pouët.net

sorry to hear it guys. I wish you the best of luck for next time.

Thats sad news h2o, hope it will be in 2012 or 2013!

h20: I dont want to be a pessimiste but I wouldnt be surprised if Marseille Provence 2013 got canceld alltogether, see the latest "words" in that matter (laprovence yestarday for example)

honestly, if I were you, dont count on them, the budget for MP2013 alltogether is like 7% of the total tourist budget for the region in 1 year...

but them, im a pessimiste and you know that.

The pessimist is evil ;)

:(

I've really enjoyed MAIN and will be back as soon as MAIN is back.

c'est triste. Good luck with the 2012/2013!

sorry to hear that .. I haven't been to MAIN yet, but I want to go .. must make a point of it in 2012.

Sad news.
You'd better be all there in 2012...as it will probably be the last french party of humanity :D

does the global economy crisis have anything to do with this? :P

marseille doesn't have huge screen :(

http://www.mainsquarefestival.fr ?

ho no, they steal my demoparty !

This is really sad news (especially when we were already eager to come and all...).
So basically what nosfe said (in both messages).

A careful read of H2O's statement about the financing situation for cultural projects in France would've answered that - nevertheless rhetorical - question.

A slight hint for the planning of the 2012 event.
Don't count/rely on the authorities for financial support, you won't get it.
The proverbial and financial shit is about to hit the government fans throughout Euro-currency-land and we all know where these pricks start to cut the budgets first.

i had some plan. it was cancelled by french government..

After 5 years in france, i'd have to say that it does not have that much to do with any economic crisis but rather have to do with that the french economy is run in a way pretty much simular to the greek economy over the last years. Just that in the french case its over the last 20 or so years. Based on nepotism, corruption and populism from all sides of the table. And in any economy that is pulling the emergency brake, culture, especially the non-finearts one, is the first to go out the window.

Ironically though, they do pretend to care about culture. You know, Hadopi, 3 strikes, etc.

....but maybe demoscene events are not that much culture to them like...lemme say....sausages, cidre or cidre with sausage taste.

All I know is that MAIN 2009 opened with the city suits giving a 15-20 min session of enthusiastic speeches about how happy they are that digital culture comes to their region and all that jazz.

It's a shame that the fervour only lasted this long.

they had the same speeches in 2010

for what i've followed there are big cuts being done for cultural funds all over europe. it's not really about whether they have intent to use money from their cultural budger for demoscene if there isn't any cultural budget left.

The whole idea in arles was to make a long term project out of it with having the hall filled up with lot of creative minds spending a good time.

As nosfe and gargaj said, we all thought the engagement will last much longer, reality showed us , that promises from politicans are "promises from politicans" and their mind changes as the wind-direction.

Maybe they also just counted heads and not creativity behind, from this point of view approx 200 to 250 visitors ( as international and cultural mixed they have been ) didnt make them so happy.

It makes no sense which reasons let them decide to cancel the support as they did, on the good side iam sure there will be some interest from cultural / supporting goverments and peoples, all your comments and the videoreports proof that main was something really special ...

The bad , really bad part was that "on hold" status we had till beginning of this week .... now for us ... in last minute to decide stopping support, deny the place was just too late to react

Iam sure we gonna find new partners and supporters, and make another main happening ...

We all do our best to get back next year !
All your words here and the fact that you really liked what we did just motivate us even more to try harder ...

This is true, even though well, it is still going (for the moment) better than in greece. The french government is really against all kind of hackers (creative or not) and affiliated, and everyone who knows well how to use a computer falls in a "blacklist" to their eyes. The truth is that president sarkozy really dislikes some combination of free speech/collective intelligence that he canot control like the TV/radio. And the revolutions in the arab world are showing that he is right to be afraid of it.

The french government has had really "good relations" with the former tunisian president Ben ali, and with ghaddafi. Sarkozy started a war against lybia shortly after ghaddafi sons claimed that they would reveal how his presidential campaign has been funded, with account number details and so on. There you go, the circle is complete.

In the city of Marseille, acutally the problem is that only one company controls everything, it is ran by the brother of the guy who is president of department concil of "bouches du rhone".

So yes, we have a "mafia" in france, and it has been gaining ground thanks to the crisis. sadly. :/

Indeed i think france needs a good revolution that would "cleanup" the system from all the parasites who prevent the country from going forward (the way germany goes for example). And the crisis is just a step ahead indeed, french banks are extremelly exposed to greek debt, so i guess it also answers the question of why our governement has been so pressing to bailout greece with the EU and IMF...

If greece canot pay back, there is a chance that french banks will collapse (unless the government decides again to save the people who have provocated the crisis -banksters-).

When the US banks collapsed in the great depression, 80% of the people got unemployed there.

So I hope there is a better issue to all of this.

So yes the problem is that they like culture, but they like it even more when it brings a lot of money, if you see what i mean. ;) anyway back to main talking, can you say what is the political party of the people in arles municipality?

Surprisingly, according to Wikipedia, the mayor is communist (H. Schiavetti / PCF).

i'm sorry but i don't believe this has anything to do with politics...

not that i know anything about Arles specifically but; maybe it's just a matter of using an amount of money for something that has a chance to entertain / interest whole families compared to a small portion of people?

This is true.. I am thinking about projecting visuals on monuments?