this is what democracy looks like

this is what democracy looks like: imc's collaborative mode of production

by - tish stringer

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"I think video activism means becoming a kind of modern-day Prometheus," Eric Galatas from Free Speech TV says. "And you don't have to have any particular set of hero credentials to take part. TV is controlled by six global corporations-they control economies, governments, cultures, and can wreak havoc on individual lives. Media is their fire, but we can steal it, and use it.(pixel visions)

This paper is a look at a particular collective media project, the Independent Media Center(IMC) video team, and their work at large scale Media Centers during mobilizations of the global justice movement. Multiple histories intersect with the collective's efforts: media activism, particularly internet activism, the structure of the global justice movement and the history-structure-goals-tactics of the broader IMC network. Today, I will limit my description to the collective mode of production, distribution and reception evidenced in the IMC video team projects.

The Independent Media Center (IMC) is a news outlet that is composed of a network of local media groups organized through a global collective. This network that has grown from one web site and media collective that began in Seattle to cover the demonstrations against the WTO two years ago to more than 100 local IMCs today. All local IMCs state an adherence to a loose group of working principals shared across the network. These principals declare that: indymedia is a grassroots, independent, non-corporate media collective that works on a horizontally articulated, heterarchical decentralized frame informed by concepts of consensus and participation.

The Independent Media Centers birth and growth have been directly linked to the movement for global justice, commonly called antiglobalization. From its inception in other internet-based social justice news forums, such as a-infos, Countermedia and Direct Action Media Network, and since its first day of transmission in Seattle during the World Trade Organization protests in November of 1999, IMC has swelled and taken shape through the trajectory of mass mobilizations, such as the meetings of the IMF/World Bank in Prague in 2000 and the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001.

The movement for global justice has gained attention on the world stage through its highly visible manifestations at meetings of global capital. This movement is situated within a larger social structure, not of the nation state, but of global regimes of increasing interdependence and speed. These regimes involve a hyper-mobility of particular flows, including among other things money, people, goods, images and information in a global system. It also involves a lack of mobility of other kinds of flows, certain people for instance: such as immigrants and activists.

This movement for Global Justice is composed of small-scale decentralized groups integrated into a network, supported by dense communication and organized through collective ideologies and ethics regarding the evil nature of the corporate state and the need to protect citizens and the environment from exploitation. The structure is horizontally articulated, flexible and expanding. It is organized through non-hierarchical models and has no central location or leadership. Eddy, a video and radio activist working in the Prague IMC told me, "It is molecular decentralization."

David Ronfeldt and Ron Arquilla describe a similar structure of groups as a netwar group. Netwar is term for an emerging mode of conflict on a societal level that employs network forms of organization. The users of netwar consist of dispersed, small groups who communicate, coordinate, and act in an internetted manner without a central leadership or headquarters. They state that one of the key components for a netwar group to function is dense and rapid communications. Not only is the IMC network structured as a netwar group, but it functions like the communications wing of the larger movement providing dense and rapid dispersal of functional information. Both the larger social movement and the Independent Media Center have structures that are juxtaposed to the hierarchical model of governments and corporations including the corporate media and entertainment industries. The decentralized structure provides IMC reporters with an advantage over corporate media reporters in covering a mass demonstration during meetings of global financiers and politicians by deploying a swarm of journalists. Swarming, according to Ronfeldt and Arquilla, is the tactic of conflict used by netwar groups. It essentially means attacking quickly from multiple directions, then retreating to regroup and preparing for the next swarm. A videographer for the BBC posted his analysis of the coverage of demonstrations during the G-8 meetings in Genoa to the main indymedia newswire comparing the coverage of the BBC to the coverage provided of indymedia:

Where the organization of events like Genoa is deliberately fragmented and the demonstrations themselves deliberately scattered, it puts traditional hierarchical news organizations at a disadvantage. In the past, where marches followed a set route, there were usually two sides: police and demonstrators and both could be approached for comment and the report could follow a formula. Frustration with such formulaic and banal marches has led to a change in tactics towards more dispersed and varied activity, which can't be captured in the same way… In other words IMC could do something on the web, which corporate media couldn't - give a near real-time account of the protests which indicated the scale and complexity of what was happening.

