User:Eleanorg/annotation/IMC London signing off

IMC London (2012) Time to move on: IMC London signing off [online]. Accessed 13 October 2012 at http://london.indymedia.org/articles/13128

This short article was posted by the London Indymedia collective (IMC London) on their website on 13 October 2012. It announces the upcoming closure of IMC London and the archiving of its online content, as well as explaining the main reasons for the closure and outlining tasks for the future.

While celebrating what the collective has achieved over the last decade, the authors state clearly that "this Indymedia project is for many reasons no longer the one which we think is tactically useful to put our energy into." This is partly due to the fact that "in many ways Indymedia won, because it pioneerd approaches which have now become mainstream... Self publishing is the norm." When it begun at the turn of the century, Indymedia's "stated purpose was to erode the dividing line between reporter and participant, between active producers and passive audiences...". With the "inexorable rise of corporate blogging tools" and other 2.0 networks, "[t]he main raison d'etre for Indymedia's existence is no longer there".

"But be careful what you wish for", the authors continue. These 2.0 platforms do not share Indymedia's values of "allow[ing] users to publish anonymously and without a logon". Along with "huge opportunities", these services create "[c]orporate commodification of the self".

The article goes on to reflect on the contrast between these new platforms and the values of Indymedia, by comparing their differing treatment of this 'self'. While "Indymedia gave voice to a collective 'we'", social media favours a "'me, me, me' attitude". They summarise: "Digital communication today seems to be made up of a collective/singular active subject that approaches the 'we' form a clear 'I' identity."

However, with a nod to Hardt & Negri they stress that "this subject is not per se individualistic and de-politicised. We can also regard it as an expression of the multitude, which organises not through unity, but through singularities that act together." (They mention that in Chiapas there is actually a specific pronoun for "this I/us type of subject".)

How exactly this multitude co-ordinates, then, seems to be top of the agenda today. "We in London see the challenges of today more in terms of collectivizing the individual outputs, of curating from within the sea of content, of fostering true collaboration and solidarity that survives longer than the latest surge in popularity or fashion". They conclude that collective memebers will be "moving on to more exciting projects that we feel are needed", without specifying yet what these projects might look like.