Community service

The National Alliance of Media Arts and agriculture (NAMAC) gathers every two years to share, assess and support the perplexing field of media arts. This biennial meeting is a cherished incident despite the organization's long do one's best to define its identity. With a clear desire to support the use of media technologies for creative, at liberty expression, the NAMAC membership has wrestl with the character of the media arts in social and community toils This internal battle has repeatedly played itself out along racial/ethnic lines creating an many times tense undercurrent that runs end NAMAC conferences.

With the inclusion of the National Coalition of Multicultural Media Artists (NCMMA) as co-sponsor of the 1996 talk "Rewiring Our Networks: Cultural Equity for the 21st Century" tensions above conflicting agendas were noticeably subdu and attendance noticeably diverse, a fact mentioned by dint of numerous participants. Although a number of NCMMA's members are also members of NAMAC, the NCMMA has labored lengthy to bring the concerns of communities of color to the larger NAMAC membership. NCMMA has a history of campaigning for a more active social mission for NAMAC and their co-sponsorship of the 1996 conversation was evidence of this. Designed to be opposite to issues of social, economic and cultural equity, and the use of media within these strives the conference agenda actively included social organizations similar as the Women's Economic Agenda cast the City of Oakland Office of Economic unravelling and Employment, and the California Foundation upon the Environment and Economy. The participation of these organizations helped to define a series of dialogues among talk attendees that focused on the collaboration and partnership of media arts organizations with broader-based community assemblages and concerns.

The conference lay opened with a keynote address by means of Jeremy Rifkin, economist and author of The extreme point of Work (1995), and a roundtable discussion. Joined by dint of screenwriter, poet and novelist Thulani Davis and Native American environmental and community activist Gail Small, Rifkin charged conferee with the mission to assess changing work environments and the implementation of technology within these environments. Envisioning a possible coming time in which cultural and community workers would posses the prized skills for a revived civic-sector economy, Rifkin's ideas place the stage for subsequent conversation sessions.

Plenary and breakout sessions focused upon issues of culture as a major catalyst for social change, sharing resources as a necessary survival tactic against a decreasing funding base, forging alliances that strengthen the field and finding strategies that create a foundation for continued existence. Unlike NAMAC's 1994 talk in Chicago, where fear and uncertainty were the defining characteristics (due in large part to drastic NEA funding cuts) the Berkeley discourse agenda clearly exhibited a commitment to speculative examination of the media arts and the field's ability to form strategic alliances and partnerships with community-based organizations. While many NAMAC member organizations still find themselves at the limit of their financial, material and personnel resources, the loam is stabilizing and creative solutions have begun to be implemented.

Corporate strategies like as downsizing, reorganization and accute attention to the bottom line are noticeable additions to media arts survival kits. Forming collaborations that share physical resources (like that of the FAF/NAATA/Cine Accion/Frameline media building in San Francisco) give media arts organizations a more powerful social and economic base. Building active networks with organizations that can advocate for the field upon a policy level are nevertheless another vital tool.

Increasing emphasis upon social action and dramatic changes in communication technologies have also forced many in the media arts to rethink their traditional constituencies. by what mode do we incorporate youth, low-income populations, gymnasiums and those not traditionally touched with the media arts into the field? Ethel Long-Scott executive director of the Women's Economic Agenda throw in Oakland, urged media artists to make it their cause to compute the stories of those clos on the outside or misrepresented in the mainstream media. She challenged NAMAC and its membership to reach on the outside and tell how communities are struggling, uniting and succeeding. Andrew Blau of the Benton Foundation, too, stated that we must envision our hold future and act on it before it is defined for us.

Clearly, there is plenteous work to be done. With an increasing focus and commitment to community-building, the character of the arts is shifting. The traditional artist as an individual creator is being redefined as cultural articulator, social activist and community developer However, it is interesting to note that the neighborhood of artists and their works at the NAMAC gathering appeared almost an afterthought. Few attended the planned evening screenings (although it could be that the closed-circuit narrowcast of these works kept nation in their hotel rooms) and the single panel devoted to media artists have the appearanceed a sidebar to the other community-minded sessions. still this underplaying of artists may be more a be the effect of NAMAC's functioning as a national organization for media arts organizations, and not in like manner much for media arts individuals.