The Dutch NGO Press Now asked me to set up a two day masterclass on New Media and Journalism for the students and staff at the Caucasus Media Institute in Yerevan, Armenia. The goal was to introduce the students of the journalism program with the most important themes in journalism and new media, and to discuss with the staff the possibilities to implement these themes in the curriculum. For the set up of the masterclass, see below the fold.
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The Mobile City is a conference on Urban Culture, Locative and Mobile Media. I am co-organizing this conference with Michiel de Lange and the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam. Keynote speakers are Stephen Graham, Tim Cresswell, Christian Nold and Malcolm McCullough.
The conference brings together academics, urban professionals and media designers to answer the question: what happens to urban culture when physical and digital spaces merge?
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For the second Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism in Shenzhen and Hong Kong I worked together with Dutch graphic Designers Leon & Loes on a project called ‘Greetings from Pendrecht - The City as Interface’ The exhibit is the result of a research project on the process of ’space-making’ in the Rotterdam Neighborhood Pendrecht.
Virtual Platform published an English language article about the installation.
After the fold you will find the Dutch press release and pictures from the exhibition. Continue Reading »
For Open #13 The rise of the Informal Media I wrote a contribution about some of the cultural implications of web 2.0. I am mainly interested in processes of ‘validation’ - in a networked media culture, who or what decides what is important? Are the hierarchic authority structures of the cultural elite being replaced by processes of collective and collaborative intelligence? I included the full text after the fold. You can also read it at the website of SKOR in English or Dutch. Continue Reading »
In the summer of 2007 I visited Tokyo and did a short photo research project on urban typologies. I was particularly interested in the contrasts between the contained atrium spaces of new developments like Roppongi Hills and Shiodome on the one hand and the still vey contingent feel of Tokyo’s street - or better: crossings - life on the other. What was the feel of these spaces? How where they appropriated? What was the overall balance between private and public culture? Don’t expect all the definite answers, this was after all a first impression.
Download the PDF for a full report.
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Together with Femke Wolting, who is a director at Submarine, I was invited to curate and host a session on Virtual Worlds, for the HotSpot network of mediaprofessionals working at or with Public Broadcasting in The Netherlands. We invited three very interesting speakers: Tim Guest, the author of Second Lives; Chris Carella, who works as a creative director at Electric Sheep Company, and director Douglas Gayeton who made a machinima-documentary in and about Second Life. Two local guests completed the line-up: Frank Husman from Lost in the Magic Forest and Danielle Jansen from Amazingg. Frank wrote a report on his blog (in Dutch). Chris also put up his slides. The show was organized as part of the Shortride-festival in the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam.
I was invited by the editorial team of the 3rd International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam to write a contribution to the catalogue of the Visionary Power Exhibition, published by NAI Publishers. In particular, I was asked to write an essay in the format of a glossary that would bring the main themes and insights of the exhibition together. To give you an idea I included some terms of the glossary after the continue-reading-link. Continue Reading »
This month (april 2007) the book The Chinese Dream - a society under construction will be presented by TimeZone8 and the Dynamic City Foundation at DEAF. In the summer of 2004 I took part in a field trip with the research team of the DCf, and that resulted in a chapter titled Too much joy and Pleasure in this book, and in a series of photo collages. In this story I describe my encounter with young Chinese people and discuss their dreams and ambitions, against the setting of the fast changing Chinese cityscapes of Shenzhen, Chongqing, Suining and Beijing. This is the blurb:
In China, a new myth – the myth of The Chinese Dream*— is fast amassing dreamers. It’s is not unlike the American Dream — the core component is still the promise of a wealthy middle-class lifestyle: a family, a privately owned car, and a house with your name on the lintel. However, where the American Dream is anti-urban* and rooted in the suburbs and edge-cities, The Chinese Dream* is essentially connected to the city. The city is where The Chinese Dream* can come true. And its architecture is the ultimate vehicle to promote this myth. All these newly constructed cities tell a story of modernization and progress. The message is simple; This is a modern place for modern people in a new era of Chinese modernity!
