A public research trajectory tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and its connections to the present.

Under the working title 'Tactical Media Connections' the editors of the Tactical Media Files, David Garcia and Eric Kluitenberg have begun an extensive public research project that seeks to trace and develop the connections between the phenomenon of Tactical Media as it was identified in the early 1990s, not least through the renowned series of Next 5 Minutes festivals and conferences on Tactical Media (www.n5m.org - organised four times between 1993 and 2003), and current critical practices operating at the intersection of art, media, activism, technological experimentation and political contestation.

Collective Action After Networks

Part of the PML Books series. A collaboration between Mute and the Post-Media Lab.

April 28, 2014:
This Thursday is May Day, international workers' day.

Across the globe workers will celebrate May Day in various ways, organizing street demonstrations and protest marches in their communities, demanding justice and freedom for all oppressed people.

With this occasion, ArtLeaks will inaugurate a visual archive dedicated to art workers' pride, which will continue to gather material throughout the year.

Here it is the Immigrant X  Stop and Search  Mobile App. The concept is really simple. Here is how it works.

Cecily McMillan was brutally arrested at an event marking the 6 month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street on March 17, 2012. In the course of her arrest she sustained a violent police beating resulting in bruised ribs and a seizure. Cecily was hospitalized for those injuries. The egregious incident received extensive media coverage. Cecily was later charged and convicted with felony assault of a police officer, Assault 2nd degree, a Class D felony in NY, which carries a sentence of up to 7 years in prison.
A support campaign for the Occupy Wall Street organizer and activist is raising media attention and financial support.

Access / Bandwidth / Code / Data / Ensemble / Fractal / Gift / Heterogeneous / Iteration / Journal / Kernel / Liminal / Meme / Nodes / Orbit / Portability / Quotidian / Rescension / Site / Tools / Ubiquity / Vector / Web / Xenophilly / Yarn / Zone

Initiated in March 2011, Tahrir Documents is an ongoing effort to archive and translate activist papers from the 2011 Egyptian uprising and its aftermath. Materials are collected from demonstrations in Cairo's Tahrir Square and published in complete English translation alongside scans of the original documents. The project is not affiliated with any political organization, Egyptian or otherwise.

Felix Stalder's extended essay, Digital Solidarity, responds to the wave of new forms of networked organisation emerging from and colliding with the global economic crisis of 2008. Across the globe, voluntary association, participatory decision-making and the sharing of resources, all widely adopted online, are being translated into new forms of social space.

Jeremy Hammond Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison! Show Him He Still Has Our Support!
Jeremy Hammond is a 28-year-old political activist sentenced to 120  months in prison, with an additional 3 years probation upon his release, after pleading guilty to the Anonymous conspiracy to hack the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor). A longtime proponent of "hactivism," his actions are a form of electronic civil disobedience. He believes that "people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors."

An investigative series produced by Occupy.com that aims to identify and connect the worldwide institutions and individuals who comprise today's global power oligarchy.

VakuumTV was founded in February 1994 on the initiative of Laszlo Kistamas and currently includes Dora Csernatony, Ferenc Grof, Laszlo Kistamas, and Attila Till. Its members presented weekly broadcasts on Monday nights at the most popular cultural club in Budapest, Tilos az A. Between February 1994 and September 1997 Vakuum TV broadcast 52 shows, and after 3 years of rest, started broadcasting again in 2000. Each show blended short films, interactive engagements between the audience and the announcer, and live performances but each used a very different content to create a parallel televisual reality.

TooBigHasFailed.org consists of a group of activists who think Wall Street could be better.
In many ways we mirror the efforts of community banks and credit unions in wanting to end "too big to fail." That is, we support the basic idea of banking as it should be, but we oppose what Wall Street has become today - with all of its political favoritism, excessive size, and reckless speculation.
What's more, we believe that activist efforts can be a force for good in the world.

Our ability to move into a collectively imagined future has been trapped in an ever-present now, composed of continually transmitted images. The spectacle accompanies us throughout our lives. News, propaganda, advertising, entertainment and social media present a continuous stream of imagery, projecting a constant justification for how our culture is formulated. When Guy Debord first published The Society of the Spectacle in 1967, the digital revolution was still decades away and the technological capacity to project images into every corner of our lives was far less developed than it is today. The spectacle is no longer simply all of the time; it is also everywhere. More than ever before, Debord's words apply: "Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation."

NINJA
Narrativas Independentes, Jornalismo e Ação
(independent narratives, journalism and action)

Documenting Brazil's protests from within...

