Alternative Economy
The ‘Alternative Economy Cultures (alt.econ.cult) programme on April 3rd & 5th brings together leading international and Finnish thinkers, cultural practitioners and activists, to present alternative economic visions.
The seminar aims to tackle not just the financial, but the social, cultural, institutional, human, material, emotional and intellectual forms of capital. Not just about individual gain, boosting, balancing or bail-outs, but common good, peer-to-peer, shared wealth and appropriate reward for effort involved.
Bridging the gap between presentations, reflections and things-to-be-done, the discussion-based workshop about peer-fundraising. Can the crowd-sourcing phenomena be applied to support alternative cultural events in Finland?
Friday 3rd April, 10.00 - 18.00
FULL 1-DAY SEMINAR
Cultural practitioners, activists, and economic theorists from Finland and abroad, working from different contexts, strategies and institutional backgrounds, have been invited to contribute to this theme.
Michael Albert (US), Michel Bauwens (BE/TH), Geraldine Juárez (MX), Tapani Köppä (FI),
Kristoffer Lawson of Scred (FI), Wojtek Mejor (PL), Saija-Riitta Sadeoja of Porkkanamafia (FI), Oliver Ressler (AT), Sara Sajjad of Piratbyrån (SE), Felix Stalder (AT), Tere Vadén (FI), and
Eero Yli-Vakkuri of Uuva Project (FI).





Bravo!
By Snyder, Matthew at Apr 15, 2009 14:11 PM
One of my only disappointments about ZCommunications is the lack of pyrotechnic skills when it comes to digital media, the quality and the conistency of the website and its videos' visual definitions and disparate audio qualities. Of course, I know how constrained this website is based on the limited funds that we have as a movement, but that's not to say that there isn't room for improvement. Otherwise, this is really Michael's greatest moment, and it's the best discussion he's given of Parecon that can be found either on ZComm, youtube or on video.google. I thought the Q&A was really a nice added element to the lecture, even thought Michael got kind of bulldozed by the number of questions and the limited amount of time he had to respond to these questions in kind. I've seen all of his video lectures concerning this vision for an alternative economy, and have even shown some of them to my own college students, but the Finland talk takes bits and pieces of his best anecdotes, statistics, pathos and observations from his previous lectures. He really continues to ask basic questions, asking all of us what human equality really should mean in a future world. The lighting, sound, color balance and everything about the Finland talk is what we need when we are trying to communicate to a larger audience. The sense of care in terms of our production of media is seemingly trivial to some, but when you intend to open up the argument to larger and more diverse audiences, you need a little bit of Hollywood Shake and Shine--a little bit more in the way of production values; of course, certainly, not it's corporate content and product placement we're looking for (we have the Oscars for that), but it's Hollywood's competence at collating image and sound that we want the most. And the conference almost looks like the Oscars, or some kind of Orson Welles' adaptation of a Shakespeare play. We really need some more of this techinical skill in our movement if we hope to attain classlessness instead of attempting to fight aging and the useless fight against gravity.
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Re: Bravo!
By Abraham, Steve at Jul 06, 2010 22:20 PM
ditto. I just finished complaining, in the comments section of an article by Robin Hahnel, about the lack of accessible/digestible communications about the ParEcon vision. Then I came over here, found this video, and I think it's about the best example I've found so far of what I would like to see more of: media conveying the idea of ParEcon in a digestible manner. I think Michael implies the importance of something like this when he talks near the end about a movement that caters to working class lifestyles. Most working-class people would be befuddled and probably turned off a little by the article by Dr. Hahnel. Heck, I am sorta one of them. Even though I sympathize with the idea of ParEcon and would like to advocate more for it. This video is one of the first items I've found that I feel could be shared with and appreciated by many others.
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