 Good morning. Welcome to the presentation of lecture two, two lectures. Today we have joined two lectures by George Ebermajic and Maxine Maas into one event. And there is another one going on up there. It's called the Meditation of Politics and Activism. So if someone wanted to go to the other one, it's upstairs. First, let me just, we will do it like that. George will be, we'll have his lecture first. And then you will have some time for any additional questions. Then we'll be with Verhard who introduced Marcel Maas and then we'll go on with Maxine. So George is an artist that I know for a very long time. He now lives in Ljubljana, but he was living in Belgrade recently. He is a graphic designer, but also an artist who is very active in the region, but also exhibiting and working around the world, among which also bands Biennale and also Ladi-Levi Festival twice. So we know him for a long time. He is now going to speak about a collective chart, which he and his colleague, Dragan Protic. Dragan Protic, established in 1990. And about collective chart, it's about to be set, but since you are going to present it, I will just give the work to you. Thank you. First of all, just to ask, will you hear me well? Can I speak now? When no one moves. Sorry? When no one moves at all. Oh, OK. I'll try to speak loud. We'll hear about 123 images, which seems quite a lot. But we'll go like 10 images per minute, approximately. So it will be about 12 minutes. Time in some of these will stop because I've explained about the dynamic of collective work for the group that is the topic of this presentation. And I also would like to show you what we have done until now to have a better impression of what they're doing. So I hope that you understand. If not, please stop me at any time and ask whatever you ask. Sometimes I will go through the images quite fast. Don't allow you to read everything because there are some poetry and things like this. We don't have time to read all the poems and stuff like that. Just to have an impression of what this is about and what we are doing. So that was the image from our former studio, which was, and this is, Schkamp written on the Xeniviks Erugration Letters. We have very few retrospective exhibition. That's the last one, the first one, the last. Just to show you the amount of materials we were producing in the 90s and 2000s. And now we are coming to the beginning. That's a context. 90s, Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia involved in war. Serbia are most responsible. And that was reality on sanctions, austerity, and so on. I don't want to complain or lay a seat in front of the banks. And that's our response to that situation. Serbia involved in war, which break up Yugoslavia, waterplot, we produced the poems on cardboard, related to the topics, to the reality at the time. There are 23 poems in total, 10 of them translated to English, which I'm showing you, that English won't know in order to understand. These are how it looks like on the bunch of women who collect them all. So what are they doing with this? We are producing that by our money. We are graphic designers, making it a craftsman, and collecting money on the side. I had a politics at the time. When we did the job, 100% like, I was, let me, rough and tough, towards my calling black and prodigy, asking the 40 to 50% to put him in the spare case. And the rest, the life of our daily routine, like life, paying departments and so on, is quite tough, tax politics. But the help that we were able to produce this stuff on the side. And after producing these things, we are going on the streets and giving to the people for free, trying somehow to communicate with people. Unknown people just going on the street, creating the topics that was the sadness of potential customers. We were delivering in front of the shops and magazines, sadness of potential travelers. Nobody was traveling, please if you, on the railway station. Sadness of potential vegetables on the grid market. Sadness of potential Peter Pan in the playground of the children. And that was still our reality, the cube vouchers. The proper word is we call cube voucher for bread. It was delivered in 1903 because Serbia was under the sanction and the people were getting vouchers to buy bread, vouchers for oil, for powder, washing powder, and for gasoline. This is the later voucher from 1999. But I bought these vouchers as a presentation of the context. So the next thing we were delivering, we were very slow, we don't do much things. The sadness that those travelers, as you've seen, they were produced in 1992, 1993. In two years time, as much money as we got, we were very invested in that. That was in 1997, we started producing vouchers, but not vouchers for materials stuff, vouchers for the human being. Trying to communicate with people, giving them on the street, and like that trying to communicate. So that's the very first voucher because what we're doing, that we did design for the festival dedicated to build them right, fact analysts, American fact analysts. They asked us to produce something and we produced vouchers for oil, as if we could have a theory about that. So after producing that one, we started to produce others as our own project. But that was the very first one. And most popular, I have to say. Bouchers for materials, for realization, for happiness, I think that was the last, one of the last. For fear, you can't see, well, I think because it's too much light, but that's important against. So, these few images, I want to just illustrate the 10 years, the decade we spent. There was a decade, as many artists do, trying to approach the audience desperately, or as desperately, whatever. So that was our way. Go on the street, because from very beginning, we decided not to go to the galleries. Why? Because we were students of architecture. And we knew from the beginning that to be in the gallery space, you have to know some curator, you have to know someone to somehow reach. We have fed up with that. Since we started the architecture, urbanism, department of urbanism, we said from very beginning that all cities are exhibition spaces, so we will use the streets to exhibit, give away our work. And these images are just explaining how we are trying to reach people. And it was in many occasions, which is very frustrating for me, not for Dragan, who is much more communicative. There's a lot of frustration about that. That's the work of 1999. We produced in collaboration with Peter De Bruyne, a photographer from Brussels, who asked us to make something to mark the dog sheets of the streets of Brussels, because he was annoyed by this. We produced the stickers, which related somehow to dog sheets, but also to the responsibility of doing things. And later on the posters, later posters. Just to mention, it's one practical thing. If you make a big poster, it's invisible, but it's hard to glue. Look at that, I have much space on the walls, but if you make a small one like with it, it's easy to glue whatever you like. And that was how you were looking on the Belgrade streets. Belgrade streets and Brussels streets, the difference is just in color. And now about loop work. Loop work, as you know, it's not easy things to do, but of difficulties inside. But we are very different personalities, like I myself. He usually makes cows in the studio, I'm trying to be clean, and you have to find some kind of the tolerance in the middle way. It's oftentimes arguing, arguing, arguing, arguing. But fortunately, none of us has a big ego. And fortunately, at the very early stage of our work, we came to some kind of decision only, our role. When we argue about something, we never allow ourselves to be stuck with some critique. So if I critique his idea, he's usually telling me, okay, you have anything better. If I don't have anything better, we go with his idea. So then that was the way how we're always going on somehow, producing stuff. Which was first in years that young artists thinking that producing is the very important song, producing material stuff, very important, that was reasonable. But later on it's realized as I've been getting older, producing the material artifacts. It's not really perhaps the most important thing. Maybe it's the more important to produce good relationship, like architecture of human relationship as we define in some way. And just to explain about our very first experience, that's the discussion Damarad does know that, very first collective experience in the group, in the collective exhibition, perhaps that shaped our way later on. We invited to Ljubljana 1994 with group of Belgrade artists, full bus of Belgrade artists, why the surrealist sort of isolated. So to present Belgrade art to Ljubljana, he came there and bus of 50 people, musicians, so on, like 20, 30 artists rushed in the schoots, gathering, gathering like this space, divided in two rooms. We entered the gathering and almost all artists, from the entrance, they came, spot the best wall, rush, put the rucksack and say, Alex wait here, I'll here, I'll here, I'll kill it, even five minutes. So there was no discussion what's best, like to decide where we go. Proto and myself, I remember very well like the day, yesterday we were sustained, looking what's going on. And they occupied the walls in five minutes. Then I went to the toilet, and then back I said to Proto, maybe we can show our works in the toilet, anybody in the world, anyway. So we blow up also in the toilet, wall, doors. What happened year ago, since I moved to Ljubljana, I went to schoots again, went to toilet. This person is still on the wall, on the doors of the 35 years, and still not. This is very important to know how maybe the sort of rushing, some dialogue is important. And that was our first frustration of facing the artistic ego very early stage, and perhaps very useful for us. And of course that's how it's like, you go in front, lot of obstacles suppressing each other, but somehow going on. And for 2000 years, it's a breaking year now for me. Why breaking? Because we are fed up at that time with many artists, obviously exhibiting worldwide related to the sum problem, problems of minorities, of whatever, making video works, many things, but what we realize that people they are dealing with, like refugees, migrants, Roma people and so on, they appear in their artworks, videos. And after that, nothing was changing for these people, got changing a lot for the artists, they are becoming more and more famous. Those people are still in problems, things like that. And then I remember the talk in the studio with Dragan, telling, I don't want to work like that. If you work with some people, I want it to be both benefit, all benefits from the together's work, not just be as an artist, which is very common in artistic work. Then in 2000, year 2000 we found two very important collectors for us. One is woman embroidery book. They have a lot of refugees in Serbia, single mothers coming from Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia, living with the children, having no jobs and so on. Thankfully to Women in Black, the association with Andrew is Serbia famous for activists, anti-war protestants, many things. There is not enough time now to tell about them. They are absolutely great. We collaborate with them from very beginning in 1991 and you can see ourselves as a member. They introduced us with a single mother's station belt. They met there, proposing the workshop of embroideries, the very old techniques, sewing, things, messages on the piece of canvas. Perhaps you have all in your country, right? These are usually very patriarchal messages, telling white folk, well, to make your husband, please your husband, something. The use of that was in, all the time, 19th century, beginning 20th century to protect