Simona Levi

Simona Levi
Born ( 1966-07-23)July 23, 1966
Torino, Italy
Nationality Spanish
Known for Activism, Performing arts

Simona Levi is an Italian (naturalized Spanish) multidisciplinary artist and activist based in Barcelona, Spain, since 1990. She is a prominent activist in European social movements that support the free circulation of knowledge, and has actively participated in movements in defense of the right to housing, against corruption and the use of public space. In the past few years she has focused on the issues of free culture, e-democracy and the strategic use of digital tools for collective organisation, communication and action.

Artistic career

A stage director, actress and dancer by training, Simona Levi studied performing arts in Paris, where she worked as a programmer in the squatted arts space L’oeil du Cyclone. She started touring as an actress with several companies in 1982, eventually settling in Barcelona in 1990. In 1994 she set up Conservas in Barcelona’s Raval, a venue that promotes local, innovative, independent performing arts based on a self-production paradigm.[1]

In 1999 she founded Compañia Conservas, and that same year the company presented its first stage production, Femina Ex Machina, directed by Levi and Dominique Grandmougin. The piece was awarded the FAD Special Critics Price and the Aplaudiment Award, and toured extensively to festivals and theatres in Europe (Spain, France, the UK, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Norway...) for more than two years. In 2003, again with Dominique Grandmougin, she directed the company’s second work, Seven Dust, which premièred at the Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona. The production toured through several European countries, including Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, Slovenia and Poland. In 2007, with Marc Sampere, she co-directed the third show by Compañia Conservas, Realidades Avanzadas, which questioned representative democracy and the concept of property. At the end of the show, audience members could take home a CD-ROM with the texts, videos, music and images used in the show.[2] The idea for the production was sparked by a video posted on YouTube in October 2006 that denounced real estate speculation and included footage recorded with a hidden camera in the anti-mobbing office at Barcelona City Council. The video was removed from YouTube at the request of the bank La Caixa, which alleged copyright infringement based on the use of images of one of its branches.[3]

Since 2001 to 2011 Simona Levi directed the Performing and Applied Arts Festival InnMotion,[4] which is held at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.[5][6]

Since 2008 she has managed the stage production of the oXcars.

Activism

Simona Levi is one of the founders of eXgae (now Xnet), a non-profit association created in 2008 which explores alternative models for cultural diffusion and royalties management. Since 2008, Xnet, with the support of Conservas, has organised the annual oXcars non-competitive awards ceremony, which puts the spotlight on projects created in different arts disciplines based on the paradigm of free culture.

As a member of Xnet, she is also the coordinator of the FCForum, an international arena in which organisations and experts in the field of free/libre knowledge and culture work towards creating a global strategic framework for action and coordination. She is also a founding member of Red Sostenible, a citizen platform created in January 2010 [7] to fight against the introduction of the anti-download legislation known as the “Sinde Law” in Spain, and to defend Internet rights.

In 2010, she appeared before the European Union Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Intellectual Property Law reform to defend the proposals contained in the “Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge”, a document that was drafted collectively by participants of the FCForum. In her intervention, she offered an overview of some of the omissions in the legislation and suggested possible solutions set out in the Charter, such as the abolition of Spain’s levy for private copying or “canon digital” and the need to restructure copyright collecting societies, claiming that they “hinder the free circulation of knowledge and sustainability for authors.”[8][9] In recent years, she has participated as a speaker and observer at national and international events, where she talks about the X.net project, the current royalties management situation and possible alternatives to this model. She has spoken at the Ministerial Forum for Creative Europe (The Czech Republic),[10] Transmediale (Berlin),[11] Economies of the Commons (Amsterdam) [12] and at the Sustainable Economy Law and the Internet seminar at the Telecommunications Technical Engineering Faculty at UPM. As a representative of the FCForum, she is a lobbyist at the European Commission.

Simona Levi is a member of the 15M (Indignados) collective 15MpaRato, which filed a lawsuit against the banker and former IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato, an action that launched the Bankia Case legal process in Spain.

She co-wrote the book Tecnopolítica, internet y r-evoluciones - Sobre la centralidad de redes digitales en el #15M and coordinated Cultura libre digital - Nociones básicas para defender lo que es de todos, both of which were published by Editorial Icaria in 2012.

Political career

Levi is one of the coordinators of Partido X, a Spanish political party that emerged from the 15-M movement (Indignados movement)and was founded on 17 December 2012. She was second on the Partido X ballot for the 2014 European Parliament elections, after the party’s first candidate Hervé Falciani.

See also

References

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