Marcell Mars

At HAU, Berlin, 2013.
Born	Benkovac, Croatia, Yugoslavia (today Croatia)
Lives in	Coventry, United Kingdom

Marcell Mars (born Nenad Romić, 1972) is a free software advocate, cultural explorer, and social instigator.

Marcell is one of the founders of Multimedial Institute - mi2 and net.culture club mama in Zagreb. He initiated GNU GPL publishing label ' EGOBOO.bits, TamTam platform for on-line collaboration, Ngode software for NGOs financial management.

He initiated skill sharing regular informal meetings of enthusiasts in mama + started skill sharing's satellites g33koskop and 'The Fair of Mean Equipment'.

Marcell participated in collaborative artistic projects like NRD Kit of NRD Van group of artists, gifoskop (interactive animation) together with Nikolina Pristas & Maja Marjancic + was a tech developer for projects EditThisBanner (by Lina Kovacevic) and Flying Carpet (by Lala Rascic).

He was one of the organizers of summer camps "Otokultivator" on island Vis (together with URK Močvara & EASA Croatia) and SummerSource (together with TacticalTech).

Marcell participated in curating or producing mi2 yearly exhibitions I Am Still Alive (2001) and re:Con (2002), free culture, science and technology festival Freedom to creativity! (2005) and in conceptual exhibition System.hack() (2006). He is a member of Creative Commons Team Croatia.

Regularly runs workshops like 'Programming for non-programmers', 'Social software and semantic web in practice', 'Command line audio on GNU/Linux'... Gives talks on topics like hacking, free software philosophy, gathering communities around good causes, slacking, doing nothing, stupid/smart business models of music industries, social software & semantic web...

While in Zagreb Marcell hangs out in Hacklab in mama, in Belgrade runs Wonder of technology/Čudo tehnike, Hackers lenses/Hakerska optika and Programming for non-programmers at Faculty of Media and Communication, from 2011-2012 worked on research Ruling Class Studies at Jan Van Eyck in Maastricht, a research continued in 2015 as PhD at Digital Cultures Research Lab. In 2013 did fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. These days advocates for and works on Public library / Memory of the World.

He sings, dances, tells the stories and makes music as Nenad Romic za Novyi Byte.

Publications

• Mars, et al., zarez 7(146): "Sloboda stvaralaštvu", Zagreb, 2005, pp 21-28. Magazine section. (Croatian)

• Mars, et al., System.hack(), Zagreb: Mama, 2006, 96 pp. Exhibition catalogue. (Croatian)/(English)

• with Edwin Gardner, Tracing Concepts: In, Out and Through Computing, Maastricht, 2011, 24 pp. (English)

• "Hrvatski WikiLeaks okupirala desnica", Novosti, Mar 2011. (Croatian)

• with Manar Zarroug and Tomislav Medak, "Public Library (An Essay)", Memory of the World blog, 27 Oct 2014. On the idea of public library. (English)

• editor, with Tomislav Medak, Javna knjižnica / Public Library, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, 144 pp. (Croatian)/(English)

• with Tomislav Medak and Dubravka Sekulić, "Taken Literally", in We Need It - We Do It: Croatia at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition / La Biennale di Venezia 2016, eds. Emina Višnić and Miranda Veljačić, Split: Platforma 9.81, 2016, pp 228-235. (English)

• with Valeria Graziano and Tomislav Medak, "Learning from #Syllabus", in State Machines: Reflections and Actions at the Edge of Digital Citizenship, Finance, and Art, eds. Yiannis Colakides, Marc Garrett, and Inte Gloerich, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2019, pp 115-128. (English)

• with Tomislav Medak, "Against Innovation: Compromised Institutional Agency and Acts of Custodianship", Ephemera 19(2): "Repair Matters", May 2019, pp 345-368, PDF. (English)

• with Tomislav Medak, "System of a Takedown: Control and De-commodification in the Circuits of Academic Publishing", in Andrew Lison, et al., Archives, Lüneburg: meson.press, and University of Minnesota Press, 2019, pp 47-68. (English)

• with Valeria Graziano and Tomislav Medak, "Pirate Care: Against the Crisis", in ...Of Bread, Wine, Cars, Security and Peace, Vienna: Kunsthalle Wien, and Zagreb: What, How and for Whom/WHW, 2020, pp 103-109. [1] (English)
  • "Pirate Care: Gegen die Krise", in ...von Brot, Wein, Autos, Sicherheit und Frieden, Vienna: Kunsthalle Wien, and Zagreb: What, How and for Whom/WHW, 2020, pp 101-109. [2] (German)

