PROLOGUE
Fora do Eixo (Out of Axis) stems out of the will and the need to redesign the map of Brazilian culture from a collective and networked logic. We emerged from hundreds of cultural collectives distributed throughout deep Brazil. We occupied the main cities of the country, we hacked the axis with collective houses and we broke down international borders.
As the network grows, so does our collective intelligence, our challenges, our references, and our themes. We no longer fit under the cultural circuit category, we are now a social movement that departs from culture to understand, reflect and build the world we want. In addition to transforming our lives, we dispute common sense and society. We build new realities, new narratives. We are also Mídia NINJA.
Mídia Ninja intensifies our relationship with social movements, we fight for democracy, we fight against coups, we take action in the National Congress, we venture in different fields, from reiki to hacker, from feminism to anti-racism, from urban tribes to the indigenous peoples, from veganism to the climate emergency. We are activists!
This whole journey has already 18 years old and we are reaching another turning point. At first, our biggest challenge was to install collaborative and cooperative logics in both work and life relationships, this is how collectives were born. The challenge then became how to articulate these collectives with each other, thus networks emerged. Later on, the challenge transformed into how to connect these networks to other networks, this is when the movement emerged. Now, the challenge is how to mix all the different movements, activisms and networks, this is when the Activist Forest sprouts!
Activist Forest
We are not a monoculture, we are a forest! By building several interfaces we ended up having a colorful ecosystem where different themes, narratives, methodologies, scales, identities, experiences and times inhabit, on the basis of a policy that prioritizes caregiving. We are talking about the anthropophagic dynamics of the recombination of cultures that generate new meanings and experiences!
Our DNA
our source code, our essence, what we are made of
Collective beings - Collectives set the pace. More than a choice, being part of a collective is a necessity. The world is a very individualistic place, so, presenting collective solutions leads to transformations,switches logic, creates new possibilities. We organize ourselves in collectives because we think it is the way to go since we are all collective beings.
Diverse cultures - we understand cultures in their anthropological and behavioral sense in which they have a leading role in changing paradigms and ways of relating in society. We are diverse peoples and there are multiple ways of cultural endeavor.
Artivisms - a space of constant ethical-aesthetic experimentation, a quarry of utopian delusions that allows us to dream beyond limits and make the impossible tangible. Without a new language, there will be no new reality.
Narrative dispute - communication as one of the main weapons to reduce inequalities and narrative dispute as the first line of the symbolic-cultural battle for the construction of new imaginary and human relations.
Network's culture - networks as laboratories of a collective and collaborative society where their members work together with claims of public interest, developing projects that are at their essence, common policies.
Free code, open mind - free code does not become obsolete, it improves, it evolves with collective intelligence; adjusting itself to new challenges and changes every day. This is how it works in technology and also in life. Keep your code free and evolve!
We are not going to ask for permission - We are Out of Axis/ off-axis, the sum of the identities of a deep Brazil and peripheral experiences that have a lot to say and offer to the world. The solution to the crisis will come from those who have always lived through the crisis. We are here to stay.
Radical and pop - there is nothing more powerful than radical ideas that become pop. We are radical without pose. We mix generosity with boldness. Commitment with freedom. Courage with happiness. The meme is as important as the text, the movements are as important as the mainstream, to change the world we need to dialogue with the most varied specters of society.
Dangerous ideas - All of our projects as well as our way of life aim to build new realities, fight against inequalities and balance privileges in order to transform the contexts in which we operate. Our fight is for a more collective, just, caring and egalitarian society.
Subjective mobility - We are like a spiral in flux, constant but always changing. Restless and decisive. We are willing to root and transcend, territorialize and deterritorialize. Detachment is important to generate changes. Change is the basis of both individual and worldwide revolution. No one is born ready, but everyone is capable of learning and generating change.
OUR CLOSURE
our bets, agreements, principles and values
The revolution will be danced - the party as a method of activism and organization. Being happy can be both a revolutionary and civic action. We like and enjoy what we do. We build from desire and to generate a desire for revolution.
Less manifest, more manifestation - be the change you want in the world! Opinion is not an argument, complaints are not criticism. Those who demand, coordinate, those who make proposals, help to advance. Always look for coherence between discourse and practice.
The house is yours, the dishes too - in collective life, sharing the space with more people is also being helpful in caregiving. Be purposeful: willingness, availability, and cooperation are essential to any truly collective construction.
Empire of the Empirical - there is no greater path to learning than experience. All our methodologies were created from the systematization of shared practices and experiences, replicated and remixed for more than 15 years of network construction.
Low resolution, high fidelity - a mobile phone in hand, an idea in the head. We are all multimedia citizens. Be the media!
This are dark times - "It is not enough not to be racist, we have to be anti-racist", we try to live Angela Davis's words to the fullest. We seek equal opportunities and reparation in our spaces and contents.
Revolution, feminine noun - patriarchy has no place here.This starts with the construction of a collective and anti-racist feminism and celebrating our differences. We seek to produce experiences that also contribute to the deconstruction of white and heteronormative masculinity. Communal feminism, committed to training and transforming people.
The accommodative has to move - O espaço é para todes e queremos percorrer esse caminho. Corpos trans, gordos, com deficiência, são eles, os estranhos, malvistos, rejeitados e orgulhosos que trilham e pensam nossos saberes. Os que incomodam são os que criam novos mundos.
Money, collective illusion - whoever has the power to define what has value and what does not, is the same who has the power to define the world economy. Gold, $ and bitcoins do not exist, those are all mass hallucinations that dictate our way of seeing the economy. This goes from the hegemony of the exchange value as price to the paradigm of shortage management. Being able to transform our vision and create new value references, translates into building other economies.To change the economic rationale in a world that moves around the economy is in fact changing the world.
We came here to confuse not to explain - we are all (de) formed by preconceived ideas and concepts that limit our way of thinking, our way of seeing the world and experiencing life. Our feeling of freedom is reduced, our dreams are cornered, our power is minimized. What we need the most is to provoke ourselves, to question ourselves, to expand our imagination and resize our realities.
Whoever stands still is a light pole - sitting down to wait for salvation is not how we do things, we are also responsible for the reality in which we live. We are survivors and we will fight for what we believe in. We are heirs of a won decade , we have a historical debt to the future which includes giving a new meaning to the past and total commitment to the present.
A free community does not want war with anyone - only with capitalism, patriarchy, racism, xenophobia, cisheteronormativity, fascism, fatphobia, ableism, ruralists, loggers and any form of modern or colonial oppression. As the composer Lulu Santos used to say: we don't wish bad to aaaaalmost anyone! We cannot be tolerant with the intolerant.
Nothing is created, everything is copied (commonism) - Knowledge is never lost and has no owner! Knowledge, when shared, generates even more knowledge, multiplies, recombines, transforms, feeds the whole.
Neither cancel, nor sugar coating - We experience multiple forms of conflict resolution, based on dialogue and debate, always looking for options that generate true and new learning. We are not punitivists, but this is not a permit: take your responsibility! We are against the cancel culture, however be explicit: no violence or discrimination will be accepted or allowed.
There is no planet B - nature and its natural resources are finite. We must always combine free access and the rights to access the common with collective responsibility, fighting individual appropriation and predatory exploitation.