The online version of this article can be found here,
the serie photocollages - titled Imagined Cities - here as well as after the ‘continue reading’-link below, and there is also a pdf-download of the story with the pictures.
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In february 2007 Het Spinhuis published De Nieuwe Reporter - Jaarboek 2007, a review of the discussions we hosted on De Nieuwe Reporter, a professional weblog on journalism and technology that I have set up with Theo van Stegeren en Frank van Vree. This book features a number of analytic chapters in which we explain the shift from a hierarchic medialandscape to a more open structured media-ecosystem and what this could mean for professional journalism, the relations between journalists and their audience and the public sphere in general. I worked as one of the editors of this book and wrote three chapters.
The book is in Dutch and for sale at any bookstore in the Netherlands or online. A free pdf with the contents of the book can be downloaded here.
Hot Spot is an informal network of staff members and free lancers connected to Dutch Public Broadcasting. The goal of this network is to exchange ideas, get inspiration and stay up to date with the latest developments in the media landscape. Hot Spot regularly organizes get togethers based on a particular theme. The project was initiated by Bregtje van der Haak, and she asked me to research two themes that would be interesting themes, so I wrote a small report on recent developments in Virtual Worlds and on Web Video.
The first Hot Spot event is planned for April 12th, and is called The Art Show
If you are interested in joining hotspot, mail us at hotspot [AT] omroep [DOT] nl
Together with V2 and the International Institute for Asian Studies I organized a symposium on media culture in China.
Whereas many discussions on media in China focus on censorship, we wanted to address developments in new media from the other side: what can be and is done in China? What new possibilities do digital media like weblogs and podcast open up? Do they play a role in an emerging civil society?
Speakers included Isaac Mao, Karsten Giese and Guobin Yang
There is a registration of the symposium on Archive.org
If you can read Dutch, you can read my research report for which I interviewed a small number of Chinese webloggers.
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De Nieuwe Reporter is a professional group weblog on journalism, technology, and the public sphere. I started this weblog in mid 2006 together with Frank van Vree and Theo van Stegeren, two colleagues at the department of Mediastudies at the University of Amsterdam. Since then it has grown into one of the top journalism blogs in the Netherlands with over one hundred contributors. In the spring of 2007 we won De Tegel, the most prestigious Dutch prize for journalistic productions.
For the French filmmagazine Tausend Augen I wrote this article on the representation of the Chinese city in the cinema of the directors of the so-called 6th generation.
In the past decade, China, a country of farmers, has become a nation dominated by megacities. Rural villages have turned into regional city centres. Where once farmers ploughed the yellow earth, mirror-glassed high rises now reflect the sun. In the large coastal cities, century old hutongs have been demolished to make way for yet another prestigious office tower or luxurious shopping mall. In the past ten years 40 percent of Beijing and 60 percent of Shanghai has been wiped out and rebuild with a Chinese version of modernist architecture. What is left of the countryside is increasingly depopulated. More than one hundred million farmers have already deserted their remote villages, in search for a better life in the city. Even conservative estimations point out that at least another 400 million will follow them in the next two decades.
The Chinese cinema has seen a similar change of scenes. The postcard aesthetics of rural China pictured by the 5th generation, has given way to the urban landscapes of the sixth generation. But while official state sponsored eulogies celebrate the modern cities as places of joy, as sites where one can get rich and achieve the newly minted Chinese Dream of middle class life, these young filmmakers turn a critical eye on the new urban society that is emerging under their eyes.
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In the spring of 2004, TimeZone8 published this book on Factory 798, an artist enclave in an old Bauhaus-industrial complex near Beijings 4th ringroad. I contributed an article about the symbolic status of the Chinese Cities and its art districts.