them all against oil drops when you cook. But after that, they were like stoves with lead pitch. So it went out of the use, but messages stayed the same. Patriarchal, just repeating, repeating, repeating. What do you want? We came to an idea to offer these women to tell what they think about the society today, and that position with the women. And the very first time, we came to the idea to, try to offer their work on the art market, which we were refusing 10 years to be part of the art market because we didn't need for free. But this time, we said like, let's try to use our position of artists already known, a bit in Serbia, to help them to sell this and to make income for them. So we're starting to organize a workshop and to sell them. This is the one of them, but you can't see because it's the only dark, the only few dark. So they were producing things, we were on exhibition, we were invited, we were putting their work, trying to sell that and all the money given to them, trying to make a kind of secondary economy for them. This one immigrated, immigrants, I saw my dream is true, only for the ID papers new. It's from a lad in the lamp, that's where it comes, but showing this, it's like taking. The one is particularly engaged for many days, he was fired from the job and she was very tough in her messages. While workers weren't filthy rich, enjoying the journey. Our factory from churches bigger, do work, not pray, that's a trigger, if you don't see it at the bottom line. We have printed the billboard, lay it, find it, space cream, so you don't be shamed. The translation is extremely good, helping our friend Nisjom Milošinic, the taxi driver from London, a friend of us who was reading the yellow papers, like the sun, but having the best of this land, which is very helpful for this proper translation. Because it should be in the right, very short message in the right, two lines in the right and the illustration. Up at the recently, I was getting my way holding these placards is all I can do today. In the original I read you on some questions, just to have an impression, Dostor and Nezvali referente as ad nosim ove transparente. So have a look at the codes made of work and skin, who belong to the BITC. So this is Leinka, that produces, she produces a lot like you, commenting almost every day in politics. And this is Briginta, she produces a little less, but she works a lot more meticulously and more precise in Sweden. And we tried another collection with our 700 people unsuccessful. The male embroidery group, we were showing in public spaces in Serbia, which was kind of uncomfortable, but the men, both in group, they were not really willing to continue for a long time, so it was after some time it stopped. It's a bit of an alphatic terrain, I'm very invited to show embroideries. And I decided not to show them in the museum space, because now people talk about that, all artists are engaged, talk about political situations, and few of them they knew were in this museum, and I guess even less people from Tirana knew about the museum. So I said, I don't want to go there, I want to show them on the street, so the people will go and pass by and you'll see now. These are our experiences. This is Tirana. So I'm assuming that it may inspire and have a lot of interaction with the mostly different artists. So this is like in drawings, what we are actually trying to do. To use our position, I would say artists have a privileged position in the way. If nothing else, just simple example, when you apply for visa, you may go somewhere, but in 90s you had to apply for visa everywhere. And when you're going travelling somewhere, most of the cases you end up in Germany, then going further, when you come to the customs, the police officer in Germany asks you what's your purpose to come here, what you're coming here, and if you say I'm visiting relatively so on, then a lot of questions. But if you say I'm artist, statistical operation, you get the time immediately, no other questions. And getting visa was much, much easier. Does it so? I can say artistic position is a privileged position. So people are using, trying to use the position we had, helping other people to, as much to join us in the boat, and as you see, as many of us in the boat, boat goes faster. That's another collective, which I'll spend a little more time to explain, because that's about the work, working on the group experience, which I almost did PAG. I'm joking, I did not, but for six years working with 50 young people, it's really an interesting experience. So we found by an orchestra, by accident, we invited to have a presentation with this one, but we tried to escape it, afraid to be boring. Then we organized the audition, having a friend on the radio station asking, can you announce the audition? Can you announce the audition? Radio show, and next day 50 young people came. We were afraid of that and said, people, there is no audition, we are all accepted. We will not check our music talent, we are all accepted, and we start to sing. Of these 50 people, maybe one third were musical Italian, two thirds not, like me, I'm the worst one, but we started to sing. Of course at the very beginning when you call people to join, you have to lead somehow. So we proposed, from the beginning, to sing two streams, two ways of repertoire. One is to sing the songs of the socialist period of the first country, because we are 2000, and we hope that it's a year of changing why the socialist song, because we wanted as well, working with the 50 young people to recall the memory of the period, which was at that time very... Nobody was mentioned socialism, it was kind of the black sheep, how to say it properly, at the time there was almost no socialist country anymore, and socialism was a blame for everything wrong in society, which we did not agree, tried to preserve the good memory of good things from that period. We grew up, of course, it's not a perfect, but it had a lot of good things, and that was the one way, one reason why we're singing that. The other were songs from the poets from Yugoslavia, all parts of Yugoslavia, including Slovenia, Slovenia language, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Macedonia language, so all Yugoslav languages, tried to introduce to young people somehow the history or the past that they did not experience as we experienced, and if nothing else, I should say, maybe made a lot of mistakes working in the choir, many people were accusing us that's really fancy and so on and so on, we were working six years on that, and if nothing else, I always tell to these people, from that choir there were six marriages and six children, two divorces, that's six children, that's some achievement, you know what I'm saying, a lot of bands came out from that, I can't count, but more than five, less than 10, I'd say bands, who still exist, a lot of friends, it became a community, they were playing on this, mostly on the streets, Green Market streets, refugee camps, wherever we can, of course the concert as well, this one was particularly like fancy, as I should say, but the photo is quite nice, it's a castle in front of the museum, we were invited just to present how many we were in time, like these placards, which you see up, these are the texts of the songs we sing at the moment, that was introduced because we realized that's amateur choir singing, let's say, political songs, but since they are amateur, people cannot understand what they sing, and that's important, to pass the message and introduce some kind of subtitles so we sing and show what we sing, so people can read as well, so to be sure that the message goes past properly, that's the duty of any lecturer, if wants to show to pass the knowledge to the audience, it has to do everything, whatever it can, just to that knowledge to be passed properly, as much as possible, this one beautiful song which I hope you'll play in the end from the beginning, our miracles is already happening, transforming the dream will be like reality and reality will be as a dream, something like that, so we can imagine what was the idealistic vision of that poem, the CDP published and it's another poem 2006 we introduced self-management in our choir and now the explanation about the group work now let's make less lines just to mention, we'll go on so working with 50 people young people, a lot of English after a certain period, we realized that the choir, there were two groups one group coming just to sing silent he's telling, he wants us to sing another group who was creating it from time to time realized something that doesn't go well friend of my brother, he likes more those who are silent and sing I like those who critique always telling to him listen to them, integrity they tell you something is wrong it's like you feel the pain in the body pain tells you something there's something perfect with your body and of course this is also the clash those who always critique it's not really welcome to those we want to sing, we want to sing the other level in the choir was the songful, preparing the songs conducted in orchestra they felt like a bit more above the others and after 5 years we realized that having the power in the choir also having the knowledge means having the power so we faced a few occasions that we arranged the concert in some little towns in Serbia but the conductor and orchestra were acting at home and I knew which was maybe true, maybe not so 50 was we had to say ok we have to cancel that which was not really comfortable station then we decided from very early I said, I will tell it to Draga I want these people work ourselves along, I don't want them anymore I don't want to lead them because very Serbia have it like political parties the one who found the party stayed as a chief until the death the same with the NGOs the same with many organizations this is kind of a distinction which I am very proud that choir exists still today and very popular and working super well we are very good friends inviting us to every concert and this is our greatest achievement if you don't calculate the 6 children that we made information which is still functioning so we introduced self-management in 2006 left the choir enough of those who already left were unsatisfied, those who were retaking criticized we found another choir called Brova Morkeškaard the other was Brova which was smaller made of people who wanted to be more kind of social gays who were fed up of playing in the concert spaces like pre-groups they wanted to play more on the streets like Draga and myself and we are playing the same and this is their invention from the next choir on the end of working in the first choir the idea was white choir should work like that very hierarchical structure that one person has a power and conducting them and other singing and playing in another choir we have the same situations the one guy who is playing the guitar we were arranging concerts he had it then he said I cannot go people were saying we cannot go two times three times it happened to us and I said it does not go like that asked Draga one other man can you learn these songs to play in the guitar the musician she said yes I can in three days she learned to play he went to that concert he finished his band earlier and rushed to the battle to join us then I learned to play the guitar I said all of you want to play the guitar to avoid the concentration of knowledge which means concentration of power which means you detain the song my proposition is many people more say have more knowledge if we march together and much comfortable which became true in that way in fact of the architecture during the class with children giving them something singing together singing a few songs giving them text learning to sing together and this is another event