last night i asked geert lovink, co-organizer of the Next 5 Minutes 3
conference on tactical media, to talk about fakeshop's "Artificial
Geography" performance.

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geert: for me this is more of a social event. there are the video-jockey
people, and then there are the pirate radio stations–more like activist
people, underground people–and there are the web people. and it's very
rare that you see video and web and pirate radio people together in one
room making essentially one product. the TV people understand that the
radio people are responsible for the audio, and vis versa. that's quite
a step in people's minds.

alex: in addition to the live performers, there were people
participating on many different channels from across the atlantic.

geert: it sounds a bit funny but we moved one step back to a more
controlled version of chaos, at the last next 5 minutes there was simply
too much, there was a complete orgy of channels. we had all these
channels simultaneously plus 2 live tv channels. all for one conference!
it was completely hillarious, too much.

alex: what do you think of fakeshop? it's very informal… people are
walking around the space..the lights are on, no one knew exactly when it
started. it's not a normal type of performance.

geert: that's up to their style. under control, do their thing. but for
us it's a very familiar way of making television–doing it together with
the audience. if there's enough room there's no difference between the
people who do it and the audience. i think that's important.

alex: do you think that the artists at the n5m are marginalized?

geert: yes i tried very much to marginalize them. i tried very much. i
tried to give more space to the activists. recently there have too many
art events. n5m is one of the few place where activists can meet and
work in such an environment. so i did my best to marginalize the
artists.

alex: good! i think artists like it better that way! ;)