Not long after the revolution of 1949, partyleader Mao and then mayor of Beijing Peng Zhen climbed the rostrum of Tiananmen square and gazed at the horizon of the city that now was theirs to transform. Imagine, the chairman had pronounced with great enthusiasm. ‘We’ll see a forest of chimneys from here!’ The city, in the eyes of the communists was an ugly place. A capitalist stronghold, whose inhabitants pursued decadent bourgeois lifestyles. That, they decided had to change. Cities would no longer be places of consumption. They would be turned into places for the new working class. As cathedrals for the new era, factories with their tall chimneys would be erected all over the city. As a matter of fact, they would hardly remain cities at all. The society would be organized in small autarkic units. Each factory would be its own microcosmos, a place - usually a walled compound - where the proletarians worked, lived, ate, recreated, loved, and participated in party activities . In theory there hardly was any need to leave one’s own danwei (work unit). Thus the city, that ugly site of consumerism, would dissolve in a fragmented pattern of very loosely connected places of production.
Now the tide has turned once again. Continue Reading »
In the fall of 2003, Chris Bajema and I travelled along the big cities of china’s east coast, reporting weekly for the Dutch Daily NPR-program De Ochtenden, and daily on our weblog. We made radio documentaries about free speech and talk radio in Hong Kong, migrants in Shenzhen, Chinese style tourism in Xiamen, we visited the birth place of the then new space hero Yang Liwei, and ended with a feature on the Beijing Art Scene in the then new Factory 798 - and old military supply factory turned into an art loft district. You can still listen to these reportages, the ones I probably like best is this one on the Beijing art scene and this one on the mythmaking of China’s first astronaut.
The project was set up in cooperation with the VPRO, the channel /Geschiedenis and produced by our friends from Submarine.
Our website was nominated for the ‘Golden Pixel’ a Dutch price for online journalism.
In this edited volume on the impact of the digitalization of the medialandscape, I wrote an article about the media use, production of meaning and construction of identity by young Moroccans who are growing up in Holland. Their identity, I suggest, is not a question of either-or (to be either Dutch or Moroccan), but a constant negotiating practice. They use self-created sites like Maroc.nl and fora to negotiate their identity: what does it mean to be moroccan in a dutch context?
SOMS OP DE KAASMANIER,
SOMS OP ONZE MANIER
De emanciperende werking van allochtonenportals op internet
Allochtonen vinden zichzelf te weinig terug in de Nederlandse media. En als ze al aan bod komen, dan steevast als ‘probleem’. ‘Realiseert u zich dat duizenden Marokkaanse Nederlanders de krant openen in de hoop dat er nu eens één dag geen nieuws is over Marokkanen, moslims of allochtonen?’ Over het publieke domein van de media, de poreuze randen en de keuze tussen overlappende of parallelle domeinen. Op zoek naar een nieuwe collectieve identiteit. Continue Reading »
In the yearly review of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation I wrote a chapter on utopian planning in Arizona. I compared two geographically close but ideologically very different interpretations of utopian city building. The first is Arcosanti, set up decades ago by the Italian architect Paolo Soleri. An old student of Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West, he revolted against his master and presented his own ideal city as the answer to the polluting and enstranging suburban lifestyle that had become current in the US. In the middle of the desert he was to build a new city with towering skyscrapers, high density, all ecologically sound. The project never really took off, while the burbs of Phoenix - of which I visited DC Ranch - became more popular then ever. Building for men - at least for the moment - seemed to have surpassed building for mankind.
You can read the full article (in Dutch) in an early, unedited version after the fold.
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In the spring of 2002 Podium published my travelogue Amerika: toets 1 voor het paradijs. (English translation: America: Dial P for Paradise). This book describes the year that I was working in Silicon Valley as a journalist covering the Dotcomboom of these days for the Dutch media. During the year I make a small number of trips to cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix to visit old friends whom I had met during a High School Exchange program, ten years earlier, during which I spent my junior year in High School in the small town of Ignacio, Colorado - culturally the opposite of my correspondent post in liberal San Francisco. I also go back to visit Ignacio itself, to attend my ten year high school reunion.
For me, the book deals with the fascinating relation (better: paradox) between individuality and community that seems to be at the heart of the myth of the American Dream. Continue Reading »