Poet events we started a thousand days making open goal of Poet events in the cinema rex calling everyone to write a poetry to appear at the stage and to perform called Pesnicenje Poet Training many people were going and this is another event and I have to say we sort of invented symbolic heat of one euro for event people from the schools their places children bands, everything that was invented we introduced one euro symbolic entrance and tell you each euro you give on the entrance will be published in the book from the previous month festival it was monthly once a month so people coming in october for instance giving one euro as a ticket to get in the book from the tent 200 people come 200 euros giving 300 books is 100 euro which means we were able to produce books and so far in 5 years of existing we produced 56 books of the people who never had a book and now we are coming to the very end 2010 there was open call for the Biennale of Architecture in Venice and the Serbian Architecture Association they make open call and we applied the topic was people meeting architecture we propose a play because playing together is kind of respecting the other, otherwise there is no play and we introduced a sea source because if you want to play you can somehow balance this with some pressure on the other side so we wanted competition and then Ben is Biennale producing my strange sea source with a poet of classical popa on the wall he was also his poet he said if I my father was telling me I would like to have a small tree to come along with me on the street so it was very strange to walk with a tree and we produced some walking plants as well and that was how Pavilion looked like and it appeared to be super crowded over our expectations which caused also a lot of damages as this so we were working I always used to say like in London working during the day and repairing during the night so it was obviously quite successful later on the thing went to the this in London and many other places all as a team with all the sea source had to use of course when we were in London we had to go to the Abbey Road to act as a business like all the tourists in London so poetry and we were also invited we were done in 2011 poetry on the streets again invited in Flint, Michigan destroyed city, half the houses destroyed we decided to write a poetry on death abandoned destroyed houses which is the problem so we have permission to to write a private property and that was really uncomfortable few times in Flint both faculty of architecture also poetry and now we have to do variance migrant stories, we ended up in 2013 before the migrant crisis in the migrant camps invited by group 484 to do the artistic workshop we were thinking what to do, what I can't do but their people came just to have a rest and continue to that Europe they became just asking them how you came, I was curious they start to talk I said do you mind if I write why does group 484 they work with school kids around Serbia we came to idea to use their stories to present to the school kids in Serbia trying to avoid forthcoming xenophobia or racism might appear because a lot of people were passing by so I was collecting stories which appeared very touch detail, there were no pathetic things for me they are super brain people trying to go to the better life and risking their lives which I learned through the many interviews I did and just to show how it looks like just to have impression I didn't spend that much money I bought off friends they learned a lot some people were travelling 7 years at the moment we met and after we presented this maps 2015 using African art in Belgrade for the very first time after that it became very so to say maybe popular we are getting a lot of imitation to exhibit that on the art exhibitions worldwide and at certain point I was fed up and I started to deny these are not art objects these are the school tools they were made like the graphical maps in the same material we want to work with the school kids not to show them to the art audience and giving conditions like yes we can send you maps to organize something for the school kids and that's how it looks like they are not really my drawings sometimes clumsy I can draw much better but what's interesting I was getting a lot of emails from the people who visited the exhibition and I was very surprised that people are that much impressed by that by these maps and I realized later on why, because these maps they are telling the true stories there are no imagination people just telling I was just writing a simple documentary work but these are true and people reading that they knew that that was the reality not kind of imagination of some artist and that's why it became popular I guess that's like one, two, three three times you try to reach the island from the third time he succeeded and these are of course first I try to limit it put it on geographical maps but it's really complicated because people coming from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan big countries, Sudan they come to the small space Macedonia this little tiny space there are a lot of things happening to them so it was not possible to write that many stories in that little time and what has to be done I come to the very end a question from Oksana a few days I come back to this like a footballer football is the most simple game like you have two teams one team made of 11 beautiful skilled players they know everything with the ball but tell you imagine but you see 11 players another team 11 players, they don't know much more they are talented but just like they pass ball to each other and what do you think who will win it's a little suggestion of course so it could be like all the time imagination drags on itself so we have to fight together to pull the numbers beautiful sentence if you do not fight collectively you will lose the individual and that's the end, thank you very much we did something very similar when they were coming up with the words that they were writing on the embroidery what was the process for you to get them to express themselves what was your input for them to do that it's also a very good question very beginning was very hard when we came to this I don't know I would leave my daughter to draw something when you come to someone I don't know to sing like me, I was the worst one but a friend of mine who was the educator in music she told me like only 1% of the population really has no music talent only 1% if you speak foreign language it means that you feel something and the best way to improve is just to play some music you like and try to sing along and you will realize when you have time going passing you will be more and more in tune the same way we all see we all play and then we go to school disappear in some time just so the kids could decide and then we get involved and we are shy to sing shy to play all this stuff but we still have some kind of we all have possibility to do that then we came with the blank paper they said then we came with our proposition telling them what you think about they had opinion if you have opinion it means that you feel something so you can also produce an opinion then they were reducing our drawings and like that we involved them in their own creativity helping them at the beginning of course Brian is because that's a skill as well Dagan is perfect Dagan is a poet then that's how it started and at length she is not an important poet she should be a project she immediately started with seducing people to relax like friend of my musician was telling me we have to relax yourself and try not to sing too loud like that at the beginning I said two or three times fortunately none of us had big ego yes and then you mentioned what made us all laugh that most of the times the founder of an NGO was asked the manager of this NGO yes that was both of them I read his song he said it and I said like I was looking at the situation it seems to be right I think we all laugh because we all live this kind of fact or situation in different ways then you showed us wonderful examples of team work all of them were not really with artists or professional in the art team or in the cultural life yeah so you went when you wanted to create collective work you went to people who were the normal not the art professionals it's good, quite normal yes there's some main passion careful to dragon colleague of mine who is I have to say he is brilliant approaching I'm very shy for me like that he is ready to jump on everyone to start the contact and I learned something that was his basic idea he was frustrating in the first 10 years I can imagine giving some artwork to someone and he's taking that in 5 minutes drawing in Berlin the dragon was relentless and that was from now I think like that that was really great and of course to approach these kind of people not easy, you fail sometimes it's a lot of failures as well and but dragon is very brilliant he pays for the stuff because he's not I need time to recover but it was it was a conclusion that I wanted to check with you do you really believe that it's more open to be connected with kids somehow with people who want to work on the streets who want to communicate with people more than in the art professional sector first of all I'm not sure what's the art professional I don't consider many because I'm professional then people who live from our experience working with non-artists appeared to be much more funny I don't know experience with artists and it was many times quite frustrating there's a lot of egos there's also egos it's very interactive the music world is everyone fights for exhibitions that's why I'm really I don't know for instance those maps they went to some exhibitions in Newcastle and the curator who was writing me it was about two months he was writing me and I was I didn't want to send another exhibition I was refusing because you have to buy this after two months my five pointer you see that he really wants you to why don't you so I don't know working with I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Necropierre from Paris if I have like some people I want to work with more or to proper keys in French you know I can help in my opinion actually designers on they have collective we have made of team designers designers, sociologists, philosophers local people so people from the local maybe non-opened artists they work still from the very beginning for us that's my collection you learn a lot from people what are the names you collect them Necropierre Igor is it good pronunciation not for Necropierre level Gerard Paris Necropierre he was he was the founder of a traditional coulet in 1968 we say we say ok we met him in 1999 in Paris you are impressed working with you are not a musician yourself and obviously you don't I mean it's a collective rotary but what but I mean what was the trigger for each project or trigger why this time we will work on choir and orchestra because in the beginning it was clear where all these posters come from and obviously you are outside but I don't have the collection of all the recordings and you know it's full of SC a lot of the kids can't dance on the wall like big bitches on the wall and we have been looking at them for years and all the same message that famous choir it's a mania's body that the ruchet music God it's a more famous one we are asking ourselves looking at them every day like why it should be like that all the time let's try to make a new one then it's going to start the choir started particularly it's just our work like this one we say oh no we're very shy at the very beginning presenting things like I'm doing now it takes for me like decades literally so you'll learn it somehow then we try to skate it let's make a pre-release performance happening instead