Omaan ehdotukseeni liittyy joitakin ristiriitaisuuksia ja kysymyksiä, joihin itselläni ei ole selkeää vastausta:

Jos kansalaisaktivismia tuetaan taloudellisesti, niin onko silloin enää kyse kansalaisaktivismista? Saisiko taloudellinen tuki oikeasti enemmän asioita tapahtumaan, vai tulisiko siitä enemminkin este? Jäisivätkö kaikki aktivistit odottamaan tukien myöntämistä ennenkuin käyvät toimeen – kuten tällä hetkellä esim. monet taiteilijat tekevät? Olisiko parempi jos kansalaisaktivismin tuki löytyisi vertaistuen avulla? Pitäisikö julkisia tahoja lobata antamaan tukea muissa muodoissa kuin rahana?

Tässä laatimani ehdotus:

JOUSTAVA TUKIRAHASTO KANSALAISAKTIVISMILLE?

Voisiko osan nykyisestä taiteen ja kulttuurin kehittämiseen suunnatusta julkisesta rahoituksesta suunnata kansalaisaktivismin tukemiseen?

Hyvä esimerkki uudenlaisesta kansalaisaktivismista ovat Apps4Finland-kilpailun synnyttämät palveluiden prototyypit ja ideat. Jotkut prototyypeistä ovat jo nyt kehittyneet valmiiksi palveluiksi asti, mutta monet ovat jääneet puolitiehen resurssipulan takia. Monia hyviä ideoista ei saada kehitetyksi edes prototyypeiksi, koska minkäänlaista taloudellista tukea ei ole tähän saatavissa.

Opetusministeriön Digidemo-tuki on suunnattu digitaalisten palveluiden prototyyppien kehittämiseen, mutta tukea saavat ainoastaan hankkeet joilla on selkeä liiketoimintasuunnitelma. Tästä syystä Digidemo-tuen suurin hyödyntäjä on tähän asti ollut suomalainen peliteollisuus, koska peleille on olemassa hyvin selkeitä ansaintamalleja – jos niistä sattuu tulemaan hittituotteita. Sama liiketoiminnallisen tuottavuuden vaatimus koskee uutta Creademo-tukea, jonka tavoitteena on tukea kulttuurialan palveluiden prototyyppien toteuttamista. Yhteensä näistä ohjelmista tullaan jakamaan vuoden 2012 aikana yli miljoona euroa tukea.

Opetusministeriölle voisi ehdottaa, että kokeiluluontoisesti osa tästä tuesta käytettäisiin ei-kaupallisten julkisten palveluiden ja muiden yhteiskuntaa kehittävien palveluiden prototyyppeihin.

Vastaavalla ehdotuksella voisi lähestyä Taiteen Keskustoimikuntaa, Kulttuurirahastoa, Helsingin kaupunkia ja monia muita kulttuurin rahoittajia. Nämä tahot tukevat ei-kaupallisia projekteja, mutta lähtökohtaisena vaatimuksena on että hakija on ammattimainen taiteilija tai tutkija. Kansalaisaktivismi rinnastetaan usein harrastustoimintaan, jota harvoin pidetään tukemisen arvoisena. Käytännön elämässä ammattilaiset/harrastajat -jaottelulla on yhä vähemmän merkitystä, mutta rahastojen toiminnassa tämä muutos ei ole vielä näkynyt. Tästä syystä on tällä hetkellä erittäin haastavaa löytää minkäänlaista tukea vaikkapa kaupunkiviljely-projektin tai aikapankki-kokeilun toteuttamiseen.

Suomeen tarvitaan lisää joustavia tukimuotoja kansalaisaktivismille!

Juha Huuskonen, 31.1.2012

If you are not familiar with the term ‘odious debt’ then I would recommend for you to watch the Debtocracy documentary film. The first part of the film gives a general introduction to the credit-driven global economy and the accumulation of Greek debt. Things get more interesting at approx 33:00 when the concept of odious debt is introduced, followed by examples of how countries like Equador have been able to write down most of their national debt.