In this clip of a sit down demonstration in Rue St. Jean in Quebec City the sheer number of multiple camera angles make it clear how many videographers were on the ground at this moment. The ability to use so many camera angles allows the viewer to be in many positions at one time. This stragegy in filmmaking is where the viewer can see democratic media at work in visual production.

I am going to structure my description of the IMC video collective around the framework used by Hamid Naficy in his book An Accented Cinema to describe media collectives and their work. The framework for investigating collective works is: collective mode of production, collective mode of distribution and collective mode of reception.

The IMC video team has four main functions: providing a modicum of safety for demonstrators by recording events to document police brutality and creating a legal archive, uploading immediate content to the internet for international coverage of breaking news, producing daily programs for satellite uplink, and producing feature length video portraits of the events after the events. In less than three years more than 20 IMC features have been produced. The IMC video team utilizes a collective mode of production to complete these numerous functions and multiple projects. The affinity group production model mirrors the social organization of the overall global justice movement as I described earlier: a horizontally articulated, decentralized, dispersed network of autonomous, small-scale cells.

At large scale IMCs during mass mobalizations hundreds of media activists converge on a city to cover the events. There is usually a physical media center where journalists can gather to produce their work. Coverage of the events is organized into teams. The hosting IMC will generally have an organized video team or one will be developed in an ad-hoc fashion during the events. For video coverage the affinity group model is used- small-scale groups gather footage from the streets, interviews and background material. To ensure coverage of multiple events making the video team must find ways to communicate amongst themselves. Communication is accomplished through face-to-face meetings, with varying degrees of formality they are run on consensus models, using a facilitator and specified agenda. At these meetings, plans are made assigning coverage of events, the technical status of the equipment, material gathered for the day is gone over and tasks are delineated to accomplish the four main objectives of the video team. When people come into the IMC with video footage either raw or edited, ideally a few things happen: contact information is gathered, a duplicate of selected excerpts from the footage is made, a detailed description of all the footage they have is logged, they are plugged into working on daily segments and important breaking news footage is uploaded to the internet site. Accomplishing these tasks requires: a space to meet in, the technology and the tape stock to make the duplicate tapes, a system for maintaining records, access to editing equipment and to the internet, a board that lists events that need coverage and coordinators and staff to accomplish all of these tasks.

E: I guess what ended up happening was we started to have some meetings, trying to get it together, and they were in this really small cramped garage space and everybody was smoking cigarettes, so it was just full of smoke and this sweaty, European sort of everybody and their own ego and you know, I'm going to shoot the revolution kind of thing. And so, from that, with everybody wanting to sort of explore tactics and coordination and things. I sort of brought up "well are we going to do a project out of this?"

T: It wasn't pre-planned?

E: It wasn't pre-planned at all, because you know the IMC just sort of happened on the guidelines of other IMC's and people used it as, you know, they hadn't necessarily been through that process before of actually producing something, or what could be produced, or each person wanted to produce their own. When I sort of brought it up, saying based on the other IMC's this might be a good way to do it, where basically the proposal was everybody submit a 2 or 3 minute segment and if 10 or 15 people do that we'll be fine, and some can be longer and some can be shorter. So that was sort of the idea, that we'd produce this international IMC version of what happened. Well, with time being what it was, by the end of the third day of the action and the meeting being cancelled and everything, and everybody leaving town suddenly and this whole feeling of paranoia and weird services from all over the world sort of watching what's going on and really wanting to make this video but at the same time not really having any resources in Prague to do it.

At many of the large scale IMCs collaborations have been created between IMC video and a satellite broadcast network. This collaboration allows for daily news segments from the demonstrations to be the aired same day on a satellite network around the country or world. Groups who have helped IMC air its footage on satellites have been Deep Dish TV, America's first public access satellite network, and Free Speech TV, a progressive station on the dish network. Collaboration of this sort strengthens both groups by sharing content and distribution of materials, decreasing reliance on corporate access and eliminates the need for large amounts of funding to buy airtime. Free Speech TV also offers the service of watching the IMC films on their video server via the internet. These networks also serve as distributors to public access TV stations around the world who pick up the satellite feed and rebroadcast it on local stations.