of presentation where people will be singing because it's much easier music for those then we made addition and they they were all accepted all all all I remember the one girl calling us day before it's a like what kind of music you perform is it really classical music in 20th century, 90th century all more kind of that none of the more contemporary you know like so there was really kind of that going blind into the obstacle but when they came they never like you now maybe a little bit more then 50 we were very afraid I said dragon can you tell them something dragon said like he said you are all accepted I guess they were confused but after the first presentation it was in Cezekar Belgrade we had that presentation they announced it and the space was filled like this we finished it 20 minutes went out and out was even more people waiting so people are asking can you repeat it one more time for the others from outside then we repeat it then we finish and member, choir member came to us we want to continue working with you in the possible we want to propose you as well very important thing which I did not mention is working discipline that's dragon myself awesome, huge argue about that because I think if you work with the choir you have to set up the time in the week every Tuesday 8 p.m. Thursday so people have must know the time they come and to prepare the rehearsal if you tell them now next week the choir will tell you la la la when it goes like this it's very very tight so it must be some time because I believe in that I believe in one part people tell that I'm very talented craftsman it's true I have to say not modestly that I can draw whatever I see but I'm not talented my parents were telling me when I was a kid five days five hours a day minimum before going to the primary school nobody was forcing me I was thinking if I would play without five hours a day I would play perhaps very well, right? so I really believe in work hard work I'm not talented that's what I'm doing because I was working hand in hand when I was a little child so it's like that I believe the word too much at the same time could you please pass the previous slide just to see the name of the person just the previous one Darko Suvi Darko Suvi just to check him out thank you so you had one last question I was curious about self-organization I am part of a collective that organizes like that for several years and one of the difficulties we found and I wanted to ask you in this sense how was it for you is to balance this the fact that we do not live in a the whole society that is like this and we make actually a little island of self-organization of mutual and non-hierarchical relationship that is really good but how did your group balance the fact that you go in a society that has almost nothing to do with that kind of model a society where at work you have a boss where you have and if you had any kind of difficulties with the relationship in this sense brilliant question I was planning to make three videos to show you which are not because they are not long short but that was 2006 we invited in Banjo Biennale to make a choir they invited one month ahead just to have time to make a choir in Banjo and that's the situation we came in completely other context where people who have a free time are pensioners or kids before the primary it was open edition and appeared kids up to five years and people more than 70 everyone else were busy working or going to school these are really quite different a lot of people hanging out having got a free time so it's not possible I believe like that invite some of Europe to make the same situation in completely different context I think the people for instance that was a great failure I have to say we were fighting for months we made a video about our failure telling like sorry people and they formed some school kids to sing but it did work so I think that's my opinion working in the context is very important for the conditions so something working in Serbia cannot work in Germany I guess maybe this can use some similarities some tools but it might appear that it will not be the same result thank you that was for a long time so I will make it short and we just met yesterday in the open session discussion and I'm sure you have read the description so you have read like me that Marcel is an advanced internet user and a founder of the Mutimidia Institute in Zagreb and a research fellow at the Coventry University and you have read also about the library project memory of the world but maybe I can just give you some keywords that maybe what to me describe the universe of Marcel that I remind from our discussion yesterday which are hacking the system struggle and solidarity so maybe I just give a short introduction and another thing because we see advanced internet user I remember as well that Marcel described himself as a worker for Marcel thank you let me just show you first what is memory of the world today so if you go to library of the world you can just type what I will type or you can just type what you would like to see there so the authors for example a couple of books Igor Shtiks who told me that he really likes that book that his books are here then I don't know maybe some like entitled like 95 books which has solidarity in cycle these are another kind of keywords which I like so they are like three comments most of them are not anti comments I will talk louder and I don't think it can be as much if you were looking into the screen I was pretty much saying what I'm typing so yeah I will now be like louder so this is a tag this is the one which I tagged I know that because that's like 19 books important books which are for my PhD another one like just library we kind of meant that thing here so the books about the libraries online library so this is memory of the world for example if you are interested in all of these 803 then if you like download this file and if you are familiar with the command line then you can run this like a little line in command line and then if you install aria to see and then do this file then on your local computer you will get all of the 803 books and it will be ready to be browsed like searched so you will pretty much get the same thing like what you can see here you can put it on USB, you can upload it somewhere else, you can give it to someone or you can just keep it on your local hard disk and then use it you can also import it in a free software called Calibre which is the book management software maybe few of you have it installed because it's mostly used for conversion so then you have like one format then you need it for your e-reader like Amazon Kindle or something like that then you would use that software but that software is also very good to help you make your books list or books kind of like a folder into a catalog so I'll tell you a little bit more about how we articulate what member of the world is so for let's say around like maybe 50,000 people per month this is how they approach it, they don't care I think that few of them care about what is behind what is in the background, what is the story about it and they kind of enjoy that it's a whatever that they can go and download their books and a lot of people come back to us, ask us for the new books so like can you like just like in any library I have like at least 20 people who are researchers and usually to Facebook they just say I couldn't find the book can you like find it for me and then there is like a little bit kind of a little bit of a context of taking for granted what they ask me and other librarians so they're like I'll just start to kind of unfold what is the concept behind so these are the librarians these are not all like like fully, they're like a little bit less of real people because few people would have more than one librarian person and that's what we can exercise on internet, no? but none of the books on this website is ever uploaded with any script there is always a person who picked up a book where it is available and then it takes care of putting it into catalog like you kind of like do the a little bit of a librarianship inventory so that's how it gets here and this is a number of like let's say like around like 20 people but then as in every kind of loose community there is maybe like six which are very very active and then the rest is like occasionally doing that and then out of six there is like two who are like running two thirds of that so it's 150,000 books at the moment a little bit more and then two librarians like responsible for like 50 plus 50,000 they also have a little bit of a competition who has better books things like that, that happens no? but there is no like there is no bad blood there is no like hard feelings in that sense so when people ask us to bring the book there is something that is taken for granted that some people but not us will call that stealing so that book is not available or it is available if you pay for that or if you borrow it from like a public library somewhere university library and then we have a network you can't see of shadow librarians and then we go to the places you can easily get there it's not like boo but we get there and then we what we call liberate the book so the book which once was after the paywall so you could only like pay for that borrow it from the library then whatever by the labor of librarians gets offered to you so I'll just tell you a little bit of history of how we got there so in like 2012 we were we reminded to curate a new media festival called like so there was like 6 I think in a row so they wanted like as you do with the new media festivals you have a curator that curator comes with a smart concept and then that curator usually needs to go and like say hey my great friend and artist can you do something for this concept can you do something for that and that's why they also invite you because when you are curator it's not just if you have to come up with a concept you also need to be part of that network and in the time I was not anymore part of that network I kind of lost a little bit of interest of what's going on in art in the new media art so instead I proposed to do a public library so I said like let's kind of think that this time of 3 days and space will be our public library and they were like okay what do you mean by that what was like very important was for me to convince them but then all of us to convince the world that that's what we are doing like so we have couple of months to make a public library so at the time there was like there was a project called library genesis which is still which is still going on this is the let's say like ex-communist librarians because if I say Russian hackers then and it completely changes the here you can have a say it's what? here you type engine and the first thing is words okay they are like many mirrors let me just tell you this is like the biggest websites where you can find like around like 2 million books mostly English some like the second language is Russian by the number of titles the third one is German and then only after that Spanish which is kind of like they are like weird kind of a list of like how many books English language is there and they are kind of like you can take your own interpretation anyway at the time in 2012 library genesis was just like few months known to be the website where you go for the books because in the beginning of 2012 another website which was called Gigapedia or before that e-books club was shut down through the court case so most of the attempts as you know like with movies with music and whatever most of the attempts live for a certain period of time and then they get shut down through the illegal pressure and things like that so what library genesis did was the first time that they offered