®TMark is an artist and activist collective, founded in 1991. ®TMark
apprpriates the corporate veil by organising itself as a corporation.
Through the ®TMark Mutual Fund System
the collectiove has executed a series of "corporate subversion
projects", suing the legal displacements reserved for corporations for
anti-corporate activism.
"Ihr sollt wissen, daß kein Mensch illegal ist. Das ist ein Widerspruch
in sich. Menschen können schön sein oder noch schöner. Sie können
gerecht sein oder ungerecht. Aber illegal? Wie kann ein Mensch illegal
sein"
(Elie Wiesel)
No One Is Illegal is an international network of local groups of immigrants, refugees and
allies who fight for the rights of all migrants to live with dignity
and respect.
The No One is Illegal campaign has two goals: to attain concrete victories for immigrants and refugees and to develop the communities' own capacity to attain justice and dignity for themselves and their families. We strive and struggle for a world in which no one is forced to migrate. We also strive and struggle for a world where people can move freely in order to live and flourish in justice and dignity.
ReadA live benefit concert and performance event with Snowcrash (.nl), The Yesmen and Critical Art Ensemble in support of artist Steven Kurtz and scientist Robert Ferrell, both threatened by an unjustifiable prosecution for "bioterrorism".
Presented in collaboration with:
Transmediale Festival, Berlin
& The Arts Catalyst, London
March 17th, 2005
How did it come to this?
Only a perverse authoritarian logic can explain how Critical Art
Ensemble (CAE) can at one moment be creating the project "Free Range
Grain" for the Risk exhibition at Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt,
reconfiguring it for The Interventionists exhibition at Mass MoCA in a
second moment, and then suddenly have a CAE member in FBI detention.
The U.S. Justice Department has accused us of such shocking crimes as
bioterrorism, health and safety violations, mail fraud, wire fraud, and
even murder. Now, as we retool "Free Range Grain" for the Risk
exhibition at the Glasgow Center for Contemporary Art, the surreal
farce of our legal nightmare continues unabated.
The formal political system today faces a new geography of power.
Globalization and the new technologies have contributed to the
shrinking of state authority and the explosion of a whole series of new
actors engaged in governance activities.
The current phase of the world economy is characterized by significant
discontinuities with the preceding periods and radically new
arrangements. This becomes particularly evident in the impact of
globalization on the geography of economic activity and on the
organization of political power. There is an incipient unbundling of
the exclusive authority over its territory we have long associated with
the nation-state.
Matteo Pasquinelli is a writer, curator and researcher. He completed
his doctorate at Queen Mary University of London with a thesis on the
new forms of conflict within knowledge economy and cognitive
capitalism. He wrote the book Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons (2008) and edited the collections Media Activism (2002) and C'Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader (2007). He writes and lectures frequently at the intersection of French philosophy, media culture and Italian post-operaismo.
It's time to create the pop stars of activism,
the idoru of communication guerrilla,
it's time to threaten and charm the
masses by the ghosts coming from the
net, to play the myth against the myth,
to be more nihilist than infoteinment!
- etoy -
