MR GUARNERI
Okay, so can you play my videos? I have not enough time to explain what's happening on the screen - do it this afternoon - anyway these are some installations we made regarding our objectives of working and our objectives are merely production of social meanings through the communication and so on, on the media to produce the same social meaning.

Briefly, a little presentation of my group. I'm a member of this cooperative called Shake that is actually publishing - a cooperative, and we have published 25 books and videotapes and this magazine called Decoder - and after I'll be on order for - you could take a look to our catalogue, and we - now we'll show direct a series for a major Italian publishing house that is called the Filtrinelli, and the series is related to new technologies.

We had a good impact on the Italian market after the publication of this book called Cyberpunk Anthology and it sold 20,000 copies. That is a good success for an independent company, in which anthology we try to define a relationship amongst the cyberpunk fiction and what we saw was happening in the area of independent communication - for example the German hacking scene, these people are from ... computer club, or are from the Holland ones or relating to the job of some researchers of the middle of the sixties or the beginning of the seventies, for example this Leif Fasstein, who was one of the inventors of the personal computer, and these people wrote something like a statement of the free communication and ... we believe it is important nowadays and probably after I could read some part of it.

Before I told about our field of activity, mainly we are related - this movement - Italian movement that I think is unique in the world. It's called squatted social centres. Actually in Italian you say only social centres. They are places squatted and managed by a collective of people. There are about 300 of these places in all Italy and they involve the collective of managers, thousands and thousands of people.

We made this statistic research and we discovered that in the city of Milan where we are based 300,000 of young people go to the social squatting centre to enjoy music or to stay together, or like in these cases to have access to new technology. As a cooperative we concentrated mainly on new technologies and we tried to spread as soon as possible the access.

Our keywords are mainly two - access first and the interaction is the second one. Access for us means that everyone can have the access to the machine. We believe that this was the philosophy of the inventors of the computers. That means that these people who were researchers thought about this machine as an easy way to have access to information and we seem to have barriers - who avoid the people and every kind of classes, starting from the underclass to every kind of classes - there are some barriers, cultural barriers or economical barriers.

We are trying to overwhelm these barriers, so in these places that are free access - I mean, you don't pay anything to come in - can give to all the people the access to the machines, as you are seeing in this. This is the preparation of an installation, the connected to the ... Electroniker, it's a festival based in ... where this group of friends called the Pontona Media Lab, who work in Hamburg makes this installation quite difficult to explain in a brief time, and before it was this big project of international interactive television called Piazza Via Etoile - it was an English virtual squared - it lasted 100 days and it connected thousands and thousands of people in the world.

This are parts of this so-called media party, which people are invited to use the machine and if they have not the knowledge to use the machine there are something like courses, elementary courses who teach the people to use this machine. We tried to create something like popular schools to have access to information, to manage the machine.

By the way I have to say that we were not helped at all by the institutions, these squatted places are not recognised by the institution, and, on the contrary, they're often evicted and we are not absolutely funded by any kind of institution and the only way for us to get the money is this very low fee at the entrance or some money you get from the beer or the Coke - I say Coca-Cola - you sell at the bar.

But this was important because it pushed us to make something like a political statement to have this kind of action recognised - by the people, I mean, not by the institution - how many people participated this media party - so we wrote down something like political points, because we believe that this kind of action would be enclosed in something like a manifesto of the rights of citizenship for the next century. We believe in fact that knowledge is absolutely important and - for the citizen of the 21st century, first for his own personality and then for everything that is related with his job or his work in general.

For example, we worried how it is possible for a new worker to have access to the information he could get through Internet if you have to pay or if you have - you must have particular technologies to have access to this information. We believe that a lot of people could improve their skills through the Internet and seeing that there was absolutely no answer from the institutions we created free access with the Internet, where people could access to the Net without paying anything and tried to give them the best technologies we can.

We also started this program of bulletin board system. Now there are 60 bulletin board systems widespread in all Italy. The access is totally free and the people who manage them are not paid and do it because they believe in this project and we are also moving on a political level, as I told before, because we believe that it's necessarily a collective decision on some topics regarding the things that will be chosen technically and politically on the assessment of the network.

For example, we ask should we - must be a collective decision, the creation of rules for the net. Also we believe that there is this risk to create an under-underclass that is poor in economical terms and poor on a cultural basis because they have no access at all to these tools that you can find on the net.

There is a need of collective decision of the way to plan the net itself and to the infrastructure that ruled access to the people to the Internet, and this decision is not to be taken only by the Telecom companies. I want to make this example. I don't know what's happening abroad but in Italy it's happening - is this, that could install ISDN lines without so many expenses at the moment, but they don't do it. They want to - these ISDN lines, allow the people to have very fast connection with the net. What they are doing is to install coaxial cables to create projects of so-called interactive TV. Actually it's not really interactive, it's a project of on-demand television where you can choose the film you want, and the only way to interact is to choose goods from something like a virtual marketplace.

It's really ridiculous because they are installing this - excuse me, I don't know the English - okay grazie - anyway they could install this - they just installed this cable, these high-speed cables, and these cables arrive just on the bottom of the houses, and they come up with these coaxial cables up to their apartments and these interrupt the possibility of interaction with all cable.

So this is the economical decision to stop the possibility - to have the complete interaction with every kind of meter you want: Internet or you can create your own personal and domestic television or your own radio broadcasting. Then we ask for free access. This means that you have not to pay anything.

