The Polymedia Lab ended on Saturday, Dec 13, at 2am after a dignified Yomango Dinner/Party.
Following a presentation about the Yomango philosophy and practice on Thursday, an transnational group prepared the Yomango dinner. Most of the day was spent enhancing the free circulation of food, cutting and arranging cheese, vegetables, salads, saussages, fruit, and preparing a stylish setting which included a multimedia presentation.
The tables were arranged in a U-shape in front of the stage/screen, with plates, glasses, flowers and hand-written menues reminiscent of the closing-dinner of a formal conference. For the first time during the We Seize event, all delegates would join each other face to face, without the grey light of computer screens in their faces.
At about 10pm, the dinner was announced with a mix of video-clips and a yomango rap composed exclusively for the occasion. In line with the ever-present claim for transparency, the process of producing the dinner was made accessible on the big screen, displaying footage of the preparations in various Geneva Supermarkets mixed with material on yomango resources.
A performance artist presented a selection of the yomango fashion range in a stylish dance presentations.
Then the delegates were seated and invited to enjoy the hors d'oevres, accompanied by special brand Yomango-wine. One visitor who had come to see the performance said, stunned by the abundance of food, objects and celebration: "This reminds me of a painting of Breughel".
Maybe today's debates have in fact many references to the beginnings of capitalism in early modern Europe. The European peasants fought a war to defend their commons, the rivers, forests, and fields. We are insisting on our rights to defend our global commons of communication, knowledge, information. Yomango, Indymedia and Free Software Movements, to name only a few, are about enjoying an abundance of goods, knowledge, stories, in opposition to the capitalist ideology of scarcity.
The closing dinner of the polymedia lab has once again put the desire for free-floating sharing into practice. It has to be noted that the party had a fixed time-limit: At 2am, we all had to leave and take our gear with us, because a cleaning crew had been hired to put the Palladium Theatre back to its normal, smooth stage.
