Tjebbe van Tijen on Sat, 2 Jan 2010 04:28:51 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> WITPLan blog for practical utopists |
Launched on new years day WITPLan blog for practical utopists A piece of paper and a pen, an idea, several people around, ?what if we could ??, discussions, jokes, scribbling, more words, bits of sentences, someone starts to formulate, ?yes! write that down?, scratched through sentences, new lines, ?can you read it now, aloud??? That?s how a WITPLAN (white plan) was born almost half a century ago. Next thing was to get a typewriter and to hammer the words in the waxed surface of a ?paper stencil? or use a pen or brush with a special etching ink to make a kind of paper printing plate. All this was two steps away from hitting the world with your plan. First the duplicating machine to churn out hundred or more leaflets. Next to go out in the streets and distribute the leaflets at a proper moment, which would be often a ceremonial gathering in the form of a street happening, whereby one had to make sure that some sympathizing journalists in the nearby cafe would get their personal copy, to increase the chances for posterity. Communication point for launching WITPLANs the Lieverdje (little rascal) statue at the Spui square in Amsterdam and one of the Provo gathering and printing places the cellar of the gallery De Witte Neger (the white negro) at the Korte Prinsengracht (photographs Ron Kroon and Cor Jaring). The leaflet shown is the White Bicycle Plan. Click picture for full size view. This new weblog WITPLAN offers another kind of meeting point for ?white plans? in the 21st. century. White plans in which means and ends are of the same order: social use of the liberating potentials of technology combined with the joy of sharing. This blog is not longing for the past but has a nostalgia for utopia, projecting the liberating spirits from the past upon the future. Tjebbe van Tijen Imaginary Museum Projects Dramatizing Historical Information http://imaginarymuseum.org web-blog: The Limping Messenger http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/ # 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: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org