Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips. A grim vision of the future

[informACÇÃO]








Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls. "Flashmobs" - groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.

This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces. It includes an "analysis of the key risks and shocks". Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the MoD's Development, Concepts & Doctrine Centre which drew up the report, describes the assessments as "probability-based, rather than predictive".

The 90-page report comments on widely discussed issues such as the growing economic importance of India and China, the militarisation of space, and even what it calls "declining news quality" with the rise of "internet-enabled, citizen-journalists" and pressure to release stories "at the expense of facts". It includes other, some frightening, some reassuring, potential developments that are not so often discussed.

Read the complete article on Guardian Unlimited

A Deluge of Parades

[informACÇÃO]




Promoters, DJs, and dancers alike prepare for some much needed cabaret lawlessness.

New Yorkers, used to being told they can't dance where they want to, will soon find themselves able to cavort a bit more freely. Alas, no, the cabaret law hasn't been repealed—incredibly, dancing is still illegal without a license. But at 1 p.m. on May 19, the city's first-ever Dance Parade will take over Broadway at 32nd Street and wind its way down to Washington Square Park. With more than 6,000 dancers signed up and top DJs such as Kool Herc, Danny Tenaglia, and John "Jellybean" Benitez participating, this hopefully annual event may soon rival Berlin's infamous Love Parade.

Greg Miller, the president of Dance Parade Inc., says this parade will differ from Berlin's in one key sense: It won't be centered around dance music, instead emphasizing dance as an art form, with representatives from Dance Manhattan, Sandra Cameron Dance Center, Djoniba Dance Center, Soho Dance, and Stepping Out Studios all participating. And they'll flip the concept of the city's cabaret-law enforcers on its head, hiring their own "dance police," who will issue citations (actually discount coupons to clubs and dance schools) to passersby for not dancing.

So far, Miller's got 20 floats signed up and 41 styles of dance represented, from ballet to breakdancing. "We are honoring these forms of dance that were birthed in New York City, such as the Lindy Hop, vogueing, and even salsa," says Miller, who was once a part of the activist group Metropolis in Motion, which is dedicated to eradicating the cabaret law. For him, the parade's point is twofold: to educate people about the cabaret law and the history of dance.

Meanwhile, the case brought by Paul Chevigny and Norman Siegel against the city, which claims that the cabaret law is unconstitutional and infringes on freedom of speech, is in appeals—the most recent ruling by the State Supreme Court Appellate Division upheld the previous ruling that dancing is not a protected, constitutional form of expression. Tell that to the members of Swing 46, a swing-dancing club that was shut down for one year and received a $10,000 fine for illegal dancing. In fact, tell that to all New Yorkers, who now have only 148 licensed spaces to dance—down from 276 five years ago. In Manhattan, the number stands at a lowly 69 licensed venues, an appallingly low number for a city of our size and stature, a city that has banners all over town proclaiming it the nightlife capital of the world.

Dancing may still be a crime in most venues, but that's not stopping the unstoppable Larry Tee from hosting a dance festival in some of the few available licensed clubs. Dubbed the Dance Music Invasion, the event finds Tee joining forces with Kevin Graves and former Ultra liaison Lainie Copicotto to create a five-day festival to be held October 3 through 7. Tee, ever the salesman, is pitching the festival as the "Winter Music Conference meets Coachella; New York needs to get its act together and be the center of music, instead of letting Miami run off with it in some version of a drunken orgy of schmoozing," he says. New York, he notes, has lost its grip on dance music, but the festivals in other cities—like Miami's WMC and the Billboard Dance Music Summit, now held in Las Vegas—leave much to be desired.

Tee might be overselling, but he knows of what he speaks. The man behind the Electroclash Music Festival—and later, the Outsider Music Festival—has no fear. After running up a $40,000 debt to fund the electroclash festivals, he learned that persistence and well-placed hype pays off. Thanks to buzz from those events, his Berliniamsburg night took off soon thereafter and helped pay off his debt.

