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zations or artist groups or expressions of the emerging sub-cultures. ‘I think it is difficult to call it a subculture because it expanded as this new, cool and modern thing. It happened on a fast pace because there was nothing standing against it as a reactionary force, I mean, as the real culture. Also, what happened quite fast was that all these things and projects by E-Lab were soon acknowledged by all state institutions that this is all good and should be supported’ (Tifentale 2010). Hence, E-Lab aimed at escaping ‘institutionalization’ in its own structure by replacing it with an independent and flexible small-scale organization that collaborates with other similar organizations, groups and individuals, in order to develop a diverse interest community of the digital culture network in Latvia. E-Lab’s Art Server – A Social Media for Art and Communication In order for ‘alternative zones’ (for instance, in the case of digital culture networks) to be sustainable, it is important to address the issue of infrastructure as before in the chapter on art servers. For media centers and laboratories this meant providing computers, powerful Internet access and a server, whereas for virtual communities and especially creative networks (both local and translocal) in the 1990s it was the server that provided Internet services such as mailing lists, e-mail service, web page hosting, Internet broadcasting possibilities and so on. Today, there are many different services and social platforms on the Internet and this issue is has lost its relevance. However, there is still a difference whether a network community uses its own media or uses Facebook or other Web 2.0 social network platforms. They are limited in the sense that community members have never been involved in the conceptual and technical development of these platforms and are not those who determine their content, since it is placed on servers owned by companies. A server is not only the ‘virtual home’ (Lovink 2005) of the creative network but also a social medium. If it is independent the community members have the final say and the control over their own content, design, structure, functions, and any other services they prefer to use. E-Lab’s own Web server (re-lab.net) as a socially independent medium was described and conceptualized as the ‘sovereign experience of media’ by Eric Kluitenberg in this way: ‘The highest aim of media for the sake of nothing else is to escape determinism. Therefore it is very hard (if not impossible) to define them. … One of the most remarkable examples of this type of media is the re-lab net art server, which is maintained by the E-Lab artist organization in Riga. … The kind of media activity that the re-lab net server carries is highly self-sufficient. It does not refer to anything beyond or outside of itself in any significant way. Neither does it refer to some ‘unrepresentable’ otherness. It simply exists’ (Kluitenberg 1999, 50). However, alongside its artistic experiments in creating ‘open and undefined spaces’, the E-Lab server also functioned as social medium with the aim to provide support for communication and activities of local (and translocal) creative network communities. As stated earlier, one of the most important functions of such a network ‘art server’ in the 1990s was to run mailing lists. Similar to translocal collaboration networks that used mailing lists as their main information exchange and communication channel, mailing lists can also play a significant role in creating and sustaining local community networks. For instance, the Rezone mailing list (set up by E-Lab in 1997) operates in Latvian, which is important to local cultural community. Next to local announcements about art and culture events, Rezone also regularly re-publishes important information (e.g. an on-going event calendar, calls for participation in festivals, conferences, exhibitions, study programs at universities, etc.) from its translocal ‘neighbors’, other creative network mailing lists. Today, Rezone continues to function, it has about 400 subscribers