[iDC] <nettime> Egyptian Revolution: 2nd decolonialisation for all

Fri Feb 4 12:27:49 UTC 2011

"#Tahrir Square sits firmly at the intersections of inequality, revolution,
architecture of power and urban gaming (and of course uncountable other idea
and action flows).

A historical site of protests of revolts, almost determined by the built
configuration of crucial building along the edge of the square, openness of
which simultaneously makes the protesters vulnerable to indiscriminate
violence. The space is proceduarally generated through human action, from
under-domination of the police of the space-eater giant, to the very symbol
of ‘liberation’ and gathering ground of a million to killing ground without
shelter to the front-line-of-battle moving to 6th Oct Bridge as
@sharifkouddous <http://twitter.com/#%21/sharifkouddous> tweets just now.

Is Hosni Mubarak a creation of that city-space with #Tahrir Square as the
center? Can he be only defeated by moving the front line of battle to 6th
Oct Bridge of elsewhere? But #Tahrir Square is also a procedurally generated
virtual (voyeuristic? supportive? emotional?) gathering space every time
somebody searches for the hashtag. And there are battles for hashtag spaces
as @Jan25voices <http://twitter.com/#%21/Jan25voices> and other prominent
occupiers of that space come under hashtagged criticism.

Why are people on streets in Cairo are tweeting and claiming hashtag spaces?
Only because most of them are journalists/bloggers and they require the
global audience for their living? How does tweeting from the streets change
their experiences and future experiences of those streets?

Much of how we talk about ‘spaces’ and ‘cities’ emerged from similar days in
France and elsewhere of late 1960s. How is #Tahrir Square going to change
how we talk about contemporary world cities, and live and play in them?"

more: http://popupcity.net/2011/02/hybrid-urban-games-and-tahrir-square/

sumandro

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 5:30 PM, <idc-request at mailman.thing.net> wrote:

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>   1. Fwd: Egyptian Revolution: 2nd decolonialisation for all
>      (David Golumbia)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 12:42:02 -0500
> From: David Golumbia <dgolumbia at gmail.com>
> Subject: [iDC] Fwd: Egyptian Revolution: 2nd decolonialisation for all
> To: idc at mailman.thing.net
> Message-ID:
>        <AANLkTi=ih5nXaBjdofhn+g0d3Ag631PFfu+216vGdtbi at mail.gmail.com<ih5nXaBjdofhn%2Bg0d3Ag631PFfu%2B216vGdtbi at mail.gmail.com>
> >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> posted to nettime, but in part inspired by ulises's idc postings & almost
> sent several times here re: that.
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: David Golumbia <dgolumbia at gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 12:11 PM
> Subject: Re: <nettime> Egyptian Revolution: 2nd decolonialisation for all
> To: nettime-l at kein.org
>
>
> i have been wanting to remark for a while on a silence is not
> just deafening, but revelatory. it makes these lists seem like "places to
> talk about politics so long as and only in so far as you think politics are
> being radically transformed by one electronic technology or another." in
> such a context, the fact of resistance is more important than its success,
> so that we can talk about failed uprisings as revolutions.
>
> the members of the various lists you mention are among the smartest and
> most
> attentive people i know in the world. Obviously nettime, idc, aoir, etc.,
> are not forums for discussion of world politics. Yet their transient dips
> into such topics (like those of mass media pundints) come to seem both
> interested and strangely quietist. "we're interested in your
> revolution/catastrophe/big political change if it is fueled by
> twitter/facebook/AJAX and if one government or another uses the internet to
> access or block parts of the huge political conversation; otherwise, don't
> care much."
>
> very few of the egyptian protestors appear to be using electronic devices
> when they are protesting, even as our pundints narrate over the pictures
> with stories about facebook transforming the political fabric.
>
> this is not to deny the role of various forms of social media in all forms
> of political activity. it is to ask what exactly are we talking about, and
> in what way do we see our discussion itself as contributing to contemporary
> politics?
>
> DG
> uncomputing.org
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 5:48 PM, Armin Medosch <armin at easynet.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > the silence on nettime regarding the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions
> > is really deafening. is it that the vanguard of net-criticism has
> > nothing to say when a genuine people's movement is rearing it's
> > hydra-like head?
> >
> > justifiedly a few voices have been heard here and on IDC condemning the
> > viewpoint that this is a #twitterrevolutuion or facebookrevolution. such
> > media-centric viewpoints, as much as they are propounded by Western
> > commentators, are old-hat indeed.
> >
> > It is telling that the media-centric vanguards (netcriticism,
> > transmediale, IDC, etc.) have very little to say in this situation.
> >
> > The Mass Intelligence of the people of Egypt shows that there is an
> > alternative. Although the outcome is not yet clear, and any genuine
> > renovation of a grassroots democratic idea is bound to run into
> > organised resistance by capitalists and religious autocrats alike,  the
> > current example should invigorate all who are looking for genuine
> > change. It is definitely a 'moment in history'
> >
> >
> > (some of the ideas and notions put forward in this posting have been
> > developed in collaboration with Brian Holmes in the technopolitics
> > project)
> >
> >
> >
> --
> David Golumbia
> dgolumbia at gmail.com
>
>
>
> --
> David Golumbia
> dgolumbia at gmail.com
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