Media Education Center Hamburg
The Media Education Center Hamburg e. V. is a self-managed, non-commercial media center that has existed since 1973. It is the oldest alternative media center in Germany that has been preserved in its original form. The focus of the activities are video productions, events and media projects that are oriented towards a critical media culture. The media center in Hamburg's Sternschanze district maintains a publicly accessible video archive.
history
The Media Education Center Hamburg e. V. emerged in the context of the New Social Movements in 1973 from an amalgamation of art and education students in Hamburg who constituted themselves as a video group and referred positively to the concepts of counter-publicity , counterculture and critical-alternative media work that were emerging in the FRG at that time . The founders of the Medienpädagogik Zentrum Hamburg e. V. through the creation of the first video groups in the USA (Newsreel) and in France (Vidéo Militant). At the end of the 1960s, they had appropriated the early video technology ( Portapak ), which was first available in the USA, which had become more mobile and cheaper . The first film and video groups founded in the FRG in the 1970s, such as "VAM-Video Audio Media" (Berlin) or the video group "Telewissen" (Darmstadt), were still technically and conceptually oriented towards television resulting video movement depends on it. The Media Education Center Hamburg e. V. as well as other video groups created at that time ("MedienOperative Berlin eV" and "Medienwerkstatt Freiburg") pursued a media-educational and media-critical approach: they were concerned with institutionally independent production and distribution structures . The video groups wanted to be an alternative to the prevailing media landscape and create an active counter-public. It is not uncommon for most of the video groups to see themselves as a media-producing part of the alternative movement and thus became forerunners and pioneers of grassroots journalism and open channels in the FRG. In the eighties, a heyday of the video movement, several video groups and media centers arose, which conceptually based on the experiences and work of the video groups and which still help to shape the term video activism today.
Working method
Since its inception, the Medienpädagogik Zentrum Hamburg e. V. takes an emancipatory, media-pedagogical approach as part of its basic concept. Based on theories and approaches that range from Tretyakov, Wertow and Brecht to Enzensberger, Negt and Kluge, the Medienpädagogik Zentrum Hamburg e. V. promote emancipatory and committed media use. Media production and sales should not be the sole responsibility of experts or privileged people, as in the prevailing media business, or should even be based on commercial criteria. The aim is to create an independent, institutionally independent media culture in which alternative media projects can arise. In this context, many video productions were made on topics such as the anti-nuclear movement or the nationwide disputes about the occupied houses on Hafenstrasse in Hamburg. In addition to video and media productions and production assistance, the field of work of the Medienpädagogik Zentrum Hamburg e. V. also publications, media projects and events. The main focus is on maintaining the archive and lending.
literature
- Margret Köhler (Ed.): Alternative media work: Video groups in the Federal Republic , Opladen: Leske / Budrich, Wiesbaden 1980, ISBN 3-8100-0328-X
- Kurt Weichler: The other media - theory and practice of alternative communication , Vistas Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-89158-002-9
- ID archive in the IISG (ed.): Reader of the "other" archives , Amsterdam 1990, ISBN 3-89408-303-4
- Ute Hagel: Media Centers - Hamburg's Cultural Initiatives , Verlag Hans-Bredow-Institute for Radio and Television, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-87296-080-6