Talk:Lost and Found Festival

Feel free to copy parts of this back into the article space :) guaka 02:03, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Left-overs
Zero-cost is indeed an interesting thing to define, but... The main point is not so much to not use money, but to only use the "left-overs", by-products of our society. Think of empty buildings, empty passenger seats, thrown away food, equipment that is not being used, time that people sit in front of TV, etc. In theory, if we truly find left-over money (hah!), I guess that's fine to use ;-) In effect, it would indeed be a "less than zero" operation, because we would be addressing waste. In theory, this implies that any company that we approach should really look at their left-overs, which we then use, instead of hunting for specific things. Think of it this way: the same way what you find in a dumpster defines your meal, the same way the person who stops defines the car you'll be driving in, in this same way we could create a festival, purely guided by what we find. I agree that growing food, etc would be an interesting proposition, but we have to be very careful about creating new waste. Also, where do you "find" things like windmills or solar panels? If it can be constructed from trash, great! (In fact, it probably can be...) What about "left luggage" from the airport? Could you make a film using just security camera footage (it's being taped anyway)? What about using "wasted light" like street lamps in combination with mirrors, etc? As always, having to work within strict bounds can truly make one creative. I don't think "left-over" funding exists that would otherwise go to waste, so I guess that's where we'd have to draw the line. If we can get office workers that are sitting idle in their cubicle to participate, now that would be awesome.

P2P is often about abundance: an extra place to sleep, an extra seat in the car. This is the interesting "soft" spot of western society to aim for and an interesting creative starting point.

"combine it with a next version of a p2p/oekonux/gift economics/hospitality art/synthesis convergence event ?" I don't know what half of that means... However, the pitch is specifically for a "(public) arts festival", not really for a conference. Personally, I'm interested in the general audience, not just the "in-crowd" for whom we wouldn't really be saying anything new. That implies using simple terms (e.g. "lost and found", "left-overs", "festival", etc) that a general audience will understand.

01.04.2009 Its a great idea! It really challenges the idea that only things with funding are considered valid projects in a lot of circles. So, where should we start to apply for funding? haha. This theme brings up many interesting questions: what do we define as zero-cost? some say time is money, money is also the transfer of energy. what is the difference between getting a space donated and receiving funding from an organization? how does one find a space and keep it hidden long enough for people to organize themselves? low emissions, what about going even further and producing an art festival that actually cleans up the environment, that grows food and reduces green house gasses or adds electricity to the grid from renewable resources?

its all very exciting and definitely promises many opportunities for creativity. seems like this is the sort of thing that needs to spread virally through the internet first. a virtual community which converges into a physical location for a period of time. and if i think about it that way, a time and location is best decided by the community. it doesn't matter where it is; city, village, or countryside, it's the engagement from the participants which will make the project attractive for the public.

we once had a group called Art Drill, like fire drill buy with art. we would find a non-art venue and convert the space into an arts event for one night or up to a week. it was essentially the same, but with a core group that organized and hung the show, and others who submitted works. nobody was turned away, everyone could join, and ofcourse as students, we didn't have much money to do it. i think there will always be leaders in these sorts of things, thats not a bad thing, it just is. some people like to organize and some like to make paintings or what not. the question is, how to let the leaders emerge naturally and to collaborate with other leaders. leaders, organizers, curators, directors....

those were some of my thoughts. i'll continue for a bit more... i think it would be best to set up some sort of site as soon as possible with the intention of the project, time and location will come naturally.

ok, can't type more now. sun shining out side. must see light. must soak up vitamines.

Free
I feel several definitions of "free" can be suggested. "Free" as in free drink, "Free" as in free to contribute and modify, "Free" as in free participation as long as the works and contributions are further shared along the same licence.

In case it has not been suggested yet,

I suggest we develop a "free festival" "license".

I would also like to contribute to Petter's comments:

I feel that it could be "free" in the sense that it is open to completely voluntary contributions, and this could include monetary donations or any other resources.

The difficulty in the case of monetary donations is that it would lead to some kind of increase of power structures in the case of middlemen - who takes care of the money - ?

So I believe there would not need to be any middlemen, and that any form of accumulation or hoarding of resources donated for the festival would not be permitted by the license of the festival.

Self organization being supported by distributed stigmergic tools - interconnected online communication, transparency and synchronisation tools.

In other words, encourage the use of distributed channels of communication - none having specific potential of control on information -

Organization wise, enable individuals to transparently show their needs and allow for contributors or donators to transparently directly support with their time, space, or other resources - including monetary resources -

I ll give an example :

A myriad of fundraising cultural organizations would have the right to apply for grants to fund funding to support projects if they abide by the free license of the festival ( ??? ) ,

license which can include full transparency, and no accumulation of - monetary - resources, or rather, the full investment of all resources collected into "usership" that supports the intention of the license,

and where all resources that are provided for stay trackable through a completely transparent system, and re-usable to support the intention of the license of the festival after the event.

I love the <> ! :-)

Some more thoughts :

As for "left over time" and "left over space", it leads me to feel that... there need not be a definition of specific time, and it could become a "permanent" "left over" festival, using left over bandwidth space, and temporary left over hard disk space, with left over processing (grid) computing,...

Left over culture sounds great ! ... as it also can include the left over people ;-) and their left over potential :-)

and within this "move(ment) of and to the left overs", in left over "life",

from my current view I would be able to situate a 9/9/9 ... in Brussels, Antwerp, and other events in other places around the globe ( ? )

By the way, I want to also cc Anais as she is involved in the Micronomics project


 * "MICRONOMICS searches for creative initiatives which, through the content of their work or their way of organising, become experiments in social innovation and create new opportunities to make a living in the current economic context. "