everything they have like the whole catalog database if you have technologies that's what you need in order to run exactly the same kind of infrastructure so they offered that to anyone to just like do that so they were not trying to cover their costs by keeping that for themselves and like trying to get the money from usually casino and poor so in a way when you go for the books in like 2012 even today you kind of feel that the books are something in between casino and poor which kind of is not really what you would expect so that was our to go back to convincing moment that was our convincing moment in 2012 so we for months before we downloaded all of that from library genesis and we were saying to people here we have a million books at the time it was a million books and it was like 11 11 terabytes now it's new one so if you ever like USB-T dealing with big data you don't even know how much of data is that 11 terabytes but it doesn't matter for us it took like few months to download it and to prepare it and then we did a number of other things we had a program there and for us the program what was the important part was to actually raise the issues why we were doing that because we were not just doing that to show that it's possible technically for any other reason but political but at the same time for us politics are done in a time of the way so these days what we feel and what kind of proof is that some of the politics you can only start from culture and our institutions so other institutions are not keen to listen to you they don't care what you get offered they don't care it goes completely against their vision of the world so in that sense that's how we started to articulate and I would just tell you together with that convincing moment of having million books just like nearby you in few few meters from you from you there we also offered kind of a proposal and what do we think what is a public library is free access to books for every member of society it's a library catalog and a librarian and then these two sentences which I will just read you that got like quoted everywhere but usually without the first part which we can discuss later but people really kind of subscribe to that so it says with books ready to be shared meticulously cataloged everyone is a librarian when everyone is a librarian library is everywhere so in that sense there's kind of like a vision and feeling where many people could subscribe that with digital technologies with digital networks that's kind of possible it's not really this is the part which you don't need to say much it's like that's internet my father I show him like a street view not Google street view when you get it was like early days of street view I was never in Rotterdam I was trying to show him like hey I'm going to Rotterdam he used to work in Rotterdam let me show you that and he was not impressed at all this is the only we don't have flying cars there is no like future which was promised there is only Google street view it's kind of underwhelming but still I'm impressed everything is on internet he's not an internet but he knows that everything is on internet he shows and then you know like all of these CSI's and whatever they go through the satellite and then in whatever the little drop of water you have a reflection of a killer now and then they dissolve whatever the plot so in that sense it's for my father at least this is not something which I have like of course everything is on internet and we are playing a lot with that idea that there are things which are now possible which were not possible any time before and then that's one kind of layer of that and then there are like competing ideological visions where there are some other people who think that internet is super new thing and that internet actually is revolutionizing the world I will just give you one example and then I will try to keep these kind of let's say idealized versions of what internet could do so another kind of very strong one is that that internet is the abstraction or and also implementation the real world abstract device which is information processing engine which can at any given time give you what is available what is the price of what is available and then ideally everyone is doing that so then the demand and the whole kind of trading problem is in a way resolved because there is nothing in the world which is smarter than that engine that that free market where you which is totally transparent to you and which can solve problems now and we don't subscribe to that so we have a different branch of that we think that that's horrible that that has horrible consequences for the world and that's Mirovsky is like calling that I kind of like quoted Mirovsky of what neoliberal neoliberalism is so neoliberal kind of fantasy is what I just told you that market is the information processing engine which can provide to the world the best source of any information which then will solve the problem of allocation of resources so the only thing which we have to do with the world is to make that world into the like world of objects which are measurable which are possibly digitized and then which has a label price which is usually dynamic just like the plain tickets the beginning is like very cheap and then as you get if you are slow in processing the information everything will be more expensive for you so that's kind of that's where it goes so in that sense that's what neoliberalism is in that sense it's not necessarily that it only came into the world because sometime in the 80s after the old crisis in the 70s Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were like oh we don't believe in society it could be also that it came because the nucleus of that idea is the nucleus of the idea where the capitalism has the means to actually explain the world in such a way that nothing else can explain the world so what we are trying to do is to explain the world in a little bit different from a different angle and we picked up a public library in that sense as our discussion device so we would like to offer something where the good things are possible that the society we believe it could exist could actually use some of these devices at the same time even this is very precise computers and whatever we don't believe in a society which is resolvable we don't believe that society is sustained which we can kind of logically get to the whatever conclusion we believe that it's messy it's full of conflicts it's never kind of stable it's dirty but at the same time there is kind of idea that that could all work fine and the keywords which you said at the beginning like solidarity for example is something which we will do when it comes from after the French Revolution in a way so what we also subscribed to is the the proposals which are moving the world into a better place and usually that's not something which makes it forever so the step which was made by Haiti Revolution French Revolution American bourgeois revolution was that there are like some that says bourgeois which wanna get in charge now and in order to convince the world just the same way how we were trying to convince the world about why we can call that space public library they also came up with some ideas or idealizations and that idealization was saying all people are equal so we shouldn't discriminate people but of course the people who were doing that didn't see that there are women didn't see that there are people workers who don't own anything, who don't possess anything they didn't see race didn't see so many people around but at the same time claiming because what they could see is that I'm in charge and these kings we should be rid of that now and they got rid of few not enough I would say we still have like kings and queens which should be symbolically hanged or if not then I don't know maybe literally that's the idea because we cannot stand it's just like it's 2019 and French Revolution brought it so what people then could do is that they can describe to some aspects of that they could reflect on these ideas and then they can make it their own struggle so in that sense there is a legacy of that and one of the legacies is what they also propose with the public library so the bourgeois was not really ready to do the problem of the distribution of wealth of the how do you make world fair so every word is in a way wrong so like please stay with me it's wrong but yeah maybe we can discuss that further so they were not able to address that the communists were the ones who were addressing that later on criticizing how the bourgeois was not able to address that problem but bourgeois then would say like yeah but at least everyone should have access to education everyone should be in that sense and become a good citizen and things like that and they very very early realized that the public library that the market in that sense whatever the stage of that time of capitalism couldn't provide that so that we need to build the institutions who would protect the vision and the claim which they made and in that sense that's the public library so public library of the 19th century were wrong in so many real places because at the time people who were able to build these libraries were not able to recognize who are the old people we will never be able to do that but that's a process and we can kind of reflect on that but then during that time public library was used by many who were not included and then they would just build that and use it as tactical device to go further to change the world and that's the way how we over identify with this with this work that we see so that's the free access to books for every member of society so in many ways in many ways internet was kind of like a big change so in many ways the idea that it's possible that a massive more people will be able to access information to access education that it is possible and it was not only seen by the leftist now they were like at least couple of scenes in like in the the more developed parts of the world who had access in the 90s to the internet and they all kind of believe that that's like a revolutionizing force not the revolution as in the French Revolution October Revolution but just something changing the world in such a drastic way that that's possible but what we can see is that gradually we would get technically more and more like closer and closer to get there but at the same time in parallel legal and other regulations the way the dynamics of the market and all of that it's not that they move they absolutely moved in a worse than it was like at the beginning of the 90s that they also like have a trend to actually make it even worse so at the beginning the capitalism let's say that neoliberals who believe that everything in the world should become a product which can be then the digital object which can be put into the database where people will query if they need it and then the price will be made after all of this information so it's not just that the world in that sense goes into the worst of the capitalism the product is very bad but there is there is even worse than that and that's the rent so in UK the aristocracy, queen and whatever they own the land so whatever you do up on that it's still under their control and then if they are not happy they didn't kill them like back then I mean they didn't have the proper bourgeois revolution but you know what I'm trying to say they are in charge to regulate that so whoever is in charge what they do is they try to gather into the product and make everything into stream so in that sense that's what you then pay it's like water so they try to make everything we will always with technology is that something which is impossible to describe in any other way because there is too much you should know as