While Tee is reluctant to name names until the ink dries, he wants to showcase Top 20 and underground DJs alike at clubs around the city, with a wish list that includes venues as varied as Pacha, Studio B, Hiro Ballroom, and Cielo. He's envisioning bills that cross genres and subcultures, pairing mainstream house DJs like Erick Morillo with techno underdogs like Bookashade. "We're approaching all the clubs," he says. "If it's gonna be for everyone, it's going to have to be for everyone. We're mixing up highbrow and lowbrow."

He's also talking about launching a blog, dancemusicinvasion.com, to coincide with the festival—one that will combine all aspects of nightlife under one roof. Ideally, you can read about Lindsay Lohan's comings and goings, track club openings and closings, and check out the top singles of the week, all in one place. "A lot of dance-music websites are way too serious," says Tee, who describes the site as Perez Hilton meets Rhythmism meets Last Night's Party.

Coincidentally, the same week Tee's Dance Music Invasion kicks off, there's another big bash planned. This one's called NY Dance Party. Scheduled for October 6, it'll be headed up by two of dance music's legends—Cerrone and Nile Rodgers —as a means of celebrating 30 years of dance music. The event's website, nydanceparty.net, purports that NY Dance Party will feature the "largest dance floor ever created in New York" at the Trump Wollman Rink in Central Park. The event will double as a fundraiser for various AIDS organizations, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, Lifebeat, and the We Are Family Foundation.

One more piece of dance news: Blackkat's annual MayDay! event, usually held at Tompkins Square Park, was denied permits this year; as the Blackkat mailing list explained, "The Parks Department makes a habit out of approving the permits for Mayday a few days before the event," though the forms are usually filed in January to give the bureaucrats plenty of time. Undaunted, the politically charged music and party promoters regrouped at Union Square Sunday, where Collin Strange, Atomic Babies, Sacha (of Flavorpill fame), and Jason Blackkat himself played. Thursday at 7 p.m., they're meeting up with Metropolis in Motion at Kabin, 92 Second Avenue, to hear from those who've been affected by the cabaret law. Meanwhile, we hear City Councilman Alan Gerson's office is drafting a proposal that would render the law moot for venues with a capacity of fewer than 200 people, but would bring stricter enforcement of noise, which would include using a device that physically limits the volume levels on a club's sound equipment.

All this pro-dance music and anti-cabaret law activity leads me to believe Larry Tee when he says, "Dance music finally has an opportunity. It's kind of hot. I sense something is changing here."

flylife@villagevoice.com

Citado de The Village Voice

Cultura Underground

[informACÇÃO]

A cultura underground é uma forma evoluída de Contracultura.

A Contracultura foi um movimento dos anos 60, que surgiu com uma nova forma de mobilização e contestação social baseada em novos meios de comunicação em massa. Jovens inovando estilos, voltando-se mais para o anti-social aos olhos das famílias mais conservadoras, com um espírito mais libertário, resumindo como uma cultura underground, cultura alternativa ou cultura marginal, focada principalmente nas transformações da consciência, dos valores e do comportamento, na busca de outros espaços e novos canais de expressão para o indivíduo e pequenas realidades do quotidiano.

Surgiu então a Contracultura que pode ser definida como um ideário altercador que questiona valores centrais vigentes e instituídos na cultura ocidental. Com o vultoso crescimento dos meios de comunicação, a difusão de normas, valores, gostos e padrões de comportamento se libertavam das amarras tradicionais e locais –- como a religiosa e a familiar --, ganhando uma dimensão mais universal e aproximando a juventude de todo o globo, de uma maior integração cultural e humana. A contracultura desenvolveu-se na América Latina, Europa e principalmente nos EUA onde as pessoas buscavam valores novos.

Na década de 1950 surgiu nos Estados Unidos, o primeiro grande grupo de contra cultura o Beat Generation (Geração Beat). Os Beatniks eram jovens intelectuais que contestavam o consumismo e o optimismo do pós-guerra americano, o anticomunismo generalizado e a falta de pensamento crítico.

