Human rights, testimony, and transnational publicity 

In the period between the end of the cold war in 1989 and the events of September 11, 2001, human rights became the dominant moral narrative by which world politics was organized. Inspired by the momentous political and cultural transformations taking place at the time, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the spread of global communications technologies, promoters of human rights discourse optimistically predicted that a transnational public sphere dedicated to democratic values would emerge (We now know, of course, that such predictions were wrong, as early post cold war hopes gave way to the harsh realities of contemporary globalization).

• feminism,
• theory

Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army Manifesto 

"We can't start perfectly and beautifully. Don't be afraid of being a fool; start as a fool." - Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche

Roll up, roll up - ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and foes - welcome to the unparalleled, the unexpected, the perfectly paradoxical, the grotesquely beautiful, the new-fangled world of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA).

• activism,
• art of campaigning,
• street protest,
• Rebel Clowning

Smashing the Image Factory. 

A Complete Manual of Billboard Subversion and Destruction

"When our work is done, advertising and billboards will fly beside the soviet flag in the museum of dead totalitarian experiments"

• culture jamming,
• billboard improvement

Post-media operators: "sovereign & vague" 

No one recognises these powers as their own

(Why Theory?) We have to dispense with the idea that theorising occurs after the creative event; that a poem or a track or a text is made and then, as part of its process of dissemination, there follows the theorising of the piece. Such a theorising is normally attributed to those known variously as critics, reviewers and essayists.

• media theory,
• media criticism

Whistle Blowing for Change 

Exposing Systems of Power & Injustice
Conferece & Book Launch:

Whistleblowing is one of the most difficult means of exposing misconducts and informing the public about unknown facts that must be revealed. It is an act based on ethics, honesty and accountability, that confronts abuses, discrimination, corruption and exploitation. Whistleblowers are people that want to change systems for the better, but that in many cases encounter reprisal and persecution. In other cases, they trust the systems too much, realising too late, and at high personal costs, that these systems are not willing to improve.

• infopolitics,
• info-activism,
• whistleblowing

The Concept of Tactical Media 

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.

• tactical media,
• theory,
• media theory,
• tactical education,
• tactical research

 Free Culture Forum

The FCForum is an international arena in wich to build and coordinate action around issues related to free/libre culture and access to knowledge.The FCForum brings together key organizations and active voices in the spheres of free/libre culture and knowledge, and provides a meeting point where we can find answers to the pressing questions behind the current paradigm shift.

• free culture

The Middlesex Declaration of the European Precariat 

We networkers and flextimers of Northern and Southern Europe, autonomously gathered at Middlesex University and determined to go beyond the sclerotizing European Social Forum, solemnly join minds and bodies in the present declaration of conflict against Europe's governments and corporate bureaucracies.

• campaign,
• activism,
• EuroMayDay,
• precarity

Free Bitflows Declaration against the prosecution of Steve Kurtz and Robert Ferell 

The Free Bitflows conference in Vienna adopted a protest declaration against imminent condemnation of artist based on US-terrorism law.

US security paranoia unable to distinguish art from bioterrorism

Founding member of Critical Art Ensemble faces terrorism charges

03.06.2004

• infopolitics

Fuzzy Biological Sabotage 

If the left has learned anything from resistance against capital driven technocracy, it is that the democratic process is only minimally useful for slowing the profit machine of pancapitalism. Since corporations and other capital-saturated institutions own the process, and tend to function outside national democratic imperatives, other methods of power appropriation have to be developed. In the case of biotechnology, the resistance is unfortunately in a position of reactivity. Corporations have already infiltrated most governments and markets at such a furious pace that all that can be done is attempt to slow them down, while cells and organizations regroup and decide on a way to address the many problems that have already arisen, and the many potential accidents that are in front of us.

Hippy Cull 

from Underground, PO Box 3285, London, SW2 3NN, UK

1. Neo-hippyism is upon us: a bumper pack of seriously dumb tendenciesthat cripple processes of change. Some of these tendencies relate toideas, and some of them to action, they range from the 'political' tothe way people dress. They form the aesthetic, theoretical and materialdatabases people use to inform and develop what they are getting up to.This database needs reformatting.

The 1988 Tompkins Square Police Riot - A Video Point of View 

Saturday night on August 6th 1988 was stiflingly hot and humid. My apartment had no air conditioning and I was dying from the heat. Fortunately that night I was booked from midnight to 7 a.m. at Broadway Video at Broadway and 49th street to do special effects and editing on my video work entitled "Free Society".

• video activism,
• gentrification,
• camcorder revolution