Culture and Democracy, Artists Collectives

A lot has been heard in recent years about contemporary art in Athens. In the international press it is often portrayed as a vibrant scene that resists the financial crisis. By now there is even a fetishism around experiencing Athens, boosted also by large-scale artistic events that mobilize a mix of international interdisciplinary professionals from the arts and the creative industries, art-activists and so on. In this lecture I will talk particularly about artists' groups and the rise of collectives since roughly 2000. Similarly to other phenomena that the ongoing anomalous social, political and financial situation has accentuated, collectivity in art has also its own continuities and discontinuities with the years before.

MEMORY! Film Festival 2019 celebrated LIFE TOGETHER ON SILVER SCREEN with prestigious guests and increased audience
Both glamorous and popular, for both the general public and professionals, the festival creates a high point of cinema in Rangoon every year. 
MEMORY Festival held its 7th edition from 15 to 24 November 2019. This film event is intended for the general public but also for many professionals in the film industry. The 2019 edition was marked by the presence of prestigious guests, Myanmar and internationals, and in particular the iconic French actress Isabelle Huppert who actively participated in the festival whose theme this year was Life Together The main thematic of the Festival was LIFE TOGETHER in the continuity of challenging themes of previous years such as PRESS AND DEMOCRACY in 2018 or BANNED FILMS AND CENSORSHIP in 2017.
For 10 days, Yangon becomes an essential place of cinema with a freedom of programming and the richness of intercultural encounters.
Each year the festival brings together a larger audience and offers a journey through time and cultures. The programming focused on heritage makes it its trademark in the continuity of the legendary festivals of Bologna and Lyon but is gradually and voluntarily opening up to recent films. This window onto the world is part of the particular context of the country, which has long been isolated and deprived of access to foreign culture but also deprived of access to its own film treasures because of the dispersion and poor condition of its classics. Access to culture and memory is a vital asset of democracy and MEMORY festival contributes to strengthen this access through this annual meeting.
Around the festival, two educational programs are recurrent and closely binded to the programming.
On the one hand, the festival runs a training and competition programme for young filmmakers to prepare them for the international scene as part of the Myanmar Script Fund (MSF). Independent filmmaking is a strong lever for freedom of expression and MSF is committed to training these directors and producers to be able to carry out their project in an independent framework, with support from recognised international professionals. At the end of 4 editions of the MSF, this programme is bearing fruit with numerous selections of film projects in international festivals.
On the other hand, since 2017, the festival has been hosting journalism students in residence every year since 2017 to train them to cover cultural topics but also for an exceptional practical experience in real conditions with the production of an independent media, Bioscope news, and the publication of daily articles published on social networks. The Festival acts as a catalyst and de facto produces a unique space of freedom of expression throughout its duration, with easy access to personalities and professionals from all over the world. MEMORY Journalism & Culture project is immediate thanks to the production of these media but also sustainable for the training of this new generation of journalists who will soon be brought to work in a media.
Finally, actions in the field of film heritage continued this year with the launch of a call to the international film archives to recover lost Burmese films, to reconstitute the national collection and to prepare for the 100th anniversary of Burmese cinema in 2020. The Myanmar 100 programme successfully digitized a 1970 feature film Mhone Shwe Yi with the help of three countries (France, Italy and Germany) and a 1905 documentary archive from Australia. A ceremony for the donation of these digital items took place on 16 November in the presence of the Minister of Information and representatives of the countries concerned. This programme should continue in 2020 with the increased involvement of the Myanmar authorities in charge of cinema and the necessary mobilization of civil society organizations.

This dissertation examines the organisational culture, structure and business
practices of contemporary jazz collectives founded in the UK from the 1980s
onwards. The study examines the rationale behind forming jazz collectives, their
objective and activities. The analysis aims to answer whether these jazz collectives
are efficient organisations for their member jazz musicians to cope with problems
and create opportunities in the music industry whilst providing them an
environment to sustain their artistic creativity. The study also features an
introductory discussion on the concept of collectivism and provides a very brief
historical background to jazz and former collectives in jazz music.

