[iDC] Activist Media Landscape

Wed Dec 14 16:27:29 EST 2005

Hi Everyone,

I just finished the first part of a project that I think somehow fits 
into the discussion here. As some of you know, I've been researching and 
making work about "secret" military bases for the last few years. As a 
part of that project, I came across a number of documents about the 
CIA's "torture jets" and also came into contact with worldwide networks 
of "plane spotters." About 2 weeks ago, I hooked up with an 
investigative journalist and we came up with this article:
http://sfbg.com/

The thing that's important about this investigation is that we were able 
to link at least one of the jets to a major public figure (something 
that noone else has really been able to do). There's way more to the 
story than made it into the weekly - I'll be explaining the whole 
structure at lectures this spring.

Anyway, I think that somehow this project captures some of what Trebor 
was talking about with 'public investigation' and distributed community 
networks (of weird airplane spotter people) and so forth. But I have to 
confess that I certainly haven't had much time to "dream" or relax or 
anything lately. No sleep, and sometimes a good dose of nervousness.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the piece. I've found that these kinds of 
investigative models of 'art' can be very fruitful - both in terms of 
creating works that foreground a radical 'means of production' and get 
around the fetishistic ways that all of us sometimes ontologize (is that 
a word?) artworks. The images from this project aren't online (yet), but 
they really do act as a kind of evidence, and not in a theoretical way 
but rather one that is far more immediate.

Great discussions on this list, keep it up!

-- 
Trevor Paglen
--------------------------------------------------------
Department of Geography
University of California at Berkeley
507 McCone Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-4740

