Call for a #GlobalDebout, May 15, 2016 

We call for a #globaldebout day of action on the 15th of May, 2016.

We call on peoples movements across the world to mobilise for justice and real democracy on the weekend of May 15th, 2016 for a #GLOBALDEBOUT. We invite you to come to Paris for an International Gathering of movements at Place de la Republic on May 7 and 8.

Today #46mars (April 15) is just two weeks after one million people mobilized in Paris and the movement Nuit Debout continues to grow. In numerous French and foreign cities, #Nuitdebout (Night on our Feet) is a light in the dark, it gives testimony to our hopes, dreams and common rebellions. Those who have taken the squares in the past and those who are taking them NOW: we know something is happening.

• precarity,
• art of campaigning,
• labour,
• street protest,
• economics

Media Darkness 

Reflections on Public Space, Light and Conflict

There is an unshakable belief in the idea that what defines the mass media is that they produce or constitute, in all their different ways, a public. So while there is agreement on the fact that not every public sphere is a communication medium, many people tend to think that every communication medium constitutes a public sphere - the most recent and prominent candidate being, of course, the Internet. But is this claim as to the public quality of all media, hegemonic as it may be today, really tenable?

• public space,
• political science,
• media criticism

Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism 

"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."

• network cultures,
• activism,
• public space,
• participatory media,
• hybrid space,
• street protest

The Network of Waves 

Public Agency in Hybrid Space

Lead-essay for the theme issue "Hybrid Space" of OPEN, Journal for Art and the Public Domain, #11, (Amsterdam / Rotterdam, 2006).

• public space,
• infopolitics,
• media theory,
• hybrid space,
• street protest

1st ArtLeaks Working Assembly 2012 

ArtLeaks invites you to a public working assembly around the issues that are at the core of the group's mission - exposing instances of abuse, corruption and exploitation in the art world. This is the official public launch of our platform, which began to operate in September 2011, and will be followed by a series of debates and workshops in the near future. These present a unique opportunity to engage more directly with conditions of cultural work that affect not only artists but creative workers in general: those from the traditionally creative fields as well as those generally involved in cultural production.

• art,
• campaign,
• precarity,
• art of campaigning

Constructing the Digital Commons 

March 2003

Democracy can be understood in two notably distinct ways. In the institutional view democracy is understood as the interplay of institutional actors that represent 'the people' and are held accountable through the plebiscite; public votes, polls and occasionally referenda. The second view on democracy is radically different in that it sees the extent to which people can freely assemble, discuss and share ideas about vital social issues, organise themselves around these issues, and can freely voice their opinions in public fora, as a measure for just how democratic a given society is.

• public space,
• public domain,
• digital commons

Nikeground - Rethinking Space 

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.

• art,
• campaign,
• tactical media,
• public space,
• globalisation

The Need for Practice 

Exhibition, Bratislava, May 23 - June 22, 2014:

We are living in a prolonged period of economic, social, political and environmental crisis, in which the yearning for global, redeeming visions of the future has become increasingly frustrating, if not obsolete. However, it is not possible to live without expectations, without being able to imagine better conditions, a more positive state of affairs. And what if ? as many thinkers, cultural producers and various practitioners propose ? instead of heading towards fixed images of the future, we understand utopia, as a continuous process of becoming in which we participate? That is, instead of viewing the future as an end, a goal we should attain in an ever-delayed 'some day', we actualize it in the present, perform it in the everyday?

• art,
• diy media

9-11 and After: A Virtual Case Book 

 The attack on the World Trade Center was--among other things--a stunning media event, and there was no shortage of analysis on mass media coverage. We saw no reason to replicate what others were doing. What no one seemed to be looking at closely was the significance of this ephemeral material that filled the streets and parks in New York below 14th Street or its relationship with the new media that was also flooding our lives.

The tactics of occupation: Becoming cockroach 

The global occupy protest movement is proliferating by "contagion, epidemics, battlefields, and catastrophes".[1] Furthermore, it materialises and disperses in multiple ephemeral processes of transformation that construct a common for the multitude of protestors. The common produced by the global occupy movement is not a mutually shared opposition to the capitalist crisis, nor a collective identity (of the "indignados" or of the 99%), nor a consensual political project (for real, authentic democracy). The common does not even embody an identical strategy of occupying public space, but rather to a series of becomings that question established categorizations and taxonomies that normalize the production of subjectivities and the organisation of life.

• urban intervention,
• street protest,
• occupy

Contestational Robotics 

Keywords: robots / contestation / public space / expression management

• contestational robotics,
• public space,
• expression management

Time Place and Manner Restrictions on Peaceable Assembly 

There seems to be a lot of confusion or misinformation in the Occupy movement about the First Amendment right to peaceable assembly and how that interacts with the right of local governments to place Time, Place, and Manner restrictions on those assemblies.

• public space,
• occupy