Short bio: annemie_maes, media artist and activist, holds a masters ...

Short bio:
annemie_maes, media artist and activist, holds a masters degree in fine arts and cultural studies. She is
founder of , a group of artists working with image, sound and technology. In their artprojects they research the transversal field of
installations, performances and audio-visual compositions. Most of the projects are linked to the problematization of new art in the public
space, from a socio-cultural background. The focus is to identify innovation and change while developing artistic projects, and research
new aesthetical presentation techniques.
Annemie Maes is co-founder of OKNO, an artist-run organisation working with art & technology, and is responsible for okno’s day-to-day
management.
In her personal artistic research she focuses on the behavior of language in its many appearances: textual, sonic and visual, as well as
gestural or body language. How do these disparate elements relate to each other and how do they organize within a system, which
includes human and computer as a sender and a receiver [and vice versa]?
Her artistic research and cultural activism projects are publicly presented as the ongoing project ‘Politics of Change’, with a focus on the
topics womenempowerment, ecology and public space.
Here you can download a pdf (with pictures) which explains in detail the research & content of the Policits of Change project.
http://so-on.be/SO-ON/installations/politics_of_change/masa-EN.pdf
abstract of the Politics of Change project:
politics of change : what?
The research project ‘politics of change’ is a collective work where artists,visionaires, working women, activists and ecologists want to
initiate collaborative dialogues to uncover ideas and solutions which support decentralised structures, biodiversity and community
development. The project involves not only public discussion, but an extensive mapping and documentation of these proposals in an art
context.
Drawing on a wide range of artistic and theoretical fields, the aim is to imagine new and sustainable relationships between humans, their
environments and technologies.
politics of change : #1 Mahila Samiti
‘Politics of change : #1 Mahila Samiti’ focuses on rural communities in India that work with an innovative program and philosophy. They
approach solutions in a participatory and bottum up way and implement sustainable changes from within the community itself. There is a
specific interest for solutions situated in the field of distributed renewable energies, the use of (appropriate) technology and the
conservation of ecosystems.
Their innovative approach has led to changes in governmental policy and has expanded dialogue around previously unexplored issues
leading to a new discussion about the north-south axis. In ‘politics of change’ we want to research what we can learn from these
decentralised community-models that succeed to grow into a quickly expanding network in Asia and Africa.
the mahila (women) of barefoot college
The Barefoot College’s mission was set out since 1972 in the district of Tilonia, Rajasthan. A group of middle-class city intellectuals came
to Tilonia with the conviction that the poverty and powerlessness of 70 per cent of India’s people - the barefoot - could only be solved by
putting lost skills and economic self-sufficiencyback in their hands.
They build upon Gandhi’s philosophy: ‘be yourself the change you want to see in the world’. Today the Barefoot project developed into a
horizontal network with 20 affiliated organisations over all states of India. The program covers different departments: education, creation
of jobs,womenempowerment, organic agriculture, conservation of ecosystems and appropriate technology sections.
the mahila (women) of barefoot college
The focus of barefoot college/Tilonia is on the solar department, where women from Asia, Africa and South America are trained to
become a solar engineer. During the 6 months solar training at Barefoot College, the women learn to work with specific solar technology,
appropriate to serve the needs and daily necessities of their communities.
The productivity in the solar engineer workshops results from collective work: the learning environment is open and decentralised and
knowledge is passedon in a bottom-up and hands-on way. From start on, the decision to step into the solar project is community-based.

The village selects and delegates its future women engineers for a 6 months training, and every village family engages itself to pay its
share in the remuneration of the engineers to set up and maintain the village solar system.
The solar engineer project has demonstrated that providing lighting through solar energy could also be a women’s responsability for the
household in the near future.
Most of the solar engineers come from traditional and conservative societies and they have struggled to fight for their identity. The women
engineers have been gradually accepted by the village communities and are respected for the work they do. These rural women have
become symbols of a new partnership. The training of Barefoot women engineers, although first regarded with suspicion, is now gaining
more popularity among the rural people. It provides an additional income and gives women a larger sense of independence and
responsability. They have displayed their capacity and efficiency within their community, are respected and repeatedly used as examples
to propagate and elevate women’s status.
politics of change : why?
As artists, filmmakers and activists whose practice incorporates ecological thinking, we have to enrich the public debate around ethical
living, environmental sustainability and eco-technology. We have to think about the kind of future in which we want to live and work. What
lifestyles, what social and economic systems can we envisage beyond the usual?
Is there anything that we can learn from existing social experiments to help us make our economic and political systems less fragile and
unstable?
The case study of the Barefoot College project is a good example to start with. Their independent, distributed and DIY approach is worth
the attention of a larger public. A public that is aware of the actions and solutions needed to build on the construction of a more balanced
society, contributing sustainable changes to social and ecological structures, a public with a focus on the sharing of knowledge.
politics of change : how?
so-on collective positions itself as a disturbing factor, the noise; one that confronts art society with other approaches, other visions, other
thoughts-and-talks.
The focus lies on creative interventions that aim to be transformational, on processes that enable individuals and communities to live in a
more sustainable way, or suggest alternative possibilities for sustainability. Collaborative creation, open source technology, and
questioning borders could become tools to transform our consumer-society into more participatory cultures.
What can the electronic arts community do to propagate these tools and methods into everyday life? If we look at the problems of
distribution of goods, people and information, can we learn from the robustness of distributed collaboration and non- Western
perspectives to enable social change?
Cultural diversity as a resource for sustainable innovative ideas, alternative models and experimental learning scenarios can create new
hybrids of practice and research. We have to restructure for new learning cultures, new models of work and knowledge spaces; the role
and inclusion of artists and extra-institutional models of organization and education can make emerge sustainable innovative networks.
If we consider knowledge production as a 2-way process, we also have to consider how a research process can become a project of
partnership with full advantages for all the partners involved. These dialogues must be understood as a process at the borders of cultural
diversity, where intersubjective exchanges create new forms of action that collaboratively build upon a shared knowledge.
Mahila (women) – 16:9 high def. movie – 26 minutes, color, sound - english spoken

** INSTALLATION SETUP **
Ghent (B) – Vooruit festival ‘the Game is Up!’ How to save the world in 10 days?
Kortrijk (B) – Happy New Festival (festival van Vlaanderen) – Klinkende Stad, Politics of Change - set up in old greenhouse.

Helsinki (Fi) – Pixelache festival – Muu Gallery ‘ Signals from the South’ – Politics of Change

Antwerp (B) - Gynaika, In Between gallery – Politics of Change
detaill of custom made computer

Politics of Change Magazine/Newspaper – part of the installation as a take away publication (I can bring them, I still have a lot of copies)
Also downloadable on the internet: http://thoughtsandtalks.so-on.be/2009/03/08/poc-the-newspaper/
Can be part of as well the installation as the online setup.

** ONLINE SETUP **
The online setup is part of the pad.ma archive (public accessible digital media archive), a text-annotated video-database developed by
Jan Gerber, Seb Luettger and Sanjay Banghar. The content of pad.ma covers mainly Indian and South Asian topics.
(For the TIK – Time Inventors’ Kabinet project, okno will collaborate with the padma developers and setup another version of padma:
Padma.okno.be, which will serve as a documentation repository for the TIK project.)