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

[marc garrett]

Hi Ryan & all,

I would include furtherfield.org as an alternative to the more 
traditional institutions - yet just like individual, experimental 
artists need support from their communities, I would argue that we do 
also...

marc
> On Jan 23, 2009, at 4:20 PM, Curt Cloninger wrote:
>
>   
>> 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).
>>     
>
> i would quickly add to Curt's fluidity/continuum model the object of  
> institutions. While there are dominant institutions that occupy space  
> in a (seemingly) hegemonic manner - including museums, etc - there  
> are counter institutions that colonize space (although, i'm not  
> really keen on using that word in all instances) out of both  
> necessity and desire and that can't be reduced to the tactical. i can  
> understand the desire for tactical media to take on and try to embody  
> the position of "the weak", but i think TM can be located in a  
> broader field of cultural and political power, where it's tactical in  
> more ways than one, i.e. "making due" with cultural capital in place  
> of political power - part of the point of Brian's essay pointed to  
> earlier.
> i think Curt is maybe after the matter of concern that such tactics  
> are supposed to address, to go back to his reference to Latour? Which  
> is hard to discuss in the limited vocabulary of tacticality...
>
> ryan
>
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