The story of why and how the film was made highlights some of the problems we are facing right now in Europe regarding democratic decision-making about financial issues. Some time ago journalists Katerina Kitidi & Aris Chatzistefanou posted a short video on Youtube which explained how Equador was able to eliminate most of its debt since it was based on illegitimate contracts. This short clip gained interest in Greece and it was soon clear that it was essential for Greek people to get a better understanding of this example. The budget for making Debtocracy (approx 16 000 euros) was gathered via online donations and many professional people volunteered to help in making the film. So far the film has been viewed approx 2 million times but it has been completely ignored by the mainstream Greek media. It is clear that democracy cannot properly function in this kind of situation.

The makers of Debtocracy are currently gathering donations for their next documentary Catastroika.

Aris Chatzistefanou & Teppo Eskelinen

Debtocracy screening and discussion (featuring Aris Chatzistefanou and researcher Teppo Eskelinen) was organised by Pixelache, Lens Politica and HIAP.

Also posted on >> Pixelache blog

Slush 2011: Shut up and grow - Mark Zuckerberg

A quick summary: this rather long blog posting deals with structural changes that are currently going on in cultural funding organisations and other institutions, how they are trying to get rid of different specific disciplines in the name of ‘innovation’.

- – - -

The decision to name the new Aalto University School as ‘Aalto University School of Arts and Creativity’ came as a shock for many people. This new university is a combination of University of Art and Design and the architecture department of University of Technology. According to press release, the new name was needed since “the concept ’art and design’ in the current name has strong associations with the past”.

The petition to reconsider the name bring up some of the grave problems that arise from choosing such a vague name for a university. This blog posting tries to deal with this one: “A degree/research with an ‘arts & creativity’ school does not point out to any specific skill or knowledge in any specific discipline”.

One could say that ‘it’s just a name’ – that having a new name for the university should not cause any significant problems for the art, design and architecture community associated with Aalto University. But there is more at stake here than just the name – as stated in the Aalto press, the name symbolises the “amalgamation and the multi-disciplinary nature of Aalto University”.

The transformation that is going on in Aalto University resembles the process that already took place in Nordic art/culture scene and the on-going process to change the structure of Art Council of Finland. These ambitious endeavors try to deal with genuine problems and respond to changing times, but it seems that the captains of this process are not sure about how this new ship should be navigated. In fact, a key aspect seems to be that the captains should let go of their control – that academic and cultural institutions should eagerly respond to the whims of darwinistic forces such as trends in international business. If this is the case, then my prediction is that instead of becoming more innovative and competitive, the institutions will just focus on short-term goals and try to imitate what others are doing.

The Nordic ‘utväckling’

In the Nordic region, there used to be four organisations dedicated for specific forms of art – Nifca (contemporary art), NordScen (performing arts), Nomus (music) and Nordbok (literature). In the end of 2006 these organisations were closed down and replaced by Nordic Culture Point, an organisation which administers several funding programmes. The ones who were lobbying for shutting down the old organisations had the opinion that in today’s world the barriers between disciplines have become so blurry that they should no longer be enforced by administration.

The biggest one of the funding programmes is the Culture and Art Programme which in 2011 will give out 2 032 930 EUR of funding. The keyword of this funding programme is ‘utväckling’ – ‘innovation’ or ‘development’. Projects which are new (have not been started yet) and have some innovative quality (the applicants can themselves explain how they are innovative) can receive funding. I know this programme pretty well since I was a member of the Art and Culture Programme Expert Committee between 2007-2009.

This new system has two clear benefits. Since many organisations were closed down, the money that used to go to salaries of people can now be used to support individual projects. Also, a larger variety of organisations can receive financial support, as long as they create a project that does some ‘utväckling’.

But there are also downsides. Previously, there used to be organisations which were lead by experts of a specific discipline. These people were active contributors to their own fields. If you had an idea you could go and have a chat with these people and similarly if there was a problem, it was clear who was in charge.

