[iDC] A Reflection on the Activist Strategies in the Web 2.0 Era

[Curt Cloninger]

Thanks Lucia,

I suppose I am saying that once a "tactical media artist" puts work 
in a gallery, a museum, or an arts festival, then that works gains a 
strategic component -- because galleries, museums, and festivals, and 
the practices of art production that surround them, fall within the 
institutional realm that de Certeau is describing (although some of 
these institutions and organizations are admittedly more fluid/agile 
than others). And again, there is nothing ethically wrong with this.

I am trying to problematize de Certeau's binary distinction. Yes, 
there is a continuum from the weak tactical consumer to the stronger 
tactical artist producer, but that same continuum continues on toward 
the systematic institutional producer, and I don't think simply 
calling onesself a "tactical media artist" excludes one from being 
considered a strategic media producer. Nor should it. Nor should we 
always rule out stategic institutional production as ethically off 
limits or pragmatically ineffectual. An artist can and should 
implement a combination of multiple production 
approaches/tactics/strategies (and indeed, this has often been the 
case, regardless of what tactical media artists and theorists have 
claimed).

Beyond mere resistance, could we push toward modulating and 
inflecting both ourselves and "the man" until the whole binary system 
was tweaked into something heretofore unknown?

To quote pithy media theorists ZZ Top:
"Jesus just left Chicago and he's bound for New Orleans /
Working from one end to the other, and all points in between."

Best,
Curt

At 3:37 PM -0500 1/23/09, Lucia Sommer wrote:
>What better definition of tactical media could we find? We could 
>say, following your important insight here, that there is something 
>like a gradual continuum between tactical production and tactical 
>use/consumption, and that the tactical media artist is a tactical 
>producer -- to distinguish this activity from a more-dominated, or 
>more-passive use/consumption.