Beehive Collective: Dismantling Monoculture

Beehive Collective presents “DISMANTLING MONOCULTURE: Tales of Ants and Economics in the Americas.”

With three giant illustrated portable murals, a six foot tall fabric storybook “slideshow”, and an engaging narrative, the Bees take audiences on an interactive VISUAL tour of the connections between COLONIZATION, MILITARIZATION, and RESOURCE EXTRACTION in the Americas.

When: Thursday, April 12, 7:00 p.m.

Where: Henderson Room of the Michigan League, 911 N. University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.

Who: Sponsored by the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality (SOLE).

Free and open to the public.

The Bees say: The Beehive Design collective’s work is anonymous and anti-copyright, for free use as popular education tools. We are working to dispel the tradition of activism that is based on books, experts, speeches, and “hoarding knowledge”, by creating communication methods that are more holistic, accessible and invite participation… inspiring action, instead of passive listening or absorbing. We build, and disseminate these visual tools with the hope that they will self-replicate, and take on life of their own. The overwhelming success of our graphics campaigns testify to the ability of visual tools for conveying ideas in powerful, effective ways unavailable to other forms of communication.

Henry Jenkins keynote at Beyond Broadcast

By kino-eye|by-nc-nd

Henry Jenkins speaks about popular and participatory culture in relation to participatory democracy. This is one of the most enlightening discussions I’ve seen this year. Please check out the video here.

Beyond Broadcast 2007

Jonathan Lethem on the cultural commons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By dingdingwang|by-nc-nd

Jonathan Lethem has written an article in Harper’s entitled The Ecstasy of Influence. This piece presents an important reflection on the history, pervasiveness, and ulitimately, necessity, of sharing a cultural and creative past.

Lethem will be speaking at the Ann Arbor District Library on Thursday, April 5th at 7:00pm in support of his new book, You Don’t Love Me Yet.

Who’s the rat?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ipso photo|by-nc-nd

As previously reported, students from the University of Michigan are caught in a cold sweat, waiting for the RIAA to come a-knockin’ at their door. The RIAA has already issued pre-litigation statements to several universities thoughout the U.S., hoping to entice administration officials to hand over infringing users, thus circumventing the legal process. However, The University of Wisconsin says they won’t become a shill for the RIAA.

Brian Rust of UW’s IT department: “These settlement letters are an attempt to
short circuit the legal process to rely on universities to be their legal agent.”

EFF FAQ on pre-lawsuit letters

Viacom bites that hand that feeds it

Viacom has sued Google for copyright infringements on YouTube.

Damages sought: $1 billion.

Check out what Free Culture friend Siva Vaidhyanathan has to say about it on WNYCs “On the Media.”

“Now, we haven’t heard a lot from Jon Stewart in the last few months as Viacom’s taken these very aggressive stance toward Google and YouTube, but I’d be willing to bet that the folks who really understand how fans build upon the work of The Daily Show, they understand that having stuff up on YouTube is priceless. Being kind to your fans by giving them content that they can use and reuse and sometimes even abuse is never a bad business strategy.”