The ad pays attention to €urovisions and other ECF activities, on the Day of Europe (9 May) and in the weeks leading to the European Parliament Elections. Tickets for €urovisions in Eye (20 May) here, by the way 😉

As with real elections, we’re inviting the audience to cast their votes for their choice of videos – and for the bright ideas and thought-provoking creativity of the media makers. Between April 14 and 27, a Selection Committee composed of the representatives of the Doc Next Network partner organizations will evaluate all entries and pick the Finalists. Online audiences can vote for their favourite videos during the same period: The 5 videos that receive the most votes by the end of this period will each win a wild card, which means they will be included among the Finalists.

Selection
A professional jury (panel of judges) will then view the Finalist videos and select 5 Winners, each receiving an award of €2,500, and 5 Special Mentions, each receiving an award of €1,000. The total awards for the challenge are €17,500.

The jury
The jury is comprised of members representing different areas of expertise related to the call: Artur Liebhart(Festival Director of Planete+ Doc Film Festival in Poland) and İmre Azem (director of Ecumenopolis: City Without Limits from Turkey) are to be included among the jury.

Deadline
The voting will close on April 27 at midnight CET. All Finalists, including the audience favourites, will be notified and announced by April 30. The winners will be publicly announced during the Awards Ceremony and Screening to be held in May at the Planete+ Doc Film Festival in Warsaw, Poland.

Go to the voting guidelines.

About

Radical Democracy 2014: European Video Challenge promotes the creation of an open and inclusive European society. Against the background of the 2014 European Parliament Elections, it is an open call to media makers, social activists and critical thinkers to submit audiovisual media works about the Europe they would like to live in. An invitation to think about the role they play in decision-making processes and to challenge prevailing notions of democracy, governance and participation.

The aim of the challenge is to collect, share and discuss genuine views on open society values and democratic representation – just like the forum in our design. European audiences will be invited to cast their votes and to share their opinion, contributing to the creation of new narratives for Europe. Offline, Radical Democracy will be present at various festivals and platforms where selected media works will be screened. All selected videos will become part of the Doc Next Online Media Collection. The winners of the video challenge will be announced and screened at Planete+ Doc Film Festival in Warsaw, Poland – in the heart of Europe.

European Alternatives and Cafebabel are communications partners of the project.

For more information about the project please contact us at challenge@docnextnetwork.org.

A source code is the combination of text which enables a computer to execute a software item. Sharing the source code is the basis of free software. The Audiovisual Source Code sets out from the point of applying this idea to culture, to realize that every cultural issue is produced through different voices in relation to the context where it’s produced. Creativity is often represented as witchcraft in the Western World; The Audiovisual Source Code tries to erase this idea of the artist as an inventor and the Copyright laws that are supported by this idea, as well as the business models produced by the cultural industries. This format lets us rethink culture as an infinite palimpsest, art as a game between different people from different eras, remixing as a cultural system where these processes take place.

The Audiovisual Source Code as a space to play and experiment, as a hybrid frame between a lecture and a screening, and many more things.

Autonomous Imageries

Mamadou Kheraba Drame is a Barcelona-based Senegalese linguist, and a prominent figure in Catalonia’s pan-Africanist movement. He is the president of the Barcelona Pan-Africanist Association and was the spokesperson for the Cal Áfricacommunity that grew out of the occupation of an abandoned factory in Barcelona’s Poblenou area. He is the manager of the integral cooperative Cal Africa Moving, founder of the Lukum Taka arts association, and member of the Black Parliament of theCongress of Deputies.

Carlos Delclós is a sociologist and lecturer at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra as well as an active participant in the 15-M Movement in Barcelona. His work focuses on migration, health inequalities, urban dislocations, urban conflict, economic organization in the home and in the workplace, and fertility. He is an editor at ROARMAG , a contributor to Open Democracy, and his work has appeared in media outlets such as Democracy Now!,Adbusters, ElDiario.es, Periódico Diagonal, Cadena SER amongst others. The child of Spanish immigrants, he is a dual U.S.-Spanish citizen. Aside from his work as an activist, researcher and teacher, Carlos is deeply interested in music, and has guest-hosted specials for DJ Rupture’s Mudd Up! radio program on New York’s WFMU andAndy G’s Music Beyond Borders on Houston’s KPFT.

