[Reader-list] Live Your Culture - DANKA's electronic subcultural revolution from South Asia

[Fouad Riaz Bajwa]

Live Your Culture - 
DANKA's electronic subcultural revolution from South Asia

Feature by Fouad Riaz Bajwa, Independent Writer & Researcher

	A subcultural revolution is evolving, taking place right here in
Lahore, the city where I live! Whenever someone who is well connected with
the beautiful history of South Asia, hears the name of Lahore, a grand
culture signified and colored by a great history comes to their mind. Lahore
has always been the peaceful cultural capital of the country hosting
beautiful Mughal gardens, historical buildings, mosques, libraries, museums,
shrines, forts, towers and monuments dating back centuries old civilizations
and empires of great rulers. 

	The city is inhabited by the liveliest and joyful civilization ever,
Lahoris, the entertaining people who are always in the mood for fun, games
and cultural events spiced with great fiestas and decorated with the most
delicious food ever! My new experience with this culture starts by
accidentally walking into a meeting being held by the members of something
called, DANKA, while waiting for a friend to show up for dinner. 

	My friend's arrival as being delayed by traffic jams provoked me to
socialize with the people around me at one of the most relaxing artistic
cafes, "Nai Rang", owned by Pakistan's famous architect Nayar Ali Dada
situated in the heart of Lahore metropolitan city, an interesting experience
within itself. I sat down to share my moments with a creative group that
leads South Asia's subcultural revolution "DANKA" in Pakistan. DANKA enables
one to experience being part of an atmosphere that is something totally
different and exciting. 

	DANKA is the name they go by hosting an online electronic culture
from the region built on top of Free and Open Source Software, if it's
happening in Lahore, its right there on DANKA! Finding out about DANKA and
getting the opportunity to meet its team of creative jolters was a profound
experience in itself, although I intend to detail in my readers on DANKA and
its objectives, I want you to join me on the DANKA ship to meet the crew for
a moment. The DANKA ship, as I now call it was founded and is steered by
Pierre Jolit, purely sophisticated French with more brains than emotions, a
business graduate from the esteemed Edhec Business School in France. 

	The captain of the DANKA ship is Dr. Andreas Daniel Matt, a creative
Austrain holding a Ph.D. in Computers and Mathematics from the University of
Innsbruck, Austria. Luckily, he landed Lahore in his antique wagon three
years ago and if it weren’t for Danka to be founded here in Lahore, he would
have been across the world twice. He really knows how to manage his wagon
ship through the deep waters of the five rivers of Pakistan!

	The DANKA online platform was cooked up by Yasir Hussain, who is
believed to be half Islooite and half inhuman. Yasir also runs his own
entrepreneurial venture here in Lahore with the name Al Rug. The drivers of
DANKA are Jakob Steinkogler and Foaad Nizam. Jakob is the possibly the lead
role for a future DANKA fantasized Punjabi film production since he is
qualified  as aggressive in nature but violence is prohibited at DANKA. On
the other hand, even though Foaad teaches Guitar at Lahore Chitrkar, and is
found on almost every musical evening in Lahore, he still has all the
ingredients to be a part of Pakistani cricket team. 

	DANKA's Spiritual Guide is Jakob Steiner dubbed as Sufi Sahab, a
writer, thinker, social servant and charming young dude getting modeling
offers on almost every visit to coffee cafes and makes sure DANKA's
Newsletter is deliverd to its members every Thursday. That's not all, Sajjad
Haider is the Speaker volunteer of Danka while carrying out a professional
"sarkari naukri" urdu for a Government Job, at the Punjab Information
Technology Board appearing as the Man in Black for the night!  
 
	Nawab Manan Ejaz is the Steward of DANKA even though he isn't an
actual Nawab but the designer champ who designed DANKA's cool dhol logo. The
only missing chap from the meeting was an Ol Irish, Martin Beddeleem who
kept police guard on Danka, barking after every other guy with a stick in
his hand and whenever he found it suitable gave'em a good moral beating and
also controlled quality. The DANKA team really misses this guy, I wonder.

	Once, acquainted with the crew members, they shared the spirit of
DANKA with me. As Lahore is the cultural capital of Pakistan, and offers a
wide range of cultural activities, Andreas said, "DANKA realized the need
for Lahore to have a strong and independent tool to organize the
communication of cultural events in order to inform the public and establish
the essential link between cultural life and public like all the major
cultural cities such as Paris, London, Berlin or Buenos Aires. DANKA is
evolving a cultural networking spirit to promote active cooperation between
artists, organizers, the public and cultural management to improve quality
of events, their communication and organization." 

	DANKA was originally developed within the frame of the culture
branch of Proloka, an Austrian based NGO for development and culture
(www.proloka.org). The name proLoka is based on two words of the languages
Latin and Sanskrit where "pro" means "for" and "loka" equivalent to "the
world" represents the overall goal of the organization's projects, to
contribute meaningful activities to this world. ProLoka is a platform and
network to exchange knowledge and competences between people, institutions
and cultures improving the quality of life and personal development of
everyone involved in its projects. DANKA is its live example for cultural
and civilization exchange in the region! 

	"In order to understand DANKA, one has to visit its website where
everyone is invited to announce upcoming or ongoing events, the best part,
its free to post and free to share!" said Andreas. "DANKA doesn't critic or
judge the quality of the events that are registered on its website promoting
an open and inclusive culture. The objective of DANKA is to host the widest
range of cultural activity registered on the site, and promote the website
amid the Lahoris by also offering a cultural picture data base, online
forums and discussions on culture and related issues." Furthermore
publications of directories of cultural centers, cultural and historical
places, artists, etc. are planned to be added to DANKA soon. 

	"Second, Danka is a networking and management effort dedicated to
assist the cultural organizers and artists in their needs, these activities
can range from event management, exchange programmes and technical
assistance to consultancy and marketing. Danka also plans to carry out own
cultural projects in the fields of theatre, dance, music, film, poetry,
recording, documentation and conservation of art and culture. Feel free to
contact the Danka Team for any enquiry."

	DANKA is destined to be a link between artists, cultural events
organizers and the public. The link has been created by collecting,
organizing, providing and broadcasting free information, all under a
Creative Commons licensing, first time by any cultural group in Pakistan. By
doing this, DANKA is confident that such steps will improve cultural
activity in the South Asian state both in terms of quantity and quality.
DANKA also sees the need to establish culture as a strong value by
culturally educating people and motivating them to add, create and
experience their own culture. 

	This subculture revolution is in full gear as DANKA evolves into an
online reference for cultural information and coordination from Lahore to
other cities of Pakistan, so if you are thinking about hosting a cultural
event and want to announce it to the world or want to know "what's on" on
the cultural scene in Pakistan, just log on to DANKA and "Live Your Culture"
at http://www.danka.com.pk or engage with the DANKA community on ORKUT at
http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=9593000. 

	DANKA is also open to partnerships with cultural centres, event
organizers, distribution and marketing organizations to participate and
support the project. DANKA's partner network promotes sharing information in
the fields of music, theatre, exhibitions and to expand the DANKA outreach
to other regions.

Online Links: 
----------------

DANKA. http://www.danka.com.pk

proLoka http://www.proloka.org 

Al-Rug. http://www.alrug.com 

Lahore Chitrkar. http://www.lahorechitrkar.com

----------------    
This article is share by Fouad Riaz Bajwa under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
----------------

-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.5/707 - Release Date: 3/1/2007
2:43 PM