"media activists who are increasingly becoming cosmopolitan and detached from local communities and struggles." leeszaal
Media theorist Geert Lovink is apparently missing out on what is happening here amongst other places when he writes: "The Social Media Question: Where are the Alternatives?" poking at a broadly defined "geek class" and applying the term elitism to it. I have never met him and i believe he's well known.
_Project of feminism/workshop Piet Zwart Institute
@ -24,3 +24,9 @@ _"point A: the importance of voice and body in the public"_
human microphone
In a contemporary context public speeches are happening in both physical and digital spaces with the help of several media like internet (podcasts and live streaming) and radio (community radios). In the diverse media landscape individuals or groups can easily form and communicate speeches happening in a physical space by themselves without being dependent on a newspaper, publisher or state. In the occupy movements known and unknown public speakers would spread their message to an audience by standing in a public square. This action followed the principles of the Speaker's Corner. "Speakers’ Corner symbolises the kind of forum for debate sought for today’s post-industrial, highly mediated cities, encouraging face-to-face interaction and real-life conversation, albeit arranged by people texting each other, recorded by shooting and uploading video on YouTube, reported on twitter or documented on face book" (Speakers Corner Trust, no date). What I find interesting is that those people because of their multilayered relation to technology are able to spread the words and make them viral in internet. This process is also a way to archive and make public bottom-up initiatives in public spaces. At the same time there is a temporarity in this action as platforms in internet are constantly changing or disappearing. So, the events and speeches are appearing in fragments of videos, transcriptions, conversations in forums. It is more like the users, protesters are leaving traces online. As it can be seen from the Youtube videos of the Occupy Movements the crowd is using a lot of media technologies, like their smartphones, to record or stream the words of the public speakers. From my point of view, the Occupy Movement revealed a lot about the relation of the media technology with the presence and resistance in public.
According to Hanna Arendt the speech becomes possible with the existence of a group of people (public assemblies) and it is a civilized way to respond to violence. Suffragettes' speech-making workshops was a way to provide women with tools “with which to take their concerns out into the public domain” (Rose Gibbs, 2016). They focused on the voice because there is a uniqueness in it, that embodies the speaker and doesn’t apply to the abstract and bodiless universality of western thought. Even more, the voice through speech (songs, protest) connects one another in a group and at the same time keeps the individuality of the speaker. In contrast to mainstream political spheres the feminists, like anarchists, were looking for horizontal ways of communication were no voice was dominating over others. The speeches of African American women, in the first part of 19th century, were very intense as they were tolerating a lot of violence because of their gender and nationality. The brave speech of Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I a Woman?" was one of the first speech acts of women in public of that time. She made that speech after gaining her freedom and she became well-known anti-slavery speaker. I will elaborate on that speech later.
Saskia Sassen (2012, p.) observes that in the cities today a big mix of people coexist. The ones who lack power can make themselves present through face to face communication. According to her this condition reveals another type of politics and political actors, based on hybrid contexts of acting and outside of the formal system. The urban space hosts several political activities like squatting, demonstrations, politics of culture and identity that are visible on the street and non dependent on massive media technologies. This brings the conversation to the Speaker's Corner, "the home of free speech, where anyone can get on their soapbox and make their voice heard" (Coomes, 2015). This practice was very crucial in Occupy Movement <sup>[1](#myfootnote1)</sup>. Anyone could be a speaker and be heard by the people surrounding her/him. In the Occupy Wall Street, amplified sound devices, like microphone and megaphone, were not permitted in the city and the crowd could bot listen clearly to the speaker <sup>[1](#myfootnote2)</sup>. But "when the technologies above them are removed somehow, the foundational elements remain embedded and embodied in our cyborg bodies and brains" (Pages, 2011). The participants of #occupy used the 'human microphone', as they call it. This means that the crowd would repeat the words of the speaker for the benefit of those located in the rear. There the voice played an important role in the spreading of the speech to the farest points of the public space. "Even given that many of the participants of #occupy are in full possession of smartphones, verbal address to the crowd from a singular source is still important" (Pages, 2011). This is an intersting fact of the public space of today. Even though many new technologies exist the public space seems to exist in a more primitive face to face communication and bodily expression under the context of public assemblies.
- Inside/ Media: Voices of the Absent, Antinomies of Transmission
- Rose Gibbs, Speech Matters: Violence and the Feminist Voice (2016)
- Federici, S. B. (2014) Caliban and the witch. 2., rev. ed. New York, NY: Autonomedia.
- Ernst, W. (2016) ‘Experiencing Time as Sound’, in Chronopoetics. London; New York: Rli, pp. 99–121 (102-111).
## What ugly things
Carson in her text explains how the direct mode of address of these women's voices was annoying for the patriarchal society. A woman would expose her inside facts that are supposed to be private data. Examples of these facts would be emotions that reveal pleasure or pain either from sexual encounters from before or the birth of a child. This direct continuity between the inside and outside was a threat for the human nature and society.
It has been established that our inner desires and needs have to be expressed indirectly through speech and in the case of women through their men’s speech.