The production of these daily shows is also accomplished through the affinity group model. Whispered Media's work in Seattle exemplifies this approach; a group of three videographers planned what they would cover, worked together to capture the footage and at the end of each day edited together a 4-5 minute piece. This piece is put together with others made by different groups, beginning and end credits are added, and a half hour show comes out of it which is uplinked to the satellite network. In New York during the WEF meetings, a staff person from FreeSpeech TV was on site at the IMC to do the nuts and bolts work of getting the show on to the satellite. Each evening most of the videographers would meet to discuss what footage they had shot and what they thought they could make into a good segment. Using a consensus approach, the group decided together what the show would be. Then, the small groups would go and work through the evening to put the show together for broadcast the next morning. Often, videographers arrive on the scene of these mobilizations with source material relevant to discussing background issues to the demonstrations to use in the onsite productions. Not every IMC has done the daily satellite shows, but most that happened in the US did.

M: so then in Quebec, what were your initial decisions about how to actually get the footage and get as much material as you could?

K: there were a couple of different things we tried. One of them was to make dubs of select tapes from people who brought their footage in off the street. So what we did was set up a couple of camcorders strung together to make dubs of tapes. We had a fair amount of blank tapes, not that many, but there are lots of issues on the ground with different kinds of formats, people having 8mm, high 8 digi 8, pal, ntsc, dv, dv cam, so it was complicated to try find ways to make dubs and also the environment was really really hectic that it was in so asking someone to sit down for three hours to make select tapes is kind of difficult for people. So probably the most effective thing we did in Quebec was have a sign in sheet where people left names and email addresses and ideas of footage that they had then after the fact contacting them and have them send footage to a central location.

After most videographers have returned home, work is begun, generally by the hosting IMC, to produce a full length film utilizing the vast archive of footage gathered on the spot. The segment model outlined above greatly enhances the ability to complete this project in a timely manner and decentralize the editing process. However, each project has proceeded in a unique fashion.

Y: I guess the interesting thing about it is that none of us, well I guess kali had met everyone, but other than that, no one had really met each other before. I had met sharpie very briefly in Quebec City. So most of the actual organizing took place not in person, it took place on the internet. It took place about 18 months almost after the events had actually taken place there so there was quite a bit to worry about in terms of the context of the film, time had past, a lot of major political events had taken place. So as far as the context of the whole thing we had a lot to worry about. So we organized primarily on the internet to set up the actual process and that process is extremely frustrating. I don't know if you have ever done something like that but to get six people, maybe seven sometimes, to get together on the internet all at the same time and then to chat in an IRC (internet relay chat) room to try to plan things out is pretty nightmarish. We tried a few other things, but that was the basis of the initial organizing before we actually got together. It's a very slow process because you know people are hampered by the fact that okay certain people cant type very quickly, this kind of thing, and then people get bored and then go off and surf what ever the hell they are surfing in their browsers while other people are trying to type. It is a pretty terrible process that way, it just takes a long time to get things done. Once we actually showed up things moved rather quickly though. As far as the process of it goes there were sort of two phases to it, or really three in a way. There was the initial organizing phase of the internet stuff, then there was the in person hard core editing phase and then there was a third phase where the people from Houston took the film back to Houston and then edited the final, you know the sort of final version that we have know, they are all sort of distinct phases I guess.

K: So the collaborating across borders- so a lot of that is on the internet, and that is really complicated and difficult because there is no face to face communication, there is not even telephone communication, you are dealing with a really ephemeral media. For some things it is great, like the translations I was talking about. But when we tried to have meetings or brainstorm or whatever, they were really difficult to manage, we did manage them, there was communication among the group all at one time, but they were difficult and for the reasons yossarian pointed out. People are more or less savvy with using their computer, people are more or less having access to time at their computer, people more or less have long attention spans to follow the discussion, cause they would go on for hours, three or four hours or something and you would just be like, jeez I cant just sit here for three or four hours to not do anything productive. In the end I think those things were productive, but it is hard to get a sense of them being productive at the time. Email lists, lately I have such a distain for the kind of organizing that is happening on email lists. I feel that people, they are not anonymous, but they have the kind of anonymity that allows them to be hurtful to other people or blow off requests for help or these kinds of things that I am not sure how well it is going to work. But if we are going to organize across physical, geographical, political, language, gender, all these borders, we need to find a way to make this kind of transnational organizing work. And the internet is really the tool we have. So developing more interactive kinds of structures on the internet, I don't know that IRC is the way to go, it is live which is good, you have a sense that everybody is there. We experimented with wikis, I think these might be better if people were really engaged in checking them everyday and giving feedback and stuff. I don't know about email lists, I don't know how good they are for in-depth kinds of communication.