a technologist in order to go with the very precise so let me just try to say imagine it's the same like someone is telling you that bottles of water which are super bad it's like plastic like water should be free why do we buy it it's like a hipster topic we have this to know that so just imagine that it's not anymore about bottles plastic bottles but it's actually the water pipe and they want to own that they want to own the water they want to own the gas they want to own the electricity so in that sense that's the dynamic and when it comes to books that's exactly also what happened so with Amazon who's mostly in charge who is the enemy of authors, publishers and all of us they made it very early into a stream just one anecdote from Amazon Kingdom you know 1984 now as like a brother they made it part of the free books on Amazon Kingdom so please buy this streaming platform and you can start by reading 1984 which is kind of tricky also I cannot imagine who's boo whose idea was it well I have a great idea I'm like a marketing department let's start with 1984 so what happened is that they didn't clear the rights for that with the publishers who had the rights so everyone who bought Amazon Kingdom with 1984 just woke up with their device without their book just imagine the world without digital you bought the book in 1984 you put it on a bookshelf you wake up, you go to see your bookshelf you're like okay I feel okay today I feel like optimistic enough so I want to read 1984 and then you get to the bookshelf there is no book your book is owned by Amazon your bookshelf is owned by Amazon and they can decide to do whatever they want so even if you do a mistake by cheating on the PI system so you have a birthday you buy it from Amazon and then you say I don't like it and then you can bring it that's like we have like customer rights so sometimes it works but if they catch you if they think that you cheated on that they can just say like okay no more so it's not just that you cannot buy anymore the PI system the speakers for your birthday can cheat whatever they will actually withdraw all of the books you have on Amazon because they will just like cut you from Amazon so this is the world so that's what I'm trying to kind of bring you and this is what we should so this is all about free access then library catalog for us it's important because library catalog there is a book I will just show you the author is Kriyavski the book is called Baker Machines so I will just like point you to that story so when you have like a lot of books you need like a list of these books in order to kind of you need a library also but also if you don't have a library you want to have like a list so during from like sometimes like the 14th, 15th century people started people had mostly like religious it doesn't matter so they just had like enough like thousands we are not talking about millions at the time but they already had a need to go with the list and then they started to think about what could be the good things how do you actually make it so you can make it in a script, you can make it into pages and then you can bind it and you have a book which actually is a list of all of your books right but then what if new books come how do you actually add it to that book like whatever binding and things like that so then some smart people came up with the idea of index card catalog so in an index card catalog you would have like all kind of possible things like you can relate and you can like point to another index card and things like that so for some like maybe a hundred or a few hundred years the problem was technical actually that index card catalog was very hard to get because there were no manufacturer who could make it consistently in the same size and thickness so that was a technical problem which today is not like something which because paper is not that easy to make so Marcus Krajewski is trying to say that computers didn't just appear because we needed air defense and then like horrible Nazis like made some secrets and then we had Alan Turing the others trying to decipher what they were doing you know like that's the usual story so during the World War II some smart people came up with the idea of computers and then they forget about some things which were happening in Britain, some things which were happening in Germany it all happened in US so what I like about this story with Marcus Krajewski is that they put it into the the kind of the the lineage of production of knowledge where librarianship is equally important for the development of computers so then everything you can imagine with what we can do with computers, my father is pretty much like everything is in that sense also thanks to a librarian so for us library catalog is that, is like a very important abstract machine just like computer but we call it library catalog because if you say computer you can understand it would be like a messy kind of abstraction here and then the last one is a librarian so this free access library catalog is possible if you get the monopoly for example if Amazon really get there Apple is out of game for few years I had Apple and Amazon but Apple is not anymore any kind of on the book matters so it seems that it could be that that will be Amazon so if Amazon will be the only player ever for the books then for most of the people will feel that it's free if they paid it somewhere else so if Amazon just make a deal to talk you know it's kind of if they are monopolies they can do all kind of negotiations so in that sense they have already cataloged and it's very powerful you know like people who bought this book also bought that book they are very much in charge to actually move it in direction they want and all these things so if we end up with that then it's very possible that people will feel that it's free access because you get there without like paying for every book and there is a catalog we don't think that a public library should be owned by any private corporation especially not Amazon no like any but also especially because Amazon is really bad so it's like some companies at the beginning of their life they don't seem that bad and actually they are not that bad they are just naive so they think that they can change the world as entrepreneur and we prove that I'm very skeptical they are my political enemies but what I'm trying to say not all companies are equally bad at different phases Amazon is the worst and is the best candidate to do what I'm trying to say at this moment and that librarian is very important so what we try to do with the librarian is a person is a human being is the knowledge production that goes behind that it's all of the possible relations of labor and capital but at the same time it's also subjectivities so that means that if you don't I'm blind for so many things systemically I want to learn more but that doesn't help that much and for many issues for many experiences in the world I will not be the librarian for everything I'm a librarian for what I'm talking to you now this is if you follow me on this as a librarian I think that you will get more of what I just said but if you want to see something else then you should go for some other librarian and in our vision of the library that's how we go so these librarians not necessarily being here we don't see memory of the world as something where all librarians ever should come it's free software you can run on your own so you can just pick up this software and make your own community so I'll just finish yeah I will finish in a few minutes and I'll show you what are the when you are a librarian so I think that what I try to make here is a case of how we can challenge the idea of property how we can change the idea of ownership first just a few things I would say that intellectual property the way how we make the production intellectual production, knowledge production into a product to get into that neoliberal information processing machine is is absolutely inappropriate I will tell you also like schizophrenic situation which happened to me so that's wanted us to write about this project so it's very like MIT Press is in academia maybe you know, maybe you don't doesn't matter they are very prestige a publisher so through some editors for anthology of tactical media we got a contract from MIT Press to write for that anthology and in that contract as it is today we get no money as authors no access there is nothing to say that we actually in any way have we are in charge of our work but they are prestige so we should be happy and we were happy we will write because also we will pilot it you know how we can do that maybe not so another thing happened is that two weeks later we got several takedown notices and takedown notices is the first step before you get into court case so MIT Press was sending us letters by the lawyers saying you should withdraw these books and they actually went for art power by Boris Groits let me see I'll just we have like 2721 books by MIT Press so they only sent one and it doesn't matter how many books there is another project I'm involved with in Canada we are sued for half a million dollars for one book by a small publisher so that's how the whole thing starts these are the things which happened today and they sent the first letter and then I was talking I got a keynote I'm trying to tell you that this story is in that sense recognized as relevant in all kind of institutions which are also prestige so I was at at Brown University with a keynote talking about project and then also mentioning we got a contract and then taking a notice which is kind of crazy the same entity is trying to do all kinds of things with you and that's schizophrenic and we understand why is that happening and because of that schizophrenia they really went super bad you heard the last thing MIT Media Lab the upstine, the money MIT is in big problems and no surprise there are like many reasons why you should end up there because you live in a very like a schizophrenic world and you are trying to comply to all of that so I was talking at the Brown University mentioning that people are laughing you're laughing a little bit less than them but I just didn't deliver the joke in a good way and then that conference had the publication following up I got again a notice from MIT Press and then I heard that MIT Press will actually either publish or distribute the publication coming from that conference where I'm like talking about Annemarie so I was like kind of how many times we will play this game how many times MIT Press will be keen to publish our story and at the same time threaten us with these like with these letters schizophrenic around the ownership and I'll just tell you I'll just tell you like a few minutes what other things which you can do this is the intervention private intervention we are doing enjoying what we are doing enjoying with all others who are enjoying what we are doing because there is a lot of downloads from this website and couple of people realize they can ask me for the books you can ask me for the books and I'll probably bring it to our network so the other things and that's about the knowledge which is suppressed because of some other reasons not just the ownership but ownership and property is usually a part of that so for example in Croatia during the 90s public libraries would get rid of the 10 times more books than sometimes 100 times more books than what I suppose to get rid of because every year you kind of you write off the books which are just too old you can't actually borrow them you know like they are kind of for some other reasons I don't know like new version of the software I don't know like there are many reasons why because of the scarcity of the bookshelf you want to get rid of some of the books