In
what ugly things? aischrologia and unspeakable things in charge of the city pg. 132-133
pg. 134 kaminada
"untoward event"
hysteria: psychic events within the womans body
Talkativness/ gossiping
For feminists in the early 20th century the speech in public is externalizing the personal violence and suppression of women. Alternative ways of communication hidden in the private domains have been created in response to that. Gossip, for example, "provides subordinated classes with a mode of communication beyond an official public culture from which they are excluded" (The Gossip, 2017, p.61). It is more an attempt to claim and exchange knowledge when there is no platform for them.
aimless conversation, example of Alkaios
the sory of Plutarch (Carson, 1996, pg. 130)
## Streaming media in relation to continuity
The ancients would believe that the female body has two mouths that are linked together and in the middle a hollow cavity.
streaming media in relation to voice and gender
streaming-> sense of liveness
streaming and continuity
unalterated speech of radio broadcasting and direct (Ernst, pg. 104) - non controlled speech by female bodies (like hysteria and aischrologia, ololyga)
Self-control and silence
the dark side and fear of death, blood the female body
"By projections and leakages of all kinds- somatic, vocal, emotional, sexual- females expose or expend what should be kept in" (Carson, 1996, pg. 129)
hysteria: psychic events within the womans body
Talkativness/ gossiping
For feminists in the early 20th century the speech in public is externalizing the personal violence and suppression of women. Alternative ways of communication hidden in the private domains have been created in response to that. Gossip, for example, "provides subordinated classes with a mode of communication beyond an official public culture from which they are excluded" (The Gossip, 2017, p.61). It is more an attempt to claim and exchange knowledge when there is no platform for them.
aimless conversation, example of Alkaios
the sory of Plutarch (Carson, 1996, pg. 130)
According to Hanna Arendt the speech becomes possible with the existence of a group of people (public assemblies) and it is a civilized way to respond to violence. Suffragettes' speech-making workshops was a way to provide women with tools “with which to take their concerns out into the public domain” (Rose Gibbs, 2016). They focused on the voice because there is a uniqueness in it, that embodies the speaker and doesn’t apply to the abstract and bodiless universality of western thought. Even more, the voice through speech (songs, protest) connects one another in a group and at the same time keeps the individuality of the speaker. In contrast to mainstream political spheres the feminists, like anarchists, were looking for horizontal ways of communication were no voice was dominating over others. The speeches of African American women, in the first part of 19th century, were very intense as they were tolerating a lot of violence because of their gender and nationality. The brave speech of Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I a Woman?" was one of the first speech acts of women in public of that time. She made that speech after gaining her freedom and she became well-known anti-slavery speaker. I will elaborate on that speech later.
radio attempts
Radio pirates/amateurs and antennas. Reaching the invisible other or being that invisible other. Practices of establishing multiple ways of spreading the voice in different spaces. The activation of those spaces as public forums. Listening to ‘invisible’ subjectivities.
@ -36,8 +47,6 @@ Radio pirates/amateurs and antennas. Reaching the invisible other or being that
feminist futurotopias
women in technology
# The mediation of the voice as detachment of the speaker. “the mediating role of all kinds of media that detach voice from its physical proprietor and enable its circulation in places and contexts in which physical bodies may not have access. (Panopoulos)
The mediation of the voice as detachment of the speaker. “the mediating role of all kinds of media that detach voice from its physical proprietor and enable its circulation in places and contexts in which physical bodies may not have access. (Panopoulos)
The technologies/media/tools/practices that relate the embodied and the distant voice enhance the presence of the person carrying it or turns against her/him.
Saskia Sassen (2012, p.) observes that in the cities today a big mix of people coexist. The ones who lack power can make themselves present through face to face communication. According to her this condition reveals another type of politics and political actors, based on hybrid contexts of acting and outside of the formal system. The urban space hosts several political activities like squatting, demonstrations, politics of culture and identity that are visible on the street and non dependent on massive media technologies. This brings the conversation to the Speaker's Corner, "the home of free speech, where anyone can get on their soapbox and make their voice heard" (Coomes, 2015). This practice was very crucial in Occupy Movement <sup>[1](#myfootnote1)</sup>. Anyone could be a speaker and be heard by the people surrounding her/him. In the Occupy Wall Street, amplified sound devices, like microphone and megaphone, were not permitted in the city and the crowd could bot listen clearly to the speaker <sup>[1](#myfootnote2)</sup>. But "when the technologies above them are removed somehow, the foundational elements remain embedded and embodied in our cyborg bodies and brains" (Pages, 2011). The participants of #occupy used the 'human microphone', as they call it. This means that the crowd would repeat the words of the speaker for the benefit of those located in the rear. There the voice played an important role in the spreading of the speech to the farest points of the public space. "Even given that many of the participants of #occupy are in full possession of smartphones, verbal address to the crowd from a singular source is still important" (Pages, 2011). This is an intersting fact of the public space of today. Even though many new technologies exist the public space seems to exist in a more primitive face to face communication and bodily expression under the context of public assemblies.
