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..
Introduction
By Andrew Boyd & Dave Oswald Mitchell
"The clowns are organizing. They are organizing. Over and out."
-Overheard on UK police radio during action
by Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, July 2004
To the Arts, Citizens: it's a fantastic title. Hearing it, anyone who's been involved in political activism will probably think: "At last we're getting somewhere." The idea that art is part of citizenship, that there is a democratic exercise of the arts within the framework of public life, and that this appeal to the citizen-artist can be supported by a major cultural institution, is about as progressive as you could get today. Especially since this is a direct echo of the French republican tradition, where the phrase, Aux armes citoyens, is nothing less than a call to rise up and institute democracy against tyranny ? in other words, a call to revolution. The Portuguese know the meaning of this revolutionary call to arms from decisive historical events that are still in living memory. So one can imagine that the organizers of this exhibition did not take their title lightly.
ReadA public debate at Framer Framed, Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam, Sunday July 6, 2014 - 14.00 - 17.00 hrs.
The relationship between art and political conflict has been
significantly reshaped by the proliferation of digital media and the
internet as a means of instant dissemination of images, texts, and
audiovisual expressions. Artistic /activist actions intervene via these
digital means into an expanded symbolical space that is no longer the
sole sanctuary of artists and art audiences, but instead has become the
'neural fibre' of everyday life.
"We take from the rich and give to the poor.
Alright you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,
We're living through a magical moment ... #OCCUPYWALLSTREET has catalyzed
into an international insurgency for democracy ... the mood at our
assemblies is electric ... people who go there are drawn into a Gandhian
spirit of camaraderie and hope for a new kind of future. Across the
globe the 99% are marching! You have inspired more than you know."
"World War III will be a guerilla information war, with no division between military and civilian participation." -- motto of Tactical Media Crew, borrowed from Marshall McLuhan
Read
Anyone involved with "tactical media" (TM) before its famed christening in 1996 at the Next Five Minutes had to know that naming this cultural/political tendency was going to have some very negative repercussions. The naming was the first step in doing what TM feared the most°Xclaiming cultural territory doomed to house haunting archives. Once given an official title, so many nasty processes could begin - most significantly, the construction of historical narratives. So many narratives already exist explaining this ephemeral, immediate, specific, and deterritorialized process of cultural production that seemed so urgent to so many radical subjects in the early 90s.
"Contemporary civilization differs in one particularly distinctive feature from those which preceded it: speed. The change has come about within a generation," noted the historian Marc Bloch, writing in the nineteen-thirties. This situation brings in its wake a second feature: the accident. The progressive spread of catastrophic events do not just affect current reality, but produce anxiety and anguish for coming generations.
ReadDeep Dish TV and Paper Tiger TV to Release New Video Series About Resistance to Rise of Far-Right Political Movements.
We Interrupt this Program brings together reports from frontlines of fight against white nationalism, neoliberalism, patriarchy, and colonialism.
Republished with permission from metamute / Mute Magazine in London:
Moving beyond the conceptual polarisation of tight-knit vanguardist
parties and loose-tie virtual networks, Rodrigo Nunes sifts the residue
of last year's wave of revolts to produce a more nuanced picture of
organisational dynamics in the age of Web 2.0
"If you've been following events in Syria, you'd know that the
English-language press is mostly deeply critical of the Assad regime
(while the Arabic press displays a slightly wider range of views). I
thought it would be worth trying to present a minority report on the
situation from a Syrian friend of mine, although, as you will see, he
argues precisely that his position is actually held by a very
significant majority (albeit a rather quiet and frustrated majority) of
Syrians.
Camille Otrakji is a Syrian political blogger based in
Montreal. Although he tends to keep a low profile, Otrakji has been, for
the past several years, at the forefront of many of the most
interesting and influential online initiatives relating to Syrian
politics. He is one of the authors and moderators at Joshua Landis's
Syria Comment, and the founder of Creative Syria, a constellation of
websites including Mideast Image (a vast collection of original old
photographs of Middle Eastern subjects) and Syrian Think Tank (an online
debate site hosting many of Syria's top analysts). Last year, Otrakji
courted controversy with a new initiative devoted to the subject of
Syrian-Israeli peace, entitled OneMideast.org. He agreed to speak with
me about the latest events in Syria, and I'm sure that his views will
generate plenty of discussion."
Germany 1998: 2 years before the New Millenium a new form of
Political Party came into existence: CHANCE 2000 - The Party of the
Last Chance. In the midst of an election that was one of the most
important in postfascist Germany an artist jumped into the political
arena to "make politics more aesthetic and aesthetics more political".
The film- and theatremaker and talk show host Christoph Schlingensief
started the Campagne: "VOTE YOURSELF!" In Berlin he started the project
with an "Election Circus". Together with a famous circus-family from
former East Germany and with his crew of actors and his family of
handicapped performers he founded "CHANCE 2000 - Party of the Last
Chance" in a circus tent in Berlin/ Prenzlauer Berg. The message for
the Republic was: "Vote Yourself, we know how to do it!" Every citizen
was asked to become an independent candidate for the new Bundestag.
Manuals were sent out how to become a direct candidate. And many
different people realized their chance to "prove that they exist" by
bringing their name on the ballot sheet: "Chance Meier", "Chance
Mueller", "Chance Schmidt". If you managed to collect 200 signatures of
support in your political region you were part of the game and you
could vote yourself. Why not voting somebody you know by heart, you
trust and love?
It's time to create the pop stars of activism,
the idoru of communication guerrilla,
it's time to threaten and charm the
masses by the ghosts coming from the
net, to play the myth against the myth,
to be more nihilist than infoteinment!
- etoy -
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.
ReadSecond Event of the Disruption Network Lab In cooperation with Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Studio 1, Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin, May 29-30, 2015.
This two days event presents keynote speeches, panels and live cinema connected with the understanding of cyborg identities, while exposing power structures embedded in technology and our everyday life. The event is built around the international book launch of The Cyborg: A Treatise on the Artificial Man, written by political Sci-Fi theorist Antonio Caronia (Genoa, 1944 – Milan, 2013), published by Meson Press / Hybrid Publishing Lab, Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Starting from the book of Caronia and going beyond it, the analysis will culminate discussing the most recent frontiers of biotechnology and transhumanism.
No One Is Illegal is an international network of local groups of immigrants, refugees and
allies who fight for the rights of all migrants to live with dignity
and respect.
"Tweets and the Streets analyses the culture of the new protest movements of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring to the "indignados" protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest. Gerbaudo argues that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a "cyberspace" detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space, which involves the assembling of different groups around "occupied" places such as Cairo's Tahrir Square or New York's Zuccotti Park."
a year ago wikileaks was as known as any other hacker project on the
chaos computer congress in berlin. its organizers which you remember
only by surname were talking about technical and organisational
issues, smoking a joint and gathering collaborators and co-developers.
like often german or swedish hackers were running the backend of this
project. they like the technocratic part where organisation and code
goes together. here is where wikileaks has its center, and the idea of
it was rather a channel, a protocol, or a p2p network to allow more
transparency in information. the opposite movement against closing
down on information which belongs to the public, and a direct result
of a cyberpunk worldview, where an oligarchy of a few corporations
runs the world.