but during the 90s public libraries in Croatia were getting rid of anything having anything to do with Serbian Serbian authors Serbian publishers so anything Serbian at the same time anything workers related in that sense socialism communism whatever and not less horrible but still super horrible especially for today also antifa so anything which had to do with the sector because they were very much volunteers complying with the state ambient if not like proper instructions to ideologically claims to do the proper reboot the proper historical and other revision of the world so they were very very kind of like keen to do that and Acomrad Leshaya did a very good research with all of the titles and that's like 500 pages research of what happened at the time so what we did is that we invited people because we scan the books also there are around like 2000 books out of 150,000 books which are scanned and they are mostly through the project I'm telling you about so we invited people to actually come with these books and then we would scan it and bring it back I'll just show you the the front page if you're from Yugoslavia you'll probably recognize some of these or we are more like people this is like I would come up like the kid Pakistan it's kind of like so that didn't work well even with the extreme right because it's kind of like people don't like to burn the books they want them to get they don't really know that that's not like what's happening so my point here is that today doing a librarianship it probably will intervene the most in the realm of the intellectual property regime or private property regime if you try to push it in other areas and say it's the same housing the medicine the ownership or the medicine genes and all of that it's horrible it doesn't really work almost anywhere but it seems also that the most blatant example is online for us that's why we start with that but then there is a lot which can be done by tactical use of what do you offer how do you do it you can scan you don't need to scan everything ever of your nation state because that's usually what public libraries do today they kind of think that they are nation state something but if you do something politically relevant if you pick up the good issue that could be a great tool to intervene and to join to join the struggles which are already happening we'll just end here so we have a couple of minutes for discussion just pass it over so we can have more points let me know I just wanted to ask you how you deal with the court cases as in how you deal with the court cases court cases and how are you managing to financially fight them not my mom is not happy how I deal with that so there is only one court case and it's only like $30,000 in in fact paid for the for that it was done half of that was done through like a crowdfunding campaign at the beginning then the rest was paid by a founder so I'm kind of like almost kind of collateral damage in that court case because I joined for solidarity and wanted to be there because I was involved and then the only person which was quite addressed was Shondongke who founded and and I wanted to in that sense also kind of invite other people to collectivize that because that project is truly collective Shondongke founded that but then that process didn't go because we are lazy and unlike Joe we don't believe in hard work so even we had enough signals that that thing will happen so we ended up only two of us so I'm there because I'm the owner of a domain and in a court case kind of label like a hacker from a Balkan and then I'm doing some things but we the court case still didn't get to my role so it's more than like three or four years and it takes for a very long time it's super annoying and that's how we deal with that we just deal with that I mean we don't have yeah we don't have like in that particular case we don't have a strategy for our from everywhere in the world it was completely different from the very beginning in that sense is not how to say that it's very clearly saying what's going on so our defense in memory of the world if we ever get sued we'll never go and say like oh we did not we know what we are doing we do that because we believe that this system is just like the system in all I mean everything what I was preaching last 45 minutes now so that's part of our defense part of our defense is also to involve all of the all of the institutions all of the institutions which were which were like which recognize this is like where we had whatever appearances exhibitions whatever education so what we would like to do is like to make a court case into kind of performative whatever any lawyer would tell you that doesn't make any sense so in that sense that's not a legal strategy this is the strategy of what do we want to do with this intervention so it's also like we like to talk a lot about civil disobedience so we think that there are like a number of things people do number of activities people do and we have another project called pilot care for example where which will happen in like few weeks in Rijeka in the next year which says that there are like more and more activities which are happening in the world which are obviously like should happen rescue of refugees helping refugees on their part is something which humans should do for other humans there is no doubt about it whoever have any in that sense any doubts on that part I think that they are like my political enemies and let's see what is the battle like if there is a war we then go with the weapons there is no war then we do all kind of political struggles and battles but that's what we wouldn't question then in reproductive rights still like abortion is again like initially it's just like it's kind of like ridiculous there are so many issues which we should kind of leave behind us and that's becoming more and more so even in that field there is a lot of practices which are becoming illegal or criminalized then in the excess to healthcare again and these are also like very much connected like refugee people without papers so the activities which we all know should happen and like if you cannot join you are kind of like I'm sorry that I'm not doing that that's obviously better than what I do but I at least I totally support that and then we see that what we do in digital and that's not the only thing which is in that sense like illegal criminalized but like kind of like having that vision so that's since we are trying to make all of that into the big case and what is sure is that we will lose any legal case but we don't know what could be the consequences most of the time what changes that people who are kind of getting trouble usually getting trouble in US, Canada whatever and then you don't go there for much where I don't know so that's you are based on poetry I'm now employed by the poetry university in the UK so I'm like a British actor but I'm based on my primary I just like the way it's like very exciting but I have a couple of questions of for example language these are books for a certain society I feel like this is very kind of problematic subject of reflection or material reflection which society and who would be interested in these books and can make these books actually available really access and the knowledge because now we are not only talking about the books as books but also the knowledge in these books available so I'm reflecting on the word I want to reflect on the word of society and language but who can access this really who would be interested in this and even to explore and how make it more expensive so I'm also reflecting on translation I just like I'm putting all this because if I see it now it would be mainly for academia or very small group of people who speaks English mostly who has a certain interest or jargon while on this level that doesn't make really this knowledge available it makes it available for certain people who already into into so it's not like no please no it's not because it's already huge so it's not like you didn't do this but just like reflecting I think that I'm kind of how to say that I'm happy that you see that this can actually address even that scope where I think that it's on interest so in that sense like anything on internet for many people kind of feels like it can go wider than it is at the moment but for us it is what we could do this is a network it's not in that sense universal it doesn't claim universal as in scope of the substance it uses tactically the ideas of the universality and especially like a legacy of the French Revolution we try our best to kind of not to subscribe that in like whatever the colonial and imperial and all of that but kind of use it like tactically because we see that there is certain potential then another kind of part of that is that it's also about allocation of resources so we feel that like I did I don't want to say percentage but I did majority of the software platform with the help of my friends so this is done by two people so this is how much it could be done with two people programming and like six up to 20 people doing like the collections yeah so that's how far and also it's like seven years of the work of high and then then also what we are trying to do when there is a chance so in that sense we try to say this is not our scope but not because we don't see it's just that we didn't have a opportunity and chance I was in Germany five years I don't know numbers in Germany I'm lazy I don't want a lot of German it's just it happened so for example Libros member of theworld.org is like 26,000 books and I always say it's a surprise that the Spanish books are not that much available on the internet like other languages and I always say is there a librarian here who speaks Spanish please I will give you the whole we don't have a librarian who speaks Spanish to take care of that and then maybe you can take care of everything but what we would like to do is to work with someone who will go to these 26,000 and pick up maybe some maybe not some of the librarians don't like this because it's full of like Pulp Fiction a lot more and things like that and then we were making jokes like hey we work we want to have people we want to have working class here and then in working class come then you're like hey I don't like their taste so there's a lot of jokes but still we don't have a librarian so what we would like to see is that someone who speaks Spanish to take care of that collaboration work because I know for example I'm not really to believe in myself but I know that some initiatives like this are done in Arabic I mean where you can find a large collection mostly yeah half the scan I mean it is there for example maybe just like we have a number of felitons we made like 11 bookscanners the only bookscanners which did more than 100 books was one in Nama and that one scan or like people scan on that book scanner more than like maybe around 2000 books like 10 others are kind of situated in different kind of spaces from Anarchy's Colony in near by Barcelona to Ramallah in Palestine to I don't know like some art academy in Germany archive in London and it doesn't happen so we kind of like we feel that we are doing as much as we could we are lazy so it's not like we don't believe in hard work so probably work would be nice I don't want to do more in India as in hard work so it's hard so that's the thing I'm just curious to know your political regarding public libraries Amazon is clear Amazon and this whole universe is your political public libraries? no did I and then public libraries physical public libraries who are on the state and give an example in Croatia and this law of 100 100% what's your position in the in the theory that you so we over identify with public library we over identify with the mission and the vision