Félix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography

the political powers that they cease using French and instead use

English, that is, to make Minitel an open system. Naturally, he was

reprimanded, and if it was even discussed, it was a French matter. And

two or three years later, the World Wide Web was launched, on an

international scale and conception. So for a number of years, France

stayed behind. Minitel slowed up development, a paradoxical story

that speaks volumes about French cultural nationalism and its power.

GM:Can you say something about Telestreet? How was this project born,

how was it developed, and is it still active?

Bifo:I have to say no. Telestreet was born as an effect of dispersion,

that is, when Berlusconi controlled everything. I was working for the

radio, had been working for RAI for six years, and did a report on the

Internet that had some success. Two months after the power grab by

Mediaset – and I am not going into details now – I was kicked out

along with hundreds of other people in the Italian communication

system. At this point we were beginning to reflect on what we could do

in this situation, and one of us, who was always the technological

brain from the time of Radio Alice, said: ‘Look, if we position an

antenna on this roof, I have access to a kind of program that can trans-

form it from a receiving antenna into a transmitter. Why don’t we

spread it around and everyone can do his own show from his house?’

What a great idea! And in fact it worked. We proposed this idea in

summer 2002 in Bologna, in a neighborhood nearby, and in six

months, Telestreet had around 80 transmitters in Italy. In December

we held a meeting, a large group attended, many participants in the

media republic, many much younger than us, and so on. In 2003, the

thing really exploded, reaching 150 Telestreets, some starting also to

work via satellite, then the police closed two or three, but then

reopened them. That is, a very interesting dynamic was unleashed at

this period.

Then external problems started to arise: the first one was that you

couldn’t do a half hour or an hour daily transmission without funds

since it meant mobilizing four or five persons to work on editing, I

don’t know, paying for the truck, and then it also meant investing in

some technical equipment, not expensive, but still necessary. And so at

a certain point, it began to really get expensive. That is, 2003 was the

high point, when the war started, and right around February 15, at the

moment of the great anti-military explosion, the Telestreets reached

their peak ... But then, they ran out of breath, energy, funds, and some

152 Thought, Friendship and Visionary Cartography

9780230_221192_14_inte.pdf 10/3/08 11:37 AM Page 152