M: yeah there is the other old problem that this is the tool you have to use. And IMCs help to serve to make that accessible to communities, but then to what degree does outreach get done within IMCs?

K: that is a great question. Not very much, I think the micro example of this film project is a good one. We are all about democracy, we are all about democratic media, making everybody the media and we did make a hundred people the media, but who didn't we make the media in this project is really the question to be asking I think. For our little local IMC here we talk about this stuff all the time, we don't do any outreach. We are looking towards a long-term goal of now having this new space and it's in a community we are not tapped into right now and trying to tap into that neighborhood and expand out. But it is really hard when there is so much work to be done by volunteers who are overworked to have the extra time, not only to find those other people but train them. That is why I said that time is really so much of an issue. It is so much easier to just do the work than it is to go out and find those communities that aren't doing the work and empower them, train them get them involved, you know. Not only to shoot and edit film, but to use IRC, to use computers, to think about film theory, to think about stories in their community, all these kinds of things are increadably complicated. But it does make it really exclusive. I think IMC is empowering a lot of people, it is empowering a lot of activists to become media makers. I don't think it is necessarily empowering a lot of communities who are underrepresented to make their own media, but it is empowering a lot of activists to make media.

Some important issues of production are the amount of time a group takes to get work done on the long project, how editing teams can work without stepping on the toes of videographers, finding ways to make editing descions as a collective, raising and then repaying the seed money for post production and duplication and distributing the finished product.

M: what was the actual practical process for making decisions about what portions of tape you would use, what areas would you focus on?

K: there certainly could and should be ways to do this that are sort of formal. But it wasn't really formal at all. Basically in sort of a really decentralized way with everybody doing this- you review tape, you make a log of what you think is the best material on the tape and then you capture that. So on all these hard drives we had captured what we thought were the best things. And then one or two people would get together to work on a segment, then they would develop the segment from the available materials with someone saying oh I saw something on such and such tape about that. I mean we tried to set up elaborate ways of where the tapes were located, how you would know what was on it without having watched it because there was no way all of us could have watched every tape. But none of those were terribly successful, it was much more very ad hoc like, "oh I saw somebody on such and such tape talking about a related thing to what you are working on". But so somebody would pick a theme, for example zen and I picked this theme where we wanted to get short snippets of people on the street saying why they were there and edit this into kind of a montage of quick cuts, why I am here, what I think is wrong with the FTAA. So people would say, "oh I know so and so says something related to that on this tape." So we would edit our segment or whoever would edit their segment and then gather everyone around to look at it and get feedback on it and incorporate that feedback do another draft, another draft, another draft. Consensus is really difficult because one person saying I really don't approve of this can take it out of the project all together. There was a piece I worked on for along time on the IMC itself and this kind of media project that other people really didn't like. I spent tons of time working on it and I think it is really great but other people thought it didn't make sense in the film, wasn't relevant to the FTAA and so its not in there at all and there is nothing really I can do to sort of push my own agenda so there is definatly this letting go of the film maker's ego, your own sort of vision of the project for the collective vision. And that is why I think it is important that the process is just as important as the product. Because you know we are all trying to learn to work together to do these things and its difficult but I think in the larger scheme of changing the world that process is almost more important.

It is important to note that the production of all of these functions is accomplished with basically no budget through the process of decentralization. The resources and materials as well as staff time is, for the most part, gathered through the in-kind donations of individual media activists. In general, IMC activists pay their own transportation expenses, bring their own equipment, buy their own tape stock and pay the shipping expenses to get materials to the IMC editing team as well as providing computers and space for the projects. Running on a minimal budget has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that the films and shows get produced without the time and energy drain on creativity known as "searching for funding". Some disadvantages are the constant need for more and better facilities and equipment and relying completely on a volunteer workforce. It is, in part, discriminatory because only those with the time and means are able to participate in the project.

