WEBWORDS
Before & After the UGC Era
Once there was a time when the Web and Social Media system was a source of hope&freedom: it seems now light years away from the "abyss" now is told to be by Geert Lovink. The passage from Web 1.0, so smiliar to the IRL world, in which the access to sites and webpages was a question to be dealt with in material life, to the horizon of the upcoming Web 2.0 and its User Generated contents, where the webspace has gradually become accessible but at the cost of being part of a hidden, omnipresent commercial world Oh, not so long ago: let's say... ten years? Here are some samples of that wind of freedom. Some are still there, lonely floating in the Infosphere in the times of Influencers & Trend Settlers. Some other are not, proving that also in the Virtual Relam things are perishable and touched by the wings of the oblivion. And some are no longer there by my decision: I quit Facebook in 2012, after years I used it as my own open Blog for years, but I gave up defeated by its annoying progressive commodification.
Facebook: one year of blogging - A journal in public
Let's start with a classic. Despite of the memory of facebook surviving only and if you stay connected with your profile, while the ancient posts fade away in the big flow of days to come not in a dissimilar what to what happens with our memory in pur minds, before leaving the Social Media I decide not to dumpster dive it all, and to save the posts, their media attachments' names and some of the comments on the thread. What comes out it's a kind of blogging style (sometimes I published even trhice a day) full of puns, references to breaking news, and special dedications to poets, painters writers and thinkers. I think it is a record of an age already past.
Here you find one year of facebook (alas, in italian!), a "Journal in public".
Once there were free places where to publish counter-trend opinions, different point of views from the swarming tide of Consent. It was 2003 when I was part of the Selection Committee in Venice FIlm Festival. Me and Christian Raimo found ourselves to be the only two person disagreeing with the general Hosannah sang by critics, initiated and insider on Marco Bellocchio's movie "Buongiorno, notte" (Good morning, night) for the author's vision on the so-called "Years of Lead", the struggle between the ultra-left groups and the Italian State. Then Christian had the idea to start a BLog, "Nuovo Cinema Paraculo" (a paraphrase for Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso", meaning New Smart-Ass Cinema), where to point the finger against the general opinion on some sanctified filmmakers. We were hosted by Minimum Fax Press website in the "Minima&Moralia" Blog, but also by another space of freedom: "Nazione Indiana" (Indian Nation), a free blog for writers still existing, where many of the Italian writers of my generation had a safe-zone to express their thoughts. Here you can find my first intervention where I debunked the general praise on Tarantino's movies, and "Kill Bill" in particular. It is in written in Italian, but thought in global.
