Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are two guys who just can't take "no" for an answer.
They have an unusual hobby: posing as top executives of corporations
they hate. Armed with nothing but thrift-store suits, the Yes Men lie
their way into business conferences and parody their corporate targets
in ever more extreme ways - basically doing everything that they can to
wake up their audiences to the danger of letting greed run our world.
Public Agency in Hybrid Space
Lead-essay for the theme issue "Hybrid Space" of OPEN, Journal for Art and the Public Domain, #11, (Amsterdam / Rotterdam, 2006).
These 0.
"What do I think of WikiLeaks? I think it would be a good idea!"
(after Mahatma Gandhi's famous quip on 'Western Civilisation')
Introduction to the cultural intelligence manual "Tactical Reality Dictionary"
A collaborative, activist and conceptual art work of the net
Introduction to WikiLeaks, published on the about page of the wikileaks.org website, August 7, 2010.
WikiLeaks is a multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect
whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials
to communicate to the public. Since July 2007, we have worked across the
globe to obtain, publish and defend such materials, and, also, to fight
in the legal and political spheres for the broader principles on which
our work is based: the integrity of our common historical record and the
rights of all peoples to create new history.
Sixty-two-year old Jordanian Labibeh Tannous was trying frantically to
decide which satellite dish to buy. Should she go for the simple kind
that only has the Arab satellite stations that goes for about $100 or
should she go for a rotating dish that can pick up European stations as
well which can be bought for about $150?
Her interest reflects both how inexpensive satellite dishes have become
and the great thirst people throughout the Arab world have to go beyond
what their national station is providing in television news.
It is tempting to portray '9-11' as a turning point. Gore Vidal warns
that, since September 11, the US is in danger of turning into a "seedy
imperial state." Make war, not politics. The new patriotism requires: "Disruption, including obstructing the view or hearing of others, will
not be tolerated." The list of measures to restrict civil liberties,
freedom of speech and privacy, or what?s left of it, doesn?t stop. A
recent conference in Perth concluded that post-September 11 reporting
adds to divisions and stereotypes. "The media's failure to provide more
perspectives to news consumers and ask critical questions is fuelling a
culture of fear and blame around the world, experts say."
From: beka economopoulos
Date: June 10, 2010 6:07:12 GMT+02:00
Subject: [iDC] Participationism (was "why do we need physical campuses")
Hi all,
(...) Below is (one of) the curatorial statement(s) of a show that Not An
Alternative has curated with Upgrade NY! and Eyebeam, called Re:Group:
Beyond Models of Consensus, about the subjects of collaboration and
participation. After constant debate, the curatorial committee never
came to consensus about the thesis for the show, and so we've presented
two distinct positions.
Below is that of our group, Not An Alternative. The opening is
tomorrow, with a curators talk at 5pm, so if you're in NY and you're
ready for a rumble join us there.
Best, Beka
Translator's Note to the 2002 translation
There have been several previous English translations of The Society of
the Spectacle. I have gone through them all and have retained whatever
seemed already to be adequate. In particular, I have adopted quite a
few of Donald Nicholson-Smith's renderings, though I have diverged from
him in many other cases. His translation (Zone Books, 1994) and the
earlier one by Fredy Perlman and John Supak (Black and Red, 1977) are
both in print, and both can also be found at the Situationist
International Online website.
The Situationist Movement can be seen as an artistic avant-garde, as an experimental investigation of possible ways for freely constructing everyday life, and as a contribution to the theoretical and practical development of a new revolutionary contestation. From now on, any fundamental cultural creation, as well as any qualitative transformation of society, is contingent on the continued development of this sort of interrelated approach.
ReadThe culture jammers tried to subvert the big brand names. But the smart
advertisers now use guerrilla tactics themselves, according to James Harkin
In a recent newspaper interview, Kalle Lasn was interrogated about
Adbusters, the Canadian anti-advertising magazine that he founded.
"Culture-jamming," a term I have popularized by articles in The New
York Times and Adbusters, might best be defined as media hacking,
information warfare, terror-art, and guerrilla semiotics, all in one.
Billboard bandits, pirate TV and radio broadcasters, media hoaxers, and
other vernacular media wrenchers who intrude on the intruders,
investing ads, newscasts, and other media artifacts with subversive
meanings are all culture- jammers." Mark Dery
Damn the Networks! Victory to the Imagination!
Yogi in Craig Baldwin's "Spectres of the Spectrum"
A Complete Manual of Billboard Subversion and Destruction
"When our work is done, advertising and billboards will fly beside the
soviet flag in the museum of dead totalitarian experiments"
In the beginning was the Ad. The Ad was brought to the consumer by the Advertiser. Desire, self worth, self image, ambition, hope; all find their genesis in the Ad. Through the Ad and the intent of the Advertiser we form our ideas and learn the myths that make us into what we are as a people. That this method of self definition displaced the earlier methods is beyond debate. It is now clear that the Ad holds the most esteemed position in our cosmology.
ReadFriday, October 05, 2001 12:20 PM
subject: Activism After September 11
Dear Friends,
This essay was published today in The Nation. It's
an attempt to discuss what the atrocities of September 11 might mean to
those of us who are publicly critical of corporate power and the
current global economic model. There are no easy answers to this
question so the essay is more of a meditation on symbolism and tone
than a political roadmap.
Take care,
Naomi
Working Papers for The Next 5 Minutes
Conference, Exhibition and TV Program on Tactical Television
Amsterdam, October, 1992
Edited by Amsterdam Cultural Studies
(Jeroen van Bergeijk, Geke van Dijk, Karel Koch, Bas Raijmakers)
The Next Five Minutes is a conference, exhibition and tv program that wants to leave behind the rigid dichotomy between the mainstream, commercial and national tv on one hand and marginal independent tv on the other. Although these differences may still be important, N5M wants to focus on tv-makers crossing the borders of tv-making and going into the spaces that the tv-world still has to offer.
That guerrilla video is now the subject of historical reflection is
probably a sign of its demise. There has been a recent flurry of
archival and publishing activity centering on experiments made in the
'70s. In 1997, the Chicago-based Video Data Bank released Surveying the
First Decade, a compilation of work from the early days of video, and
Oxford University Press published Deirdre Boyle's Subject to Change:
Guerrilla Television Revisited, the definitive study of the video
movements of the late 1960s and '70s. These reflections on the utopian
impulse in early video provide an opportunity to think about the
present state of media in this country, in particular those movements
that have attempted to create electronic space for non-commercial views
that run counter to the mainstream.
The question that I would like to examine with you concerns the role that the new media can play in the fostering of democracy. We can discern roughly two opposite answers to that question. On one side there are those enthusiasts who argue that they provide us with the technology that will finally make it possible to realize the ideal of direct democracy under modern conditions, on the other side those detractors who see them as contributing to a further privatization of politics and as replacing rational debate by the instant expression of private prejucides, turning what ought to be public decisions into private consumer-like choices.
Read