While there are various challenges, adventures, highs and lows in living a media and arts collective,
we would like to have a stable set of values which we adhere to, a set of values which have come to us from experience, from advice, well wishers, role models, friends, trustees and strangers
In no certain order, then, some of our values are:
Socially sustainable: We have been a diverse group, responsive to the times, and flexible to diverse areas of work. However, while it has been worth every minute of it, this attitude brings out very peculiar challenges, such as follow up, depth of field, and most of all, social sustainability. So we like to choose work carefully and if and when we do choose to engage, then we are at it for a long time. Be it campaigns, projects, institutional or individual relationships, at the heart of it all, we believe it is this seeking of social sustainability which has and will keep us going in our toughest times.
Interdisciplinary: While very much an arts and media collective, we are very aware that these two are also, to some extent, forms – loose, malleable and sometimes capable of disappearing into abstraction. However, these very challenges are also sometimes opportunities, in the sense that they give us a wide berth of working with many kinds of people, places and practices across various disciplines. Often the experience has given us a lateral perspective, a sudden insight into things which people within disciplines may not always see from the inside. It places us at the cross-roads of a civil society world, where digitized platforms are blurring the lines at a rapid pace.
Collaborative: A young group, both in years, and in spirit, we find it useful to work collaboratively. Learning from the miracles of projects like Wikipedia, FOSS etc, we think it is possible to do lots more collaboratively, than individually. There are many more groups in the city, older, experienced and much the wiser, and perhaps it is because we are so young, that many of them have no problem in collaborating with us. We would like to keep some of this young-ness for we would like to keep collaborating. It sure beats competing.
Openness: Today, we think there is no longer a tragedy of the commons. There is a certain liberation in letting go of authorship. We think it reduces the burden on what we create, and lets it travel further, and wider. That’s the way it should be with any cultural entities and as a media and arts group, we would like our entire body of work to be placed fair and square in the public domain. At another level, we also would like to promote openness at the base layer, i.e. at the hardware and software of media practice, as much as possible. Open standards and open formats mean wider accessibility and free information. Free beer and Freedom!