In the new system all this is different. Nordic Culture Point is made up of administrators who just have to focus on administration – they have specifically been denied any comments or contributions to the funding decisions. Also the members of the Expert Committees cannot take any active role – they are not supposed to be in touch with the applicants and it’s not possible to appeal against individual decisions. So, in terms of an agenda related to a specific discipline, there is no one who you could talk to. This is understandable since the new system is not supposed to have any such agendas. It’s all about ‘utväckling’ and a few other concepts such as ‘communication’ and ‘Världen i Norden – Norden i Världen’ (‘The Nordic Region in the World – the World in the Nordic Region’).

The other problem is that there is no longer any support for longer term processes. If you manage to get support to realise a project and it turns out the be a success, it is not possible to get support for the continuation – it’s no longer new and thus no longer about ‘utväckling’. There is another Nordic culture foundation – the Nordic Culture Fund – but they also only support individual, one-off projects.

One could say that a third problem is that the expert committee does not have expertise to handle applications coming from many diverse disciplines of art and culture. The current expert committee seems to have strong biases – out of 8 people there are two theatre directors and two people focused on music. But in the logic of the new system this is not a problem – since knowledge of a specific discipline is no longer necessary for making decisions.

From a ‘Council’ to a ‘Promotion Centre’

The Arts Council of Finland is supposed to close at the end of 2012, to be replaced by the brand new ‘Promotion Centre for Art’ (‘Taiteen Edistämiskeskus’ in Finnish – I’m not sure what the official translation is supposed to be).

The transformation has some clear similarities to the Nordic one. The plan is to close down many of the current committees and boards which are focused on specific disciplines such as visual arts, design, architecture, photography, performing arts, dance, circus, etc. These committees would be replaced by new ‘super-committees’ in which there would be approximately only one person per discipline.

There is something positive that can be said about this proposal. It would be positive that people from all these disciplines would have to talk together in order to make decisions. Probably quite many applications that currently fall in the cracks between the disciplines would get support. Also, this change would simply be a ‘shake’ to the old system, some usual suspects might fall out of the loop and some new ones might get in.

But – the problems are pretty similar as in the Nordic case. Currently the various Art Council committees and boards are not just making funding decisions – they can actively take part in the policy making and try to influence the development of their own discipline. In the new system this would no longer be possible. Also, the amount of expertise involved in the decision making would be dramatically reduced. I was personally a member of the Media Art Board of the Art Council, where I was involved in making the decisions with 7 other people. I would not feel comfortable as a member of the new ‘super-committee’ as the only person with knowledge about media art. This would put me in a position of ‘dictatorship’ over the whole scene for a duration of 3 years (if the committee periods stay the same).

The case WDC

Similar traits can also be found in the setup of Helsinki World Design Capital 2012. Since I’ve written quite a bit about WDC already earlier, I will just summarise the similarities with Nordic / Arts Council of Finland case.

Instead of hiring designers to work on the WDC programme, or nominating committees that would have focused on specific disciplines of design, the WDC organisation is made up of producers, administrators and marketing personnel. The authority for making decisions is given to one general committee and that committee has not defined any specific agendas related to any specific disciplines. The keyword is again ‘development’ – most of the funding is given to this purpose.

What is ‘innovation’ anyway?

Returning back to the case of Aalto University -

The working title of Aalto University was ‘Innovation University’ and the main argument for establishing this new institution seemed to be to increase ‘innovation’ and ‘competitivity’ of the three universities that were merged to form Aalto. It is interesting that eventually the term chosen for the title was ‘creativity’, not ‘innovation’. ‘Creativity’ was the buzzword a few years ago (creative industries, creative economy, etc) until it was replaced by ‘innovation’. But I guess since using the word innovation is just so passé at the moment that it feels better to use the safe and generic ‘creativity’.

Compared to the case of Nordic cultural funding, Art Council of Finland and WDC, Aalto University is a vastly more complex and solid institution. The main tasks of this institution are (or at least should be) to do research in various academic disciplines (which have simple and boring names such as art, design or architecture) and to teach students the history, theory and methods of these disciplines. This core activity involves thousands of people (if one counts students as active participants as well) and it’s simply impossible to just stop this activity and replace it with some multi-disciplinary innovation activity, even though some people might wish that something like this would happen. So, Aalto University is better guarded towards the current trend of adjusting organisations for ‘innovation’ or ‘creativity’, but it still would be important for the Aalto University community to gain a better understanding of what this trend is all about, so that there could be an appropriate response.

