Home » Twenty years after the G8 in Genoa, Indymedia is back online

Twenty years after the G8 in Genoa, Indymedia is back online

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Mini Dv cassettes, the (rare) mobile phones, modems with 56K connection, analog cameras, a few digital ones. Social networks did not exist. When Indymedia, what became the world‘s leading independent news network, was born in 1999 in Seattle, this was the context.

The internet wasn’t all that pervasive yet digital tools were within the reach of a few. Yet handfuls of media activists and hackers around the world managed to create what could now be described as the first major experiment in participatory journalism. 15 years after its closure, the archive of italy.indymedia.org is back online. Frozen, as it was in 2006, when the historical group of activists who animated it decided to decree the end of that path. But with a dynamic part: a real Time Machine, active on Telegram e also on Twitter, which since July 1st publishes “in real time”, on the same day and in the same minute as 20 years ago, the posts that appeared on Indymedia in 2001.

To restore visibility to the amount of information, images, videos, testimonials, which, during the days of the G8 in Genoa and those immediately following, poured on the site. And without which even the truths reconstructed in the trial would have been at least partial.

A little bit of Indymedia history
Born in Seattle to document the protests against the Millennium Round, within what was called the Independent Media Center, Indymedia arrived in Italy in 2000. The occasion for the opening of the local node is that of the No Ocse event in Bologna.

But months will pass before we begin to consolidate the core of media activists that will constitute the historical core of the project: a more than inhomogeneous mix between videomakers, information operators of various kinds, activists of movements. And above all of which was part of the community that had formed, from 1998 onwards, around the Hackmeetings and hacklabs, the only ones with the skills to manage Indymedia software. As well as those for putting together media centers (real multimedia newsrooms), also pulling them up in places all to be wired, ie without connection. And that inside Indymedia they poured their idea of ​​the Net: an open space, to be frequented in the most horizontal way possible, using the tools of free software, sharing knowledge and tools.

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“Don’t hate the media, become the media” was Indymedia’s motto, as if to say: my point of view matters as much as that of others. It does not need any mediation to be able to be narrated. It was the first tool to allow everyone to be able to publish and comment freely. It was enough to choose a nickname to publish: no registration, no data provided (let alone stolen), no logs stored in any server.

Indymedia’s site was divided into 3 sections. On the left, the part reserved for links, for local and international nodes and those reserved for thematic dossiers, which we could now call longform. The central column housed the feautures, that is, the in-depth analyzes carried out collaboratively through mailing lists and chats (instant messaging programs did not yet exist). This was where the verified news posted on the newswire and those written by the same management group came together. The right column (called newswire) was the truly revolutionary part, the free one, where anyone could write, comment or upload audio and video material. Or even troll, exactly as it happens now in social networks.

What happened after closing
With the closure of the Italian experience of Indymedia, the site was no longer accessible. At least until July 1, 2021. The digital memory recovery operation was launched SupportLegale, a collective founded in 2004 within Indymedia (later became independent) to respond to the request for help from the legal secretariat of the Genoa Social Forum. And that has continued to work until now with the aim of “defending and supporting everyone and everyone”. An operation that made it possible to bring the old Support site and the Processig8.org site back online, where all the material created by the legal secretariat is stored. More complicated to make Indymedia accessible again: an organic backup did not exist. There was only an old hard drive and the copy of the database recovered during the various attempts made over the years to bring the site back online.

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Then, the spark. A chat where, 15 years later, a large part of the historic core of Indymedia was suddenly found. An alchemy of energies and skills that made it possible to put together the pieces of the Italian knot. Now Italy.indymedia.org is accessible again. And with it she returned Pillolarossa is also online, the first participatory counter-investigation into the events in Piazza Alimonda, made by citizens, journalists and activists who met thanks to the Indymedia Newswire. The occasion is given by the 20 years since the G8 in Genoa, a moment that also marked the beginning of the explosion of Indymedia Italia which now does not present itself only as a piece of digital archeology.

A splash page accompanies you in navigation of the static site and collects all the most interesting features made by Indymedia on what happened in Genoa in 2001. As it is possible to see the old videos, starting with Update # 1, released in August 2001, and download micro clips, taken from historical movies, to use as Stories or as Reel on Instagram.

And then, the real Time Machine: a jump back in time to 20 years; the same posts published on the Newswire in 2001 bouncing from a Telegram channel to a Twitter account. Following its flow in 2021 could also be alienating for those accustomed to the frenetic pace with which Twitter posts now appear.

In the first days of July there are very few posts published daily (even less than 10): they will multiply close to the days of Genoa, but it will only be in the days immediately following that the Newswire will fill up of videos, photos and testimonials. Smartphones did not exist, cell phones were few and even text messages were expensive: to be able to publish it was necessary to arrive in front of a computer. And compress photos and videos, to make them usable in an era marked by the unforgettable 56K modem sound, with its endless attempts to connect.

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