Panel Statement

Using MED TV as an exemplar, this panel looks at the historical and contemporary uses of communication technologies which have sought to disrupt, subvert and/or revolutionise dominant and received notions of cultural identity. John Byrne, as a member of the MED TV Advisory Group, has developed the panel in liaison with Hikmet Tabak (MED TV, Director), Mamoste Musa Koval (MED TV, Zaningeha MED) and Joe Cooper (MED TV, Producer)
MED TV is an independent satellite broadcasting company, based in London and licensed by the Independent Television Commission with studios in Denderleeuw on the outskirts of Brussels. MED TV represents the full cultural, political and religious diversity of a global Kurdish Diaspora. As the Kurds themselves have no politically recognised country, MED TV has increasingly provided a virtual identity for a historically, politically and geographically dispossessed community.
Papers, presentations and demonstrations have been invited which provide similar examples of how broadcasting technologies (Radio, TV, Video, Digital etc.) have been used in the production, distribution and exchange of diverse racial, political, sexual and cultural identities.
Mediated Nations will culminate in the screening of a unique broadcast of MED TV’s Zaningeha MED (University MED) programme. This will take the form of a discussion programme with live phone-in, fax and e-mail interactivity to be hosted at MED’s Denderleeuw studios in Brussels. The unique nature of this event will be that the broadcasting agency of a stateless nation will be participating in a section of an international conference, to which delegates can contribute, and which can be received across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and large parts of the former Soviet Union. MED TV will be recording this programme for future broadcast in Kurmanci.

• John Byrne (UK), Convenor, Senior Lecturer in Contextual Studies, Liverpool Art School, Liverpool John Moores University