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Why Is the Case of Jailed Photographer Shahidul Alam So Important? Martin Parr, Dayanita Singh, and Others Explain His Significance

The Bangladeshi photographer is being punished for criticizing the government. Here's why you should pay attention.

https://news.artnet.com/opinion/shahidul-alam-supporters-1334627

Please share this and spread the news into the data sphere as far as possible!! I met Shahidul Alam two years ago in Kathmandu where we worked together with photography students at a international workshop. Shahidul is a one of a kind media and human rights activist, the founder of Pathshala Media Institute in Dhaka, one of the best photography schools in the world and a brilliant photographer.

Here a bit more about Shahidul's work.

Please read the text bellow his photo and share this widely!!!

Shahidul Alam #freeShahidulAlam

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Latest update through UNB
Dhaka, Aug 5 (UNB) – Detectives detained Shahidul Alam, Managing Director of Drik Gallery and Chairman of Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, here on Sunday night.

Additional Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DB) Abdul Baten said a team of Detective Branch of police detained Shahidul from his Dhanmondi residence for interrogation over his Facebook posts on the ongoing student protests.
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Internationally renowned photographer Dr Shahidul Alam, Managing Director, Drik, was forcibly abducted from his house in Dhanmondi, Dhaka after 10pm on 5 Aug 2018. According to security guards of the apartment building and other eyewitness reports, there were roughly 30 to 35 men, in plain clothes, who claimed to be from the Detective Branch (DB), who went upstairs, brought down Dr Alam, who was screaming as he was forcibly pushed into the waiting car, a HiAce, with the words Popular Life Insurance, written on the outside. They taped up the CCTV camera, and took away the CCTV camera footage. The guards were manhandled and locked up. His partner Rahnuma Ahmed, was in a neigbouring flat, raced downstairs on hearing the scream, but the car carrying him and two other cars waiting outside, sped away.

oliver
4 years, 10 months ago

The link did not post so here it is: more about his work:

http://drik.net/shahidul-alam-my-journey-as-a-witness/

oliver
4 years, 10 months ago

Here the link to sign the petition to free Shahidul Alam. Please support and sign:

https://www.change.org/p/free-shahidul-alam

"Hey Gabriella, thanks for posting about your exciting Zine! I am very much looking forward to see th..."

The Equal Standard

A short video accompanying the current exhibition "We Protest!", giving you a glimpse of the Melbourne protest culture. Great stuff!

Branding = artificial scarcity

read this:

Burberry’s destruction of £28m of leftover clothing shows fashion is still all about class

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/07/burberry-s-destruction-28m-leftover-clothing-shows-fashion-still-all-about-class

An exciting new theory, one that again shows that it is collaboration, not competition that is responsible for success of human development and prosperity. Even more so, it shows the role women and especially grandmothers play in making us being successful.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/07/617097908/why-grandmothers-may-hold-the-key-to-human-evolution

Important reading and highly relevant to us at Memefest. I still remember talking to a large audience of activists and critical and engaged creatives and asking them why are almost all using Facebook instead of this social network we have established at Memefest and it made me a bit sad to see how powerful FB is to interrelate even this fantastic folks. But the story has not ended yet and we are ready to make the next step and will let you know more about it soon. In this process, this new book by Geert Lovink and Ned Rositer is an important and useful guide.

Organization after Social Media by Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter

Here the blurb:" Exploring the politics of networks through and beyond social media

Organized networks are an alternative to the social media logic of weak links and their secretive economy of data mining. They put an end to freestyle friends, seeking forms of empowerment beyond the brief moment of joyful networking. This speculative manual calls for nothing less than social technologies based on enduring time. Analyzing contemporary practices of organization through networks as new institutional forms, organized networks provide an alternative to political parties, trade unions, NGOs, and traditional social movements. Dominant social media deliver remarkably little to advance decision-making within digital communication infrastructures. The world cries for action, not likes.

Organization after Social Media explores a range of social settings from arts and design, cultural politics, visual culture and creative industries, disorientated education and the crisis of pedagogy to media theory and activism. Lovink and Rossiter devise strategies of commitment to help claw ourselves out of the toxic morass of platform suffocation."

PDF available freely online: http://www.minorcompositions.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/organizationaftersocialmedia-web.pdf.

Five years ago we printed this beautiful Food Democracy posters for Memefest 2013. Now the Food democracy book shows the process of the festival on the topic with additional research. Published a few months ago the book is getting more and more interest, and we truly love the work we have done.
If you haven't yet, check it out here:
http://www.memefest.org/en/fooddemocracy/

More than two years ago i saw the first ASMR video. The somehow creepy videos where someone whispers, and touches objects and this is recorded by very good microphones causing a sensation of special pleasure. It is pretty fascinating as a marketing strategy as well as brands use it to sell their products.

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180605-the-weird-whispering-videos-that-brands-want-to-cash-in-on

I met David Giles last week. He is an academic at Deakin Uni here in Melbourne. What brought us together was the book Food Democracy:

http://memefest.org/en/fooddemocracy/

David, has done some super interesting work on Dumpster Diving and on the link bellow you can listen to a really cool interview he has given on the subject- great stuff!

http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/conversations-david-giles/8512342

The beautiful power or words: A Priest and His Political Billboards in Australia

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43985084

David Harvey, a Marxist critique of higher Education

https://soundcloud.com/freshed-podcast/freshed-100-a-marxist-critique-of-higher-education-david-harvey

This is a very important read. John Jordan on the Revenge against the commons, writes about the recent attempts by the French Government to evict The ZAD, the largest autonomous zone in Europe.

https://zadforever.blog/2018/04/24/the-revenge-against-the-commons/

Vida
5 years, 1 month ago

Thanks Oli! Important happenings in the Zad.

A review of our Food Democracy book by Mapping Edges:

http://www.mappingedges.org/readings/food-democracy-critical-lessons-in-food-communication-design-and-art/

An urgent message from our friend John Jordan!!

A CALL FOR INTERGALACTIC SOLIDARITY ACTIONS EVERYWHERE TO END THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ZAD OF NOTRE DAME DES LANDES

We are writing with the smell of tear gas rising from our fingers. The springtime symphony of birdsong is punctuated by the explosive echo of concussion grenades. Our eyes are watering, less from the gas than the sadness; because our friends’ homes, barns and organic farms are being destroyed. Bulldozers, supported by 2500 riot police, armored vehicles, helicopters and drones, are rampaging through these forests, pastures and wetlands to crush the future we are building here on the to the zad (The zone à defendre).

See and read more here:
https://zadforever.blog/2018/04/11/a-call-for-intergalactic-solidarity-actions-everywhere-to-end-the-destruction-of-the-zad-of-notre-dame-des-landes/

This is very interesting and at the same time a bit bizarre. Who wants to see on the smart phone live stream of what is in our fridge?

To Invade Homes, Tech Is Trying to Get in Your Kitchen

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/technology/smart-homes-tech-kitchen.html

Check out this link as it gives very helpful insight on what is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy

renfah
5 years, 2 months ago

facebook stole my account 6 years ago - coz i got nearly 5000 followers - and they wanted my REAL NAME, not with me...cheers

oliver
5 years, 2 months ago

What do you mean, they "stole your account"?

This has been around for a while now, but media seems to be slowly reporting on this. It is one of the more fascinating social developments in our current world, one that - I think- will radically alter peoples autonomy. I have asked my Chinese students about this, - they did not know anything about this development.

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-31/chinas-social-credit-system-punishes-untrustworthy-citizens/9596204?pfmredir=sm

Open call for residence!!! Occupy the kitchen !