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.
At first glance the concept of "organised networks" appears oxymoronic. In technical terms, all networks are organised. There are founders, administrators, moderators and active members who all take up roles. Think also back to the early work on cybernetics and the "second order" cybernetics of Bateson and others. Networks consist of mobile relations whose arrangement at any particular time is shaped by the "constitutive outside" of feedback or noise.[1] The order of networks is made up of a continuum of relations governed by interests, passions, affects and pragmatic necessities of different actors. The network of relations is never static, but this is not to be mistaken for some kind of perpetual fluidity. Ephemerality is not a condition to celebrate for those wishing to function as political agents.
ReadThere is a last enterprise that might be undertaken. It would be to seek experience at its source, or rather, above that decisive turn where, taking a bias in the direction of our utility, it becomes properly human experience. (Bergson, 1991: 184).
ReadTactical Media emerged when the modest goals of media artists and media activists were transformed into a movement that challenged everyone to produce their own media in support of their own political struggles. This "new media" activism was based on the insight that the long-held distinction between the 'street' (reality) and the 'media' (representation) could no longer be upheld. On the contrary, the media had come to infuse all of society.
ReadAt 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.
ReadI am interested in a certain sense of wanting to be "in" something: to participate in it, to connect with it, to synchronize with it, to be caught up with it, rather than to visually possess it. The desire to be attuned to something that is happening, or that might happen at any moment -- not necessarily as a conscious thought, but as a vaguely felt expectation. The desire to move toward something that is (or might be) happening, in order to absorb its force, touch it, taste it, surrender to it -- rather than simply to observe it.
ReadIt 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."
This essay provides a short and insightful overview of alternative television projects in the Italy of Berlusconi.
Xnet publishes a Basic How-to guide for preserveing fundamental rights on the Internet
#Democracy – Rights and freedoms protected by the people: recent events in Catalonia as a case study
How-to guide: https://xnet-x.net/en/how-to-for-preserving-fundamental-rights-internet/
Even more basic PDF version.
At the end of the third 'Next 5 Minutes' conference on tactical media (March 1999) in Amsterdam, an interesting discussion emerged around the question of how the minor media practices elaborated and highlighted in this vibrant event would ever reach a wider audience for lack of being covered by any mainstream outlet. At one point, some people from the back of the room (unfortunately I don't know anymore who exactly, I believe an Italian group), shouted: 'We don't want to be mediated - we mediate ourselves!'
ReadThe events of the century's turn, from Seattle to New York, have shown that a sweeping critique of capitalist globalization is possible, and urgently necessary-before the level of violence in the world dramatically increases. The beginnings of such a critique exist, with the renewal of "unorthodox" economics. [1] But now one can look further, toward a critique of contemporary capitalist culture.
ReadThis debate will address some of the doubts that hard core activists have about the usefulness of art in a political context.
The avant-garde never gives up. And tactical media has produced (at least) three different theaters of operation to wage its struggle: media activism, pure tactical aesthetics, and net conceptualism. The first allows for "formal" net.art tactics (materialist, structural), the latter two allow for "real" net.art tactics (native presence, site-specificity).
ReadNaomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the New York Times and #1 international bestseller, 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism'. Published worldwide in September 2007, The Shock Doctrine is being translated in over 25 languages. In 2009 it won the inaugural Warwick Prize for Literature. The six minute companion film, created by Alfonso Cuaron, director of Children of Men, was an Official Selection of the 2007 Venice Biennale and Toronto International Film Festivals.
Berlin · May 12 2017:
Conference series by Disruption Network Lab e.V.
Whistleblowers and truth-tellers persecuted for blowing the whistle, critical thinkers and activists meet to discuss countermeasures to detention and repression.
The 11th event of the Disruption Network Lab to celebrate the upcoming freedom of Chelsea Manning and launch the new book by John Kiriakou (CIA anti-torture whistleblower). Directed by Tatiana Bazzichelli.
With: John Kiriakou (CIA anti-torture whistleblower, USA); Annie Machon (former MI5 intelligence officer, UK/BE);
Annegret Falter (Chair Whistleblower Netzwerk e.V., DE); Magnus Ag (Senior Programm Officer, Freemuse, DK/DE); Silvanos Mudzvova (Artist Protection Fund Fellow in residency at The University of Manchester, ZWE/UK).
Many are the social, political or economic problems in Brazil.
Socially, there's an extremely unequal distribution of wealth. Such a
big social unequality is reflected, for example, in the extreme
differences between the center and the periphery in the big cities,
regional unequalities, criminality, racism. Besides that, we live in an
unnoficial police state that acts in defense of the elites, murdering
and arresting poorer citzens, because of the color of their skin or
social condition.
"The darkest, hottest place in hell waits for that repulsive angel choir
Which, at the hour when crisis strikes, sings equivocal, neutral songs".
Dante, Inferno, Canto III.
This is a short text [1] which appears in "Public Netbase: Non Stop Future. New Practices in Art and Media" edited by the fine people at the New Media Center_kuda.org, in cooperation with World-Information Institute / t0. This book was presented at Transmediale 2009 in Berlin.
http://nonstop-future.org
Tactical media as a practice has a long history and, it seems save to predict, an even longer future. Yet its existence as a distinct concept around which something of a social movement, or more precisely, a self- aware network of people and projects would coalesce has been relatively short lived, largely confined to the internet's first decade as a mass medium (1995-2005).
#FREEBASSEL Campaign launched to bring home loved and celebrated Internet Volunteer detained in Syria.
Damascus - Tuesday, 3 July 2012 - Today marks the launch of the #FREEBASSEL
campaign to bring about the release of Bassel Khartabil, known widely
on the Internet and in technology communities as Bassel Safadi. Bassel
is a resident of Damascus, Syria, a technology pioneer and respected
community leader. He is a loving family member and friend to countless
people at home and around the world. He has been detained since March
15, 2012, without trial. Today the campaign learned Bassel is being held
at security detention branch 291 in Kafer Sousa, a facility that was
uncovered in the recent Human Rights Watch report "Syria: Torture
Centers Revealed."