M: since it has been a labor of love, how much money would you estimate has gone into the project.

K: that is so hard to know because it is so decentralized. Lets just talk about the people in Quebec city because that is where I can come from. I'll just talk about my personal stuff and you can multiply this by the number of people involved. I bought my own plane ticket up to Quebec city, I already had my own camera, and I brought tape stock and I was provided lodging and stuff up there, but you know food and whatever. And other people provided computers and space for us to have an IMC in Quebec, so right there there is a bunch of people donating money. Every videographer that was there, paid their own ticket, brought their own gear, bought their own tape. So what I spent a hundred dollars on tape, a couple of hundred dollars on airfare, so there is a few hundred dollars. But then the editing collectives, I'll just talk about our editing collective, but the same things happened with the others. You put tons of hours into organizing before you go in terms of how you want the film to look. So there is the labor time that you could be compensated for there. Then there was the movement of tapes, so each person that sent in a tape to the project paid their own postage. So like, I paid fedex to send my tape, and other people did the same. You need money to buy a blank tape to send it in. when we actually got the tapes, it was a ridiculous process of somebody picking a box up in DC and bringing the box back from some other demonstration. Its complicated, but they were driven from Boston to DC and then from DC down to Houston and from Houston I packed them up and took them on a plane to Oregon when we went there. So I bought my own ticket to Oregon, you lose work time, you're there for a couple weeks and working while you are there, and then coming back here we bought hard drives, we bought cases for hard drives, we have access to a computer we can use. Since we finished it, I have made close to a hundred copies that I have shipped out. I am sure I have spent hundreds of dollars on tape and postage. Sometimes somebody sends a check back, but I have only gotten one thirty dollar check back out of all those tapes I have sent out. We did a screening so there is photocopies, and we paid some gas money for people to come speak at the screening so there is that. (note: funds that were gathered at the screening were used to pay off some of the expense of duplication and shipping) Thousands of dollars. But none of it came from any centralized source, there is no fund for money for this project, it is all coming from individuals and when we do ever do the 1000 tape or 1500 tape pressing of it, what we have agreed to do is that each of us in the editing collective pitch in 250 dollars and hopefully at some point that comes back to you but who knows if that ever comes back. And that is another border problem too, because it is a financial border. It really makes it so that only people who can afford time off, plane tickets, gear, tape, organizing time, skills, technology can ever be involved in these kinds of projects. So far we have identified gender borders, financial borders, language borders, these are all really problematic if we are trying to have a really broad base collective.

Distribution of the finished full-length feature is again accomplished through decentralized means. Collectivization of distribution severs any dependence on commercial distributors. Distribution is often the major stumbling block for independent video producers. For the film, Praha 2000: IMF And World Bank Under Siege 500 copies were printed. They were shipped in small amounts to local IMCs for screenings, key individuals, producers and cooperating media organizations. These tapes are then sold individually by people who received them. Local IMCs screen of the film and sell copies at it the event. The funds raised by these sales directly support the media makers and the local group who sells the tape. This video is also distributed through the IMC video website and the FreeSpeech TV website.

T: How many copies did you guys get printed?

E: 500

T: How many did you distribute?

E: I think I distributed at least 450, that are out there. Whether or not they have been sold, or given away or whatever. And that was part in compensation for people like A and A so they could autonomously do it through Free Speech, and Free Speech has this huge account of, not huge, but they've probably sold 50-60, hundred tapes or something. And so that money is there, and if that goes to pay off the production on this run, that's fine, and if it goes to fund the next project that's fine.

T: I know for us (houston imc), it was a fundraiser for us, as well as trying to pay off some of the production cost…

E: And your model was the perfect model…

T: If that happened across…

E: And now it can with the IMC's, you know back then we didn't take it to that level and really send each IMC so many tapes, although that would be the model to follow and certainly to just get them out there and to hope that…

T: Because you know there's like 75 or 80 IMC's or something, if 30 of them, well if 50 sold 10 you guys would get $5,000, and they'd get $5,000.

