“Telephone Trottoire”
March 27th – May 8th 2006
Nostalgie Ya Mboka, Mongrel, June 2006

AIMS

The aim of the “Telephone Trottoire” project was to engage the London based Congolese community in issues that affect our day-to-day lives. “Telephone Trottoire” is based on a new form of “contagious” telephone application developed by Mongrel and named after the Congolese practice of “pavement radio” or the passing around of news and gossip between individuals on street corners.

As a new community in the UK, we - the Congolese - are seldom asked for our thoughts and opinions. Yet a great many of these same issues are core to the well being of our community. Decisions are all too often taken by social policy planners, working at a distance who rarely consult the community on the issues that affect us. However, through “Telephone Trottoire” our people have spoken out about how they really feel and what they would really like to see happening.

This is one example of the twenty topics or "polemiques" that we recorded with Koffi, Esther and Floresse of Nostalgie Ya Mboka for Telephone Trottoire.

Here, Esther invites comments about Priests abusing their position in society when they separate and divide families.

Priests(Esther).mp3

The family have a problem – this problem is caused by a priest. The priests are destroying families. For example – when two sisters attend the same church and one decides to leave that church for whatever reason, the priest then convinces the remaining sister that the other is a witch. The role of the priest is to bring people together and not to separate people. Is it normal for a priest to behave this way ?
Also we as the followers – many of us attend particular churches because we heard that the priest is good, we listen to the advice of friends and relatives, but don't we have a judgement to make ourselves ? Isn’t it up to us to decide whether a priest is good or bad ? Shouldn't we decide whether a priest is fit to hold his position ? Should we blindly follow what we are told without realizing the implications of manipulation and used by some people who call themselves priests yet use their power purely as a means of self profit ?
Do you have some comment to make upon my statement ?

Perl Routines to Manipulate London

Linker

Linker 1.2 is an off-line Free downloadable software product. This software offers you an experimental way of linking data together into a multimedia matrix.

The Linker software comes out of a specific need that Mongrel found doing workshops. Our dialogues allow us to produce fast artefacts of digital culture with other mongrels. A crucial thing about these workshops is that we found people want to produce something that looks good, and means something, but don't want to have to invest months in teaching themselves up to know something like Photoshop or Director. We don't particularly want to knock these programs, but they're cultured up to be useful really only to experts.

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Rehearsal of Memory is available as a CD-ROM and installation.


The aim of this piece was to work with a group of people from Ashworth a high Security Mental Hospital to produce an interactive programme embodying the life experience of those involved. This is manifested in the form of an anonymous computer personality made up of the collective experience of the group. Ashworth Hospital is located in the north of England near Liverpool and is home and prison to people who are a danger to themselves or to people outside the hospital.

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NATIONAL HERITAGE:

National Heritage is available as an installation and a CD-ROM.


Check NationalHeritage for more information.

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Natural Selection was a search engine specifically designed to find - and twist the results for - far right and racist sites on the net. According to Matthew Fuller, who produced this project for Mongrel along with Harwood:
"Along with porn, one of the twin spectres of 'evil' on the internet is access to neo-nazi and racist material on the web. Successive governments have tried censorship and failed. This is another approach.- ridicule."

It was formed round an elegant hack of one of mainstream technoculture's most popular search engines, Natural Selection was guaranteed to stop you smearing skin lightener on your computer.

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Colour Separation:

is constructed from photos of over one hundred people who are related in some day-to-day way with the core Mongrel group. Using "HeritageGold" software it transforms their images into eight un-glamourous sterotypes of black/yellow/brown/white men and women.

NINE (9) SOCIAL SOFTWARE RESEARCH PROGRAMME

Mongrel’s most ambitious project of recent years was its social software development which began with the release of the “Linker” software system in 1999 and culminated with the release of “Nine(9)” in 2003. These works were among the first examples of multimedia authoring software designed by artists themselves for running collaborative arts projects that were sensitive to the cultural expressions of marginalised social groups. These two works alone resulted in invitations by arts organisations to run hundreds of workshops around the world and won numerous citations and awards.

TextFm is a piece of software that broadcasts text messages. Anyone with access to a mobile phone can send a message to a specified number. A computer receives the message and reads it out using a text-to-speech program. This speech is broadcast by a radio transmitter. It is a way of creating a simple, lightweight, open media system.

TextFm was installed by groups in a number of cities over the end of 2001 and beginning of 2002. Each installation is a variant on the software. Languages other than English are being added. The program is also available for download and use for any other non-commercial purpose, pirate radio, community radio, or other localised broadcast system.

Go to the site here