The Spacestation media lab is closing down... : Melbourne Indymedia

The Spacestation media lab is closing down after a year and a half in existence. The lab will be closing its doors at the end of June, and will be winding up the open access experiment.

Spacestation is closing down because we've run out of energy and money, and don't have enough active members to keep the space open and functioning.

We're all very sad about the end of the Spacestation - over the last year and a half more people and groups than we could name have used the resources in the Spacestation to realise their projects. From websites to campaigns, flyers, film nights, using it to support protests and actions, for media pranks, longer term projects, to people just dropping in to check their email. We think that the Spacestation has served peoples direct needs and desires. And we've enjoyed being a part of the realisation of those needs and desires. Its been amazing to have met and work with so many incredible people. We want to thank everyone who has used or been a part of the Spacestation project.

There is very much the need for an open access media lab in Melbourne - the use of and interest in the Spacestation media lab is ample evidence of it. Hopefully it won't be too long until another open access media resource space is started. We would like the end of the Spacestation to serve as a starting point for discussions of what future open access media spaces would be and how they would work. If you have criticisms or thoughts on the Spacestation project, we'd love to hear them. We'll be posting this email up on Melbourne Indymedia so hopefully that can serve as a discussion space. We'll also try to set up some spaces in the future for discussion and workshopping the Spacestation project and media labs in general.

Thanks and solidarity from the Spacestation crew.

you guys & gals rock!!!

thanks for making the resources availiable that
most other organizations covet and restrict access to.

hope you all didn't burn out & get diss-mayed
from the weak as piss lack of support sometimes
we don't give. but in the current state of things
somehow it's no surprise.

so much reinventing, so little time,
b.

gotta admit I am very sad to see this happening and would love to see the space taken over by other people so that it continues, even if in another identity than space station.
kudos all

the best of luck with future similar projects,
and a big thank you to all space kids for the support,
workshops, space, knowlesdge they shared with us.
xa

thanks
thankfully people these days can get hold of user friendly programs and powerful home pcs to make stuff at home. a place is good for picking up tech and tips if you don't have access to school or friends
I think you kick started a great spirit

Spacestation kids, you were a stimulating little capsule in the cold vacum of media static, the satillite of no-one. Good luck with the IMC plan! Hope to see you soon for a drink... cheers >> Robbie Corp

Good luck to all those who put allot of effort into building a project that served some really good causes.
Maybe this can be a time where people kick back and have chats about activities, what purposes they serve and how we can collectively establish sustainable ( both mentally and financially ) projects in the future.
Salud y anarquia…

Kool Keith …

so, this is somethig i posted to the internal spacestation mailing list. i wanted to put it out publically as well - i reckon that critiques and analysis of things like the spacestation are important. and its even more important that such analysis takes place in a publically accessible manor.. anyways, this it a few of my thoughts on the station

-------

Spacestation review

So I thought I’d write up a few thoughts that I had about spacestation – how it worked [or didn’t], what I thought it did and failed to do, its role and place in Melbourne, etc… I’m not meaning to compile a comprehensive critique or set of reflections on spacestation, just a first missive in a dialogue on the space. I think its important that we reflect on the spacestation and critique it in a public manor. I reckon as it was a both a political project and a ‘public’ access space in some sense we owe it to ‘our community’ and to ‘our’ various political arena’s to instigate a conversation that non-spacekids can be involved in, and that contribute to the projects that found a home in spacestation [media labs, ‘open access’, autonomy, social centres, etc].

anyways, off we go…

I’m going to break it down into two sections – what I thought the positives of the space were, and what I thought the negatives were [original I know..]. overall I reckon spacestation was a success – an amazing project [on a number of levels – personal, media, social, etc] for almost too many reasons to name.

[jargon check: spacekids is the name of the collective that maintained the space. It also refers to individuals in that collective]

Positive stuff:

+ Spacestation saw a large number of people come through the space and make use of its resources [physical, various kinds of ‘expertise’, and social networks]. The people who came through were a mix of those that knew the spacekids, friends of friends, members of what we could call the ‘political-activist community’ and just people who happened across the space [either through a relationship to Irene, or to one of the events outside of Irene that related back to Irene & the spacestation]. As far as I am concerned, this is ample evidence of real and immediate needs and desires for a space like spacestation that provides equipment, knowledge about how to use that equipment, and the social networks that ‘we’ plugged into [a mixture of anarchist /autonomist+media activist+fringe culture networks and krews]. The fact that it served those real and immediate needs and desires is a big positive

+ as a kind of PS to the point above, the computers left outside the space in the Irene foyer have been pretty much in constant use since they were left out there. Again, evidence of real needs and desires that spacestation served. And perhaps also evidence of a desire for internet enabled computers that can be used anonymously (outside of a place like spacestation)?

+ Its provided a space away from institutions such as libraries, centrelink offices and universities – the places that Information Technology / media resources can usually be found. The existence of extra-institutional resource spaces is anther big positive.

+ there are a few things in the above points – non-institutional access to ‘expert knowledge’; access to networks; spacestation acting as a ‘point of access’ for the broader Irene social centre – that are positives in their own right.

+ the spacekids collective managed to put on a number of events and workshops that expanded and advanced the political discussions happening in the Melbourne activist community [such as various ‘autonomist’ film screenings and discussions, news and screenings from places like Argentina, computer and media skills workshops, etc].

+ it was in many respects a positive working environment: I personally found the spacekids collective supportive of both my personal projects and my autonomy within the collective. Collective members were always ready to offer advise or share their knowledge with me. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that there was a strong ‘educational’ environment in the spacestation (limited, but strong).

