Tactical Television in Italy
Overview and manifesto of urban tv movements in Italy
Overview and manifesto of urban tv movements in Italy
?In Central and (South-) Eastern Europe the cultural landscape has entered the Post-Soros Era, while still awaiting the arrival of the widely expected EU patronage for the arts and the civil sector ?? (from the original description of the ?Enduring Post Communism? panel)
Tactical Media are what happens when the cheap 'do it yourself' media, made possible by the revolution in consumer electronics and expanded forms of distribution (from public access cable to the internet) are exploited by groups and individuals who feel aggrieved by or excluded from the wider culture. Tactical media do not just report events, as they are never impartial they always participate and it is this that more than anything separates them from mainstream media.
The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realise the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of telepresence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the reinvigoration of the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favour of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style. As current systems of hypermobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits - most prominently in the intense debate on global warming - citizens and organisations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced telepresence technologies.
ReadPresence in the mediated environment of digital networks is probably one of the most complex phenomena of the new types of social interaction that have emerged in these environments. In the current phase of radical deployment (or penetration) of the Internet, various attempts are being made to come to terms with the social dynamics of networked communication spaces. It seems that traditional media theory is not able to contextualise these social dynamics, as it remains stuck on a meta-level discourse of media and power structures (Virilio), hyperreality (Baudrillard), or on a retrograde analysis of media structures deeply rooted in the functionality and structural characteristics of broadcast media (McLuhan).
ReadMarch 2003
Democracy can be understood in two notably distinct ways. In the institutional view democracy is understood as the interplay of institutional actors that represent 'the people' and are held accountable through the plebiscite; public votes, polls and occasionally referenda. The second view on democracy is radically different in that it sees the extent to which people can freely assemble, discuss and share ideas about vital social issues, organise themselves around these issues, and can freely voice their opinions in public fora, as a measure for just how democratic a given society is.
Summary of the presentations and public debate on digital archiving practices, activism, and the role of the artist.
Report of the event Vox Populi and the Syrian Archive on 21 January 2017, organised by Eric Kluitenberg..
Artist and flimmaker
Born in Knittelfeld, Austria, in 1970, lives and works in Vienna.
The CAE Defense Fund was created in 2005 as a mechanism to raise funds
for legal bills incurred by Dr. Steven Kurtz and Dr. Robert Ferrell in
what its members argued was a politically motivated attack by the
Department of Justice - one which threatened the constitutional and
fundamental rights not only of the two defendants, but also of
everyone, due to legal precedents that would have been set by an
unfavorable outcome.
In response, thousands of people worldwide organized demonstrations and
raised money for the two men's legal defense through fundraisers and a
variety of other grassroots efforts.
www.caedefensefund.org
As a playful, do-it-yourself approach to media activism and new technologies, tactical media (TM) seemed to have some critical bite when it emerged in the mid-1990s. But is it still radical today?
ReadThe Letter written by N. Tolokonniokova in which she outlines the problematics of Gender Equality and other fundamental freedoms in frames of ethical consensus monopolized by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian State, absent the plurality of the people of Russia and incarceration of Pussy Riot, as its main actors.
ReadFilmmaker and activist Gregg Bordowitz's passage through the
1980s mirrors the course of AIDS activism in that decade. From the very
first ACT up demonstration in New York to the triumphal storming of the
FDA headquarters outside Washington, DC, he deployed his art in the
battle against AIDS. Bordowitz leads off this two-issue series of
personal chronicles of the decade, recounting his experiences as an
activist and guerrilla filmmaker at the forefront of the fight.
"Art
does have the power to save lives, and it is this very power that must
be recognized, fostered, and supported in every way possible."
- Douglas Crimp, introduction to AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism (MIT Press, 1988)
The first interview was conducted during the opening of Hybrid Workspace in June 1997, the temporary media lab in the margins of the big art show Documenta X in Kassel (Germany).
Read"In August 1996, we called for the creation of a network of independent media, a network of information. We mean a network to resist the power of the lie that sells us this war that we call the Fourth World War. We need this network not only as a tool for our social movements, but for our lives: this is a project of life, of humanity, humanity which has a right to critical and truthful information."
These were the words of Subcomandante Marcos, speaking in 1997 from Chiapas in the midst of the Zapatistas' guerrilla information war against the Mexican state and the neocolonialism reflected in NAFTA. Marcos's powerful statement and Zapatista stories of struggle were circulated from the jungle of Chiapas on mailing lists, listservs, and websites, capturing the imagination of activists around the world and galvanizing a wave of new grassroots media projects. Perhaps no project more purely embodied this response than the Indymedia network, which was launched in November 1999 at the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings and quickly grew into a global network of news websites.
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.
In March 1993, Kevin Carter took a photo of a starving Sudanese child crawling towards a UN relief camp less than a mile away. A few meters from the weary child stood a vulture, waiting for her death to begin his meal. Birds also must eat, and in southern Sudan they were eating because humans were not.
Read