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photo credit: Ian Davis, from Oakland Fence Project

From the Executive Director

I have a new mantra this year. Thanks to Toni Morrison in her recent piece in The Nation called “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear”:

“In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.”

At NAMAC, we gather artists and their colleagues and partners and communities with intention—so we do not remain silent. In the cold and often unbearable state of the world, we heed Ms. Morrison’s words:

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.”

This year, NAMAC will be hosting numerous ways to come together in community, to find new ways of working, share challenges, excavate solutions, make and share stories and images that move the world, create abundance and equity for artists, hold the space for creative leaders and practitioners everywhere to find their light, their voice and their power.  This is what we are up to:

• • March 21st/22nd in Washington, DC, in collaboration with the Environmental Film Festival at our Nation’s Capitol
• • April 10th in Oxford at the Skoll World Forum, in collaboration with the Sundance Institute and Skoll Foundation’s Stories of Change Program
• • June 8th in Oakland, as part of pre-conference events at NAMAC’s ALLIANCE 2016 Conference

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Member News and Notes

Histories of Sexuality on Video Data Bank’s VDB TV
Last month, Video Data Bank released new collections of archival video on VDB TV, its digital distribution project offering free, online streaming access to curated programs of video and media art. Collectively titled Histories of Sexuality, the two programs (Parts I and II) explores two past programs from the New Museum that focused on sexuality and gender in then-recent video works.

Southern Documentary Fund seeks new leadership
The Durham, North Carolina-based Southern Documentary Fund, which cultivates documentary work made in or about the American South, seeks a new Executive Director to begin no later than May 1st—applications are being accepted via Submittable until February 1st.

Venice Arts wraps youth-made web series Pushing Buttons
In the fall, youth filmmakers at Venice Arts debuted their own web series Pushing Buttons, about a young music producer balancing her burgeoning career and the needs of her family. Just last month, the final episode of the eight-episode series debuted on YouTube—watch all eight episodes here!

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Media Policy Watch

By Rose Kaplan

Last month, Media Policy Watch opened with info from the then-ongoing Philly-Comcast franchise renewal talks. Free Press’s Dana Floberg has an excellent summary of how the city fared—briefly, very well (although funding was lacking for public access and community media organizations), in an agreement that could serve as a model for other cities looking to hold cable providers accountable for corporate malfeasance.

From Net Neutrality to media mergers, state surveillance, and new media policy laws across the nation and the world, 2015 fundamentally reshaped the media policy landscape. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a fantastic series of recaps of some of last year’s most important stories—click through for more stories on student privacy, patent reform, cryptography and encryption, or check out the entire series of posts here.

T-Mobile has been in the news lately for deceptive marketing, particularly around its new Binge On initiative, which claims to offer customers free streaming video from many popular video services. As EFF’s Jeremy Gillula explains, however, with Binge On, T-Mobile has also begun throttling all its video streams—a definite violation of the FCC’s new Net Neutrality and Open Internet rules. Along similar lines, labor federation Change to Win has launched Calling Out T-Mobile, a new website detailing other deceptive and false T-Mobile advertising, particularly around its no-contract claims.

To end on a more fun note—the EFF has released Pwning Tomorrow, a free anthology of short speculative fiction that delves into the media policy issues of today and also tomorrow. Authors are scifi newcomers and veterans alike, including David Brin, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Rudy Rucker, and Bruce Sterling.