The Audiovisual Source Code format is distributed through a Creative Commons BY-SA license and appears from the core of EMBED integrated audiovisual, a community that reflects on the integrated audiovisual.

FEDERICO MARTINEZ from the State of Puebla works as a taxi driver in New York. He sends home 250 dollars a week.

After September 11, the notion of the “hero” began to rear its head in the public consciousness more and more frequently. The notion served a necessity in a time of national and global crisis to acknowledge those who showed extraordinary courage or determination in the face of danger, sometimes even sacrificing their lives in an attempt to save others. However, in the whirlwind of journalism surrounding these deservedly front-page disasters and emergencies, it is easy to take for granted the heroes who sacrifice immeasurable life and labor in their day to day lives for the good of others, but do so in a somewhat less spectacular setting.

MINERVA VALENCIA from Puebla works as a nanny in New York. She sends home 400 dollars a week.

The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is a perfect example of the hero who has gone unnoticed. It is common for a Mexican worker in New York to work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions for very low wages which are saved at great cost and sacrifice and sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive.

The Mexican economy has quietly become dependent on the money sent from workers in the US. Conversely, the US economy has quietly become dependent on the labor of Mexican immigrants. Along with the depth of their sacrifice, it is the quietness of this dependence which makes Mexican immigrant workers a subject of interest.

ALVARO CRUZ from the State of Mexico works as a cook and runs with Los Compadres team. He sends home 300 dollars a month.

The principal objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand extreme conditions of labor in order to help their families and communities survive and prosper.

This project consists of 20 color photographs of Mexican immigrants dressed in the costumes of popular American and Mexican superheroes. Each photo pictures the worker/superhero in their work environment, and is accompanied by a short text including the worker’s name, their hometown in Mexico, the number of years they have been working in New York, and the amount of money they send to Mexico each week.

BERNABE MENDEZ from the State of Guerrero works as a professional window cleaner in New York. He sends home 500 dollars a month

Dulce Pinzón was born in Mexico City in 1974. She studied Mass Media Communications at the Universidad de Las Americas in Puebla Mexico and Photography at Indiana University in Pennsylvania. In 1995 she moved to New York where she studied at The International Center of Photography.

At the 16th ZEMOS Festival Remapping Europe, we use Dulce’s photo’s in our campaign.

Watch all Dulce’s Superheroes here.

LUIS HERNANDEZ from the State of Veracruz works in demolition in New York. He sends home 200 dollars a week.

Juan Luis Sánchez is a journalist. His is co-founder and deputy director of eldiario.es. He was also co-founder of Periodismo Humano. He has worked as a multimedia reporter in Morocco, Kosovo, the Western Sahara, Turkey and India. His coverage of the emergence of the 15-M movement in Spain was widely published and referenced in Spanish and international media. He is author of the book Las 10 Mareas del Cambia (10 tides of Change) about new discourses of civil society.

A motto of the second feminist movement was: the Domestic = Political.
This statement came from the notion that everything that is political is important.
Thus, by saying the domestic is political, we say that what happens in the house is also important. Just as important as activities that take place in the public discourse.

By stating that the domestic is important, the feminist movement also meant to remove the private from its invisible sphere of the home, where violence and abuse could be hidden.

What has happened to these ideas in our time? Is the domestic still gendered?
Important things have changed: Nowadays, we say that domestic work is also work, like any other work. We say: domestic work is important; it’s the caring economy. We say: What happens in our homes should not be hidden.

However, the domestic is not covered in (mainstream) media.

Also, with the trend of migrant women working as domestic workers in the houses of materially rich people, what happens in the home is hidden again. Leading to the exploitation of labor, physical violence and sexual abuse of migrant women. This is also not covered in the media.

That is why this morning a group of 50 media-makers, thinkers, artists and activist are creating a fresh front page of a financial newspaper, subverting the usual logic, language and contents. Lena Rogowska, Chairwoman of the Polish Cultural Practitioners’ Association, presented the findings and conclusions of the morning sessions are presented to the public audience.

Anna Clemente (from Collective Architectures) are plotting the findings of the sessions in a graph or diagram.

Read more about the HOME Encounter here.