Amsterdam, Oct 2004


AUDIOLOOPS                 

free short samples for audio-makers, from merbed poetry festival and baghdad                    
::use them in your musical compositions::

group 2/3 

Duration: about seconds
Language: mix

Authors: streamtime crew, iraqi poets
Insider: salam khedher
Recorded Where: basrah and baghdad
Recorded By: jo van der spek
Edited By: eleonora oreggia
Original Support: minidisc

http://streamtime.org/



free as a fish
Streamtime is a project of Radio Reedflute in collaboration with Rastasoft, developed with artists and activists from Iraq and elsewhere. Streamtime is a loose network of media activists dedicated to assist local media to get connected. Streamtime uses old and new media for the production of content and networks in the fields of media, arts, culture and activism in crisis areas, like Iraq.


Merbed documentation project
Merbed is the name of the annual Poetry Festival in Basra, in the south of Iraq. This year was the first time after the fall of Saddam and brought together Iraqi poets, writers and other artists from all parts of Iraq and from the diaspora. At the beginning of April, when the crisis started to gain signifiance on a daily basis, the festival was held in a closed environment of the Hotel and a Hall with only invited participants.

The first aim of this Merbed documentation project is to publish all this material on a web site and on a CD-ROM, in collaboration with the Iraqi National Union of Writers (chapters Basrah and Baghdad), with Radio Reedflute and with RastaSoftware. This will open an avenue for publishing more of the artists present at Merbed, collecting texts, translations, pictures, press clippings, etc. 

The longer term perspective is to create a much wider outreach and participation of next years Merbed, by creating a parallel on-line platform, which would enable live streaming and interactivity from other locations.