in 1950s when i was training to be a teacher there was a big divide.. some staff -religious thought we were going into the world to gentle the masses others were inspiring us to educate the people. its going on now too under the guise of defusing racism SCARY SEEING it -GENTLING THE MASSES AGAIN did it ever stop ?
we could all see the military cold war ....the cultural cold war was under the radar I was a victim and a warrior in the cultural cold war ....it hit me in 1959 when i was doing a third year of my teacher training ..long story with many dramas .see some on our family site www.birdchildsandgoldsmith.com janice my cousin and iImade this over ten years....i will write more
at teacher training college in matlock derbyshire the push toward abstraction began , the drip painting of jackson pollack and the single colour canvases of rothko were beginning to be supported and influencial.These artists when younger pained social realist work expressing american life in post offices and other civic buildings . Books of interest - 1 who paid the piper the cia & abstract art by frqances stopnor saunders pub in 1999
Was Stephen Spender part of this CIA funded cultural cold war or just a useful idiot - published in 1978 see - The Thirties and After . Poetry politics and people 1933-75 ... i tried to discuss this in the 1980s at public meetings and with individuals But it was an a thankless task . Men were especially defensive and abusive... lots of sexism and misogyny in those days - more to come . with academics and with ordinary people it was a miserable task
Session 1) I’m planning to invite one of the founders of both Undercurrents and IMC to speak. I was also involved in both so we would have 3 perspective's. I would have to cover the expenses of these speakers. Session 2) I’m currently looking for speakers. I can talk/guide on this subject to shape the agenda to the subject. Session 3) We have a list of people to invite from our meetup group from last year, so it will be a continuity user group meetup with fresh outreach.
1) Looking back - how technology shaped the production and distribution of radical/progressive media like Undercurrents, Indymedia etc. 2) The current day - failure of radical media technology. The rise of the #dotcons and the new alt-media projects. 3) Looking forward - The activetypub meetup. This is an update on the state of current #openweb projects. A continuation of the very successful Mastodon meetups that I setup last year, opening up to the wider projects like Peertube etc.
Radical media technology over the last 20 years - looking forward / looking back. 3 events at a central London location this winter. A look at how technology shapes progressive/radical media #OMN
“Before Twitter, before algorithmic timelines filtered our reality for us, before surveillance capitalism, there was RSS: Really Simple Syndication … As we move away from the centralised web to the peer web, it’s time to rediscover, re-embrace, and reclaim RSS.”
The very dangerous TRUMP is unravelling the peace treaty by Reagan and Gorbachev from 1987 which was partly the work of the greenham protest and the broader peace movement who made great sacrifices in the 1980s in their campaigning for peace, masses out on the streets , blockading US bases , going to prison ,giving up jobs selling homes ...etc there are films , plays and books and more being made about our campaigning for peace ...