www.paglen.com

Trebor Scholz wrote:
> We fly over the terrain. But each light cone of our searchlights
> renders a different area. Sometimes, this territory
> is claimed to be the entire forest. What would we find if
> we pin note pads to a map of resistant practices
> in today's networked media landscape? I took some time
> to outline what I see as sites of resistance. They come
> down from a birds-eye view to lists of concrete examples.
> 
> INSIDE/OUTSIDE
> All acts are political in their consequences. It did not
> take Brecht to teach us that. There is no outside. There
> is no snow-white innocence of an absolute non-involvement.
> Many are vehement in their critique of the university
> as corporate vehicle. They cancel it out as site of oppositionality.
> It does not take much historical wandering to question this
> argument. Just take the German political theorist Herbert
> Marcuse who taught at the conservative,
> small, private Brandeis University for 8 years. We could add many
> Other examples. In similar ways to critique of academia others leave no
> space or potentiality for affective resistant practices within the (even
> commercial) art world.
> 
> TIME/DURATION
> The separation of work time and leisure that I wrote about
> earlier is a major site of contestation. Here I see a personal
> locale for resistance. We need time to dream, reflect, and think.
> http://collectivate.net/journalisms/2005/11/19/downtime.html
> 
> Grant brought up the question of duration in art. I recommend Grant's book
> "Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art" (2004)
> highly! Here, Grant looks at long-term, sustainable community art. I am
> particularly taken by his approach to critique. He is obviously invested in
> community art. But to value it he is extremely critical as well as
> appreciative. No romanticism here!
> 
> This also relates to the prevailing culture of immediacy. Immediate results
> are expected in the process of learning (i.e. in programming). The way to
> art world fame needs to be short. The production time for artworks are often
> weeks if not shorter. Also the staging of the artwork is often more like a
> flash. Time was also at the core of the considerations in previous posts who
> reminded us that social change takes generations.
> 
> Time was also the issue for those who asked us to be ready for our
> oppositional gesture when the window of opportunity (of vulnerability) opens
> up.   
>  
> CONNECT
> A key problem in the field of activism or oppositional practices I see in
> the antagonisms between different communities of practice. Dismissive
> accusations are quick at hand. People are blamed for selfishness,
> complacency, techno-utopia, careerism, managerial behavior, betrayal of
> principles in the art world or in academia, etc etc etc. We should rest this
> and instead look for connections. We should respect distinct levels of
> thinking and not impose our ideas. We should recognize our own errors and
> correct them. We should seek dialogue instead of shutting others up. We can
> learn and speak in discursive communities and renew ourselves through these
> networks of inspiration. It's not all of "them" against "us." We are largely
> the same. To acknowledge what we hate so much about the other in ourselves
> is a start. This takes self-awareness and consciousness. We see how our own
> biography shapes our thinking. We are driven by our fascinations. That's
> what motivates our feelings and behavior. We can help each other in living a
> bit less brainwashed, depressed, compulsive, anxiety-ridden, and addicted.
> We can be a bit more in touch with social reality. A bit less
> "remote-controlled" by corporate media. A bit more self-governed. A bit more
> autonomous.   
> 
> I look at this network society and the politics surrounding me and I see a
> wide field of possibilities for engagement. From art, media activism, the
> production of media theory, to an event-based cultural practice.
> 
> What follows are examples. What follows is not more than an annotated sketch
> of sites of oppositionality in today's network society. I make, of course,
> no claims to completeness.
> 
> 1) CIVIC USES OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES
> 2) TACTICAL MEDIA
> 3) MEDIA ART/DISTRIBUTED CREATIVITY
> 4) PROTEST CULTURE
> 5) PROPERTY
> 6) CULTURE JAMMING
> 7) (TRADITIONAL) ART WORLD
> 8) EVENT-BASED CULTURAL PRACTICE
> 9) EXTREME SHARING NETWORKS and the their OPEN ARCHIVES
> 10) (MEDIA ART) EDUCATION
> 11) ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIES/ COMMONS-BASED PEER PRODUCTION.
> 
> =======================
> 1) CIVIC USES OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES
> Communal web pages, mailing lists, blogs, grass-roots journalism,
> pod casts, cell phones, open access journals
> 
> Examples: 
> 
> Indymedia
> Citizen journalism is the act of citizens "playing an active role in the
> process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and
> information."
> http://indymedia.org
> 
> OhmyNews
> South Korea's OhmyNews website (new type of democratic journalism)
> <English Version>
> http://english.ohmynews.com/
> 
> TxtMob
> A free service that lets you send SMS text messages to a group of people.
> http://www.txtmob.com/
> 
> Fahamu
> African Global Call to Action against Poverty uses
> SMS messaging as a tool for mobilization.
> http://www.fahamu.org
> 
> Bytesforall
> http://www.bytesforall.org/
>  
> Blogosphere/ Rise of the online Citizen
> http://www.eff.org/bloggers/
> 
> Daoud Kuttab's Blog
> http://www.daoudkuttab.com/
> 
> Blog on the Commons
> http://www.onthecommons.org/
> 
> Audio Activism Podcast
> http://www.audioactivism.org/
> http://www.odeo.com/show/239771/view
> 
> Journals
> Neural
> http://www.neural.it/english/
> 
> Google Bombing
> A Google bomb stands for the willful manipulation of the ranking of a given
> page in results returned by the Google search engine (i.e. google "Miserable
> failure").
> 
> =======================
> TACTICAL MEDIA
> Short-term, spontaneous interruptions of daily life through creative re-use
> of mostly cheap consumer electronics.
> 
> Personal Sousveillance (pronounced "Sou Veil Lance," Steve Mann) refers both
> to inverse surveillance, as well as to the recording of an activity from the
