Costelloe-KuehnMemo19

· JATAN Trust is a “rural digital media collective” developing and mapping “information from below” on local knowledges, experiences and struggles (jatantrust.org). Since 2004 JATAN has been focused on the critical and complex geopolitical issues surrounding water in India. JATAN combines a traveling media production and presentation project with a more permanent museum of cultural memory and a website that combines satellite mapping technology with digital video clips. I am interested in how they combine new media (online representations, satellite technologies, GPS mapping, etc.) with more established knowledges, technologies and practices (indigenous knowledge of geography and agriculture, video cameras, screening films with portable projects in public markets, etc.). JATAN weaves together locally collected interviews into videos for presentation in public places as part of a festival with local musicians, singers, dancers, etc. These video screenings are designed to represent the audience back to itself and foster deliberation over, and better articulation of, local knowledge. JATAN is currently developing a digital arts media lab that is intended to elicit participation from populations that have often been excluded from new media use. Although place-based production and exhibition is a key focus for JATAN, it is also tied into national and transnational webs of funding, expertise, knowledge, and media. Documenting and the “sensed, partially articulated awareness of specific other sites and agents to which particular subjects have (not always tangible) relationships” and following these connections will illuminate political and economic processes spanning different locales and continents (Marcus 1995 111). I will participate as an audiovisual producer and research intern with JATAN for four months. · The Deccan Development Society (DDS) combines media production – especially made by rural women and dealing with environmental justice issues – with the development and dissemination of knowledge on the production and politics of food. It will be a particularly good site for examining the gender issues tied up with new media production and its video training program for illiterate women has received wide acclaim in both the “mainstream” and “independent” media. DDS also has a vibrant and heterogeneous member base with expertise in environmental science, social sciences, biodiversity, agricultural policy, media production, local knowledges, etc. A wide variety of DDS projects bring together these different experts and forge working relationships and distributed communities. I am fascinated by the DDS as an experiment in truly diverse collaboration. · ** The Yes Men are a loose network of “tactical media” activists or “culture jammers” and will provide insight into my questions about innovative protest tactics. ** They stage events that provoke viewers to question dominant (often corporate) explanations and justification. On the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, for example, they staged an event in which they impersonated a representative from Dow Chemical (formerly Union Carbide). The Yes Men also illustrate creative ways to use new media (fake websites, ICT-mediated collaboration on programming, animation, etc.) to “infiltrate” the mainstream media. ** · Greenpeace – well known for their creative protest tactics combining old and new media with non-violent direct action – has similar organizations in the U.S. and India and will provide an interesting cross-national comparison. Greenpeace is a much larger, better-funded and more hierarchically structured organization than my first three sites. I will examine ways in which these differences constrain and enable the goals of these four EMOs.
 * Overview of primary organizations: **


 * Interview guide 1: ** **breakdown of 84 interviews**
 * ** Organization or Site ** || ** Role or Area of Expertise ** ||
 * ** JATAN Trust ** || ** Artists/media producers (5), community workers (5), rural collaborators (5) ** ||
 * ** Deccan **** Development Society (DDS) ** || ** DDS Board (10), Bio Diversity (5), Agricultural Policy (4), Environmental Science (2), Radio (5), Biodiversity Festival (2), Community video (4) ** ||
 * ** The Yes Men ** || ** Primary actors (2), digital media producers (4), researchers (2) ** ||
 * ** Greenpeace ** || ** Staff in the department of Media & Communications (6), New Media (6), and Actions (4) ** ||
 * ** Conferences/Media Camps ** || ** Attendees, both activists and researchers (10) ** ||

I will use "snowball sampling" (CITE?) to follow the connections and knowledge that I learn from at my primary sites and identify secondary sites and interviewees. Possibilities include the Beehive Collective primarily located in Maine, and the MIT Media Lab and Center for Future Public Media in the U.S. and Sarai, one of India's first community media centers, located in Delhi.