Confronting consolidation.

2005 NAMAC CONFERENCE

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

SEPTEMBER 28-OCTOBER 2, 2005

The National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in Philadelphia with evening receptions and events at the Institute for Contemporary Art, the Asian Arts Initiative, the Painted Bride Art Center, and the World Cafe Live. However, by day the celebration was tempered by the conference "Taking Liberties," which focused on deep and growing concerns about the perils facing media artists. These perils include issues of cultural policy, globalization, and long-range planning for arts organizations, confronted through a number of conference tracks and plenary sessions.

A pre-conference panel discussion at Drexel University posed the question "What Price Media Consolidation?" Or, in the words of moderator Jonathan Rintels from the Center for Creative Voices in Media, "What price can be put on the song never sung, on the news that no one hears?" Among the issues that the panel discussed were the media consolidation of the late 1990s; the ramifications of the recent Brand X Supreme Court case concerning consumer choice as regards the Internet; and the debates about indecency that followed the 2004 Super-Bowl "wardrobe malfunction." Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein, who offered a dissenting voice when the FCC pushed for further deregulation two years ago, suggested a four-pronged focus for preserving the media's role in American democracy: curbing media consolidation; increasing diversity in media ownership; reducing the reliance upon "payola"; and keeping the Internet open to broad democratic participation. The last point is where Adelstein finds the most hope, because of the new possibilities created by broadband technologies. Gene Kimmelman from the Consumers Union used his time to persuade the audience that the work of artists depends upon the right infrastructure. Like Adelstein, Kimmelman also finds hope in the Internet, particularly with the push for community wireless systems. Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project insisted that "Artists have to care, artists have to speak out" against policy moves that would limit access to the media.

Alice Myatt, a multimedia consultant, spoke against the appearance of corporate theater and corporate independent film, as well as the declining significance of public space in the lives of Americans at a time when citizens are being re-branded into consumers. Kristin Thomson of the Future of Music Coalition found hopeful practices on the Internet in the form of Web spaces that are allowing artists to bypass big media and share their works with a large audience. (1) Gregory Allen Howard, screenwriter of Remember the Titans (2000 by Boas Yakin), and Ali (2001 directed by Michael Mann), raised special concerns about the chilling effect created by indecency fines. When a corporation holds interests in a number of media, a punitive action against one sector, such as television, will ripple across the corporation into other sectors. Finally, Daniel Myrick, the co-creator of The Blair Witch Project (1999), joined the panel via iMac Webcast and offered a brief introduction to his new project The Strand, a Web-based television program. (2)

A fear that consolidated media could no longer serve the interests of democracy was addressed at the conference's opening plenary, featuring Lani Guinier and Nolan Bowie, both of Harvard University. Guinier insisted that artists who are engaged with issues of social justice must work in collaboration with others and that their art must be the "collective voice of the people," not just the lone voice of the artist. They must resist being pulled into vanity so that their work is open to critique and available for conversation. Lastly, she argued that artists must convert personal grievances into social causes. Bowie called for a broader philosophical discussion about United States identity and the meaning of democracy. The artist's role, he suggested, is to foster this discussion using two tools: media technologies and the First Amendment.

The session "Media for Social Justice" invited the audience to make a choice straight out of The Matrix: take the blue pill and return to blissful ignorance, or take the red pill for social justice. Dee Davis, from Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky, highlighted the many overlooked inequalities in the rural U.S., the ways that his organization has used independent media to address them, and the ways that Appalshop has confronted corporate media for its role in deepening these inequalities. Amy Lesser described the work of CTCNet's program Youth Visions for Stronger Neighborhoods, which funds programs that put media technologies into the hands of young people. Members of the Media Justice Network spoke about their participation in the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Summit on the Information Society. The session closed with a guided chant, "When I say media, you say justice! Media! Justice!"

NAMAC co-director Helen de Michel joined several others in discussing the importance of strategic planning for organizations. (3) Given the turbulence of technology and its influence on the media arts, NAMAC limits its strategic planning to eighteen-month increments, and the staff revisits the plan every six months. The session addressed the need to plan for leadership transitions, the role of program evaluation, and the importance of including evaluative strategies in all organizational planning. The overall message of the session was that planning is absolutely imperative, and organizational leaders who feel that they do not have the time for planning might need to think about putting their programs on hold, so that a plan can be devised.

Patricia Zimmermann of Ithaca College led a discussion about "Archiving Everything," with representatives from Appalshop, The Freedom Archives, Creative Commons, and the Intellectual Property Clinic. This conversation featured two elements: the importance of maintaining archives for historical purposes, and the difficulties created by the increasing use of the Web as an archival space. A major legal concern created by the use of archives involves "orphan works"--cultural artifacts that are protected by copyright law but whose creators cannot be found. One participant discussed this issue and recent efforts toward achieving a balanced approach to copyright policy involving such works, which is now under consideration by the United States Copyright Office. (4)

At the start of the conference, de Michel proposed a river metaphor for thinking about the media arts. The river is powerful and broad, like the media. It has a powerful mainstream, but it also has many countercurrents. It has rocks that re-route its stream, eddies off to the edges, whirlpools, and bubbles. She did not mention, but might have added, that it sustains life, which is why so many media artists remain committed to the media arts, even in the face of powerful challenges from social policy, corporate dominance, and competitive technologies.

DUSTIN KIDD is an assistant professor of sociology at Temple University. He is currently completing a book titled Culture Changes: At the Intersection of Art and Politics.

NOTES

1. See www.myspace.com, http://magnatune.com/ and http://cdbaby.com/.

2. See www.strandvenice.com/.

3. NAMAC's strategic plan can be found on its Web site: www.namac.org/docs_upload/plan.pdf.

4. See www.copyright.gov/orphan/.

info

For more information about the 2005 NAMAC conference see www.takingliberties2005.org.