We push some city councils to do this and in some Italian cities, for example, Rome, they are trying a pilot project to do this and to give to the citizens at least an Internet address for free as some sort of, like, right of citizenship. We think we need more to be recognised as electronic citizens. They want to discuss again on some concepts, for example, the freedom of speech, and we believe there are some attacks going on, for example, on the Internet and this - regarding the use on some software - for example the description of software - for example EGP also criticised by some American institution and probably adopt this - kind of critical - be adopted by some other governments all around the world because it's really the Americans, from this point of view, rule their entire world.

I could make some examples for you. This is the way in the Italian parliament adopted - there is law against software piracy because there was this meeting amongst people from Microsoft - something like a lobby - who met some members of parliament and the other members of the parliament were absolutely ignorant about exactly what is software piracy. So they made a bad law very heavy if one person copy software for his own use. This is related to another point - we ask to make some more reflection and it's related to copyright.

The usual, the nowadays concept of copyright is related to this concept coming from the late 18th century and is related to the information printed on a piece of paper. We believe that is necessary to move over. When we talk about copyright on digital - the speaker before me said something - we are often afraid this could limit the freedom of access to information to normal people. We want to defend the single creator of the information. We believe that the actual state of the copyright laws defend only the corporations and the bigger companies.

In Italy - but in all of the European community now is - you offend a criminal law if you copy a software for yourself. But we believe quite the 100 per cent of the people who has a personal computer has at least one copy of software on his machine. This, for us, means one thing: not that every personal computer user is a criminal, but probably that the software is too expensive for the people, and that it's necessary to find ways to spread this software in a cheaper way, in other ways that are actually present on the net.

For example, the project of the free software foundation is really a good and great experience based on the net. It was clear and there were some questions. This could explain some feature of this video. This is an installation we made in a theatre festival and it was one of the biggest in Italy. It was called Santo Cangelo Street Theatre Street Festival.

These people at the festival had the problem - there is something like a - there is a gap amongst the artists and the people of the festival because the artist are too avant-garde for the people. So they asked us to make something to try to solve this problem. With very cheap technology - we really work with something like fresh technology - all the computers and video recorders, home video recorders and normal videocams - we put something like a bigger mix in film direction in the centre of the principal square of this little town - this a middle-aged town - even as a - I mean as a geographical situation.

We put this installation in the middle of this square and giving to the population the free access to the machine, and telling to all the people, "Let's make a collective film together." They could bring their own videotape, filming what they thought about the festival itself. Because we believe that, relating to theatre, at the moment - at least in Italy, I don't know abroad what's happening - the artists try to represent just themselves and not to be the mirror of the society all around.

So we try to create something like a mirror, a medium using the media - something like a mirror in which the people who recognise themselves through the technology and through the theatre. What happened was something like an enormous film and you cannot see it completely - it was something like a 24-hour film regarding all this installation, and this is something like a concentrated video, and it's 1 hour long, and we project it in the only cinema of this little town.

We thought this experiment worked, and we also make something, but the institution don't know - we made something like pirate television in our installation and the antenna was placed in the building of the city council in Santo Cangelo. You can get the signal in the area - it was 6 kilometers. The people could broadcast their own television. I hope you could understand my bad English. Yes, I probably need a translator for the questions.

We tried - I don't know, I really don't know if it is possible to export to way of - but our aim was actually to reach the street people. It worked. You can see from the majors and it was not so difficult; it worked. Naturally, spontaneously it worked. If you bring, for example, televisions, computers in the middle of the road, it works, it works.

Because normal people - I think, just a little feeling of what a computer is - probably they attract, but they are a little afraid with - so we tried to force this situation. We were out because there is this network just existing in Italy, it is called - it is now called social centres. In this place you can have access to music, very cheap music or theatre, so the people are used - they have access to capture the information in general. But really, it was very easy.

Even in Santo Cangelo, in this town, it was very easy. The installation worked 16 hours a day. We were having something like a nervous breakdown after this festival week. Really, a lot of people - they brought I think something like 70, 75 videotapes and they went, "This is good, this my film. This is what I think about the festival. This is my point of view about that performance

It worked. I think it's a system to try. It was not so difficult. There are a lot of people interested, really are. We make this media party - we have to create - you have not to discourage the people - something like a party where people can use the machine and you can say - you can go through Internet and find your games and find whatever you want, but we are sure that if they need something like the culture, for example, they go to try to search it. That's in the media; the official media create the rest. They create the necessary attention of the people and they solicit their curiosity. The problem is that the people have not the access.

We would like to negotiate something with the institutions, really, because it's easier. I think that actually it's something like a fight because you have force on your side, and when they recognise you exist they probably react in a way. Now we have only repression. There are only some few cities and city councils that react positively. For example, in Rome it's really political - in Rome was elected this left-wing major and to fight the right wing - decided to adopt this philosophy to manage the media. The people involved in our project was totally not involved - they were involved just a little in the project of the sitting council. They adopted only the philosophy. I think that for us it's enough.

Probably it's better from our point of view because we are free to go on to do what we are doing without field tests or controls or something else. I believe that it's something like the struggles at the beginning - the late 19th century when the trade unions asked for access to libraries, to creation of public libraries.

That's what's happening. We are asking access to the net. If that creates something similar for us it's okay. From this point of view the situation will be okay. We will probably do something else.