Manu Luksch on Sat, 8 Jan 2000 18:23:23 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> VIRTUAL BORDERS |
VIRTUAL BORDERS Hybrid film - internet project with and about the Akha people http://www.ambientTV.net/akha by Manu Luksch Mostly, documentary filmmakers attempt to minimise the influence of their presence. This project is driven by the idea that the dynamics of media are not only able to capture a story but also create a situation from which the people to be documented will continue to profit: in VIRTUAL BORDERS, the documentary introduced the internet as an effective solution to provide an affordable audio link for a people divided by international borders, as well as to make an archive of their traditional knowledge and oral history available in an audio online database. The creation of the internet link at this meeting also allowed the Akha to explore the appropriateness of this technology, as an affordable and legal alternative to the problems they face in relying on their oral culture in the face of an ever more embracing global culture. This film serves as documentary, giving facts and communicating impressions and hopefully eliciting a reaction from the audience. However the starting point of this film is the establishment of 'online facilities' as a means to communicate for the Akha people. A film always has an end while reality continues. Here the end leads to the 'online interface', and the audience will be able to influence how the story continues by using the Internet. =============================================== The Akha people, have a population of 3 million spread across the borders of five national territories: China PDR, Laos PDR, Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma (Myanmar). At the beginning of the year 2000 a meeting in Jinghong, Yunnan, China brought them together. The Akha identify as one people through their ‘tribal’ history, rather than the ‘modern’ world history which created the nation states they live in. The most important tool for shared experience was the traditional knowledge transmitted orally to the successive generations. More recently, this tradition has found support through the radio programmes transmitted by the Akha radio station in Thailand and China. Battery powered transistor radios provide the only access to media for many of the Akha villages in the remote mountain areas. The International Conference on Hani and Akha Culture was hosted by the People’s Government of the Xishuangbanna Dai Prefecture, and the official focus lied in cultural and economic issues. The representatives of the Akha leadership used the occasion as well to compare their conditions within the different national contexts. They considered the governmental policies that influence their daily lives; issues such as citizen rights, education and infrastructure, land rights, and especially the introduction of a unified script. The main narrative followes the highly recognized Akha personality, Abaw Buseu, on his way from his village in Thailand to the conference in Yunnan. The documentary film structure recognizes the emerging ‘media loop’: TV, radio, and the internet. We established an internet link from the meeting in China to the radio station in Thailand, which allowed to transmit the live discussions to the villages in the mountains within the allotted 2 hour Akha programme. Abaw Buseu’s wife and villagers are filmed listening to the programme, which again, is integrated in the documentary. coming soon: http://www.hani-akha.org # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net