The Grup de Recerca sobre Exclusió i Control Social (GRECS) and the Observatori de la Vida Quotidiana (OVQ), which are collaborating on the project “Strong Squares: the political beating of the heart of the city" present an intervention that takes participants on a documentary journey through the promised world of the information "freedom" that the Internet puts within our reach. In the tumultuous Arab social context of 2011, the Net emerged as one of most crucial tools for spreading information about the popular uprisings in different countries in the region. A year later, if we want to go back and follow the trail of those revolts, we simply type a keyword into a search engine and we are faced with millions of possibilities. But beyond this initial avalanche of data, what kind of information can we glean from this noisy, slippery magma? In this intervention we will explore how collective memory (and also forgetting) is shaped in a context such as this, through a search focusing on two uprisings that occurred almost simultaneously: the revolution in Cairo’s Tahrir Sqare, which received strong media coverage, and the citizen uprising in Tahrir Square, Baghdad, which was silenced in the press. By following this dual path, we will be able to experience the potential autonomy of the virtual world as a source of information independent of the mainstream media, and to consider the limitations of the Net as a scenario of and for social conflict. GRECS Research Group on Social Exclusion and Control. An interdisciplinary, international group of researchers that promotes critical reflection around the issues of social exclusion and control, based at the University of Barcelona. http://www.ub.edu/grecs/ OVQ: Observatory of Everyday Life. An assembly-based organisation of social researchers and visual arts professionals that carries out research on aspects of contemporary social life on the streets. http://www.ovq.cat

The Mahabharata is the epic poem of oblivion; of forgetting the source.

An interview with Uruguayan writer and journalist Eduard Galeano, who spoke at the Acampadabcn assembly on May 23, 2011. “There is another world beating inside this one, a world that is different and seemingly difficult. It will not easily be born, but its definitely beating in this present world, and I sense its presence in these spontaneous demonstrations: in Plaça Catalunya in Barcelona, in Sol in Madrid (...) People ask me: “What's going to happen now?.. What’s next?... What will become of this?” And I can only answer from my own experience. I say: “Well... nothing... I don’t know what’s going to happen, and it doesn’t really matter to me. All I care about are the things that are happening now, the present moment, and what this moment augurs about another moment that will come into being, although I do not know how it will be. It would be as if, every time I had an experience of love, I asked myself what was going to happen next."

At the height of the Vietnam war, with the media drumming up the war and patriotism, Cassius Clay took the name Mohammed Ali and refused to go to war or to participate in propaganda activities. He paid the price of being stripped of his world heavyweight title and faced a prison sentence. “No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over."

I don't think politicians have read any history at all, modern or ancient. Situations repeat themselves, and no matter how many guns they have, it will all be repeated again, because it will be necessary. Watch out world leaders, murderers like Mr Bush...this is a Barcelona you can't see; one that hides.

Every morning, we sign the Contract. The system at the heart of our “free" world is based on a kind of contract that we all agree to. We sign it every morning: “I accept competition as the foundation of our system, even though I am aware that it generates frustration and anger for the majority of those who lose. I agree to be humiliated and exploited in exchange for being allowed to humiliate and exploit those on a lower rung of the social pyramid (...)"

An interview with writer and local resident Darcus Howe on the events that took place in London in 2011. "Have some respect for an old West Indian 'negro' " "I don't call it rioting, I call it an insurrection...of the masses of the people. It is happening in Syria, it is happening in Clapham, it's happening in Liverpool, it's happening in Port-au-Spain, Trinidad, and that is the nature of the historical moment."