database of works with profiles of composers, streaming audio and video archives).

Zion (http://www.zionmag.org ), is a webzine created in 2000. It is a node run by a community of young people who are also organising cultural events and features articles, cultural news, blogs, visual artworks and message boards.

In 2004, Dusan Barok (who programmed the code for 34.sk and is also an active contributor) started the online database, Monoskop.sk, an easily editable Wiki-based portal mapping initiative,artists and works related to art and technology in Central and Eastern Europe.

Buryzone.info e-mail newsletter is a digest of upcoming events and other relevant information in the sphere of arts, new media culture and community, and compiled by Maria Riskova. It originated together with a small gallery and club - Buryzone (2001-2003) - a kind of public living room which was an important meeting point for the cultural scene.

What is the background of all these publishing and community initiatives in Slovakia? First of all, after all the efforts, we can only say that people are doing it simply because they want to, and there exists the enabling technology.Of course,it has not been easy for several reasons.Although internet connectivity has been on the rise over the years and most of the independent projects are using private server space offered for free (many of the projects have been running on ephex.factory.sk, xena.media7.sk and kyblik.pieskovisko.sk), there has been almost no financial resources for online publishing projects in our country to date, apart from corporate initiatives (blogging possibilities offered by sme.sk - a daily newspaper's website, or inzine.sk lifestyle/cultural webzine, funded by an IT company and in existence for a couple of years. Similar to this type of website is e.g. station.sk). After all the experiences, we can say that the only thing that works is DIY. No one is going to do it for you.

 

Buryzone.info mailing list

 

(Mostly) no-one gives you money for any of it, which also means that there can be no professional editorial staff employed. Despite all governmental claims about the development of the e-society, the state arts funding in Slovakia currently supports only print-format arts publishing but no online activities.We can also see that the responses to each technological possibility are different. Mailing lists had no bigger a success; a community server, however, is very popular.Webzines that are connected to a traditional publishing medium, are working in connection to its content. Other initiatives experienced involved problems arising from the purely enthusiastic and, therefore, unprofessional nature of their way of working.Although their future is unstable, in the end, all of them together create a network of important information nodes. In order to get a closer view, it might be interesting to read the statements written by independent publishers in Slovakia themselves.

 

Buryzone.info
Text by Maria Riskova

"Buryzone.info" is a simple mailing list or newsletter (not a discussion group). The content of the e-mails that I send to subscribers I usually define as "information about cultural events in Bratislava and the surrounding area (Slovakia,Vienna, Brno, Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Internet, etc.)". I collect information (invitations, calls for participation, various offers) that I receive from galleries, clubs, institutions or individuals; then I filter it and send it to interested people.

The message always includes information on events organised by me or the space I am currently involved with (so it is also a form of self-promotion), invitations for events of related organizers/friends (circle of people of my generation and interests from various cities who are connected), info about grants and „www-tip" (invitation to visit an interesting web page of any kind).The language is Slovak plus the language of forwarded messages (usually English or German) and I update the information every week.

My strategy is to use a purely personal filter for forwarding of information.Though I try to select a variety of information,I always bring in the highlights of the next few days and events that are not very well promoted by other means - I prefer experimental things to mainstream, for example.

The self-promotion aspect refers to the origin of the newsletter. In 2001 I started to collect addresses and send out the information once a week about the current programme of the informal art space Buryzone that I used to run with my friends. In these e-mails we already were adding info about events to our programme about our fellow organisers.After stopping the activities of the space, a great database of contacts of people willing to receive culture information was left. So, the best idea was to continue to maintain the list.

During the time that I was sending the information, people got used to sending me messages about events happening here and asking me to forward it to the list. Recipients of "buryzone.info" often appreciate personal introductions to the messages (a kind of editorial) reacting to current situations in Bratislava.

The disadvantage of such a personal project is that, when I am busy with some project or other, I often neglect the regular sending of the e-mail. The advantage of this personal filter is that it is in direct contact with recipients of e-mails who often react to my message hidden in the introduction.

The best way to be informed about things happening in your city is to filter information for other people. Soon you can check the list's development on the web site, www.buryzone.info.

 

Monoskop

Text by Dusan Barok

_ social context

Two years ago we started Burundi media lab in Bratislava with the main focus on new media.Among other things we have been taking part in the organization of the annual Multiplace festival. There were a number of people who were confused about what we were about and, in fact, we sort of based our activities on confusion about the term 'new media'. In summer 2004 we set up a wiki in order to store the information connected to what we understood as media art and we have been doing this since then.

 

Monoskop

 

_ form

The structure of Monoskop is not really complex. On the frontpage there is a list of cities. Currently the most evolved ones are three: Bratislava, Prague, and Brno. Under each city there are listed the current and past initiatives, festivals, events, conferences, symposiums, ateliers or academic programs, media, and individuals. If you go further, these nodes consist of a description of what it is, when it started or takes place and where. Then there is a summary of organizers, programs, links to articles and a homepage. Everything is linked to other nodes.You can edit each node easily.