Restore the Fourth to hold protests on July 4th for Fourth Amendment Rights. We're protesting to restore the Fourth Amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."

This video expresses the Mosireen media collective's stance of solidarity with the ongoing protest in and all around Taksim square.
Anything you may need that we can help with, please let us know.
We fight a common enemy.

Source:
www.youtube.com/user/Mosireen/featured
www.mosireen.org

An Analysis From #jan25 to #geziparki

If media theory over the last 40 years largely understood media as hopelessly contaminated by capitalism, the quietism implied by this critique also met its challenge in Guattari's concept of 'becoming-media'. Here Clemens Apprich revisits key media political debates to imagine post-media approaches in the age of social media.

A short film by Alex Mallis and Lily Henderson that documents the burgeoning micro-community inside Zucotti Park - the General Assemblies, the Working Groups, the Comfort Station, the cigarette-roller, the masseuse, the library, the first-aid station, the drum circle, the media center, the food, and all the people working around the clock to maintain a developing national movement.
BrooklynFilmmakersCollective.com
sonsonandson.tumblr.com

Source:
https://vimeo.com/30081785  |  cc-license

The current techno-economic paradigm of Web 2.0 has challenged notions of art and hacktivism within digital culture. The book "Networked Disruption" takes up this challenge and discusses a new perspective on political and social criticism. It simultaneously asks what are the conditions for hacker and artistic practices under Web 2.0 and how can social networking be seen to build on and incorporate artistic practices from the earlier decades of digital and network culture.

Through its theoretical discussion of contemporary art and hacktivism, the book maps out a new contradictory space for art and criticism: Networked disruption.

Free Speech TV Presents
The Historic Deep Dish Series:
Shocking and Awful: A Grassroots Response to War and Occupation
MARATHON ON SATURDAY, MARCH 23 -- REMEMBER THE IRAQ WAR

"Tweets and the Streets analyses the culture of the new protest movements of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring to the "indignados" protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest. Gerbaudo argues that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a "cyberspace" detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space, which involves the assembling of different groups around "occupied" places such as Cairo's Tahrir Square or New York's Zuccotti Park."

"On Friday evening, ANIMAL and advocacy group Stamp Stampede took a projector-equipped van to the streets of Manhattan - as promised - and broadcasted propaganda to mark the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's controversial Citizens United decision. We kicked things off at Bowery and Houston and eventually made our way uptown to send a message to some of New York's wealthiest and most powerful political players."
Video: Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork)

Source:
http://animalnewyork.com/2013/watch-animal-and-stamp-stampede-killcitizensunited
Posted: January 22, 2013 - 01:00PM

Die Spanien Rettung (Spain Bailout) - Mitteilung an das deutsche Volk von Spanien (A message to the german people from Spain).
Answer from Germany

Source:
takethesquare.net
Published on: 2 Feb 2013.

Viva La Piracy! An intellectual freedoms documentary based around the interpersonal triumphs, and defeats of the three main characters against the largest industry in the known universe. The media industry.
Starring Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde & Fredrik Neij
Directed by Simon Klose
Credits

This film is released under the following Creative Commons Licence:
Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivs
Source:
www.tpbafk.tv/the-film

In memoriam: Aaron Swartz

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

As much as images of violence, civil war, and sectarian strife become prominent in the media narrative of the Syrian uprising, little gems of innovative cultural production, artistic resistance, and creative disobedience continue to sprout across the virtual alleys of the Internet. These creative gems are also the germs of a viral peer-production process at work at a grassroots level in the new Syrian public sphere. Such acts of creativity - mash-ups, cartoons, slogans, jokes, songs, and web series - are probably too small and inconsistent in impact compared to the horrific magnificence that shelling, bombing, sniping, and killing scenes that provide daily fodder to global television viewers. It is also challenging to discover them; in fact, as remarked by Tunisian blogger Sami ben Gharbia at the Arab Bloggers meeting in Tunis (3-6 October 2011), Facebook is not the most suitable platform for activists to store, archive, tag, search for content, and give it a context.

Hey all you cultural creatives and heterodox thinkers,

Occupy Wall Street created a fissure in global consciousness . . .
Now it's time to throw a mindbomb into the chasm:

Meme Wars
The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics

A small handbook which explains complex economic terms and theories in simple language, to help everyone understand what has caused the economic mess, why it's still continuing, and enable them to engage in the debate about what needs to be changed for the better in our economic system. It is NOT a manifesto. It has been created to stimulate people to engage in discussion, and so to make up their own minds as to what they think should be done to create a better and fairer world.

