R.A.F. - Free4alternatives @ G8, Heiligendamm, Germoney

Submitted by Liaphine on Sat, 2007-03-24 21:12.
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Free4Alternatives

Free4Alternatives is an activist group originating from the Free Spaces scene (Free Parties, Teknivals, Squats, Traveller sites, TAZ...) who stand together to fight against the growing restrictions on our liberties and to fight for autonomy and the right to live an alternative existence. We will attempt to assemble our scene at the blockades and protests against the G8 2007 summit, which will be held from 2nd - 8th June in Heiligendamm (Rostock, Germany), and plan to organise a Free Artistic Space there.

Hello Artivists from all over the world!
 



 
The press have said that the RAF might come back for G8… it's true! It's the Resistance Art Festival!!

We will be organising an artistic Temporary Autonomous Zone near Heiligendamm during the G8 summit in June from the evening of the 2nd till the end of the protest. We are comprised of several tekno sound systems and demonstration organisers from across Europe and we will be bringing our rigs to Heiligendamm; after all, we are already used to creating our own Free Autonomous Spaces!

Our aim is to offer people a place to stay, rest and find new energy to go back to the barricades with. We want to mobilise all the people that normally wouldn't come to the G8 protests without there being something else in it for them. Don't laugh - it's true, a lot of people would definitely make it if they could also find a festival there.

Our message is in our art (music, video, juggling, painting...) and we certainly intend to make ourselves heard! We want people to come back from the barricades and find a place to free their minds and moods from all aggressiveness and hope to re-motivate them with the positive and creative influence of our art.

Moreover, the 8-Big-Bastards will speak about copyright and the distribution networks of art (DRMs, licences, peer2peer, copy protections etc.) so we cannot let them do that without showing them that Free Art is a reality and is steadily on the rise; that we can and will make autonomous spaces for free, and offer more than ‘just’ art to the people; and that we refuse their standardisation of art and the capitalist way of seeing art in general. Our art is not for sale!!

We will bring our own hardware (speakers, amplifiers, trucks, video projectors...) so any artist can come and perform or install work. We'll also be glad to accept any collaborations you might propose. We are also in contact with alternative artists from other scenes (rock, rap etc.) and are trying to arrange concerts as well.

We have done our polite bit and asked for a building but still haven’t received any answers yet. Even if they don't give us a place we will take one for our event. As we said, we are experienced in that area and will be ready to defend our camp. Honestly though, we don't think they will give a fuck about people dancing when they will have thousands of people trying to break down their fence at the same time!

We pulled off an illegal Teknival with 5000 people in Germany (Baden-Baden) last year just after the demonstration we organised in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on April 15th 2006. Some of our group staged other events all over Europe last year and have also organised numerous illegal protests in Berlin (and legal ones too) - so we are quite aware of how it goes down in Germany.

If anyone is interested in working with us in this project (whether you have equipment or not is not an issue) please contact us:



benlagren@gmail.com (french and english) or liaphine@gmail.com (german and english)
To subscribe to the Free4Alternatives mailing list send a blank message to: Free4-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

 

www.free4alter.org

 
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Help for R.A.F.

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Submitted by Liaphine on Wed, 2007-04-11 23:43.

Hello friends and motivated ones....


WE NEED YOUR HELP !!

 

We are happy about each feedback we got by now, each person who contacted us personally, but what we really wish for this Project is to see that autonomy can work, that DIY can work. We've always tried to point out the importance of « keeping it real » , what means in first place to involve everyone in the spirit of community...

In order to achieve this project and to mobilize more people to come to G8 through our art we need a bit of help from you all :)


We prepared 2 working fields:

the first one is the main site www.free4alter.org, based on Drupal, where we want to keep people informed and up to date and where we also want to collect political art, furthermore ideally we want to let this site to develop as an Infopage/Workspace about/for the "Freespaces linkup" freeparty, squat and all other alternative art scenes.

The other working field is the Forum, where we hope that people will find and finally start to use the opportunity to find travel opportunities, again Info about G8 and considering issues, as well it can be used as discussion Forum. For the work on the Event itself we have a not public part installed, where we imagined you guys, the people who asked us if they can help, would get in touch with each others.


-> Free4alternatives is more an Initiative then an Organization and it depends on peoples contribution !!

There is no hierarchy, there is no « chief » or someone who would decide anything for anybody.


What we try to do is to connect People with the very same Ideal and Vision to create TOGETHER a Temporary Autonomous Zone and this is what needs to be done:


  • WebPublisher: we need people to subscribe to the main site and put Informations on the site. Therefore we would instruct you how to do this, how to use the site and how, for the moment it is structured. Your job would be: find Informations and Art to post on the site

          post them up the site and possibly the fourm ( 2 people would we wicked )

  • Messenger: Post news on Forums and mailinglists, make the project known in different coutnries ( we have started this but really would need some help, for this job 3 people would be perfect to cover it, cool would be people with language skills )


  • Translator: There is many content still to translate for the main site. If you dont feel like filter yourself for the important issues, we can prepare you a file with to translate texts. That really is a basic thing to do !!!

  • ART: as we want to provide political Art, we also feel like to collect them and help building a network between artists. On the site you can find was to provide and share your artwork, also we call out that it would be wicked to have some Banners, Flyers, etc done. Music, jingles, whatever you can think of. We do still wait for contributions.

  • Organization Work: this mainly should take place on the Forum where we will work out the practical coordination and planning of the event R.A.F. cause we have to be prepared for many different imaginable sceneries.




For the practical help at the place in June we would need a lot of volunteers, that means people who help us coordinating some stuff such as:


  • parking of cars and vans, marking up the area....

  • trash – people who hand over bin bags to people an encourage them to pick up trash, take care about their little space...

  • entry/infopoint: people who stay at the entry point to hand over info and keep the communication...


This jobs of course need to be done at the Event itself, yet it need to be coordinated before, therefor you find on the forum a place for volunteers, so interested people can subscribe there and choose the job they would like.



Please now do following in case you have little spare time and motivation to help:

sign up to the site and the forum and get back on us via mail:

free4alternatives@gmail.com with your username for both sites and if you want a text about what you think of to do and if you have of course questions.


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