of what we think public library should be so we think that public libraries shouldn't so that there is always like kind of a problem where the public usually is the scope of nation state it seems that that's how people tend to see public public access to park to transport to transportation and then someone who has no ID card cannot and then you're like in that sense so there is a trap in which public libraries could be over identified with the limits I would say with traps and many would do so that's where they don't see that their kind of their kind of reason to be was not with the vision and idea of all people are equal but so in that sense the public library these institutions who get into that trap we would probably say hey there is a trap there but at the same time institutions we also write I didn't there is another kind of handle here which is then the relation to institutions like in which way the institutions could be part of political struggles things like that so I would say that few of us try to articulate the institution has a very important role and then there are ways how we can deal with the institutions and that's not joining the institution and then trying to do something from inside but there is also a possibility to challenge the institution without saying and then that's not avant-garde gesture from like I don't know like from Russian constructivism we would just like burn all of the museums and put them into apotheca as a little kind of that's what we are trying to say is like there is a reason why you are here we are with you, we believe that that's what we should do as part of our political struggle we should establish our institutions radically in relation to the vision of a society in a relation to political articulation so that you as someone from institution you should be allowed you shouldn't in my opinion shouldn't hard work but politically you should be aware so it's more like a discussion at the same time we don't invite the public libraries because we don't want them to get into risk because any public library who would join us at this moment would get probably in more trouble than any other institution so in that sense when we work with people we work secretly and then we are trying to prepare some public libraries who would join and then maybe join the way so that it's prepared so there is it's kind of tactical but we don't see in any way as enemy we don't see us as replacing anyone there this is just the kind of intervention in that sense it is such a great field of knowledge and we are the librarians we know little compared to the librarianship but what we do is that we do political intervention in order for that knowledge to be more relevant in our society so this great public election we are librarians if somebody comes to me then we are not even in the in the direction has to find another library so it's a great collection because it's a great collection because then in the library you might say you know what is dealing with that and then it's all so in this case it emerges from the problem of selection of improving and excluding politics of museum because the visual aesthetics access logic which filters and it doesn't be any internal fashion how do you make your internal models to be this much in that sense we don't try to become the model for governance I think that we are fairly good collective friends some people get in fights they are like some emotional connections these emotional connections so in that sense it's just like any other collective or organization there is also a lot of kind of discrepancies because few people me primarily have like a role which is like I'm better programmer than most of the librarians who are there than I'm the one who's making coaching in that sense I'm much more in charge than anyone else and I don't do like a assembly for all of the decisions which comes to the to the thing which is I don't and I don't feel like we should like address that there is free software anyone can run I'm happy to help someone starting something else and then they're like I just mentioned that Hanukkah is Spanish like that librarian who did absolutely the most for memory of the world I'm not sure if I should share it with you because this is from our person this is kind of like how you make yourself funny so he will probably make jokes out of it because he's teasing me so he's playing that guy and then I'm playing another guy that's how we have friendships so in public he will probably say something else but he was saying like I don't want Libros this is not edit still and then I was using that joke you can't deal with what working class want to read and then he says like come on you know it's and then that's how we go further when it comes to what you brought it's we are very aware of that in the realm of identity politics um yeah it's gender balance fine racial you know like things like that who cares no it's not that who cares I would never say who cares I think that we care and then it's the proof do you care or not is not always but most of the time is to see what's going on there so in that sense I think that probably the best representation is what we have there but at the same time face the journey would be also books we chat about like not that political so the tag would be better kind of entry point like political tag than just going one by one but at the same time I don't think that we have many books where we would be like oh this book should be there we can say that that guy is an asshole you know but still that book is okay it's not like we don't but at the same time it's internet, it's like passwords all over and we are guerrilla now so we don't play public institutions we don't make that as our mission we will never get to that university or like that kind of mission which we should do but at the same time I think that there is a kind of layer of governance what do you do and also what do you say so we try to do what we can not what we would like to see in the world because most of the things which we would like to see in the world we are absolutely first not competent to do and then second we cannot have resources like anything this is not a model for governments but if you want to like a guerrilla then we can join and do more one last question we all work time yeah so do you select librarians you approach certain people yeah so I can tell you just a little bit how it started so at the beginning it was like we use Calibra which is that software which is the software which everyone should use not even install I would just like to explain you I'm sorry I don't have it prepared just to show it now just imagine Excel which is very good for books now so every librarian should use that Calibra and then there was a click which you can do and then it says and then the librarians at the beginning would share from their own computer and then people could see it through the server so if I like them if I get out from the internet these books are not anymore available so for many people they was like wow that's great it's beer to beer it has like a working hours like a library you have to get with librarians in touch and kind of that had artistic aspect high but usability aspect very long because very very soon people started to come to me like where's the book I found it last time why is it not there I need it now like what the fuck is going on so we slightly moved to the management of the library which goes that all librarians when they add their books locally they upload it to the server and then it's 24-7 and then that way is how you can get in touch with librarians and that's how it goes there but the librarians usually comes through other librarians so we don't make open calls we did only one open call for Spanish library after they tried many personnel and we never got someone to take care of that so I'm doing that again is it possible we can just go to this website and you can download this even if it's not open source the software which is behind this website is open source but even if it is not this website is online library.memory.org you can download all of these books you have it will take a lot of time also if you are interested in running it somewhere there are a lot of projects we did so that I would allow people to do bulk download there is also a way how you can do bulk download on your own so you can download 1,000 books in like a day and you just do like one command line in the terminal and it's downloading everything by the tag everything by that order everything by that librarian so in that sense that's the way how you can take the books and run them so just a playful proposal what about building such a thing for example pure restaurant technology and giving people people in fraud in the shape of a downloadable application mobile application so you don't have to trouble yourself in the server so it is just a revenue pure thing that cannot be error or it's hard and specializing not on this kind of hard over 5 simple literature but on any part of fiction stuff the novels that you wanted and this is how you would access other layers of society who don't read these kind of things just ask there is two questions here one is about ethical part and another one is about pulp fiction and mission to reach more people so I will start with the later one reaching more people I will do that if you are a librarian who want to bring pulp fiction you are very welcome I like you so I will talk to other people because I like you that's usually the good way how you can get in if someone would just come out of blue saying I want to share pulp fiction I think that we will start like you say like not now let's try how what's the context now we are not sure that pulp fiction just on its own is necessarily immediately there that's my guess the technical part which is about peer to peer I'm fairly good programmer I can sell my skills on my test I tried quite few things and I think that there is no technology for the books now I think that BitTorrent was very good for movies and then Germany killed it because of the famous 800 euros letters you would get if you come from Balkans in Berlin and then torrent some movies and then you are free in Berlin there is probably one person here I got at least 5 from KDG so BitTorrent are killed by that in main race because they are like these letters also technically it was made for files between 600 megabits up to like 2 gigabytes anything smaller and bigger is not really the best BitTorrent there are three reasons I tried that there are a couple of others IPFS they are like I tried all of them I'm still trying and we will eventually get there technically probably because we are lazy a little bit too late but in this particular case I can get into any technical discussion I have my arguments and I'm like I know that it's not ready and I think that will be actually earlier there we would like to do that but the problem with peer-to-peer is that it pleases the hearts and brains of technologists and no one else cares it's very hard to get people to help you distribute the resources they just don't care the biggest ever which was the success the Skype and you probably didn't even know that when you were using Skype from 2003 to 2000 when Microsoft bought it you were part of sharing the resources with all other Skype users like almost nothing else if you know of any I'm happy to know any career in a way but I don't know of any other example and it's very hard if you know how to address that I'm happy to follow it's very, very, very hard it's very hard these days to convince people to install it it's just that's the problem people care but they care in a few ways they don't care about what you need them to do they care about things and that they do what they think they should do thank you thank you