Remix The Commons:
An Evolving Intercultural Space
for Commoning

A well-known Canadian environmental expert told us at a commons conference in Berlin in 2010, “Commons are an attitude.” A year later, a Senegalese participant of the World Social Forum in Dakar stated, “Commons are what we all share,” and yet another said, “They are something I feel committed to.”

In May of the same year, one of 15,000 demonstrators on Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona used the image “a soccer team (that plays well!).” At a 2012 Earth Day rally in Montreal, Canada, one participant responded, “Commons are what belongs to everybody,” and the next one added, “commons are what belong to nobody.” During the Rio+20 Conference in Brazil, an Ecuadorian government minister talked with us about commons and buen vivir.² 

At a commons festival in Helsinki in 2014, we had to reformulate the question so that we could pose it to a Lithuanian dancer: “How would you dance commons?” Her spontaneous response: “But that’s impossible alone!” Then she invited the interviewer to participate in a “moving” commons definition.

By August 2014, our collection had grown to more than 100 brief definitions in thirty-five languages from about forty countries. Naturally, we also included definitions that are more precise and elaborate and that reflect the long practical experience of commoners and the research findings of commons theorists.

All of these substantial and diverse answers to our simple question illustrate both the universal character of commons and the difficulties arising when one tries to both delineate such a definition while keeping it open and dynamic. And they made clear to us that an intercultural perspective is indispensible.

Remix The Commons considers itself a place of intercultural encounters, sharing, and joint production of video and audio documents, short films, and media and cultural projects about commons. The initiative is supported by an international collective of people and organizations convinced that collecting, exchanging, and remixing stories and images about commons is an active, sociable way to get to know the concept and make it one’s own.

Remix The Commons itself works like a commons. The work is organized around an open and collaborative platform which is a website that enables storage, exchange, cataloguing, remixing, and dissemination of multimedia documents. We also always find places and opportunities that make it easier to jointly develop concepts for media productions and to design and breathe life into them. In other words, an intercultural, free and collaborative catalog of multimedia documents on the commons is available to commons practitioners, academics, educators and cultural activists. They can use it and enrich it with contributions of their own.

The history of the project is closely linked to the emergence of the commons in the current societal debate and in the proposals put forward by social movements since the crisis of 2008. An initial draft was presented at the International Commons Conference (ICC)³ in November 2010. It was based on the video documentary of the interdisciplinary meeting on “Science and Democracy” that had kicked off the World Social Forum in Belém in Amazonia in January 2009. The commons had a place at the final session of this World Social Forum, and the manifesto “Reclaim the Commons”⁴ was published in several languages on this occasion. That same year, the academic community saw Elinor Ostrom awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on the commons, and the documentary “RIP: A Remix Manifesto,⁵ which pays tribute to humanity’s creativity as the outcome of collaborative creation in space and time, circulated in the independent cultural scene.

Remix The Commons is maintaining its close connections with the international meetings of social movements, and this colors the development and realization of our concrete projects. We participated in the discussions and documentation of the commons at the World Social Forums in Dakar in 2011 and in Tunis in 2013, at the Summit of the Peoples at Rio+20 in Rio de Janeiro, and at the Afropixel Festival in Senegal in 2012. We were part of international meetings on social and solidarity-based economic activity as well as open festivals à la Villes en Biens Communs 2013 in the French-speaking countries and Pixelache in Finland in May 2014. We are now concentrating on events that bring out the art of commoning⁶ and contribute to the development of an international network of commons schools.

Our roughly 300 videos have been viewed more than 15,000 times and are constantly reproduced, disseminated and used for many purposes. The videos consist of interviews, case studies, reports about concrete projects and activities, reflections upon them, and theoretical and political statements on commons. The videos also consist of a large collection of individual commons definitions in the respondents’ native languages, as mentioned at the beginning of this piece. That collection is currently being mapped on an online map that locates each speaker and his or her statement on a world map, which is very helpful for workshops and educational events about discovering the diversity of commons. Such workshops – for example, “commons breakfasts” or “commons summer schools” – illustrate how collaborative knowledge production works in open networks.