One key element of being ‘innovative’ seems to be that one should aim for some clear profit-generating goal: that the outcome should be a new product, a new service or a new patent. I think it’s important to encourage and support this kind of activity, but one should not forget that there is already a vast array of institutions supporting this: business incubators, start-up funding schemes, etc. Just TEKES gave out 633 million euros of funding for innovative product, service and business development last year. And this is public, tax-payer money given to this purpose. Since the whole point is to make money, there are also plenty of private investors who have an interest to support this activity.

Multi-disciplinarity seems to be another important factor. I would be the last person to say that multi-disciplinarity is not important – I’ve dedicated past 15 years of my life to supporting multi-disciplinary practice. But – I don’t think we can improve multi-disciplinarity by reducing disciplinary expertise. In my own experience (related to Pixelache festival etc), great multi-disciplinary projects are often created when strong expertise in one specific discipline is twisted around and applied to an unusual context, with the aid of people from other disciplines. For many people who graduate from Aalto University, the working life will be about being involved in multi-disciplinary, competitive teams. The time of studies should be the time when one can dedicate time and effort to become an expert in at least one discipline.

Right now all this ‘innovation’ activity is just too predictable. If you want to do something innovative today, you should aim to create a service. You should not treat people just as customers, you should engage them as active participants in the process. It’s a clear bonus if you use social media and new technologies – you create a mobile phone app, etc. If in addition you have a multi-disciplinary team and you aim for some good cause like solving energy-consumption problems or improving the well-being of elderly people then BANG, you’ve just hit the bullseye of current innovation trend, you are really riding the high wave of the current zeitgeist. The fantastic thing is that it’s quite easy to get involved in this – you just need a few busy fingers with digital media skills to create a mock-up of a product with a potential for global success. If this does not sound familiar to you then please have a look at the line-up of the recent Slush start-up event.

So, this is the current innovation trend. But the word ‘innovation’ also has another meaning (or at least used to have). To really be innovative right now, one should be tinkering with topics that no one else bothers to care about. One should have the courage to head towards the unknown, to start exploring areas that might become important in 10, 20 or 50 years time. We don’t know what the future will be like – so it would be important to have a really diverse range of creative exploration going on. This is what academic research used to be about, and still is for some people, even though it’s increasingly difficult to maintain this kind of course in an academic setting. It’s very important that we don’t allow all organisational structures to bend over backwards so that everyone just serves the needs of short-term commercial success.

And just to be clear – I’m not saying that nothing should change, that the good old days were better. The world IS changing and the borders between academic disciplines ARE becoming more blurry. The academic departments and cultural institutions have been focusing too much on protecting the jobs of individual people and interests of certain organisations, instead of bringing in new perspectives and developing the theory and practice of the discipline further. So, it’s important that some changes do happen but right now are heading to a wrong direction.

I hope that eventually our communities will be able to bring together MORE expertise as well as MORE DIVERSE expertise, not less!

What became clear from the official announcement event was that the cities themselves want to open up and in the context of Helsinki WDC they have initiated many projects that they wouldn’t normally be engaged in. This is very positive. It’s also positive that the project brings together cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Lahti and Kauniainen. The mayors of these cities were the main stars of the event and they gave their own quite distinct views on Helsinki WDC project.

The main problem of Helsinki WDC can be found by studying the programme pdf in more detail. A great majority of all the contact persons mentioned are from big institutions: cities, universities, libraries and big companies. Many of these projects also involve small companies, non-profit organisations and individual people, but it is the big institutions who have the upper hand in the process and it is them who also get the main credit. So, for ADC it’s important to focus on supporting small, independent initiatives and voices.

I also appreciated the comments given by mayors of Espoo (Jukka Mäkelä) and Vantaa (Kari Nenonen). Jukka Mäkelä said that Helsinki WDC should engage the citizens better and also should aim for stronger and bolder visions in terms of city planning, involving the best designers. He was referring to the time when car-free Tapiola garden centre was planned in 50s and 60s – that we should think how this vision should be upgraded to correspond to today’s world.