E: Right, ultimately you can make it break even, and you can ultimately make it, without being a horrible capitalist, make it pay for the next project. And that's hopefully what this will do, with the quebec idea, that resources could be channeled through the sales of that tape into this tape, and its an autonomous project but it received part of its inspiration from this other project.

A model for the Collective Mode of Reception of IMC videos are screenings that are sponsored by local IMCs. For example, the Houston IMC has a monthly video screening. At these screenings, a socially conscious, usually documentary style; often multi-authored video on a series of different topics is featured. There is always a panel/audience discussion. These screenings have been successful for the Houston IMC in terms of community outreach, publicity, non-web distribution of information, showing new, hard to find works by small collectives and fundraising for the local group. The mode of reception that is experienced at these screenings is much more active than sitting through a film at the local corporate multiplex. the audience is encouraged to actively engage the material, to enter into discussion about it, to make and screen new work.

The availability for strong networks of distribution and reception via these screenings, internet or the radio is the greatest strength of the indymedia network. Incoming media activists know that if they produce something it will get airtime. It goes directly counter to the popular misconceptions that only a select group of professionalized journalists get access to the media, or that filmmakers or authors that get distributed are famous and rich.

M: so that you can use that as a way to get people to make media without having to have a whole lot of knowledge about super hyper technical stuff and things like that.

K: right, yeah distribution is the strongest point of indymedia. That is the distribution network we are using for the film. It is going to IMCs in all these different places, San Francisco IMC, DC IMC, Alberta IMC, those IMCs request a tape from us we send it to them, it will be distributed through the IMC video page. This is the network of people that we are plugging into to distribute the film. But also IMC has been building a strong distribution network for the videos but through the websites as well and one of the great things about that is that I think it does inspire people to participate because it is not like I am making my own film that no one will ever see, I am making a film that hundreds of people, thousands of people will see. I already know thousands of people have seen it and I am not even done with it right so when you get involved with an IMC you know people will see your work, or hear it or view it or whatever, and I think that is really the strongest thing IMC has going for itself. Because it cuts our need to get plugged into commercial distribution networks which is really the hardest thing for independent filmmakers. The hardest thing for independent film makers isn't getting the subject, or getting the tape, or getting it edited, it is getting it distributed. And getting it distributed in a way that is accessible for non-profits to use it. You could get it distributed through first run films or women make movies or something where a non profit is going to have to pay 300 dollars to rent your tape for one night right and that is just not accessible. We need to provide films for ten dollars or for free or something to groups with no money to get the tape to show it their communities and I think we have been really successful at going around commercial distribution networks.

This example of IMC collective authorship is working on several levels. First, it is harmonious with the goals of the broader social movement. Second, it deals with the issue of authenticity in a palpable way, as multiple insiders tell their own stories. Third, it gives access to the media to a broad group of producers. On these levels, as well as on the technical and organizational levels people actively create social structures that are informed by a desire for collective democracy in a global system.

As people become concerned by their disenfranchisement in representing and being represented within an ultra-concentrated media scape, many turn to alternate media sources for information. Some sources are media collectives such as the IMC, which operate using direct participation. When people encounter these structures that encourage them to become involved in the production, distribution and reception of media representation something very powerful can occur. Engagement with collective modes of production has the potential to break down producer/consumer boundaries, demystify the media making process, encourage people to be critical viewers, reduce alienation through working with others, challenge the notion of individual genius, encourage labor for something other than monetary gain, build networks that cross cut other social categories and challenge corporate/studio systems of domination in the global mediascape.
I'll end with a quote from jay about the IMC:

It blurs the line between producer and consumer, it blurs the line between participant and observer, it blurs the line between actor and audience. It really makes everyone part of the experience. It's really powerful when people realize their part of the show. And its more powerful if they realize that they have to rise to the occasion or else the shows not going to be as good and people when given responsibility to participate, are almost always able to do it. And surprisingly so because there's the image out there that people are drones and they only do what they're told, and they can only conceive of what they're told. But underneath all of that gray automation that is supposed to make us better, everyone has a spirit, and when you delve into it, when you get past that level, that shell of modern life, into, inside of people, wonderful things come out.

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