September 12, 2003
AMIKEJO – The National Dish and Consulate
12. September 2003
NEXT 5 MINUTES Festival 4
at Melkweg / Amsterdam
At the “Next 5 Minutes” festival, SoS will present its national dish and lay claim to visitors’ abdominal territory. On September 12 in Melkweg / Amsterdam the national dish will be dispensed to visitors and remain in their colons forever. This dish is the maraschino cherry, specially engraved with SoS typography. Maraschino cherries are produced with a chemical that, like formaldehyde, is neither assimilated nor dissolved, but must travel as a lifetime stowaway in the cargo hold of the bowel, like the Flying Dutchman’s seabags. The two-hour performance (or communion) will take place on stage in and around a Mongolian yurt, festively accompanied by the electronic sounds of DJ Pomassl. Inside the yurt, guests and visitors will find a temporarily installed SoS consulate/embassy where they can acquire SoS citizenship as well as passports. The word “AMIKEJO” means “Plaza of Great Friendship” and can be traced back to the micronation of “Neutral Moresnat.” The one-time mini-state of “Neutral Moresnat,” with the ambition of becoming an Esperanto state, staked out between 1815-1919 the international four-corner point on Walserberg (322m), today the highest mountain of Holland.
The program of Next 5 Minutes 4 is structured along four core thematic threads, bringing together a host of projects and debates. These four thematic threads are:
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“The Reappearing of the Publc” deals with the elusiveness of the public that tactical media necessarily needs to interface with, and considers new strategies for engaging with or redefining ‘the public’. “Deep Local (Growing Roots for the Global Village)”, which explores the ambiguities of connecting essentially translocal media cultures with local contexts. “The Tactics of Appropriation” questions who is appropriating whom? Corporate, state, or terrorist actors all seem to have become effective media tacticians, is the battle for the screen therefore lost? “The Tactical and the Technical” finally questions the deeply political nature of (media-)technology, and the role that the development of new media tools plays in defining, enabling and constraining its tactical use. |
The festival explores a variety of forms and formats, from low-tech to high-tech, from seminars and debates to performances and urban interventions, screenings, installations as well as sound projects and live media, a pitching session, a tool builders fair and open unmoderated spaces. Defining for tactical media is not the medium itself, but the attitude towards media.
Amsterdam 11 – 14 September 2003
De Balie / Paradiso / Melkweg / Waag Society /
NIM Montevideo / SALTO / Imagine IC
State diplomacy is conducted through artistic sovereignty and trans-nationality – art as state as a direct form of inde- pendent state art.
Settlement coming soon