Concerning the design challenges in Vantaa, Kari Nenonen dared to mention also issues that are not easy and positive, such as high unemployment rate, segregation and ‘syrjäytyminen’, the fact that for various reasons many people have become isolated from the society. These are examples of complex problems that cannot be fixed with a single design solution but require a lot of collaboration between various actors in the society.

Here are the key slides and the mayors:

“Information wants to be free” (IWTBF hereafter) is half of Stewart Brand’s famous aphorism, first uttered at the Hackers Conference in Marin County, California (where else?), in 1984: “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/may/18/information-wants-to-be-free

Yksi FRAME:n uudistamiseen olennaisesti liittyvä dokumentti on äskettäin ilmestynyt Suomen kulttuuriviennin kehittämisohjelman 2007-2011 loppuraportti. Raportissa puhutaan paljon ‘brändäykseen liittyvistä tarpeista’ ja ‘kulttuuripalvelutoiminnan kehittämisestä’. Jostain ihmeellisesti syystä ministeriössä ei olla tajuttu että FRAME on brändi sekä kotimaisesti ja kansainvälisesti merkittävä palvelu. Tämän palvelun katkaiseminen epämääräiseksi ajaksi ei tee hyvää FRAME:n, Suomen tai kenenkään muunkaan brändille. Kaikkien osapuolien kannalta olisi ollut parasta, jos nykyinen FRAME olisi voinut jatkaa niin kauan että uuden säätiön toiminta on saatu konkreettisesti käyntiin.

Laura Köönikkä & co ovat saaneet vuoden aikana FRAME:n hienosti uudestaan jaloilleen ja kuvittelisi että tällaisen positiivisen, ammattitaitoisen toiminnan merkitystä osattaisiin ministeriössä arvostaa. Näin ei ilmeisesti kuitenkaan ole.

Toisaalta, en tiedä pitäisikö olla enemmän huolissaan ministeriön sähläämisestä vai siitä, että taidekenttä tuntuu hyväksyvän tämän päätöksen varsin hiljaisesti. Jos mitään vastalauseita ei kuulu niin päätöksentekijät jäävät siihen uskoon että kaikki menee ihan hyvin.

Kaikki, joita FRAME:n toiminnan katkeaminen tulee suoraan koskemaan, voisivat ilmaista huolensa asiasta vastaaville henkilöille eli selvitysmies Rauno Anttilalle (rauno.anttila (at) minedu.fi), ylijohtaja Riitta Kaivosojalle (riitta.kaivosoja (at) minedu.fi) ja viime kädessä ministeri Paavo Arhinmäelle. Ehkä tällä tavalla uudistamisprosessi saisi ministeriössä sen ansaitseman huomion.

IBM Think exhibit / Data Wall

It turned out that the simple information boards opposite to the Data Wall had some quite intriguing content. These boards contained a vision of a Happy Future, with all the improvements that sensors, surveillance and data analysis will bring to our societies. Reading the promises felt like taking a time trip back back to the days 1939 New York World’s Fair that introduced many wonders of consumer devices (including IBM’s electric typewriter).

In context of ‘Healthier rivers’, the Hudson River was chosen as the example. In collaboration with IBM, Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries and Clarkson University are in the process of creating a real-time sensor network all along the Hudson River.

Coincidentally, Hudson River was also one of the sites where publiclaboratory.org citizen science projects are taking place (see my previous posting). The goal of these two projects is essentially the same – to get better information about the state of the river in order to improve its condition. But in the approach there are drastic differences:

• IBM & co use complex and expensive technologies, publiclaboratory.org tools are free or very cheap
• Based on a recent press release, IBM & co aim to ‘advance commercialization of emerging real-time river monitoring sensor technology’. Publiclaboratory.org tools are free and open source

In addition to these rather obvious differences, an important issue is what kind of opportunities are lost if river monitoring is left to the hands of big institutions. In case of publiclaboratory.org, the tools offer people a concrete way to learn more about their own surroundings and to take an initiative to improve the conditions. Who is more likely to make noise about the companies that pollute Gowanus Canal, the local activists or IBM & co?

