An Interview with John Jordan and Gavin Grindon
Furtherfield interview with Gavin Grindon and John Jordan from the
Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination about the User's Guide to
(Demanding) the Impossible. Published by Minor Compositions.
Outer Spaces Conference Series 2017
An analysis of ISIS and its media strategy, the meaning of cyber jihad, and why people enrol as foreign fighters.
The 12th conference of the Disruption Network Lab
Directed by Tatiana Bazzichelli. Studio 1, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin.
The CCC is an international campaign, focused on improving working
conditions in the global garment and sportswear industries, and empower
the workers in it. There is a Clean Clothes Campaign in 12 European countries. These are Austria, Belgium (North and South), Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Candida TV was born from the melting of different realities: underground cinema, video production, rave parties, street theaters, independent radios, underground bulletin board systems on the net and counterculture pop-magazines in the last seven years in Rome.
ReadThis article focuses on grassroots digital activism in the Arab world and the risks of what seems to be an inevitable collusion with U.S foreign policy and interests. It sums up the most important elements of the conversation I have been having for the last two years with many actors involved in defending online free speech and the use of technology for social and political change. While the main focus is Arab digital activism, I have made sure to include similar concerns raised by activists and online free speech advocates from other parts of the world, such as China, Thailand, and Iran.
ReadBerlin · May 12 2017:
Conference series by Disruption Network Lab e.V.
Whistleblowers and truth-tellers persecuted for blowing the whistle, critical thinkers and activists meet to discuss countermeasures to detention and repression.
The 11th event of the Disruption Network Lab to celebrate the upcoming freedom of Chelsea Manning and launch the new book by John Kiriakou (CIA anti-torture whistleblower). Directed by Tatiana Bazzichelli.
With: John Kiriakou (CIA anti-torture whistleblower, USA); Annie Machon (former MI5 intelligence officer, UK/BE);
Annegret Falter (Chair Whistleblower Netzwerk e.V., DE); Magnus Ag (Senior Programm Officer, Freemuse, DK/DE); Silvanos Mudzvova (Artist Protection Fund Fellow in residency at The University of Manchester, ZWE/UK).
Two years after 911 the global cup looks both half full and half empty. It's hard to be optimistic, yet there are plenty of reasons for it. With the Bush-Blair war machine running out of steam, the movement of movements shifts its attention to alternatives for the WTO, Security Council and similar post-democratic bodies. In the moral desert of the Iraq War the structuration of imaginary consent through the repetitive bombardment of the image began to show severe cracks in credibility. These discrepancies within the represented result in a heightened need for action. The Iraq war didn't fool any one and both sides are still reeling a little from the shock. While maintaining their anger, people moved on from protest to a collective search for that other, possible world. What might a global democracy look like? Would it be a system with representatives and 'rights,' or rather a dynamic set of events, without higher aims?
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Nina Czegledy and Inke Arns presented the material described in the
following text during the afternoon programme at V2_Organisation
Rotterdam on Sunday, January 21st, 14.00 - 18.00 hrs.
On an imaginary journey in the territories of current medical practice
and visual art, we observe the disintegration of former boundaries and
discover the emergence of a new discourse involving new metaphors and
new mythologies. In the course of this voyage we witness the
crystallization of a process which began in the Enlightenment and today
is linked together by electronic technologies. Mediated by television,
and lately the Internet, the concepts involved here, have contributed
to the construction of a simulated reality in both medical science and
art which imprisons attention and redirects it from the subject of the
activity reproduced.
Introducing the panel on Counter-strategies of Corporations against
Campaigns Featuring: What are the modern-times strategies of present
day companies? And: How can we respond to these?
This part of the introduction includes a short outline of the themes to
be discussed at the forum. Being used are examples from the work of the
panelists and cases they have been working on. Also included are
exerpts from recent articles on the corporate world's reaction to
social and environmental cam-paigns, illuminating the main themes from
different points of view. References are included below, if you would
like to receive four further texts on this subject, please let me know:
evel@xs4all.nl
Activists are using the internet to fight large companies over ethical issues. Yet many major brand-owners lack a clear counter-strategy. Earlier this month a group of environmental activists staged a sit-in at Shell's London offices. Although Shell turned the power off and cut the phone lines, activist Roddy Mansfield broadcast the protest live to the internet and e-mailed the press, using a digital camera, laptop computer and mobile phone.
"10 Basic Facts You Should Know About OCLP for Fighting [for] True Democracy"
#OCCUPYXMAS kicks off with Buy Nothing Day, on November 25 / 26.
Buy nothing day / a 24 hour moratorium on consumer spending / north america nov 25th, international nov 26th.
adbusters.org/bnd
The Negative Dialectics of the Net
In his essay, "Presenting the Unpresentable: The Sublime", Jean-François Lyotard observes that capitalism, technoscience and the pictorial avant-garde of the twentieth century share an 'affinity to infinity'. All three point towards a sensibility that is constitutive for the experience of the modern world.
The twin phenomena of immediacy and of instantaneity are presently oneof the most pressing problems confronting political and militarystrategists alike. Real time now prevails above both real space and thegeosphere. The primacy of real time, of immediacy, over and above spaceand surface is a ~fait accompli~ and has inaugural value (ushers a newepoch). Something nicely conjured up in a (French) advertisementpraising cellular phones with the words: "Planet Earth has never beenthis small". This is a very dramatic moment in our relation with theworld and for our vision of the world.
ReadAs much as images of violence, civil war, and sectarian strife become prominent in the media narrative of the Syrian uprising, little gems of innovative cultural production, artistic resistance, and creative disobedience continue to sprout across the virtual alleys of the Internet. These creative gems are also the germs of a viral peer-production process at work at a grassroots level in the new Syrian public sphere. Such acts of creativity - mash-ups, cartoons, slogans, jokes, songs, and web series - are probably too small and inconsistent in impact compared to the horrific magnificence that shelling, bombing, sniping, and killing scenes that provide daily fodder to global television viewers. It is also challenging to discover them; in fact, as remarked by Tunisian blogger Sami ben Gharbia at the Arab Bloggers meeting in Tunis (3-6 October 2011), Facebook is not the most suitable platform for activists to store, archive, tag, search for content, and give it a context.
ReadA brief history of "The Journal of the Mental Environment."
The
core idea behind Adbusters, the essential critique that motivates our
struggle against consumer society, is mental environmentalism. And for
seventeen years, since the seventh issue of Adbusters was published in
1993, the subtitle of the magazine has been "The Journal of the Mental
Environment". But, what exactly is mental environmentalism?
Notes for Brain Holmes' text: The Flexible Personality: For a New Cultural Critique.
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