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NYU TML beyond the protype |
by Gregg Bordowitz |
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In their article In their article "A Virtual World is Possible: From Tactical Media to Digital Multitudes Florian Schneider and Geert Lovink declare that "the new social movements (wrongly labeled anti-globalisation) are in danger of "getting stuck in self-satisfying protest mode, running the risk "of getting stuck at the level of a global 'demo design,' no longer grounded in actual topics and local situations." They then ask the key question "how to jump beyond the prototype?" The answer to their question lies above all in specificity. In being able to generalize effectively (with explanatory power) from the lived experience of involvement in *specific* campaigns. In December Gregg Bordowitz will be moderating a session in the New York Tactical Media Lab. His text (below) suggests ways of addressing a number of the questions raised by Geert and Florian including the function and meaning of art in relationship to politics. I hope this list finds Gregg's text as inspiring (and useful) as I did. (David Garcia)
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I'm Gregg Bordowitz, AIDS activist, video maker, writer and teacher. I will be facilitating the discussion at the December TML on Sunday the 15th. It will focus on HIV/AIDS media activism. Planning for that day is coming more into focus. Here are some of the ideas that I have been thinking about that could come up within the discussion. I am a long time activist who has made much work, both in video and in writing that addresses the organizing problems specific to AIDS activism. Here are some of the presumptions I make going into our discussion. Be kind, these are rough working notes. 1) The AIDS crisis is still beginning. In the US there is much fatigue around the issue of AIDS and a profound misconception that the epidemic is contained. Around the world, in Africa, South America, Eastern Europe and Asia, places where the epidemic is out of control, there are growing activist movements. A particular hot spot to look at now is South Africa. The issues that internationalist AIDS activism currently focuses upon have the potential to explode and alter a number of governing discursive and juridical regimes concerning trade, industrial production and post-industrial production. International AIDS activists are questioning and applying pressure regarding the production and distribution of generic pharmaceuticals. This is interesting to us for a number of reasons. First, I am on the AIDS drug cocktail myself and so the issue is potentially central to my survival. Second, the juridical regimes that govern international patent law are the same whether applied to pharmaceuticals, software or feature films. (The TRIPS agreement covers all this.) ?All of us have a stake in copyright law -- academics, media activists, software designers, people interested in digital tech of all kinds. For media activists, the issue of affective labor and the management of the production and distribution of affective labor is an area of great concern in theory and practice. 2) You can't understand the global AIDS crisis without a working theory of globalization and analyzing the global AIDS crisis is a perfect way for forming a theory of globalization. ?You can get to almost any issue by way of an analysis of global AIDS -- poverty, borders, modes of production, etc. 3) Think about. There are millions of people with AIDS around the world, in every corner of the planet. What would happen if every person with AIDS demanded immediate care and access to lifesaving drugs? At the Barcelona AIDS conference this passed July, Nelson Mandela encouraged every person with AIDS, no matter where they are, what circumstances of poverty they live-in, to demand immediate care. This was profound. Everyone else was talking about scaling-up -- increasing the scale of funding and infrastructure to meet the dire needs of millions. That's an important discussion to have ( unfortunately now weighed down by bureaucratic infighting and the apathy of governments). BUT, Mandela gave a revolutionary message that addressed the individual,potentially millions of individuals. This is what Hardt and Negri are talking about in the book Empire, when they are trying to figure out "how to capture the multitude as a singularity." How can one come-up with an articulation available to individual use, an open, improvisational code, if you will, that links millions around a common goal, but allows for differences of context. (Yes back to the old problem of the Internationale. The Internationale without the Internationale. Arise, ye prisoners of international trade regimes and structural inequity!) 3) Politics and art. Media activist work must adopt the imperatives of a movement as its starting point, not its end. The work of media activism is not supplemental to any cause. it is its own cause. Media activist work does not earn its guarantee of relevance or truth from protests and activist efforts. Media activism must provide its own guarantees through form. The politics in political art, are the politics that occur when the work is encountered in real time. The politics of media activism are not to be found anywhere but in the work itself. ?Lastly, we must talk about aesthetics. Yes, as media activists, in particular our work must address questions of form. I advocate the cross breeding of documentary procedures with poetry and the concerns of structure usually reserved for conversations about music.
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