Keywords: jazz collectives; jazz history; free jazz; artist organisations; music
industry; music business.

Thinking about a country and its artistics processes in an apocalyptic scenario in which all logic seems to fail. Understand the Art and democratic processes can be a path against the ignorance and invisibility of the other. In this article we will make some digression to understand the role of art through experience of art and life that impact on the place of culture, even if they go through erasures processes.
Pensar um país e seus processos artísticos em um cenário apocaliptico em que todas as lógicas parecem ruir. Compreender que a arte e os processos democráticos podem ser um caminho contra a ignirância e a invisibilização do outro. Neste artigo cometeremos algums digressões para compreender o papel da arte por meio de experiência de arte e vida que impactam no lugar da cultura, mesmo que passem por processos de apagamento.

Ant Farm’s 1973 20/20 Vision exhibition framed their prognostication of the year 2020 as a synthesis of four key dates – two past (1939 & 1955) and two future (1984 & 2020) – that exemplified in their collaborative imagination the nexus of a century of American culture, ambition, politics, industry, creativity, technological innovation, and (ultimately) dominance and destruction. The exhibition was presented in Texas, the heartland of the US oil industry, during an international fuel crisis brought on by US foreign interventions. The exhibition featured “readymade” displays of vehicles and fuel pumps, collages of ephemera collected from previous Ant Farm projects, and two key new works: Kohoutek: Dollhouse of the Future, a Barbie-doll scale model of a techno-dystopia in which an all female colony of humans is raised by giant insects for food, and Convention City, an architectural proposition for the 1976 US Presidential nominating conventions where politics fused with a made-for-TV game show set.

ISSN 2704-7598

Since December 2010, millions of people in various countries in the Middle East have repeatedly protested for justice, freedom and democracy. The ongoing Arab spring has recently taken over Algeria, where it is linked to the turbulent revolutionary history of the country which fought it's independency by a bloody war against the French colonial. After Algeria's declaration of independence in 1962, the capital Algiers quickly turned into a hub for all kinds of revolutionaries, intellectuals, freedom fighters and artists from all over the world. Outstanding individuals such as Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, Amílcar Cabral, Eldridge Cleaver and Nelson Mandela spent time in Algiers, from where they discussed and planned anti-imperial and emancipatory struggles for justice, from the perspective of the global south. On one hand the project is dedicated to the role of the arts and the artists within the current process of democratization. It examines the impact and conditions of their artistic and activist work within the development of a capable civil society. On the other hand it points on Algiers forgotten history as a mecca for revolutionaries and their ideas and as a former hub for the fight for global justice. By collecting and examinating the stories of Algiers' revolutionary actors, the project aims to connect the recent spirit of hope and freedom that has flared up against authoritarian regimes in many middle eastern countries, to the historical past.

Article about the social movements, popular mobilizations, and artistic movements of resistance during the 2018 presidential elections in Brazil. The article mentions artistic collectives Casa Chama, Coleraalegria, #MarielleMultiplica, Cineclube Atlântico Negro and others.

Mon Histoire de L’appartement 22 (2002-2008)
Le 10 octobre 2002 est un jeudi comme les autres à Rabat. Les cris des Diplômés chômeurs dominent le paysage sonore de l’avenue Mohamed V. J’habite ici depuis cinq mois déjà! Safaa et Younès finissent l’installation de Brisa et de Cafane après avoir partagé la résidence dans mon appartement pendant deux semaines. Ce soir ouvre la première exposition, JF_JH (individualités), une caméra cadre la vue de la fenêtre et l’image vivante de la rue est projetée dans le lieu d’exposition. Manifestement, c’est le début...
La pratique de rencontres et d’expositions menée à l’appartement 22 continue le travail de recherche et poursuit son projet. Avec l’exposition comme projet artistique il est question d’Expression et non d’Espace.
L’appartement 22 existe par ce qui y prend forme et y vit. Les œuvres nées à l’appartement 22 ont transformé ce logement en lieu d’art. Elles lui ont donné le sens de cette exigence, de cette éthique de la production. Le lieu est devenu au fil des années l’amphithéâtre, la salle de musée et la place de rencontres autour de l’art.