2. How would you describe the role a young artist today?
I’m interested in marginalized youth and their struggle for creative expression despite the challenges they face growing up in difficult circumstances – socio-economic and political. Youth in marginalized communities and conditions of conflict have a great deal to tell us about their lives and often their stories and artistic expressions are very powerful, if given an opportunity to be expressed. This has been the focus of our work with Voices Beyond Walls, engaging marginalized Palestinian youth in refugee camps in the West Bank. The narratives, photography and video shorts they’ve produced in our workshops are both remarkable and surprising for their poetic visions, humor and deep emotions conveyed. Hence, these “young artists” serve an important role in highlighting the trauma, conditions, and also cultural identity and joy of living within their own communities and for audiences everywhere.

3. How do see now and how do you imagine cultural collaborations in the Mediterranean in the future?
I believe youth across these marginalized regions, particularly in the Middle East, can gain a good deal by sharing their visions (narratives, photo, films) with youth in the Mediterranean – they share many cultural similarities and in some cases also similar challenges of violence, disenfranchisement and aspirations within their lives. I can imagine joint workshops conducted across regions whereby youth not only present their work to one another in online/physical festivals, but also share ongoing work during synchronous workshops via virtual links, and in the future collaborate on joint projects by visiting each others communities. A regular exchange and learning program to promote youth media across the Mediterranean and the Middle East would be a wonderful outcome, to bridge the cultural and political divides that seem to exist today.

4. Do you think online tools are a good model to start art exchanges in the Mediterranean?
Indeed online tools present an opportunity to initiate exchange, however they are not in themselves sufficient to develop deeper bonds and meaningful collaborations. I believe there is no substitute for face-to-face interactions among youth to develop initial relationships and working projects, which can then be sustained better online with some regular meetings during the year. So while I believe there is great room for innovation in online tools and platforms that specifically cater to youth media exchange, they must be complemented by actual meetings, workshops and festivals where youth can build trusting and lasting relationships with each other.

5. Would you like to give any recommendations to the Emyan network or the activities we are organizing?
I think Emyan is off to a great start and I hope you will continue to focus on youth media, but also begin to address youth in marginalized communities both in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. In addition to your online activities, I urge you to consider developing programs that engage youth in more direct ways.

2. How would you describe the role a young artist today?
I think that, more in general, the role of an artist today is not so different from the role of the artists during the avanguards of the last century. The artist has an important role, a key position in contemporary society, expecially in the modern society in which we live: a society full of rapid changes, of technologies developents, of growing violence, of media control, of superficial values. If you think well, there are not big differences from some revolting periods of the last century, ecxept from the fact of new digital technologies of course: internet, networking and social networks, bio and nano sciences and design, robotics, interactions, audiovisuals are all elements more and more central in our lifes. The main problem today is that the “normal” men and women are not involved in the potential risks but also powers of new technologies, that shape the world in which we live: are not used with new aesthetics in art and design, the potential connections with the past analogic or electronic technologies, and are not affordable with possible connections between new instruments and tools used both for creativity or professional purposes (in terms of new hardwares and softwares). And, don’t think about the general ignorance about open source technologies, open hardwares, free softwares, peer to peer technologies and so on. So, I firmly think that the artist today (both yound and not young artist) must consideate all these aspects, trying to be a surface connecting people with the world of art (or design) and using new aesthetics and technologies to explain the complex and rapid world surranding us, to visualize data fluxus and systems, to suggeste new ways of producing and creating objects outside the rule of big multinationalities, to introduce a new possible way of living, being informed, working with others, being indipendent. This is the role of the art: to be not passive, to be informed, well trained on technologies, without forgetting the experience of the past, to always suggest a way to interpretare the reality.

3. How do see now and how do you imagine cultural collaborations in the Mediterranean in the future?
To be honest, and someone can say fortunately even if it could be one of the risks of new technologies, all the national and cultural borders are falling down: it means that it’s very easy today for people in general, and also for people living and working in the Mediterranean Area to be in contact, to work togheter, to share ideas and to develope cultural collaborations. I mean, If I have to imagine it, it will be not different from any kind of collaboration of people at different corners of the world. Of course, people living in the same cultural area, with such an history as the Mediterranea Area in terms of art, democracy and civilization, will share a common cultural background (even if is not sure that it could have more potentiality of a cultural mix that could grow up from people living and working at opposite corners of the world, with different identities and cultures). Of course, the Mediterranean Area is not uniform in terms of digital devide and internet access and freedoms: we must remember it, we don’t have to forget that situation in Italy, France or Spain is not the same as the situation in North Africa, or Balcans region, or Middle-East Area. Of course, if new digital technologies are the common field that can make cultural collaborations easier, it’s important to give all the people living in all these regions the same technological chances to work, live and create .

