Personal Statement
Integrated Media Arts Application
February 1st, 2007
Today's global justice movement is rising in a time of unparalleled individual access to the tools of media production and distribution. The exponential growth of online communities, social networks, and independent media is creating the potential for truly democratic structures on a hitherto impossible scale. In the last part of the 20th century, regional uprisings against economic imperialism and unchecked free market capitalism sprung up across the globe. These struggles coalesced into a global justice movement by using the internet to communicate directly and globally, creating unity and identity across a multitude of diverse struggles.
For the last 7 years I participated in this movement as a media activist and protest organizer. My first goal was to help build the global justice movement as it protested the institutions responsible for the maintenance and spread of neoliberal economic policies. To this end I helped organize protests against the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle, the 2000 IMF/World Bank meeting in Washington D.C., the 2002 World Economic Forum meeting in NYC, and in 2004 against the Fox News Network in NYC.
My second, and primary goal, is to create lasting, independent, egalitarian, counter-institutions. In 2000, inspired by Indymedia's skyrocketing ascendancy, directly democratic process, and its commitment to participatory media, I poured my energy into the NYC chapter, playing a key organizing and technical role. In 2003 I co-founded the Bluestockings Collective, transforming a much beloved Lower East Side institution into a radical bookstore, fair-trade cafe, and activist center that is now a thriving hub of political activism in New York.
After years of work in the activist community, I saw the need for a tool to unify the many diverse and geographically distant movements for social justice. I began development of an alternative kind of web-based social software called the Mycelia Network. Independent of corporate interests, secure, and tailored to the needs of the global justice movement, the Mycelia Network is a social organizing tool specifically designed for democratic decision-making. It will allow many distinct groups to interact, plan, and organize in a way that lets them share their power while still maintaining their distinct identities. In collaboration with the RiseUp! Collective, active development has been under way for six months.
I'm applying to the Hunter IMA program to develop and challenge my ideas as far as possible. I want to become the kind of "twenty-first century pamphleteer" mentioned on the IMA website, someone able to move fluidly within the demands and opportunities created by modern technology, and able to turn them to the service of global social change. This means learning new technologies, honing my design skills, and learning the story-telling skills of both the documentarian and the propagandist. For all of these goals, it seems clear that the Hunter IMA program is the right place. I am also excited to continue my theoretical studies of social networks and political movements in a program where theory and practice don't have to be separated. The IMA program is a place where I'd like to further participate in the vital effort to ensure that new technologies become and remain a force for grass-roots organizing and political change.