Control through neoliberal democracy: in-between the headless (the populist right wing mob attitude) and the thoughtless (the snob attitude)
Marina Grzinic

Histories of the world (that seems to be without a world, as reference to Alain Badiou “worldless world”) cannot be read as an excess, or as an error or a mistake to be evacuated as soon as possible. It is a paradox: developing such histories today means linking them to new media technology, and it is becoming obvious that what was very local has to be connected to global migration, to exclusion of bodies, – to migratory transitional bodies that are really pushed to the edge of society. If we are interested in what democracy is, in what are the possibilities of really radically rethinking the perspectives of society – if it’s possible to draw a society that is not just a neoliberal economic agreement but a society that can develop a community in which social questions matter and in which social alliances are important – we have to make a turn to real histories. This means that in relation to new media and technology, from Internet on, it became obvious that histories of practices like feminism, like underground, like radicalised theory have to be re-evaluated.

The Symposium of Philosophy or the Philosophy of Symposium: Ethics and Politics in Society of the Spectacle
Alkiviadis Rasel

In a world torn apart by poverty and war, is there any reason why one should be the least interested in the philosophical interplay between ethics and politics? Put otherwise: in a world that is, by most people's standards, unethical, is there any room left for an authentic engagement in what constitutes, or should constitute, an ethical approach toward the continuation of democratic public discourse?This is precisely the question that the 1st International Philosophical Symposium, which took place in Heraklion-Crete, Greece, was confronted with. A very eclectic group of speakers was lined up, from linguist turned superstar agitator Noam Chomsky to Alex Callinicos, leader of the english communist party, to speculate and reflect on the role of ethics in contemporary politics. The philosophers' symposium, orchestrated by the Municipality of Heraklion, was purportedly aimed at igniting a social dialogue pertaining to burning issues facing society today.

Ready for Action
Jordan Crandall

We have a critical vocabulary to understand the power of media in terms of its ideological effects. Yet we lack a vocabulary to understand the power of media otherwise: that is, in terms of its ability to transmit affects. During at least the last forty years, criticism has focused on the social and cultural construction of knowledge. It has directed attention toward the conditions that make meaning possible. It has been useful for debunking beliefs, powers, illusions, essentialist truths. But for the reasons pointed out here, it only gives us half the picture: the world of form, rather than that of force. Language, rather than readiness. Speech, but not the screech. How, then, can we expand the language of cultural analysis in order to account for this affective dimension of readiness? And, further, how can we use this orientation to generate a reinvigorated, performative politics? Might we speak of an “affective critique”? Or is the term “critique” no longer useful at all?

The Creative Common Misunderstanding
Florian Cramer

Whatever stance one may adopt, the name "Creative Commons" is misleading because it doesn't create a commons at all. A picture released, for example, under the Attribution-ShareAlike license cannot legally be integrated into a video released under the Attribution-NonCommercial license, audio published under the Sampling License can't be used on its soundtrack. Such incompatible license terms put what is supposed to be "free content" or "free information" back to square one, that is, the default restrictions of copyright - hardly that what Lawrence Lessig, founder of the Creative Commons, could have meant with "free culture" and "read-write culture" as opposed to "read-only culture." In his blog entry "Creative Commons Is Broken," Alex Bosworth, program manager at the open source company SourceLabs, points out that "of eight million photos" posted under a CC license on Flickr.com "less than a fifth allow free remixing of content under terms similar to an open source license. More than a third don't allow any modifications at all."

Identity, Transformation, and Digital Languages: a conversation with Ali Zaidi
Antonio Pizzo

Motiroti is a London based international arts organisation founded by Ali Zaidi and Keith Khan in 1996. Zaidi describes himself as Indian by birth, Pakistani by migration and British by chance. Together with his art companion, he has been working with traditional art craft and new digital media in public events and performance. They have growth steadily during the years, and they were commissioned the Commonwealth Section of the Queen's Jubilee Parade in London on 2002. Now they are a well know art organization and, after Khan left, Ali Zaidi is the only artistic director. His work has always being about identity and cultural displacement, confronting a world that struggle against globalisation and homologation. The way he approaches art blurs the boundaries between films, theatre, performance, and it rather focuses on the communality of the experience. Most of the time he makes a heavy use of digital technology, bringing out what one could call digital communal performance.