• with Janneke Adema and Tobias Steiner, Books Contain Multitudes: Exploring Experimental Publishing, COPIM, Jan 2021, PDF. Report. (English)

• with Valeria Graziano and Tomislav Medak, "When Care Needs Piracy: The Case for Disobedience in Struggles against Imperial Property Regimes", Soundings 77: "History/memory", Spring 2021, pp 55-70. DOI. (English)

• Pirate Care, "Local Maximum: On Popular Technical Pedagogy", in Artistic Ecologies: New Compasses & Tools, eds. Pablo Martínez, Emily Pethick, and What, How & for Whom/WHW, Zagreb: What, How & for Whom/WHW, and London: Sternberg Press, 2022, pp 118-131. [3] [4] (English)

• with Valeria Graziano and Nick Thurston, "Public Co-Learning Tools: a Meta-Politics of the Simple for Postdigital Infrastructure", Groundings, Mar 2022, 18 pp. [5] [6] (English)

• with Tomislav Medak, "Public Library and the Return of the Repressed Memory of the World", in Stories and Threads: Perspectives on Art Archives, eds. Sara Buraya Boned, Jennifer Fitzgibbon, and Sezin Romi, L'Internationale, 2022, pp 74-89. [7] (English)

• Personal blog, since 2007.

Talks

• Vienna 2013
• CCC 2015, Hamburg.

Interviews

• "Multimedia Institute (mi2): Zeljko Blace, Marcell Mars & Tomi Medak interviewed by Joanne Richardson", subsol 2, Apr 2002.
• Phillip Torrone, "The Maker File: Interview with Marcell Mars", audio, Make Zine, 1 Nov 2006.
• "Demonizacija Wikileaksa mogla bi dovesti do uništenja interneta", Tportal.hr, Dec 2010. Interview about Wikileaks. (Croatian)
• "Između revolucije i reforme", Zarez, October 2011. Interview about Pirate Party. (Croatian)
• Alessandro Ludovico, "Marcell Mars, Interview", Neural 44: Special Issue on Post-Digital Print (Jan 2013), pp 6-8. (English)
• Lazara Marinkovic, "CTM.13 – Marcell Mars, The Golden Age Interview", Bturn, 30 May 2013.
• Cornelia Sollfrank, Public Library, Marcell Mars, video interview, 2013, 23 min.
• David Garcia, "Public Library: Memory of the World. Conversation with Marcell Mars about his project", New Tactical Research blog, 14 Feb 2014. [8]
• Petar Jandrić, Ana Kuzmanić, "Knowledge Commons and Activist Pedagogies: From Idealist Positions to Collective Actions: Conversation with Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak", in Jandrić, Learning in the Age of Digital Reason, Rotterdam: Sense, 2017, pp 243-269. (English)
• Felix Stalder, Cornelia Sollfrank, "Caring for the Public Library, Interview with Marcell Mars & Tomislav Medak", Mar 2019, 33 min. Video. Transcript. Conducted Oct 2017 at HEK, Zurich. Part of the Creating Commons project. (English)
• XPUB, "Interview with Marcell Mars", in The Library Is Open, Rotterdam: Piet Zwart Institute (XPUB Special Issue 09), Jul 2019, pp 28-33. Website. (English)
• Hana Sirovica, "Taking Care of Unconditional Solidarity", Kulturpunkt.hr, 8 Mar 2020. (English)
• Miljenka Buljević, "'Svijet takozvanog društva znanja svijet je nejednakosti'", Booksa.hr, Zagreb, 13 Apr 2020. (Croatian)

On Marcell Mars

• kuda.org, "Art organization. Interview with Tomislav Medak and Petar Milat, Multimedia Institute mi2, Zagreb, 2019", 2019.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "Memory of the World / Public Library", in Goldsmith, Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb, New York: Columbia University Press, Jul 2020, pp 116-123.

See also

• Mama, Zagreb
• Tomislav Medak
• Memory of the World
• Shadow libraries

Links

• http://ki.ber.kom.uni.st
• https://mastodon.social/@marcell (Mastodon)
• http://www.memoryoftheworld.org/people/nenad-romic-aka-marcell-mars/
• http://www.labinary.org/guru/
• http://www.scribd.com/marcellmars
• http://wiki.icommons.org/index.php/User:Marcell_Mars
• http://archived.janvaneyck.nl/4_4_cv/cv_d_rom1.html