We presented the Tactical Media Lab as a collective. The presentation began with the sound and text video (The Zoo). Aniruddha Shankar introduced the idea of a lab as a space for inputing ideas and circulating them to a wider network. Azra and Raju introduced the different media forms that can be experimented with - texts, sound recordings, interviews, photography, web logs, graphic strips, story board, animations, images. Suraj presented the idea of Cybermohalla through proposing a small project. Here we share a few extracts:

AZRA TABASSUM:

"All of us here are producers of knowledge. We all of have experiences to share, stories to tell. All we need are ways that can make this possible, a space that is hospitable to these narratives, suggestions from peers that can provide some kind of anchor, forms through which we can express through different registers, and pubic forms through which these ideas can be in circulation and travel. There are experiences all around us, we encounter them at every turn. We only need to be tuned to them, and not let things just pass us by. Moreover, as producers, it is important for us that when we start creating, we find ways in which sound, text and image - which are our resources and our tools - can be integrated in creating, as they are interpermeating in how we experience the world".

SURAJ RAI:

We have come to Hamburg from India, partly for the experience of travelling to a different city, and partly to put up a performance before all of you. This performance is not just for or from us, but also for all the faces and subjectivities who are absent in this constellation, and whose voices are not reaching us, to a certain extent. Actually, this is what Cybermohalla is about.

Through our performance, we will tell our stories, we will tell you about Cybermohalla, about the Compughar and also experiences, feelings and thoughts inside all of you which may not have surfaced for some reason or the other. We want many such thoughts to surface, to emerge.

Now don't mistake us for some great artists. Someone is an artist only when others around him or her understand and can share the practice, only when they contest, combat and question the practice. And that is just what we would like you to do. Because "art" and "skill" and "practice" is that which can be understood, practiced, changed, altered. An artist is one who can include others in what he or she does; who can be a port into who others can plug in.

What we do is not something that can be taught. To join in, you will have to look inside yourself and inscribe pages with pens. If you can do that, we will have shared our practice with you. Our practice of thinking, of writing. It is for this that the Cybermohalla team has travelled to Hamburg. But if we were to do everything all by ourselves, all alone, then it won't be any fun. So, please join with us through the media lab. Draw, make animations, blog, write with us. But... this is only an invitation, not a compulsion!

Now, I want to play a game with you.

You can do anything with objects that belong to you. But what about things that belong to someone else, but which you have with you for a short while? How do you use that object? How do you feel while you have that object with you? Have you ever done this before? If not, then take small objects that you posess - like a scarf, a handkerchief, pen, jacket, cap - and exchange it with someone around you. Now use it for some time. How do you feel as you do this? Does nothing happen? Or is a story born? Did an image surface in your mind?

If this happens, then draw the image, write that story. Turn this moment that is passing by into a memory. Layers will get added to your thoughts.

This is what will be possible if you plug in with us, to one another.

So please, come and help us create this media lab.

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Sound files of the presentation will be available soon.