MediaMatic offers a more philosophical approach to homemade porn and the web

When I visited San Francisco a few weeks ago, I noticed that people got really excited when I told them I’m from Amsterdam. Not for the obvious reasons – “oh you guys smoke pot all the time, right?” – but just for the reputation of Holland’s capital. When I got back in Amsterdam, somebody told me we partly owe this reputation to Mediamatic, a cultural organization that organizes exhibitions, presentations, workshops, and more things on these lines. They’re now organizing an evening about DIY and the web, which appears to be pretty interesting. The event goes by the name of “Say Yes / No to the Internet” and is part of a series of evenings on The Power of Negative Thinking.

According to the people from Mediamatic, there’s a yes-yes-mentality today:

Everyone seems gay these days. This lack of conflicting emotions fails to arouse alternative passions. Here, every critical position dissolves.

So by organizing evenings as “Say Yes / No to the Internet“, Mediamatic wants to stimulate you and me to break from this positive consensus. We must make negative statements about anything and in this particular case, the web.

Three speakers address examples of Do it yourself and the web. Brian McKenna’s talk has the title “Proprietary Hardware Do It Youself vs. the Ever Elusive Potential of Software”, Harm van den Dorpel discusses life changing experiences on the web, and Roald de Boer will hold a lecture about porn on the Internet. De Boer will look into the history of porn, especially porn movies, and the amateurish aspect of porn. He will show how images evolved and tries to answer the question whether Internet created a new pornographic language.

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So if you’re in the neighborhood and not into football (Holland will defeat France that night), you might want to drop by the PostCS building in Amsterdam. It can be inspiring and refreshing to hear a more philosophical talk about the web, instead of all the start-up bla bla all the time.