In terms of design, the question is whether there is a standardized solution with centralized monitoring or a general instruction which is modified be the local people to suit the local context.

A striking example of the difference between these two approaches that was often discussed during Mobilityshifts were the Adequate Yearly Progress tests that all children in public schools in US have to take. This test was introduced as a part of the No Child Left Behind Act during George W Bush administration. The goal ‘No Child Left Behind’ sounds great, but trying to achieve this goal via standardized tests has been a disaster.

Based on the presentations at mobilityshifts, everyone (teachers, children, parents, school administrators) seems to agree that these tests have not increased the quality of education, on the contrary they have added unnecessary stress to those who are doing well and been discouraging for those students and schools with problems. The points that were emphasised during mobilityshifts over and over again was that people learn in different ways. Good teachers adapt their teaching methods to suit the needs, and luckily here in Finland this is still possible (see Dianne Ravitch’s blog posting about this, her view is a bit too positive, but the main facts are correct).

Unfortunately in many other areas (public institutions, university education, etc) the idea of improving quality via standard tests has been pushed through here in Finland as well, with unhappy results (less efficiency, less creativity, less everything else except suspicion and bureocracy).

Pollution in Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn (Liz Barry / PLOTS)

The Rigorously Unprofessional session at Mobilityshifts featured two really impressive projects, Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (PLOTS) and Treekit.

Activists are using the tools and methods developed by PLOTS to find out more about the sources of pollution that is constantly accumulating in Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. One of the key tools is balloon mapping, which is used during different seasons of the year to shoot high resolution aerial images of the area. There is also a tool for shooting infrared imagery. By comparing various images, activists have been able to identify a large number of pipelines which are not monitored by any authorities, in fact no one seems to knows what they are and what is coming out from them. Liz Barry spoke of ‘environmental headhunting’ – that these images could be used as legal evidence against corporations and other polluters.

Liz also wanted to emphasise that there is a difference between crowd-sourcing projects that have been initiated by companies and public authorities, and citizen science projects in which the agenda is set by people themselves. The tools created by PLOTS can be used for all kinds of purposes, even to purposes that the creators of these tools would not want to support. This was discussed often during Mobilityshifts conference – how citizen efforts can be re-appropriated to work against them.

Suspected pipelines found by activists in Govanus Canal. The one marked with red colour is the only one that the city authorities have information about.

The Treekit project has created tools for mapping the exact locations and gathering other useful information about trees that grow in cities. In New York these tools have been used by local people and the resulting dataset is much more comprehensive and accurate than what the park authorities themselves had before. The point of this activity is not just to gather information – the main point is that trees in urban context need nurturing, that someone has to take care of them. In certain areas of NYC there is a lot of pollution in the air and the trees are struggling. Giving them water on a regular basis already helps, some people have started doing this by using big buckets. Healthier trees means healthier air for people to breath.

Treekit is also connected to the ongoing milliontreesNYC project, with currently 499 517 donated, planted or adopted trees.

Treekit - The red squares are the exact locations and sizes of the trees, measured with Treekit tools. The round items are the locations of the same trees in a database used by the city park authorities. (Phil Silva / Treekit)

An interesting discussion followed, related to the transformation that happens when people start using these tools. One could say that these tools allow ‘non-experts’ or ‘common people’ to become ‘experts’, ‘researchers’ or ‘designers’, but the whole idea of a ‘non-expert’ does not seem to make much sense. Phil Silva (Treekit) emphasised the importance of being allowed to make mistakes, that people can start doing things before they have learned all the details.

To me it seems that instead of learning specific knowledge and expertise, the important thing that these projects can give people is a sense of confidence, a sense of authority, a belief that they can change their everyday surroundings. I guess this is what expertise in practice often is – confidence and authority.

Zuccotti Park, 14 Oct 2011, 7 AM

During my visit to NYC this week, I had a chance to visit the Zuccotti Park a couple of times. I was impressed by the way discussions and decision-making were arranged. The mood was friendly and jubilant.

