Picture taken from 8th floor of El Portón, Sector Suramericano, Medellín Centro, with big thanks to Anne Marie Van Broeck
I arrived in the city of the eternal spring, Medellín, for the festival LabSurLab in the Museum of Modern Art (MAMM). LabSurLab was born during the meeting of the European network LabtoLab in Madrid (June 2010). It promises to be a unique event with 55 guests, bringing together an exciting crowd of free software developers, artists and thinkers. As the main language is Spanish and there is no translation planned, I will be reporting about the festival here. It claims to be ‘a meeting of *labs, official, marginal, instiutional or independant labs from Argentina, Brasil, Bélgica, Colombia, EEUU, España, Francia, Méjico, Perú, Venezuela. One above the other in order to decant the vectors and possible cultural strategies of the network society. Why? The reason is quite simple. Medellín is living a vertiginous transformation. There exists a large bet on the technological: what do we want, what do we need, what is our interest, rethinking the artistic and social aspects of the media starting from the experimental component.’ The festival is mainly funded by the City of Medellín and is part of the program ‘Medellín Digital’, aiming at providing every citizen (6 million!) with internet access, computer courses and a mail address.
