Cibersalão

Cibersalão.BR -//. TACTICS FOR A DISRUPTIVE FUTURE

What?

Cibrsalão.BR is hybrid creative technology project, with mixed elements from the arts and media activism. It is expected to happen from September 2024 to August 2025. Cybersalon is a collaborative project in critical digital culture between the UK and Brazil, which encourages the continuity of a proposal for debate and meetings already held in the two different points for more than 10 years, and which aims to reflect on the changes that will occur in the fields of the internet critical art and technologies and situated in the last 20 years, proposing a dialogue with new generations. Hybrid in nature and carried out both in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro) and in England (London) in person, the project also presents continuous online actions that will encourage a fertile exchange of methodologies and ideas.

The project TACTICS FOR A DISRUPTIVE FUTURE proposes encounters connecting the triad art, politics and technology, revitalizing the previous encounter between Cybersalon and Festival Mídia Tática Brasil, which took place 20 years ago (SP/Brazil) discussing important aspects of art, digital culture, and tactical media, in a groundbreaking event that influenced the Brazilian digital culture scenario in 2003.

Cybersalon  is a real and virtual space where people involved in creative digital production can meet to talk. By celebrating and promoting the multiple possibilities of information and communication technologies, through live and online discussions that focus on the new digital medium, we seek to connect artists, developers, programmers and the general public to debate pressing issues of our times and realities. The creators of Cybersalon – a networked culture think tank – are the British Eva Pascoe and Richard Barbrook, among others. Cybersalon website <https://cybersalon.org/

Since 2002, Brazilian collectives such as Mídia Tática have been maintaining contact with Barbrook and creating synergies between Brazilian and British digital culture. Thus, he was a guest of honor in 2003, participating in a historic debate with John Perry Barlow and Gilberto Gil about the Internet that arrived in Brazil. At the time he defended his thesis Californian Ideology, which proposed to oppose the growing neoliberalism in the USA. In 2009, a series of events took place in Brazil called Cibersalão.BR, which also promoted debates about technology in several cities, simultaneously promoting Barbrook’s recently released book Imaginary Futures translated collaboratively by the collective des).(centro and launched that same year by Editora Peirópolis in Brazil. The book can be accessed here <https://midiatatica.desarquivo.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/08/futuros_imaginarios.pdf> Ideologia Californiana was also published in Brazil in 2008 in a partnership between Monstro dos Mares and Baixa Cultura and can be accessed here <https://baixacultura.org/a-ideologia-californiana/>

This version, 20 years later, emphasizes a renewed attention for the current political aspects regarding the use of the internet, which has changed radically in the past 20 years.

It focuses in a format which includes, in the period of one year (between September 2024 and September 2025):

  • Live conferences in each of the countries – UK and Brazil – for a public of 200 people also transmitted via streaming;
  • Art exhibition focusing on net art, with installations, projections and scenography/exhibition display composing with the physical;
  • Radio (via streaming);
  • Collectible newspaper.

The project as a whole focuses on reclaiming important artistic and digital culture agendas (movements, occupations, collectivity and internet culture), analyzing the differences brought by the changes in the historical time that happened in these 20 years, focusing in a reclaiming of aspects regarding digital and collective creation, changes in the internet, such as digital rights, digital authorship, IA, also including net-art, science-fiction and games.

Why?

Unique

  • the re-encounter between two important agents of digital culture (Cybersalon and Festival Mídia Tática) which established important landmarks in the digital and artistic culture in both countries;

Innovative:

  • the updating of the overall global scenario of art and internet, including discussions between art and media, artificial intelligence etc etc etc
  • involvement of state of the art artists, which embody artistic innovations such as x y z

How?

Brazilian and British artists are invited to collaborate in online and in-person conferences according to common interests and a participatory methodology.

This exchange will feature tools built for this and therefore shared in order to make mutual use accessible, such as online discussion environments, collective creation dynamics, digital platforms focused on interdisciplinary artistic practice as well as conceptual and physical support for meetings.

The individual artists will be the following, including also the main topics the approach:

  • Natália Quinderê:
  • X
  • Y
  • Z

The audience is people who already work with technology and are curious to delve deeper into different related topics but which do not have as much visibility.By proposing to create unique and diverse technological interactions, we believe that we will also attract an audience that is not directly interested in technologies but in everyday activities such as gatherings, cultural exchanges, music, etc. WE aim at about 200 people at the physical meeting, and possibly five times more of that online, 1000 people.

After the project is completed, we will look for other partnerships to continue, but in any case, we already have a relationship that has been established for a long time, and it will not end. We will also continue to use collectively created tools remotely to keep exchanges alive.

Timeline/Milestones

Budget

Breakdown of each item, with a description of cost per units and total units required.

Notes or rationale, including where costs relate to providing greater accessibility and inclusion, or are above market value but are low carbon alternatives.