It’s unfortunate that the recent discussion related to Occupy Wall Street has focused on the question WHO are the people in the park, or more precisely WHO has the right to be there. To me this question seems rather irrelevant – if Occupy Wall Street is a forum for political discussion then everyone should have the right, even a duty, to be there. Public square as a political tool is a very old invention, it was probably invented before the wheel.

As a my little contribution to the on-going discussion about the Occupy Wall Street movement, I wanted to shortly refer to some thoughts of political theorist / activist Hannah Arendt. I take the liberty to interpret her thoughts quite freely here:

In her most well-known book ‘The Human Condition’, she argues that we should make a distinction between three terms: labor, work and action. LABOR is related to our basic survival as species – we have physical bodies we need to take care of, we need to find food to eat, we need to copulate to produce new human beings. WORK is the way we modify our surroundings, how we create tools, products and services – how we act in our professional occupation. ACTION is the domain where we act as free citizens – the domain where we express our thoughts, the domain where by default we do NOT agree about things.

In the discussion related to Occupy Wall Street movement, these three perspectives tend to get confused. Related to LABOR, the argument is that the people on the square are too well-off: they are not the poorest, they are not the starving ones, so they should shut up and go home. Related to WORK, the ‘WE ARE THE 99%’ slogan has perhaps been more counter-productive than useful for the discussion: it creates a far too simplified idea of ‘us’ versus ‘them’.

Despite your position in the context of LABOR or WORK, you have the right and duty to be part of ACTION, to act as a citizen and participate in the political debate. EVERYONE should have the right to be at the square.

* * *

I visited the park this week on Wednesday evening, when there was a discussion about buying new equipment to handle the live internet transmissions. It was dark, cold, rainy and windy, but direct democracy was still functioning. A decision was made to spend $25 740 for new equipment.

The ‘stack’, ‘blocks’, various hand signals, the live transcript on a screen and foremostly the people’s mic – issues are discussed through a slow, detailed process (see Generally Assembled at #OccupyWallStreet). Some of the hand signals were in used in General Assemblies in Spain and other countries in Europe this summer.

This is NOT how decisions are usually made in everyday life – in schools, in companies, in politics. Occupy Wall Street is an important demonstration of how complex issues can be discussed and decided collectively. Many people have learned this lesson now and hopefully this will have a concrete influence in many big and small institutions where these people are based. I’m not saying that exactly these methods should be copied everywhere – there are also many other methods for implementing direct democracy.

* * *

In her book ‘On Revolution’, Arendt admires the way the constitution of United States was originally written through an elaborate, slow process that involved a large amount of citizens in all the different states. This is the ACTION that Arendt is talking about. It would be great if the constitution would be completely re-written on regular intervals, so that every generation could participate in this important process.

In the same book, she also writes about the ‘lost treasure’ of revolution. It is the exceptional spirit that arises during revolutionary times, the change in one’s being when one gets involved in a movement that wants to fundamentally change things. There is a lot of that spirit in the air at Zuccotti Park and a strong tendency towards ‘unity’ and ‘consensus’. In this sense the event is also a carnival – and it should be so. But if there is only ‘unity’ and ‘consensus’ then the event is just a carnival and no longer a political event. The important political issues are the ones in which there is no clear agreement.

Zuccotti Park, 14 Oct 2011, 7 AM

The first ADC meeting / Photo: Antti Ahonen

Some time ago I wrote a critical blog posting about the upcoming Helsinki World Design Capital year. This posting generated a lot of public discussion and now for some weeks there has been an on-going process to set up an Alternative Design Capital.

What will this Alternative Design Capital aim for and how will it function? We don’t know yet, the discussion about this has only begun. And it’s even unclear how decisions are made. The challenge is to find a healthy ratio between talking and doing, to keep the process open for new ideas but also to fix some key points that can help the project to focus and develop. ADC as an organisation strives to be open and democratic but in contrast to this, in context of design, democracy is most often not the best way to make decisions – this often leads to boring and safe solutions.

There was good energy and great discussions in the first meeting, please join us the second one on Wednesday 19 October 18:00 at HUB Helsinki.

Alternative Design Capital planning wiki can be found here.