[Bricolabs] Back from Yogyakarta. Preparing the First World Summit

From: Jean-Noël Montagné - Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 10:32:32 +0200

Hi Bricos :-)

Very important news for all Bricos: we have the opportunity to gather ourselves in Indonesia in autumn 2015, and to participate to a major event in history.

Back from Yogyakarta, Indonesia…….

Few hours ago, I was sitting here in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in HONF headquarters, with Venzha from Bricolabs and founder of HONF, with Irene, artistic director and co-founder of Honf, and Tommy Suryo, director of Honf Fablab http://www.honfablab.org/ . I was there for the ProtoType 2014 meeting in Yogyakarta, organised by 3 NGO: HONF Foundation, Catec (represented by Ilham Habibie) and rOg (represented by Stephen Kovats, chairing the meeting). Meeting on Open Culture and Critical Making: http://www.natural-fiber.com/y2014/

After three days of brainstorming with international and Indonesian partners, we have found that there is an opportunity to launch here in Indonesia, the First World Summit of Critical Making in autumn 2015.

Critical Making ?

The original concept of Critical Making has been first set up by Matt Ratto, one of the first co-founders of Bricolabs list, few years ago, then started to be a subject of research & learning in some universities. Critical Making is basically what we do and share in Bricolabs: creating and building art, knowledge, goods, services and structures in citizen-based approach and not in a capitalist-based approach. We develop a critical reflection on the relations between technology and society. We like to share our knowledge, we like to control the technologies and not be controlled by them, we like to hack, to build, to learn and to teach. We like the world, we like the planet. We like freedom and poetry.

Why a world summit of Critical Making ?

Critical Making is one pacific approach to the necessary changes we have to do as soon as possible, regarding the conjunction of two main crisis in the very next years:

-energy crisis: we are at the end of the “sinusoidal plateau phase” of the peak oil. Very next years (around 2017, + or - 2 years, according to many indicators and researches) will see the price of petrol climbing regularly and strongly with a global impact on all production of goods and services, all over the world, with all the bad consequences we can imagine on society.

-climate crisis: this year, as last year, was the world record of sending CO2 and greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The climat is more and more chaotic and violent. The climate crisis affects health, water resources, agriculture and food production, transports and lodging of billion people. Floods, tempests and dryness will create hundred million refugees. Nobody has succeded yet to stop this self-destruction.

I don’t forget also the metal ressources crisis, coming during the 20 next years with huge impact on industry and society, the fragility of financial system, the political crisis and many other sectors of society in deep distress.

Infinite growth

Please don’t consider these facts as conspiracy theories coming from paranoac attitude. It is just analysis of the curves of the production and consumption of our resources. All these numbers come from official & industrial agencies, and are really easy to verify. Even if the predictions are wrong within a few years, it’s a matter of time: this planet is small and has limits. Infinite growth is impossible. In just two centuries we have consumed most of the fossil resources, and our children will have to live in a completely different world.

Despite this negative observations, mostly ignored by the medias, who want to profit from ads for cars and useless electronics as long as possible, we still have the power to make another world possible, other worlds possible, and using our schemes to start a viral transformation of the society, starting from our neighborhood, from our house, now. In most of the countries, leaded by industrial and financial power, this transformation will have to come from the citizens, at citizen-scale. Cooperation, Do-It-Yourself ( DIY), Do-It-With-Others (DIWO), share, openess, open-source, autonomy are the keywords. Realistic keywords. Mankind keywords.

We have almost ten years to build ” global and local development of generic infrastructures incrementally developed by communities “, and we have to spread it before, or during, an eventual chaos. The easiest years to do it are now, just now, because energy has still a low cost, and everything is still possible.

The World Summit of Critical Making, autumn 2015.

The World Summit of Critical Making hope to show & spread a lot of new practices, directly usable by the people. The World Summit of Critical Making itself has to be a critical making process. This summit will produce words for the documentation of many critical making processes , but will aslo show facts, tools, objects, networks, practices, ways of learning, ways of spreading the knowledge. The main focus is to show how to start the transformations now.

We are all transformakers !

If scientific words are produced, and such words will be produced, it will not be only for storing heavy PHD thesis on shelves of universities, but for sharing methods, manuals, translations, encyclopedias, hope, art. If words are produced, it will be words of love and knowledge. For viral immediate use.

A very important part of the summit will be the “Demo Faire”, the “Tangible Zone”, the “Workshop Place”, the “Hack Area”, the “World Tool Sheds” where the invitees and Indonesian citizen will see, test, hack, touch, learn, dismantle & build the concepts, the materials, the objects, the machines, the systems.

A big event for Indonesia and South East Asia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asia

Our first contacts in Indonesia and worldwide are ready to support a big international event in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in autumn 2015, with hundreds attendees.

Indonesia is centered on equator. Indonesia is full of diversity in all sectors of the society, and knows how to manage it. http://tinyurl.com/indonesian-diversity Indonesia is a little planet itself. More than 700 living languages are spoken in Indonesia. Influences of Indian, Japanese, Australian, Chinese, Australian, European cultures associated with traditional islands cultures. Indonesia has a lot of natural ressources, with the world’s second highest level of biodiversity after Brazil. Indonesia has a lot of makers. The indonesian Fablab, DIY, and DIWO scene is growing quickly, and we have a lot to learn from them. And the people are very nice and peaceful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia

As hosts and main organisers with our help, Indonesian and South-East Asia transformakers will have an important place in the summit, and you will see that this is a real chance for us to discover people coming from a territory half as big as Europe and inhabited by as many citizens as Europe or North America.

Contents of the First World Summit of Critical Making 2015.

We would like that the autumn 2015 summit will be composed by 50% of words and 50% of practice. But we would like that the practices show over 70% of real level of utility, and less than 30% experiment. And we would like that the words produced for the summit represents over 70% of direct spread of the knowledge to the people, by all channels possible, and less than 30% for academic research.

During the next weeks, we want your comments, questions and inputs on the project. Post on this list. We want that you take a breath, unplug the stressfull electonic devices around you, and take some time to think about such a summit. About the next years of our children.

We need your creativity, your work and your help to make it a major world event in 2015.

Welcome, transformakers. Tell us if you are into the project.

JN, with the help and great inspiration of Venzha, Irene, Tommy and all HONF partners in Indonesia

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