As the commons have grown in visibility on the international stage of culture and politics, Remix The Commons is constantly adapting to the rapid shifts in sociopolitical contexts. This is evidence of the agenda-setting power of a movement that is still very heterogeneous, but is increasingly influencing socioeconomic and political agendas. Amidst this veritable cultural revolution, Remix The Commons is committed to using the Internet to shape new cultural interest in commoning and to develop new methods of communicating these trends.

This requires that we meet numerous challenges, for example, countering “commons-washing,” which seeks to trivialize the innovative and revolutionary character of commons. We must also confront incessant enclosures of information and natural resources, and devise joint strategies, collaborations and means of communication for commoners in the cultural arts and trades, education, and communication in order to share knowledge. In George Pór’s words, “We have to raise our culture of communication to the level of commoning” – and make it as intercultural, user-friendly, participatory and inviting as possible.

Alain Ambrosi (Canada) is a designer and producer of intercultural projects, independent researcher, author, videographer and producer of the Remix The Commons Project. His long involvement in improbable international collaborations has led him to aspire to the status of utopian’s apprentice.

Frédéric Sultan (France) is a French commons activist. He co-facilitates the Francophone Network for the Commons, launched in 2012, and helps people create or claim commons in their communities through cultural and educational actions. 

The post Patterns of Commoning: Remix The Commons as an Evolving Intercultural Space for Commoning appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Photo by kafka4prez

As an open economy neophyte, I’ll admit some of the concepts can be confusing.  Yet with encouragement from the P2P community and some perseverance, newcomers can begin to appreciate the message.

The problem is that many people are unwilling to click on a post titled Neoliberal Exploitation of Commons-Based Structural Exchange Platforms.  (Which was a truly fascinating article.)

Not everyone is a reader.

My son and his friends prefer podcasts.  Other people enjoy photos with witty captions. Many of the people I work with prefer their information in tweet-sized bursts. (Which explains why they don’t bother reading the policies my unit publishes.)

Photo by Anne Worner

As a compromise to all these styles of information intake, we thought a set of short, engaging videos that illustrate P2P concepts might appeal to a variety of folks.  People who might otherwise not expose themselves to the commons.

Recently, I participated in a group discussion regarding how to move a project like this forward.  One person suggested creating a budget proposal and applying for funding.  Another person thought we needed a research team.  Michel Bauwens participated in the discussion. He said,

“Why don’t we do it the P2P way?”

So, that’s what we aim to do.

The working title for the project is P2P: a-z.  We’d like to produce 24 videos, one for each letter of the English alphabet.  If there are people interested in pursuing this in a language other than English, we can do videos for each letter of your language.

I created a project in Loomio.  Loomio is an online platform that facilitates peer decision-making.  All members can share their ideas and we can decide together how we want to accomplish this project.  To participate, go to https://www.loomio.org/g/eaRjUBw5/p2p-a-z and click Ask to join group.

Whether you have video editing skills, writing skills or creative ideas for illustrating P2P concepts, we welcome your participation.

To illustrate my impression of the type of videos we want to produce, I made a video about making videos for P2P.

Photo by thomaswanhoff

The post A Call For Video Makers – P2P: a-z appeared first on P2P Foundation.

It’s indeed a remarkable synthesis of where the movement is at, and how it is both grappling with the tensions in the world system, and the tensions within the movements.

What is noteworthy is how the concerns and efforts for sharing, the commons, and the new forms of cooperativism, are indeed converging.

Watch the video here:

Photo by jeanbaptisteparis

The post The remarkable keynote of Yochai Benkler on the state of the commons/sharing movements and the tensions within appeared first on P2P Foundation.

According to his own assessment, and we concur that it is an excellent mustwatch video presentation, this is his best introduction to the importance of the blockchain.

Thanks for spreading it around,

Michel Bauwens

The post Vinay Gupta & the Promise of the Blockchain appeared first on P2P Foundation.