Vectorial Empires 

01. These are precarious times. These are eventful times. Let us note some of the symptoms of this instability. There is September 11,and the prospect of a new form of American empire that uses September11 as its pretext. There is the global stock market slide, triggered by the collapse of American tech stocks, which altered the lives of chip-makers in Korea and Coltan miners in the Congo. These are instances of what I call weird global media events. They are events because they are singular. They are media events because they happen in a vectoral space of communication. They are global media events because they call a world into being. They are weird global media events because they defy explanation. They subsume every explanation as mere ripples and eddies in their wake.

• politics,
• tactical media,
• infopolitics

Global Uprisings 

Global Uprisings is an independent news site and video series dedicated to showing responses to the economic crisis and authoritarianism. Since 2011, Brandon Jourdan and Marianne Maeckelbergh have been travelling, researching, and making documentary films.

Their short films detail social movements in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the UK, and the US. Their films cover strikes and demonstrations in the UK, the large-scale housing occupations and street mobilizations in Spain, the various general strikes, protests, and factory occupations in Greece, the revolution in Egypt, the Gezi Park uprising in Turkey, the 2014 social explosion in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the revolt against austerity in Portugal, and the occupy movement in the United States.

• activism,
• public space,
• video activism,
• street protest,
• occupy,
• tactical research

Facial Weaponization Suite (2011 - 2014) 

Facial Weaponization Suite protests against biometric facial recognition–and the inequalities these technologies propagate–by making "collective masks" in community-based workshops that are modeled from the aggregated facial data of participants, resulting in amorphous masks that cannot be detected as human faces by biometric facial recognition technologies.

• art,
• hybrid space,
• surveillance

The Occupied Times of London Editorial, Issue #23, "Technology", November 2013. 

The latest issue of The Occupied Times of London is devoted to the question of technology in contemporary forms of political contestation. The main question thrown up by  the editors is to ask: "What is technology for?" (TMF editors)

• politics,
• activism,
• tactical technology,
• occupy

3rd ArtLeaks Working Assembly - Belgrade 

Cultural Center REX, Jevrejska 16, Belgrade, Serbia
Friday, 31st of August, 7pm, 2012

Participants: Corina L. Apostol, Maja Ciric, Pavle Cosic / KORNET, Nikola Radic Lucati, Vladan Jeremic, Selman Trtovac, Vesna Milosavljevic / SEEcult.org, Stefan Tiron, Noa Treister, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Marica Radojcic, Rena Rädle.
The 3rd ArtLeaks Working Assembly will be facilitated by Corina Apostol, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Stefan Tiron and Vladan Jeremic.

• art,
• campaign,
• infopolitics

stateless plug-in 

The 'stateless plug-in' is an extension for your browser that intervenes in digital territory, transforming the issue of stateless people into a multifaceted digital mapping of existing knowledge and information on the Internet.

• migration,
• statelessness

net.congestion 

International Festival of Streaming Media
De Balie, Paradiso, Melkweg
Amsterdam, October 6 - 8, 2000

• network cultures,
• streaming media

What is Meme Warfare? 

Unshackle the Human Spirit!

The most precious natural resource is human spirit. A close second is human imagination. Spirit and imagination will do more than oil, gold and guns to determine the fate of the human experiment on Earth, an experiment that has never been as precarious as it is today.

• tactical reality,
• culture jamming,
• meme wars

In Brazil, Mídia NINJA's indie journalists are gaining attention and sparking controversy 

Providing journalism from within Brazil's protest movement has led the 'ninjas' to find an audience that wants to be represented in media.

• tactical media,
• community media,
• grassroot journalism,
• diy media,
• media criticism,
• self-mediation

Signs of the Times: the Popular Literature of Tahrir 

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.

• activism,
• middle east,
• street protest,
• visual culture

Tactical Media After 9-11 

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."

• tactical media,
• 9/11

Introduction to the N5M Zapbook 

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.

The Art of Campaigning 

The idea for the Art of Campaigning topic originates from the works of the McLibel group [www.mcspotlight.org]. Their type of net.campaign questions previous forms of activism, which was focused on the mass media and their ability to influence public opinion, by staging direct action (targeted at known media makers). Big NGO's such as Greenpeace have built up experiences with this model for decades. The scenarios they use have not changed much since the seventies. There is the usual PR material: official reports, books, folders, flyers, magazine and original video footage, shot on location. Campaigns are being planned long in advance. The way of working does not differ much from a campaign to launch a new product. Professionalism has taken over the task of volunteers. Their role is being reduced to that of a local support group, doing the actual grass roots work with the population.

In memoriam: Oleg Kireev 

On Friday April 3, 2009 we received the terribly sad news that our friend and ever inspiring colleague Oleg Kireev from Moscow had died, apparently as a result of suicide. We are left behind as friends and colleagues, bereaved and puzzled by this dramatic fact. Kireev was a prominent guest in some of the most important projects in the art / media / politics triangle, which we had the honour developing at De Balie. Kireev was a crucial figure in circles of free culture, media activism and the arts in Moscow, one of the most demanding environments for such activity one can think of.

• tactical media,
• Russia

Notes on the Politics of Software Culture 

Software 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.

At Frontiers 

Frequently at frontiers we are asked, "Anything to declare?"

The wisest thing to do when faced with the scrutiny of a border official is to say that you have "nothing to declare", and quickly move on. Crossing borders usually entails an effort not to say too much, or at least to get by with saying very little. A degree of reticence is the mark of the wise and experienced traveller.

• no border,
• borders

TERROR FEEDS: Inside the Fear Machine 

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.

• media,
• infopolitics,
• post-governmental organisation,
• fear,
• info-activism,
• media criticism,
• middle east

The Role of the Engineer in the Information Age 

When looking at technology, we barely see machinery, let alone the people who made it. We seem to take technology and its development for a given, neglecting the process of its creation. We live off the fruits of the tree, without examining its roots.