Next posting on this blog was written during a visit to Shanghai (July 8-11, 2010) as a result of the Transit Labour Asia research platform, an Australian-European-Asian coalition of scholars, artists and cultural workers who focus on urban issues, migration and new media (arts). Their first stop was Shanghai, next ones will be Kalkota and Sydney. I visited the Rockbund Art Museum, the Xin Dan Wei co-workers space, Cultural Studies at Shanghai University, Tektao design studio and managed to do five interviews. On Friday the invited group did presentations at the local Goethe Institute where also screenings took place. A whole lot could be said about the format of such translocal work gatherings, which in the past would have had the ‘tactical media’ label, and nowadays more look like a cultural version of the BarCamp, the temporary media lab or unconference happenings. One could also put it under the larger umbrella of distributed research networks. Here you can find an explanation of the organizers how they define the platform concept. If this is the age of social networking we’d better start playing around with formats that builds on this dominant social formation. Wintercamp, organized by the Institute of Network Cultures in March 2009, was one such attempt. Here is the group photo:
