Friday, June 3, 2011

[Yasmin_discussions] Art and Science Agency and Their Constitutions

Guillermo

thanks for your report from Valencia and the comment that although
there seem to be artists involved in the community meetings, you
have not seen any activity from scientists


I checked out the Precarios site you mentioned

http://precarios.org/tiki-index.php?page=portada

and didnt see any discussions about the current political discussions
in spain

i wonder if this is the case in egypt and tunisia

maybe that there is a basic asymmetry between artists agency
and scientists agency in the current events in the middle east
and north africa

as you point out most scientists are deeply embedded in government
or industry and perhaps have a deeper connection to the status quo

roger


There are many artist working in the organization and the developing
commisions of the spanish assemblies in all cities squares.

There are activities with poetry and phonetic poetry, for example. There are
individual works of artist that present in their work some critical aspect,
or thinking in a social critical way.

However, i can not fin any direct scientific involvement. I know that
there are many scientists in the popular assemblies, but i can not find any
scientist helping to this movement through his work.

This point is interesting, because i don´t think that there is any realistic
cause for this. The artists who helps in the assemblies are people who
export to their work any critical thinking. Lot of scientists have social
critical thinking but there is not easy to find any activity of this kind
developed at any work place (for example, we don not have any regular
meeting for our science social producing results. At least not for the
younger and without any science policies responsablilities). I try to
express that social critical thinking is an individual activity for
scientist which is not easyly view as conected to our work, but of course it
is. We are dealing with technology, industry, so, we are part of the
"product" developing and comercialization, so science has tremendous impact
in society and needs lot of social critical thinking. Indeed, we have
tremendous social problems, as for example the percentual annual state
butget dedicated to science, the numbers of grants and contracts, ... , and
some time appears movements for the scientis rights (here at spain we have a
scientists plataform called "Precarios", or "Joves Investigadors", for
example (it works as a king of syndicate, although it is not the same). But
it is dificult to find and scientist involved to social commonly
problems.

As an experimental data: art is represented commonly in all this
assemblies but science is not offering any, for example, concrete
discussion, any science commission. If this would be tha case, could be we
can develope another example for science contact with people: not to
develope a science popularization event (which at the same time could be one
parallel idea) but to make science policies realistic debates of within our
neiborghoods. The finality of this debates would not be to take action to
the science policies (there are many experts and profesionals for this
work), but of course it would be to listen people, put science and
scientists in social contexts and collect any sugestions.

One week and a half after the democratic ellections here at Spain, the
assemblies are following their work and thinking the way to create an
perennial activity (segmenting the mean assemblies moving to multiple and
more local ones, ...).

Best,

Guillermo.
(Munoz)

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