Prayas Abhinav was our guest during DAI days (March 13th-14th) who discussed his work as an artist, but also an organiser of social spaces in Bangalore, India, where he is based. Prayas is also a contributor to n.e.w.s and he and I had just attended Wintercamp, a 5 day conference organised by the Institute of Networked Cultures in Amsterdam.

We began with a series of interviews I had made the past months with organisers, curators and writers of socially engaged projects that remap the territoriality of public space, ‘private’ equity and past governmental or state institutions. Alan Moore is one of the founders of ABC No Rioin NYC and presently organising the migrating show, “House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence”, which will also be part of theUniversity of Trash show at Sculpture Center in NYC. Eric Duivenvoorden is the author of ‘Een voet tussen de deur : geschiedenis van de kraakbeweging (1964-1999)’ (A foot between the door: history of the squatter movement 1964-1999) and ‘Met Emmer en Kwast’ (With a bucket and a brush) that is one of the most comprehensive publications on Dutch poster design of protest in the Netherlands the past 50 years.Branka Curcic, based in Novi-Sad, Serbia and at new media center_kuda.org, is also a contributor to n.e.w.s., elaborated on her blog post about Autonomous Spaces of Deregulation and Critique where she discussed the historical and present day relevance of Youth Social Center in Novi Sad.

Prayas Abhinav delivered the evening lecture that allowed a more in-depth look at his artistic practice, his work as an urban geographer and a recent curatorial project. On the second day he gave a short workshop to the participants on ways for artists to represent themselves on the Internet and website applications.