Gita Hashemi (http://strictlypersonal.net) is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, activist, writer and educator. Her formal arts training started at the School of Fine Arts, Tehran University, and, after leaving the Islamic Republic in 1984, continued at CSUN, California. She left the United States in late 1990 in protest against the first war on Iraq, and has since been residing in Toronto, Canada. She has a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies and currently teaches in Visual Arts and Humanities departments at York University, Toronto. Hashemi has been involved in many collaborative, participatory and activist art and media projects in Iran, the U.S. and Canada; and is a founding member of the Post-Exile Collective and Creative Response, and the founder of IAD (Iranian Artists in Dialogue). Hashemi has served on the boards of directors of many art organizations including A Space, Diversi Film and Video Fund and InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, and has been on the Editorial Committee of Fuse Magazine since 2004.

Abstract

Freedom of Knowledge, An OpinionWare Project

The purpose of General Public Freedom of Knowledge License – an OpinionWare project – is to reflect on and bring attention to the inherent character of knowledge as public resource rather than private property. OpinionWare – a project initiated by Gita Hashemi – is an animating concept whose ongoing imperatives are to explore, articulate and reflect upon dissenting opinions, practices and acts that address pressing current issues, and to carve and claim public spaces for such articulations through tactical and strategic, formal and informal collaborations. OpinionWare is open to ideas, proposals and contributions at http://opinionware.net.