Today, 9 October, 2015 WikiLeaks releases the final negotiated text for the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. The TPP encompasses 12 nations representing more than 40 per cent of global GDP. Despite a final agreement, the text is still being withheld from the public, notably until after the Canadian election on October 19.
ReadThe CCC is an international campaign, focused on improving working
conditions in the global garment and sportswear industries, and empower
the workers in it. There is a Clean Clothes Campaign in 12 European countries. These are Austria, Belgium (North and South), Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Motivated by the theories of Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Geert Lovink and David Garcia, Brazilian Internet users, activists and artists are, more and more, developing attractive activism and tactical media projects.
ReadCamping can be so nice. Crawling out of dewy plastic in the early morning, with a pinch of sleep still in your eyes, braving the unbearably hot sun, yet invigorated and ready to take on the day with as much indifference as possible to the ongoing struggle with nature. Surely everybody knows that the secret of success is to fight the laws of petty bourgeois civilisation with minimal equipment and therefore gain a flexibility that is capable of suspending the otherwise ruling power relations for a clearly defined amount of time.
ReadThis 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).
tactical media event
Amsterdam & Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 12-14 March, 1999
www.n5m.org
(Source: Updated announcement Feb 11, 1999)
The Furtherfield community utilizes networked media to create, explore,
nurture and promote the art that happens when connections are made and
knowledge is shared - across the boundaries of established art-world
institutions and their markets, grass-roots artistic and activist
projects and communities of socially-engaged software developers. This
is a spectrum that engages from the maverick media-art-makers and small
collectives of cross-specialist practitioners, to projects that critique
and change dominant hierarchical structures as part of their art
process.
This text will provide a brief background as to how Furtherfield, a
non-profit organization and community, came about and how it extends the
DIY ethos of some early net art and tactical media, said to be
motivated by curiosity, activism and precision, [01] towards a more
collaborative approach that Furtherfield calls Do It With Others (DIWO).
Tactical 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.
If media theory over the last 40 years largely understood media as hopelessly contaminated by capitalism, the quietism implied by this critique also met its challenge in Guattari's concept of 'becoming-media'. Here Clemens Apprich revisits key media political debates to imagine post-media approaches in the age of social media.
ReadTactical media are the field being worked by artists adopting a positive attitude towards contemporary digital technology, in a critical, innovative spirit. Media artists reveal a preoccupation with aesthetics as a concept, not with a particular style. This trend is part of the creation of a new language for the communications network era, a user language which is successful as art because it transmits an effective activism. Media activists are a hybrid of artist, scientist, theoretician and political activist that shuns labels and categorizations. Their creations are characterised by integration of user and machine in the work itself, so that interactivity has an important place within it. The concept of tactical media allows Art with a capital and grassroots political activism to be combined and, in this sense, we could include in it the tactical struggle that is part of anti-globalisation movements. Media activists point to the power of tactics as a means of breaking down the barriers between mainstream values and alternative ones, between professionals and amateurs and even between people who are creative and those that are not.
ReadWikiLeaks releases today the "Investment Chapter" from the secret negotiations of the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) agreement. The document adds to the previous WikiLeaks publications of the chapters for Intellectual Property Rights (November 2013) and the Environment (January 2014).
ReadFor 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.
Instigating final declaration of the FC⚡MC
In the middle of the protest, something new emerged:
Final declaration of the FC⚡MC - International Media Center during G20 in Hamburg
Book presentations:
Tuesday, 5 March 2013, 7:00 p.m.
Depot, Vienna
Oliver Ressler in conversation with Luisa Ziaja (held in German)
An event in cooperation with Open Systems - Zentrum für Kunstprojekte, Vienna
Friday, 8 March 2013, 7:30 p.m.
Home Workspace, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut
Book signing at 7:30pm and presentation at 8pm by Gregory Sholette
Thursday, 25 April 2013, 6:30 p.m.
Austrian Cultural Forum, New York
Book presentation with Gregory Sholette, Oliver Ressler and guests
On 14 October, the net culture institution Public Netbase was served a writ intended to prohibit a work of art. The writ was the result of a lawsuit filed by Nike corporation, with a disputed amount of 78,000 Euros. The space installation "nikeground ? rethinking space" is a joint project of Public Netbase and the renowned art group 0100101110101101.ORG. The renaming of the historic Karlsplatz square in the center of Vienna into Nikeplatz, as suggested by the project, is meant to encourage reflection and public debates. In their work, the authors combine the artistic tradition of mythopoesis with the new culture of communication technologies.
ReadGreenpeace Netherlands has released secret TTIP negotiation documents. We have done so to provide much needed transparency and trigger an informed debate on the treaty. This treaty is threatening to have far reaching implications for the environment and the lives of more than 800 million citizens in the EU and US.
ReadA dangerous new legal doctrine is lurking:
The unrestricted Trade Secret protection
Xnet launches a video campaign at European level, in collaboration with numerous civil society organizations such as Corporate Europe Observatory, EDRi, la Quadrature du Net, Health Action International, P2P Foundation, Initiative für Netzfreiheit, Commons Network, to expose the threats of the new legal doctrine on Trade Secrets for whistleblowers, freedom of press and information, workers and consumers, health and the public interest.
Over 2,000 Ogoni, including their leader, Ken Saro-Wiwa have died since they started their non-violent campaign against Shell. Many Ogoni are still imprisoned today. Their only crime was to campaign against the ecological destruction of their homeland by Shell and ask for a greater share of the oil wealth that had been drilled from under their land.
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.
Read