Matched and in-kind support (if applicable).

Split of budget between applying organisations and rationale

Project Access costs (By this we mean the costs associated with ensuring the project is accessible to audiences and participants. This does not include individual access costs to complete the application or access costs required by the organisation to plan or deliver the project.)

Costs for international bank transfers if needed

Contingency

H6: Please share how you will work together to deliver this project and how you will support each other.*

Limit: 300 words

This can include areas such as working across different time zones, countries, cultures and connectivity

For video submissions by pasting video link on the text field, please keep the length to no more than 3 minutes.

H7: How will this project make a positive contribution to the cultural development of the non UK country/ countries?*

Limit: 200 words

By this we mean how does your project support social and/or economic development to the international country/territory involved, such as; skill sharing with audiences or partners, capacity building, promotion of international profile, providing platforms to underrepresented groups, or artists, or practice.

For video submissions by pasting video link on the text field, please keep the length to no more than 2 minutes.

H8: How will you share the project with your audience and wider community?*

Limit: 200 words

Detail your current thoughts around marketing and communicating the project. It doesn’t need to be a finalised plan.

For video submissions by pasting video link on the text field, please keep the length to no more than 2 minutes.

H9: What risks have you have identified in planning or delivery of this project, and what actions will you take to mitigate the risks?*

Limit: 200 words

For video submissions by pasting video link on the text field, please keep the length to no more than 2 minutes.

H10: How will you evaluate the success of your project?*

Limit: 200 words

I1: How does your project embed diversity and how will you ensure inclusion within your project?*

Limit: 200 words

This could be within your project team including specialists to consult or advise, in how you plan to deliver your project, what your project is about, the organisations, artists or creatives you will work with and the audiences you might reach

This could be how the project might increase the reach to include underrepresented artists and/or creatives, organisations, communities, networks, or delivering work for underrepresented audiences. It might be how the project creates platforms for women, disabled groups, LGBTQAI + in delivery and or/ audiences. You may want to include you approach to wellbeing and mental health if relevant, as well as noting any any specialists, consultants, or advisory roles, which could support the design, delivery and approach where you need more expertise in a specific area.

You can include a short description of what diversity and/or inclusion means in the context of your project and the countries you are working with.

I2: How will you consider access for disabled partners, participants and/ or audiences?*

Limit: 200 words

Here you can share details about how has been considered in the delivery of the project, such as transport, venues*, online access, or interpreters and within marketing materials.​ Have you identified any potential risks in relation to diversity and inclusion?​

*We know that it is not always possible to have provision of accessible venues in different country contexts, but you can describe what access means in your country context, and what a good standard of access might mean in your country if this is the case.

I3: How does your project address environmental sustainability?*

Limit: 200 words

We are looking for evidence of planning around environmental sustainability within delivery of the project. How will you seek to reduce the potential environmental carbon footprint in delivery? You may want to note any specialists, consultants, or a

G8: Tell us how the project might continue after the funded year of delivery.*

After the project is completed, we will look for other partnerships to continue, but in any case, we already have a relationship that has been established for a long time, and it will not end. We will also continue to use collectively created tools remotely to keep exchanges alive.

H4: How do you know each other?*

Tatiana Wells, one of the organizers of the project proposed here, was a master’s student in Hypermedia Studies at the University of Westminster in 2000, a course coordinated by Richard Barbrook. After completing his studies, she returned to Brazil and joined Giseli Vasconcelos and Ricardo Rosas in 2002, the three of them having organized the Mídia Tática Brasil festival, which applied many of the concepts that were arriving in Brazil in relation to digital culture as a network organization and thinking critical in relation to apparatuses and networks (much of the theory learned from Barbrook himself) with situated tactics strongly rooted in a Brazilian context such as community media, tactical media and free software.

This collaboration was so fruitful that it ended up changing the scenario of Brazilian digital culture, with the methodologies of Brazilian digital media activists being applied to national government programs such as Pontos de Cultura, Cultura Viva and Pontos de Mídia Livre in subsequent years, through the Ministry of Culture of Brazil led by Gilberto Gil, who was also the moderator of that seminal event in March 2003. The mutual collaborations continued until 2010 with book launches, collaboration in editorial production, translations, and 7 festivals realized in different Brazilian cities.

H6: Please share how you will work together to deliver this project and how you will support each other.*

Limit: 300 words

H7: How will this project make a positive contribution to the cultural development of the non UK country/ countries?*

Limit: 200 words

(By this we mean how does your project support social and/or economic development to the international country/territory involved, such as; skill sharing with audiences or partners, capacity building, promotion of international profile, providing platforms to underrepresented groups, or artists, or practice.)

H9: What risks have you have identified in planning or delivery of this project, and what actions will you take to mitigate the risks?*

Limit: 200 words