4. Do you think online tools are a good model to start art exchanges in the Mediterranean?
I think I’ve answered yet in the previous question. Online tools like blogs and podcast as editorial platforms, Facebook, Flickr and Vimeo to communicate and share multimedia contents, Delicious and Twitter to be informed, Peer to Peer and open source technologies to share softwares and hardwares, online platforms to work togheter, are all important instruments for art exchanges, not only in the Mediterranean area.

Ben Baruch Blich, ph.d.,  is at present a senior lecturer in the History and Theory Dept.  of Bezalel Art and design Academy in Jerusalem. He is a chief editor of an e-journal Protocols: History and Theory, a member in the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) ,in the European Society for the History of Photography(ESHph). In 1989 he was a visiting scholar to the Warburg Institute in London, and in 2002 a guest Professor in the Higher Institute for the Fine Arts (HISK) in Antwerp. His main publication include “Pictorial Realism” in Empirical Studies of the Arts 9.2 (1991), “Natural Kinds as a Kind of Family resemblance” in the Proceedings of the 12th International Wittgenstein Symposium 15 (1988), and “Pictorial Representation and Its Cognitive Status” in Visual Arts Research 15.1 (1989), “The Epistemology of the photographic image”, Photoresearcher no. 8 2005. In the last five years he has lectured on the subjects “Body representations in the Arts”, “visual information”, “The use and abuse of the photomontage: the case of John Heartfield”, “Philosophical questions on Design and Architecture”, in the Van Leer Institute (Jerusalem), in the School of Architecture (Haifa), at the Hebrew University School of Communication (Jerusalem), and has presented papers at various conferences in Nottingham, Prague, Berlin, Kirchberg, London, New York, Vevey, Antwerp, Maastricht, Dublin, Urbino, Vienna, Potsdam.

In the last two years Blich writes 3 books on photography:  ’Photography in conflict: representing political upheavals’; ‘Bodies represented by the Camera’; ‘Amateur photographers during World war 2″.

2. How would you describe the role a young artist today?
Young artists should besides their art creativity, take an active political role in their respective countries. In other words, young artists should learn from artists in ancient Greece, who were an involved citizens and not only creative and innovative citizens. It is expected from a young artist to break through the indifference of our societies vis-a-vis the poor and the deprived, and give a hand to those in constant need. In sum, a young artist should refrain from the romantic image of the detached artist, occupied only with his art, ignoring the hardship of daily life.

3. How do see now and how do you imagine cultural collaborations in the Mediterranean in the future?
Cultural collaborations and mutual exchange of ideas are a must in the ongoing development of art in general, and especially  in cultivating art in the Mediterranean, which unites people with a multicultural historical backgrouund. Without excahnaging odeas and experiences the common ground of the Mediterranean culture might perish. It is, therefore, vital for this particular culture to initaiate ongoing processes of collaborations.

4. Do you think online tools are a good model to start art exchanges in the Mediterranean?
Indeed, as a start the online virtual tools are a good starting point in establishing understanding and mutual experiences. And yet, without having a real down to earth meetings, using the net as the only vehicle would miss the point of cultivating culture.

5. Would you like to give any recommendations to the Emyan network or  the activities we are organising?
My only recommendation is ‘keep on going’ with you idea.

As side activities for this year edition, we will invite new media experts and artists to give their opinions on the subject of do-it-yourself Media Generation. In addition to artistic works, which will be featured on the 2. Online Arts Festival platform, this year’s  a r t i f i c e concept would like to further stimulate exchanges on the topic of interactive and creative technologies.

Are you inspired by the uses of media technologies and do you want to share your practice with other artists in the Euro-Med region?

Extensive potential of locative and do-it yourself media innovation can recreate interactions with peers and the environment and there are plenty of instructive online portals, which stimulates artifices and crafts for the creation of low-cost media devices.

The EMYAN team is interested to hear stories and experiences, by encouraging young artists in the Euro-Med region to make short podcasts, which will feature reflections and interviews on how media technologies can be reused and reinvented. Artists are also encouraged to make a short video talking about how they would like to see these playful tools being used in the future; Or make a script of their own idea about different possibilities of innovation with media in their neighborhoods or presenting their own prototype of creative technologies.

Original stories futuristic perspectives of young media generators will be published on the EMYAN web portal.