Fixing the Facts.

"Media is the nervous system of a democracy; if it's not functioning well, the democracy can't function."
- Jeff Cohen, Founding Director of the Park Center for Independent Media

The exposure of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy in the eco-activist movement revealed how the state monitors and undermines political activism. This book shows the other grave threat to our political freedoms - undercover activities by corporations.

This is a Call to Action for a
Non-Hierarchical Occupation of Monsanto Everywhere

Whether you like it or not, chances are Monsanto contaminated the food you ate today with chemicals and GMOs. Monsanto controls much of the world's food supply at the expense of food democracy worldwide. This site is dedicated to empowering citizens of the world to take action against Monsanto during the week of September 17th, 2012.

Occupy Wall Street invites you, the 99%, down to the Financial District for three days of education, celebration and resistance.
September 15, 16 & 17, 2012

On #s17 Follow the Money, All Roads Lead to Wall Street

Abortions for Successful Living

A twelve day prelude moving across the city; a twelve-hour sound art opera of betrayal and rebellion culminating in a spectacular series of disturbing performances in Chelsea College of Art Parade Ground; a one-day coda of debate.

Presented by AKA the CASTLE

Call to Action: Reclaim Pride From the 1%
#OccuPride #OccuQueers #Tranarchism #PinkBloc
Global Facebook event

Pride 2012: The Struggle for Sexual and Gender Justice Continues
This summer, communities across the world will celebrate Pride Festivals commemorating the birth and victories of the Gay and Trans Liberation Movements. Despite the profound social change these movements have accomplished since the first high-heels were thrown over the barricades at Compton's Cafeteria and the Stonewall Inn, it is clear that the struggle for queer, trans, and gender-variant liberation is far from finished.

A Salvage Operation

On a clear evening in December, as the sun was setting over the Texas horizon, a Mexican drone entered U.S. airspace and crashed into a backyard in El Paso.

With kind permission of the author and publisher we have included the introduction of Rita Raley's book Tactical Media - 'Tactical Media as Virtuosic Performance' in the TMF resource as a pdf document. Raley's book appeared as part of the series Electronic Mediations with the University of Minnesota Press in 2009.

Watching a popular uprising in real time was indeed a dramatic experience. As viewers tuned in (or streamed in) to the violence, courage, and uncertainty of events in North Africa this year, many of them had the impression of witnessing the "actual" events, free from the framing tactics and analytical bias often found on the six o'clock news. A host of new media celebrities became household names as they reported live from Tahrir, and news outlets such as Al-Jazeera saw an unprecedented rise in viewership. Spectators were made to believe that a return to the event "itself" was once again possible after decades of being locked into what Jean Baudrillard called the hyper-real. The revolution in-and-of-itself seemed to unfold before our eyes, creating a fetish for real-time revolt.

Felix Stalder explores the swarm politics  of the 'endlessly fascinating Anonymous story' in an essay written for Le Monde Diplomatique, where it appeared in a slightly edited version and under a different title.
This version of the text was originally distributed via the international nettime mailing list.

a work in progress in solidarity with OWS -  live and online

Citizens join us!
Every Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 1.30pm, March through May, we come to Liberty Square (Zuccotti Park) to work on The Days of the Commune, a play by Bert Brecht. Each scene in the play denotes one day. Each day is documented and posted on our website thedaysofthecommune.com

Out now and available for download:  INC Network Notebooks 05 - Legacies of Tactical Media

Tactical Media employ the 'tactics of the weak' to operate on the terrain of strategic power by means of 'any media necessary'. Once the rather exclusive practice of politically engaged artists and activists, the tactical appropriations of media tools and distribution infrastructures by the disenfranchised and the disgruntled have moved from the margins to centre stage.

International public seminar on the new forms of protest and their media, hosted by De Balie, centre for culture and politics in Amsterdam, on Friday September 30, 2011.

Short animation film in homage to the Syrian revolt.
by La Chaise Renversee
Realisation :
Dani Abo Louh et Mohamad Omran
October 2011 - France
Source:
http://vimeo.com/30585735

"One formula [...] can be that of the mob: gullible, fickle, herdlike, low in taste and habit. [...] If [...] our purpsoe is manipulation - the persuasion of a large number of people to act, feel, think, known in certain ways - the convenient formula will be that of the masses". - Raymond Williams

A shift in revolutionary tactics.