> perspective of a participant in the activity (i.e. personal experience
> capture).
> 
> Carbon Defense League
> http://www.carbondefense.org/
> 
> =======================
> MEDIA ART/DISTRIBUTED CREATIVITY
> 
> Examples:
> 
> Internet Art
> "Nukorea" by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
> http://www.yhchang.com/OPERATION_NUKOREA.html
> 
> and the classic: "The Struggle Continues"
> http://www.yhchang.com/THE_STRUGGLE_CONTINUES.html
> 
> Radio
> Transit Wellen by schleuser.net
> http://www.transitwellen.net/de/p1_0_0.php
> 
> Games
> agoraXchange
> http://www.agoraxchange.net/index.php?page=218
> 
> Games with political intent
> http://www.selectparks.net/modules.php?name=News&new_topic=2
> 
> Transforming aesthetics, conference, Sydney 2005
> http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/aaanz/program
> 
> =======================
> PROTEST CULTURE
> Demonstrations, new organizational forms
> 
> Democratic globalization movement
> Seattle, Genoa, Davos, ...
> 
> Virtual March
> http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/default.asp
> 
> Denial of service attacks
> http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/ecd.html
> 
> Protest.net lists upcoming protests
> http://protest.net/
> 
> =======================
> PROPERTY
> Copyright Issues/Creative Commons/ GPL
> 
> Creative Commons-- nonprofit organization
> that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works.
> http://creativecommons.org/
> 
> CC Mixter
> http://ccmixter.org/
> 
> Archive.org/ (also see: Ourmedia.org)
> http://archive.org
> 
> Bittorrent
> There is a decisive disregard of copyright law by millions
> of Internet users every day on file sharing networks like Bittorrent.
> http://www.bittorrent.com/
> 
> =======================
> CULTURE JAMMING
> 
> Examples:
> 
> Adbusters
> Adbusters is a political magazine.
> http://adbusters.org
> 
> Bush in 30 Seconds
> http://www.bushin30seconds.org/
> 
> Billionaires For Bush
> Billionaires For Bush is a culture jamming political street theater
> organization that satirically purports to support George W. Bush.
> http://billionairesforbush.com
> 
> The Yes Men
> http://www.theyesmen.org/
> 
> The Partyparty
> Satire Remix Culture
> http://www.thepartyparty.com/
>  
> The Meatrix
> http://www.themeatrix.com/
> 
> Bush & Blair 
> by US Department of Art & Technology
> http://ia300131.us.archive.org/0/items/bush_blair/bush_blair.mov
> 
> Homeland Security Threat Monitor
> http://hewgill.com/threat/
> 
> Gatt.org
> http://gatt.or 
> 
> Whitehouse.org
> http://whitehouse.org
> 
> Politics in the game Second Life
> http://secondlife.blogs.com/photos/nwn/icerink.JPG
> http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2004/08/so_very_kerry_a.html
> http://secondlife.com/
> 
> =======================
> (TRADITIONAL) ARTWORLD
> Conceptual Political Art/ Public Interventionist Practices
>  
> Examples:
>  
> Alfredo Jaar
> http://www.alfredojaar.net/
> 
> Temporary Services
> http://www.temporaryservices.org
> 
> Ultra Red
> http://www.ultrared.org/
> 
> BL4CKH4M
> http://www.bl4ckh4m.com/
> 
> 0100101110101101.org
> http://www.nikeground.com/
> 
> 
> =======================
> EVENT-BASED CULTURAL PRACTICE
> 
> Examples: 
> 
> Conference in Budapest, October 2005
> http://mokk.bme.hu/centre/conferences/reactivism/index_html?set_language=en&
> cl=en
> 
> International conference on Information and Communication Technologies and
> Development, Berkeley 2006
> http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/events/ictd2006/
> 
> Make World
> http://www.makeworlds.org/1/index.html
> 
> Share, Share Widely
> Conference on Media Art Education
> http://newmediaeducation.org
> 
> =======================
> RESEARCH
> 
> Who Dies?
> http://whodies.com/
> 
> Iraq Body Count
> http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
> 
> 360 Degrees
> http://360degrees.org/
> 
>  =======================
> 
> EXTREME SHARING NETWORKS and OPEN ARCHIVES
> EXTREME SHARING NETWORKS are social networks that are able to reproduce
> themselves. They takes the idea of extreme programming to autonomous social
> networking. Extreme Programming is a popular development methodology used to
> implement software engineering projects. It claims to have the potential to
> avoid personal burnout and develop a more sustainable software development
> culture.
> 
> Examples:
> 
> FibreCulture
> http://fibreculture.org
> http://journal.fibreculture.org
> 
> Cactus Network
> http://www.cactusnetwork.org.uk/collective.htm
> 
> Sarai 
> https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
> 
> Argentinean Electronic Network
> http://raec.clacso.edu.ar/
> 
> Interactivist Info Exchange
> http://slash.autonomedia.org/
> 
> =======================
> 
> (MEDIA ART) EDUCATION
> 
> -Transformative power of human encounters in the class room
> -Analysis of neoliberalism
> -Teaching of human rights, civil society related to network society
> -Empower students to use the networked commons
> -Reeingineering, hacktivism (programming + critical thinking for social
> change)
> 
> Examples:
> 
> http://gothacked.org
> http://www.hohusen.com/mmotimes/issue2_1.html
> 
> Distributed Learning Projects
> H2O, Connexions, ShareWidely
> 
>  =======================
> 
> ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIES/ COMMONS-BASED PEER PRODUCTION
> (non-proprietary cooperative production of information)
> 
> Examples: 
> 
> Anonymous P2P file sharing
> GNUnet file sharing application
> http://gnunet.org/
> 
> Friend-to-friend networks/ Community Informatics
> community networking, electronic community networking
> 
> Production & Use of Free, Libre, and Open Source Applications
> 
> FreshMeat
> http://freshmeat.net
> 
> Freshmeat is probably the largest open archive of open source
> and free software projects.
> 
> Wikipedia
> Free, user contributed encyclopedia.
> http://wikipedia.org
> 
> FreeNet
> Freenet is free software that lets you publish and obtain information
> on the Internet without fear of censorship. Contributors stay anonymous.
> http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
> 
> =======================
> 
> 
> Best,
> Trebor
> --
> http://collectivate.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
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