Posted via email from Oz+Lanka

This is a very loosely written response…

It's interesting how we side-step each other as we fumble our way in our research. I heard about groundviews many years ago and have been following it for quite some time, off and on. But I had no idea that the creator of the service had done so much other work in ICT and peace-building generally. Thanks for that.

And the YATV story you found – Sumugan discovered these guys a few weeks ago and I've been checking out their vids on their Vimeo channel, but I had not seen this one. I'm going to visit them if I end up heading to Lanka in July, they seem excellent.

There is a ridiculous amount of diverse, bottom-up, community work being done in Sri Lanka by Sri Lankans, typical of a society that has always been quite literate, educated and media savvy when compared to other countries in the developing world. But since this stage of the war concluded, this has seemed to just skyrocket even further.

It's fantastic to observe, but I do wonder what our role as the diaspora is in this mix. I kinda feel at the moment that we should just butt out, watch and learn. It makes we wonder about things like the Vaddukoddai (re)resolution – who is voting at these things? I am not making a comment here on my own vote – separate from that – I wonder if most of the people who would vote "no" are not even going to cast a vote, not even turn up? What do you think?

Either way, I personally am thinking that all I can do if I were to go to Sri Lanka is volunteer and help out with any initiatives the Sri Lankans are already running. Which is exactly how CuriousWorks collaborates with Australian communities. I was pondering international collaborations and what an Aussie-Sri Lankan collab might be like in the future, but it just doesn't seem like it should be a priority for them at the moment…

This report was pretty bloody clear on one role the diaspora could play – you should check it out if you haven't yet – http://srilanka.posterous.com/clear-and-critical-report-on-the-possible-rol

For me, this has meant that my play will be very much focussed on Sri Lankans in Australia and what that migrant experience is about. It will involve scenes from Sri Lanka, past and present, but sit in the overall framework of how that history comes to bear on our experience in Oz, here and now…

On another slant, it's interesting that both the YATV story and the Groundviews guy frame this kind of work in terms of "peace". I'm not sure what this word means to me anymore.

In my research I've been exploring how certain aspects of democracy pulled Sri Lanka into an ongoing, ultimately violent circle of polarisation; Bandaranaike's rise to power is probably the clearest example of that. As mentioned in the book I am reading, "it was a revolution of the ballot, not the bullet."

So I am not sure peace can be inextricably linked to all types of democracy; or simply described as an absence of war. Peace seems to be more of a systemic thing; a description of a society that has peaceful systems securely in place.

Things like:
- Moderates that can hold the centre strongly
- Emancipation of the masses through non-polarising means (ie, yes you deserve this freedom, nut not at the cost of that person's freedom, etc)

Which is kinda boring on a surface level…

… But In this context, I feel new media can play such a pivotal role. It is the perfect way to democratically share diverse modes of information and bring a diverse community to understand that the only way towards peace is through compromise between those diverse perspectives… I feel we need this as much as we need our leaders and government policies to reflect peaceful systems in our society.

I guess what I am saying is I wish stories about art and technology in community were framed like this, rather than the more linear idea of art or technology immediately leading to peace…

That's all for now, will report more as my thoughts continue to bubble.

Posted via email from Oz+Lanka