Not Home
"Happiness is where I am not"
Darko Fritz's Search for Home
Investigation by the Expose Accenture, the Movement Research Unit, and the Progressive International
Today, the Progressive International, Expose Accenture and the Movement Research Unit release the Accenture Files, revealing the central role of the world’s largest consultancy in the global right-ward turn towards surveillance, exclusion, and strong-men: The Reactionary International.
Based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and a comprehensive review of internal documents, our investigation demonstrates how Accenture has quietly embedded itself deep into the apparatus of security states worldwide, deploying its vast network of resources, wealth and technology to surveil entire populations, fuel the military-industrial complex and channel immense public wealth to private hands.
An Analysis From #jan25 to #geziparki
ReadIn March 1993, Kevin Carter took a photo of a starving Sudanese child crawling towards a UN relief camp less than a mile away. A few meters from the weary child stood a vulture, waiting for her death to begin his meal. Birds also must eat, and in southern Sudan they were eating because humans were not.
ReadHow do I get started?
How does this work?
How can I become an excellent actor?
Can I get in trouble for this stuff?
Can I at lest be fined?
How do I videotape?
How can I go to a conference?
How can I speak at a conference?
How can I make a fake newspaper?
How can I hijack a Twitter backchannel?
WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Files on All Guantánamo Prisoners
On Sunday April 24, 2011 WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files
from the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The details for every
detainee will be released daily over the coming month.
Pirate signals from the margins
ReadA public research trajectory tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and its connections to the present.
Tactical Media Connections is an extended trajectory of collaborative research tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and mapping the relationships between its precursors and its progeny. The program is realised through a series of meetings and exhibitions, culminating in the publication of a Tactical Media Anthology with contributions and dialogues ranging across generations and territories.
The McLibel media strategy arose from a simple premise: this story has
to be told. Most people have been affected by McDonald's in one way or
another - working in a store, being nagged by children, stumbling
through litter, suffering ill-health or enjoying their burgers - and
the corporation's influence continues to increase as they relentlessly
pursue their "global domination strategy" (to use their own words). Two
people investing their lives to stand up to such a force has got to be
a great story in anybody's book.
10 solutions/facts plus one.
A citizen response to the recent attacks on freedoms in the name of an
incoherent concept that carries the name "intellectual property".
Summary of the presentations and public debate on digital archiving practices, activism, and the role of the artist.
Report of the event Vox Populi and the Syrian Archive on 21 January 2017, organised by Eric Kluitenberg..
At the end of the third 'Next 5 Minutes' conference on tactical media (March 1999) in Amsterdam, an interesting discussion emerged around the question of how the minor media practices elaborated and highlighted in this vibrant event would ever reach a wider audience for lack of being covered by any mainstream outlet. At one point, some people from the back of the room (unfortunately I don't know anymore who exactly, I believe an Italian group), shouted: 'We don't want to be mediated - we mediate ourselves!'
ReadPresence in the mediated environment of digital networks is probably one of the most complex phenomena of the new types of social interaction that have emerged in these environments. In the current phase of radical deployment (or penetration) of the Internet, various attempts are being made to come to terms with the social dynamics of networked communication spaces. It seems that traditional media theory is not able to contextualise these social dynamics, as it remains stuck on a meta-level discourse of media and power structures (Virilio), hyperreality (Baudrillard), or on a retrograde analysis of media structures deeply rooted in the functionality and structural characteristics of broadcast media (McLuhan).
ReadIn this essay, we claim that far from being a strength, the lack of demands reflects the weak ideological core of the movement. We also claim that demands should not be approached tactically but strategically, that is, they should be grounded in a long-term view of the political goals of the movement, a view that is currently lacking. Accordingly, in the second part of this text, we argue that this strategic view should be grounded in a politics of the commons. Before addressing the politics of the commons, however, we dispel three common objections that are raised against demands during general assemblies, meetings, and conversations people have about the Occupy movement.
ReadMarch 2003
Democracy can be understood in two notably distinct ways. In the institutional view democracy is understood as the interplay of institutional actors that represent 'the people' and are held accountable through the plebiscite; public votes, polls and occasionally referenda. The second view on democracy is radically different in that it sees the extent to which people can freely assemble, discuss and share ideas about vital social issues, organise themselves around these issues, and can freely voice their opinions in public fora, as a measure for just how democratic a given society is.
What we've learnt from the Net and how we can extrapolate it to all spaces of struggle.
(Some thoughts geared towards action, compiled for the Radical Community Manager courses that we organise at X.net)
Public Agency in Hybrid Space
Lead-essay for the theme issue "Hybrid Space" of OPEN, Journal for Art and the Public Domain, #11, (Amsterdam / Rotterdam, 2006).
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.
A Salvage Operation
On a clear evening in December, as the sun was setting over the Texas
horizon, a Mexican drone entered U.S. airspace and crashed into a
backyard in El Paso.
Tactical Media emerged when the modest goals of media artists and media activists were transformed into a movement that challenged everyone to produce their own media in support of their own political struggles. This "new media" activism was based on the insight that the long-held distinction between the 'street' (reality) and the 'media' (representation) could no longer be upheld. On the contrary, the media had come to infuse all of society.
Read