Next 5 Minutes 2
Next 5 Minutes: tactical media was a conference and exhibition that took
place at Amsterdam's Balie and Paradiso and at Rotterdam's
V2_Organisation from January 18th till January 21st 1996. The
conference was officially opened Thursday evening in Rotterdam with a
performance of the Critical Art Ensemble from Chicago about the matter
of media.
General Subjects
The conference is subdivided into four distinct but closely related subjects.
Tactical Research
The
means and ends of tactical research are the theme of a series of
presentations from television, radio, phone and computer networks,
which question the information monopoly as practised by main stream
broadcasting organisations and individual or corporate experts.
Public Domain and access
As
'democratisation' is one of the central claims associated with the
tactical media, we will have to assess critically to what extent it can
actually be achieved. In this context we also want to discuss the
effects that tactical media have on the reconfiguration and
revitalisation of our notions of community, as well as the technical,
political and ethical aspects of public access and large-scale local
connectivity. In addition we propose to use the conference to
scrutinise several legal, political, economic and ethical issues about
the state policy concerning public and commercial broadcasting.
Metaphorical Languages
For
us the question of metaphor is not abstract. It includes and goes
beyond issues of representation and asks the strategic question, what
language shall we use. We have therefore made the third theme of the
conference the use of metaphorical languages. Current metaphors, like
the socio-spatial metaphors of digital cities and electronic
superhighways, or the biological metaphors of the media ecology of
cyborgs and memes, will be evaluated.
Net criticism
Finally
the conference will strive to introduce the concept of Net criticism.
We imagine this as a form of reflexive critical consciousness about the
contents and practice of the communications culture as it has been
affected by the emergence of the Net. It will be an investigation of
language and metaphor in the electronic age, and it should strive to
formulate aesthetic and ethical categories for net and media discourse.
The continuous involvement of visual artists with the interrogation of
metaphors places their work at the heart of the development of a
political poetics for the media age.
Festival Archive:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/n5m2