Alright you 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future. The spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain, is captured in this quote:

"The antiglobalization movement was the first step on the road. Back then our model was to attack the system like a pack of wolves. There was an alpha male, a wolf who led the pack, and those who followed behind. Now the model has evolved. Today we are one big swarm of people."
- Raimundo Viejo, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain

Protest Signs, Graffiti, and Street Art - a special issue of Shahadat

This issue takes as its focus the popular literature of the Egyptian Revolution. Drawing on protest signs, graffiti, and street art in Tahrir to read the culture of resistance particular to the Egyptian Revolution, the curators examine how protesters changed the political narrative through the use of images, memorials, and expressions of daily life.  Featuring examples from an extensive gallery of online images culled from the collections of several prominent Egyptian journalists and activists, the online piece is a visual tour of some of the creative production of Egypt's Revolution.  A collaborative curation project split between New York City and Cairo, this is ArteEast's first critical look at the cultural production related to recent political developments in the Middle East.
- Co-curators, Rayya El Zein & Alex Ortiz.

Interview with Rami Nakhle, a Syrian activist in exile in Beirut, who uses social networks to disseminate news from protests on the streets in Syria across the country.
(April 26, 2011 - '14:54)

TMF editors: This video has achieved a somewhat iconic status for depicting the internet dimension of the protests in Syria. The rising death-toll of the protests in Syria shows, however, that these 'cyber-protests' are not without material consequences on the ground. Neither are the protests primarily media-based, of course. They are first of all staged in the streets. Deeply troubling questions emerge about the dilemma's media-activists face promoting the image of a popular uprising with dramatic consequences (even more so keeping the descent into civil war in Libya in mind). We have linked this video with an excellent and rather controversial interview with Syrian political blogger Camille Otrakji, published by the Qifa Nabki blog.

Saturday night on August 6th 1988 was stiflingly hot and humid. My apartment had no air conditioning and I was dying from the heat. Fortunately that night I was booked from midnight to 7 a.m. at Broadway Video at Broadway and 49th street to do special effects and editing on my video work entitled "Free Society".

"Contemporary civilization differs in one particularly distinctive feature from those which preceded it: speed. The change has come about within a generation," noted the historian Marc Bloch, writing in the nineteen-thirties. This situation brings in its wake a second feature: the accident. The progressive spread of catastrophic events do not just affect current reality, but produce anxiety and anguish for coming generations.

10 tactics for turning information into action explores how rights advocates around the world have used information and digital technologies to create positive change. This 50 minute film documenting info-activism success stories is part of a larger package containing tools, tips and advice for info-activists.
Published by Tactical Technology Collective, November 2009.
www.tacticaltech.org

Drik Gallery, Dahka, March 22- 31, 2010.

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) was set up on 26th March 2004 to curb corruption in Bangladesh. It consists of members of Bangladesh Police, Bangladesh Army, Bangladesh Navy and Bangladesh Air Force. RAB has increasingly been criticized for the extra judicial killings and torture that have taken place of people in custody.

Thesis 0

"What do I think of WikiLeaks? I think it would be a good idea!"
(after Mahatma Gandhi's famous quip on "Western Civilization")

THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world's most outrageous pranks.
From New Orleans to India to New York City, armed with little more than cheap thrift-store suits, the Yes Men squeeze raucous comedy out of all the ways that corporate greed is destroying the planet.
Brüno meets Michael Moore in this gut-busting wake-up call that proves a little imagination can go a long way towards vanquishing the Cult of Greed.
Who knew fixing the world could be so much fun?

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.
www.collateralmurder.com

A documentary by Alberto Arce and Mohammad Rujailah.
Running time: 113"
Language: Original in english and arabic. Subtitles in english.
Country: Spain.
Production year: 2009
Distribution and press: Eguzki Bideoak Merced, 21
Directors: Alberto Arce/ Mohammad Rujailah
Script: Alberto Arce/ Miquel Martí Freixas
http://toshootanelephant.com

Following the September 2009 roundtable conference organised by the World Information Institute in New York, the follow-up publication will be presented on Thursday April 15 at the New School University. The book launch hosted by Ted Byfield, with remarks by Marco Deseriis (NYU), Steve Kurtz (Critical Art Ensemble), Andy Bichlbaum (The Yes Men), Ken Wark (NSU), and Trebor Scholz (NSU)
Wollman Hall, New School University, 65
West 11th St, 5th Floor, New York, NY.
6:30 - 8:15 pm

Introductory essay for the second editon of the Next 5 Minutes festival of tactical media, 1996.