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