_ highlights & reactions

Although Burundi dissolved last year, we keep using this site. My approach to Monoskop is to make notes from the personal contacts or from internet research. For instance, with the help of others, and based also on the field research, I compiled a wide-ranging overview of the history of media art in Slovakia (see the node 'Slovakia').There are also other uses besides the database or a notebook one. A friend of mine here, the audiovisual artist Guy van Belle, is creating a text-based media piece,'Kurt Vonnegut suite',together with Barbara Huber.Then there are people who prefer a sort of freeform rather than a portfolio- or CV-based homepage; this kind of information you can easily store here, and also save money on design and programming. The artist Michal Murin continuously edits other items in Monoskop.

_ links

http://www.burundi.sk/monoskop/
http://www.burundi.sk/monoskop/index.php/Slovakia http://www.burundi.sk/monoskop/index.php/Kurt_vonnegut_suite http://www.burundi.sk/monoskop/index.php/Michal_Murin

 

Zionmag.org, Lyrical look back into history

Text by zion.org crew

Zion is a Hebrew word with many meanings. Originally a proper name of a hillock of Jerusalem, it acquired abundant symbolic meanings over the centuries: its meaning may come close to expressions such as ‘Promised Land', ‘Holy Mountain', ‘Kingdom of God'. In other words: a dimension of harmony. And although the name of our magazine is not intended in religious terms, it still indicates where we want to get with our work, and also, how we want to do it. In an honest and sincere manner, to become a refreshing island in the ocean of disgusting post-modern pseudo-culture.

 

Zionmag.org

 

Since the spring of 2000, Tomas, together with Miso and Roman, have been giving realistic outlines to the idea of creating an open space for presentation of anything they considered good. In different ways, they meet Andrej, Mario, Ondrej, Milan, Boris and Vlado - the emerging intelligentsia of the Slovak education system. They register on the zion.sk domain and together with new friends they hesitatingly embed their work into the Slovakian media world. In the summer of 2003, zion transformed to a Central European periodical in three language versions [ zionmag.com | zionmag.cz | zion.sk ]. Cooperating with websites of similar thematic focus in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and other countries, it has created a cultural exchange network. Zion's mission is to monitor the current music, movie and literature scene. In the autumn of 2004, zion found out that having plans is one thing, and turning them into action is another thing. Zion regularly gets to a standstill, being able to lie motionless for long weeks. Not even an anti-zion coup in the New Year was able to stir zion's former strength.Zion's laziness, that has been its companion since the beginning, caused the loss of the Czech domain in the spring of 2005, with the summer already finding zion in a profound coma. With a four-minute warning after midnight on the twenty fifth of December, zion mobilized itself in autumn in probably its last attempt to stand up, supporting itself against a wall, loudly spitting a nasty swear word.

 

 

node: "http://kyberia.sk/id/21836" Kyberia.sk syntax template: "http://kyberia.sk/id/3" 3 parent: "http://kyberia.sk/id/63535" Kyberia owner: Daniel

Text by Daniel Hromada, 04/09/2002

(...)
stage 3 - temporary autonomous zone. crypto.con.text (2006-2008))

assumption: humankind is at different stages of development and understanding of the world (karma)

assumption: those living at a lower stage tend to distrust those living
above

assumption: those living at a higher stage tend to distrust those living
below

 

kyberia.sk

 

Although Moore's law gradually ceases to apply, memory capacities and Internet speed will continue growing at an exponential rate even in Slovakia, and within 6-8 years, any 3D audio or video transfer will be just a piece of cake. Projection will be transferred from monitors to projection screens and glasses, to be followed later on by the first implants directly onto the nervous system that will become a craze similar to what GSM phones are currently. Children will each get their unique UIN instead of the current personal ID. In this situation, it will be already crucial to defend your consciousness against the negative impacts of the marketing business whose illegal worms will try to penetrate your consciousness, not to speak about the omnipresent bots of government agencies. If you care at least a little about the world being colourful and the water being wet, you will have to use very powerful cryptographic methods (which will, however, cease to have any sense upon the introduction of quantum computers - ref.The End).As space will cease to play a role not only from the aspect of sound, but also from the visual aspect (in case of an implant directly in the NS, also from the aspect of smell, feeling and taste), people of similar thinking start getting isolated from the surrounding areas of the web, secular islands will begin to emerge in the ocean of information - Hakim Bey refers to them as Temporary Autonomous Zones - TAZ. Systems such as kyberia, nyx etc. will close in on themselves - to use a biological term, the membrane separating them from the rest of cyber space will become semi-permeable, letting in only information necessary for running the system and for its further development, and letting out all waste.The individual members will become "tentacles" searching for interesting information on the web to share them with other members of the zone. Of course, it will no longer be possible to have all this centralized on a single piece of hardware somewhere in a dust-covered server room, however, it will be distributed among computers of all users by way of a hologram, where each part will contain information on the structure of the whole (analogy with human memory is not purely incidental). The autonomous zone will not only be a reality that you consciously choose because it is shared by individuals of similar thinking, but also a reality that you choose to be safe against individuals whose thinking is very distant from humanism. Let's face it, 80% of people are domesticated primates who, in their full nakedness, not only do not know (this is something we all have in common) but do not even want to know.As for illusions that one day you will succeed in changing them, forget about that, and you will immediately feel lighter at heart(...)