It’s complicated. Video-activism, supposedly, when we first came together, meant a form of video with a strong and defined character. Before 15M, there was a notion that any video that was focused on motivation counted as such, especially if it held a focus on our values. With the 15M movement taking place, we realized that in addition to doing it wrong, we can introduce aspects like marketing and publicity in order to use them against capitalism or what we thought wasn’t working in it. 15M broke the pre-existing norm that anything, even something poorly done can be interpreted by anyone and it could mean something. So one of the things that I think we learned from 15M and that we’ve tried to develop is first, how to make high quality audiovisual productions, both in the artistic and technical sense, and second, how to break from the self-referential codes of activism. The break from the type of self-referential language that isn’t understood outside of the movements themselves in order to reach more people. This brought us lots of criticism from and many discussions with people who had been working in the field for a long time during 15M, but i think that little by little it has become understood that we can reach common people with a message that’s equally radical, just changing the language, but the message is still just as radical.

By Xapo Ortega (Metromuster)