Na década de 1960 o mundo conheceu o principal e mais influente movimento de contra cultura já existente, o movimento Hippie. Os hippies se opunham radicalmente aos valores culturais considerados importantes na sociedade: o trabalho, o patriotismo e nacionalismo, a ascensão social e até mesmo a "estética padrão".
Aparece o rock’n’roll, com a figura de Elvis Presley, entre outros que foram surgindo ao longo deste período. O movimento hippie, com suas comunidades e passeatas pela paz, teve força a partir de um grande acontecimento, que foi o festival Woodstock, em 1969, com vários espectáculos que marcaram a era hippie.

“De um lado, o termo contracultura pode se referir ao conjunto de movimentos de rebelião da juventude [...] que marcaram os anos 60: o movimento hippie, a música rock, uma certa movimentação nas universidades, viagens de mochila, drogas e assim por diante. [...] Trata-se, então, de um fenómeno datado e situado historicamente e que, embora muito próximo de nós, já faz parte do passado”. [...] “De outro lado, o mesmo termo pode também se referir a alguma coisa mais geral, mais abstracta, um certo espírito, um certo modo de contestação, de enfrentamento diante da ordem vigente, de carácter profundamente radical e bastante estranho às forças mais tradicionais de oposição a esta mesma ordem dominante. Um tipo de crítica anárquica – esta parece ser a palavra-chave – que, de certa maneira, ‘rompe com as regras do jogo’ em termos de modo de se fazer oposição a uma determinada situação. [...] Uma contracultura, entendida assim, reaparece de tempos em tempos, em diferentes épocas e situações, e costuma ter um papel fortemente revigorador da crítica social.” (Pereira, 1992, p. 20).

A partir de todos esse fatos era difícil ignorar-se a contracultura como forma de contestação radical, pois rompia com praticamente todos os hábitos consagrados de pensamentos e comportamentos da cultura dominante, surgindo inicialmente na imprensa foi ganhando espaço no sentido de lançar rótulos ou modismos.
É vital a importância dos meios de comunicação de massa para configurar a contracultura: “pela primeira vez, os sentimentos de rebeldia, insatisfação e busca que caracterizam o processo de transição para a maturidade encontram ressonância nos meios de comunicação” (Carvalho, 2002, p. 7).

O que marcava a nova onda de protestos desta cultura que começava a tomar conta, principalmente, da sociedade americana era o seu carácter de não-violência, por tudo que conseguiu expressar, por todo o envolvimento social que conseguiu provocar, é um fenómeno verdadeiramente cultural. Constituindo-se num dos principais veículos da nova cultura que explodia em pleno coração das sociedades industriais avançadas.

O discurso crítico que o movimento estudantil internacional elaborou ao longo dos anos 60 visava não apenas as contradições da sociedade capitalista, mas também aquelas de uma sociedade industrial capitalista, tecnocrática, nas suas manifestações mais simples e corriqueiras. Neste período a contracultura teve seu lugar de importância, não apenas pelo poder de mobilização, mas principalmente, pela natureza de ideias que colocou em circulação, pelo modo como as veiculou e pelo espaço de intervenção crítica que abriu.

Finalmente, esta ruptura ideológica do establishment, a que se convencionou chamar de contracultura, modificou inexoravelmente o modo de vida ocidental, seja na esfera social, com a génese do Movimento pelos Direitos Civis; no âmbito musical, com o surgimento de géneros musicais e organização de festivais; e na área política, como os infindos protestos desencadeados pela beligerância ianque. Pode-se citar ainda o movimento estudantil Maio de 68, ocorrido na França, além da Primavera de Praga, sucedida na Checoslováquia no mesmo ano. Pereira (1992) assevera que é difícil negar que a contracultura seja a última –- pelo menos até agora -– grande utopia radical de transformação social que se originou no Ocidente.

Adaptado de Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre.