The existing use of media so far has been determined by the local, decentralized nature of the campaign. Local groups are adapting, editing and redesigning existing material like research results, lines of argumentation and logos, photos and slogans. The educational material, used by trade unions, schools and churches is very specific and "customized", and therefore cannot be used in campaigns which target the general public.
ReadEvery so often, a technology or protocol emerges that is touted as a ?magic bullet? either by the company or consortium promoting it or a core group of enthusiasts using it. Examples of this are WAP, OS/2, ISDN etc? The technology is initially promoted as having ?earth-changing? significance that will revolutionize the way things are done. Eventually most of these either fall by the wayside or take their rightful place as effective [but less hyped] mainstream tools in a much larger toolbox of solutions. The problem with the magic bullet approach is that it over-promotes particular technologies and often obfuscating the real benefits they could provide if evaluated and positioned in a more realistic context. For the for-profit community investing in failed magic bullets, the fallout is typically nothing more than an unfortunate R&D decision which can be expensed before moving on to the next IT investment.
ReadSoftware has, over the last few years, increasingly come into view as a cultural technique whose social and political impact ought to be studied carefully. To the extent that social processes rely on software for their execution - from systems of e-government and net-based education, online banking and shopping, to the organisation of social groups and movements -, it is necessary to understand the procedural specificities of the computer programmes employed, and the cultural and political 'rules' coded into them.
The resistance continues at Liberty Square and worldwide!
OccupyWallSt.org is the unofficial de facto online resource for the
ongoing protests happening on Wall Street. We are an affinity group
committed to doing technical support work for resistance movements. We
are not affiliated with Adbusters, anonymous or any other organization.
Dr. Steven Kurtz-the artist accused of bioterrorism in federal
court-will make his first public appearance following the dismissal of
his case
Thursday, May 29, 2008, 7PM
Eyebeam 540 W. 21st St. (btw 10th and 11th Aves.)
Free and open to the public
Outer Spaces Conference Series 2017
An analysis of ISIS and its media strategy, the meaning of cyber jihad, and why people enrol as foreign fighters.
The 12th conference of the Disruption Network Lab
Directed by Tatiana Bazzichelli. Studio 1, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin.
In the period between the end of the cold war in 1989 and the events of September 11, 2001, human rights became the dominant moral narrative by which world politics was organized. Inspired by the momentous political and cultural transformations taking place at the time, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the spread of global communications technologies, promoters of human rights discourse optimistically predicted that a transnational public sphere dedicated to democratic values would emerge (We now know, of course, that such predictions were wrong, as early post cold war hopes gave way to the harsh realities of contemporary globalization).
We can no longer put off re-thinking the economic structures that have been producing, financing, and funding culture up until now. Many of the old models have become anachronistic and detrimental to civil society. The aim of this document is to promote innovative strategies capable of defending and extending the sphere in which human creativity and knowledge can prosper freely and sustainably.
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.
One of the biggest promises of the Internet was the transformation of political activism. No longer would change come about solely through the actions of large organizations, claimed the Web's early enthusiasts. Now, they claimed, individuals could rouse the concern of their fellow citizens for a particular cause through Web sites, e-mail, and online petitions. Those who normally shunned demonstrations and limited their participation in the public sphere could be contacted personally in their e-mail box, and all that would be necessary for them to do to show their support would be to click a button or fill in a field. Soon, pundits predicted, there would be a revolution in grassroots participation in the political process.
ReadTactical Media Connections public program, Amsterdam January 20 - 22, 2017.
As part of the Tactical Media Connections public research trajectory tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and its connections to the present, a series of public events take place in Amsterdam between January 20 and 22, 2017. The public program includes an exhibition at Framer Framed in the Tolhuistuin cultural centre, opening on Friday January 20; a Meme Wars Lab workshop on Friday January 20; a public debate at Eye Filmmuseum on Saturday January 21, and a one day conference (‘The Society of Post-Control’) again at the Tolhuistuin on Sunday January 22.
Please find below a brief program overview, followed by a detailed description of the different parts of the public program.
An interview with a Syrian activist in exile, code-named Sami, published by Occupy.com draws attenton once more to the radical experiment in real-life bottom-up matriarchal democratic design unfolding against all odds in the autonomous Kurdish region of Rojava in Northern Syria. We are republishing two short texts here on this subject matter to speculate about the question if 'Rojava' could offer a repeatable model for post-governmental political design?
At the turning of the year 1992 I received the program and manifesto for the Next 5 Minutes Conference in Paradiso. As professional collector of documents by and about social movements for the International Institute of Social History, the list of videos to be shown caught my attention immediately. This was an excellent opportunity to realize something for which I had been trying already for some time, to make an international sample collection of products from the movement of new independent video makers.
ReadThis polyvocal, collectively authored paper describes the Transborder Immigrant Tool, a border disturbance art project developed by the Electronic Disturbance Theater. The paper outlines the motivations behind the tool and elaborates a notion of Science of the Oppressed as a methodology for developing locative media projects in solidarity with social movements. A shift is identified from Tactical Media to Tactical Biopolitics in contemporary media art. Walkingtools.net is also introduced as a platform for sharing technical information about locative media projects in order to create an ecology of projects. Poetic sustenance, part of the Transborder Immigrant Tool's functioning, is discussed in a context of Inter-American Transcendentalism.
ReadThat 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.
For a world without borders! No immigration controls!
DEFEND THE OUTLAW!
Immigration controls should be abolished. People should not be deemed 'illegal' because they have fallen foul of an increasingly brutal and
repressive system of controls. Why is immigration law different from
all other law? Under all other laws it is the act that is illegal, but
under immigration law it is the person who is illegal. Those subject to
immigration control are dehumanized, are reduced to non-persons, are
nobodies. They are the modern outlaw. Like their medieval counterpart
they exist outside of the law and outside of the law's protection.
Opposition to immigration controls requires defending all immigration
outlaws.
The Speculative Archive for Historical Clarification is a long-term project that produces documents that investigate the political and cultural implications of state self-documentation. Its work focuses on the processes through which covert government activities are documented, classified for reasons of national security, and, at times, selectively declassified. Founded in 1999 by Julia Meltzer and David Thorne, SAHC has recently completed a series of interviews with government officials involved in the regulation and release of secret government information. Below are excerpts from three of these interviews.
ReadA 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.