+ the political breadth of the spacekids. The spacekids was far from unified in terms of political ideology. For me this was a positive aspect in many ways, the main one being I had to continually reassess my own politics and the actions that I thought flowed from them. Continually being engaged on what my politics mean, and being exposed to other frames of mind and modes of action helped me grow politically and contributed to a robust political environment.

Negative stuff:

+one of the biggest problems was the lack of development prior to the start of the spacestation project – both the ideas behind it, what it was going to do, how it was going to function, how it was going to be maintained, and how it was going to relate to the broader community…

> ideas & politics: spacestation did not have a well established conceptual or political framework. There were many ideas and examples that underlay the spacestation project, but the spacekids didn’t discuss these various ideas and practices in any great depth (in a formal manor). This would have meant that it took more time for the spacestation to become establish but would have meant that some of the problems we encountered (issues of how we would practically break up the tasks, issues of members and ‘ownership’ of the space, skill sharing, what we did outside of the space and computer maintenance, etc) would have perhaps been avoided or we would have had a firmer conceptual background with to solve them (rather than the ad-hoc approach we took on many occasions). It would have also meant that tasks beyond the maintenance of the space and computer network would have been informed by a stronger political agenda (again, many of the things we did outside of the maintenance were on an ad-hoc or personal interest basis. This made it hard the collective to have any substantial sense of ownership over all the of the projects and events that were done under the spacestation ‘name’)

> the distribution of labour and the procedures for the maintenance and running of the space. We tried several methods of distributing labour (all of the tasks we collectively thought necessary for the running of the space) , and eventually settled on some core positions and some non-core positions (we stared out with roles like finance officer, etc, then went to task ‘clusters’, then to the idea of positions again, but with the understanding than some of the daily mundane tasks would be collectively done). Ideally, all could be expanded into working groups / collectives, but we not dependent on them. It took almost half a year to get to this point – spending time we could have used more productively elsewhere. In the end, working groups didn’t eventuate (another separate prblem in my view). We should have sorted out our working structure in more detail prior to the start of the project. We discuss how it was going to run, but not in any great depth.

> the closed nature of the spacekids. Early on in the project, the spacekids decided they wanted to retain the ability to collectively decide who they wished to work with and who they didn’t. the first result of this policy was that we would retain the right to refuse use of the spacestation to individuals or organisations who we felt opposed the collective politics and/or ideals of the spacekids (broadly speaking, fascists, racists, sexist and homophobic persons, young liberal, etc). this as far as I am concerned is both necessary and good. The second effect of this policy was that the spacekids remained a closed collective, with people becoming involved through personal connections to existing spacekids. This meant that (a) the spacestation would always have limits on how much "ownership" of the spacestation people outside the spacekids could take, and (b) we would always be short of people and fresh energy / ideas. From the very beginning spacestation had too few people involved in the collective to keep the spacestation running effectively. Another problem was the unclear nature of the spacekids relationship to other ‘permanent’ projects that the spacestation housed (like the Melbourne Kungkas and The Paper). We could have done far more to involve the users of the space and people broadly interested in being involved and well as the broader community around the spacestation and the Irene social centre. This should have been done for both political and organisational reasons.

> at the start, we didn’t establish collective projects that went beyond the maintenance of the space and the computer network. This would have meant two things – one, that more people could become involved, and two, that spacekids who left for a variety of reasons (or failed to get past the starting line) could have stayed involved on non-"geeky" projects. The downside to this is the fact that it could lead to a hierarchy of labour were there are ‘fun’ jobs (i.e., events and protests) and ‘shit’ jobs (finance, cleaning, tech admin).

> we failed to collective develop a long term financial plan. Only towards the latter half of the projects existence did we get the bookkeeping and the financial planning in order.

+ distribution of labour was also a major problem.

> A constant problem was the issue of mundane tasks – many tasks, like sorting out phone bills, depositing rent, etc, where left to a handful of people. The entire collective needed to address the distribution of minor mundane tasks in a more thorough manor, and collectively take responsibility for them.

> we didn’t work hard enough to challenge the concept of ‘volunteerism’ that permeated through the project. A problem with many projects like the spacestation is that it seems difficult to establish an atmosphere that encourages people to view their contributions to the space as un-alienated labour rather than ‘volunteer work’. that is as labour done from the individuals needs and desires as a member of an autonomous collective rather than as a job done for a ‘moral’ wage (which is still alienated labour). People tend to treat the ‘shit’ jobs as stuff they can avoid rather than necessary labour that is best shared amongst the collective.

> we also failed to address the idea of "service provision" that people outside of the spacekids seemed to have. That is, that the spacestation and the spacekids existed to solve their problems and work for them. Some of this is part of the failure to involve the broader community. But some of it is a failure to challenge assumptions and practices within society about the nature of labour, how we are to relate to one another (alienation and the commodification of human social relations – basically capital as social relation stuff). Because people outside of the space treated it as a service, they failed (in general) to treat it as ‘their’ space and hence failed to help maintain and develop it.

+ we didn’t have enough committed spacekids. The lack of people and the inevitable lack of energy meant that at not point did we have the energy to build the collective or the space beyond what we had already established.

+ also, because of the lack of members and energy, we failed to engage as fully as we could have with the rest of the Irene social centre.

That about wraps it up for now. No doubt more things will come to mind, and hopefully discussion from other people will bring more issues up.

This is not supposed to be the final word on spacestation or the spacekids – its just (hopefully) a document that forms part of a broader dialogue on spaces such as spacestation that leads towards the development of the constitution and practice of such spaces. I loved being a part of the spacestation project, and hope that something not too dissimilar comes into being in the near future (and that I can play some small role in it)

nik