BLF Manifesto 

In the beginning was the Ad. The Ad was brought to the consumer by the Advertiser. Desire, self worth, self image, ambition, hope; all find their genesis in the Ad. Through the Ad and the intent of the Advertiser we form our ideas and learn the myths that make us into what we are as a people. That this method of self definition displaced the earlier methods is beyond debate. It is now clear that the Ad holds the most esteemed position in our cosmology.

• culture jamming,
• billboard improvement,
• street protest

CHANCE 2000: Vote yourself! Just do it! 

Germany 1998: 2 years before the New Millenium a new form of Political Party came into existence: CHANCE 2000 - The Party of the Last Chance. In the midst of an election that was one of the most important in postfascist Germany an artist jumped into the political arena to "make politics more aesthetic and aesthetics more political". The film- and theatremaker and talk show host Christoph Schlingensief started the Campagne: "VOTE YOURSELF!" In Berlin he started the project with an "Election Circus". Together with a famous circus-family from former East Germany and with his crew of actors and his family of handicapped performers he founded "CHANCE 2000 - Party of the Last Chance" in a circus tent in Berlin/ Prenzlauer Berg. The message for the Republic was: "Vote Yourself, we know how to do it!" Every citizen was asked to become an independent candidate for the new Bundestag. Manuals were sent out how to become a direct candidate. And many different people realized their chance to "prove that they exist" by bringing their name on the ballot sheet: "Chance Meier", "Chance Mueller", "Chance Schmidt". If you managed to collect 200 signatures of support in your political region you were part of the game and you could vote yourself. Why not voting somebody you know by heart, you trust and love?

• campaign,
• social sculpture,
• post-governmental organisation

Recombinant Television 

VakuumTV was founded in February 1994 on the initiative of Laszlo Kistamas and currently includes Dora Csernatony, Ferenc Grof, Laszlo Kistamas, and Attila Till. Its members presented weekly broadcasts on Monday nights at the most popular cultural club in Budapest, Tilos az A. Between February 1994 and September 1997 Vakuum TV broadcast 52 shows, and after 3 years of rest, started broadcasting again in 2000. Each show blended short films, interactive engagements between the audience and the announcer, and live performances but each used a very different content to create a parallel televisual reality.

• art,
• tactical media,
• tactical television

Dictionary of War - Novi Sad Edition 

After a one year break the DICTIONARY OF WAR continues with a fifth edition on January 25th and 26th, 2008 in Novi Sad, Serbia. Again 25 new concepts on the topic of war will be presented in alphabetical order by artists, theorists, filmmakers, scientists, researchers. Loosely based on the slogan: "At least, when we create concepts, we are doing something" DICTIONARY OF WAR is a collaborative platform for creating concepts.

• war,
• theory,
• dictionary of war

Dictionary of War - Frankfurt Edition 

"At least, when we create concepts, we are doing something"

• war,
• theory,
• dictionary of war

Dark Markets 

Dark Markets is a two day strategic conference that looked into the state of the art of media politics, information technologies, and theories of democracy. A variety of international speakers inquired into strategies of oppositional movements and discussed the role of new media.

• politics,
• infopolitics,
• democracy

CAE: Framing Tactical Media 

Anyone involved with "tactical media" (TM) before its famed christening in 1996 at the Next Five Minutes had to know that naming this cultural/political tendency was going to have some very negative repercussions. The naming was the first step in doing what TM feared the most°Xclaiming cultural territory doomed to house haunting archives. Once given an official title, so many nasty processes could begin - most significantly, the construction of historical narratives. So many narratives already exist explaining this ephemeral, immediate, specific, and deterritorialized process of cultural production that seemed so urgent to so many radical subjects in the early 90s.

• art,
• tactical media

Publication: Legacies of Tactical Media - The Tactics of Occupation: From Tompkins Square to Tahrir. 

Out now and available for download:
INC Network Notebooks 05 - Legacies of Tactical Media
Tactical Media employ the 'tactics of the weak' to operate on the terrain of strategic power by means of 'any media necessary'. Once the rather exclusive practice of politically engaged artists and activists, the tactical appropriations of media tools and distribution infrastructures by the disenfranchised and the disgruntled have moved from the margins to centre stage.

• tactical media,
• archive,
• theory,
• media theory,
• hybrid space,
• tactical camping,
• occupy,
• self-mediation,
• tactical research

Security through InSecurity 

Increase the level of paranoia.....
bombs in the metro.....bombs in Oklahoma......
bombs in the World Trade Center.....bombs in Mururoa.....
Who are the real terrorists?

The Disappearance of Public Space on the Net 

The Internet was started in the 1970's by the U.S. Defense Departmentas a communications tool and is now being bought out by I.B.M., M.C.I.and other megaCorporations. April, 1995 marked the closing of theNational Science Foundation's part of the internet, and signaled thebeginning of the end of the publicly funded computer networkinfrastructure.

• network cultures,
• net.activism

My Postmodernism - My '80s 

Filmmaker and activist Gregg Bordowitz's passage through the 1980s mirrors the course of AIDS activism in that decade. From the very first ACT up demonstration in New York to the triumphal storming of the FDA headquarters outside Washington, DC, he deployed his art in the battle against AIDS. Bordowitz leads off this two-issue series of personal chronicles of the decade, recounting his experiences as an activist and guerrilla filmmaker at the forefront of the fight.

"Art does have the power to save lives, and it is this very power that must be recognized, fostered, and supported in every way possible."
- Douglas Crimp, introduction to AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism (MIT Press, 1988)

• art,
• AIDS,
• aids activism,
• act up

Tactical Media in Brazil - Submidialogia conference report 

The four-day conference on the campus of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) brought together many key persons from the tactical media movement of Brazil and some of their counterparts in the Brasilian government.
The movement is converging from roots in free radio, free software, hardware hacking, art and social movements. It is currently focussed around a large-scale project master-minded by Claudio Prado and supported by the Ministry of Culture: ?Pontos de Cultura? (Culture Spots) which is aiming to empower up to 600 cultural projects with free software-based multimedia production and publication facilities.

• tactical media,
• Brazil

Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism 

"Tweets and the Streets analyses the culture of the new protest movements of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring to the "indignados" protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest. Gerbaudo argues that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a "cyberspace" detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space, which involves the assembling of different groups around "occupied" places such as Cairo's Tahrir Square or New York's Zuccotti Park."

• network cultures,
• activism,
• public space,
• participatory media,
• hybrid space,
• street protest

No One is Illegal! Manifesto 

For a world without borders! No immigration controls!

DEFEND THE OUTLAW!

Immigration controls should be abolished. People should not be deemed 'illegal' because they have fallen foul of an increasingly brutal and repressive system of controls. Why is immigration law different from all other law? Under all other laws it is the act that is illegal, but under immigration law it is the person who is illegal. Those subject to immigration control are dehumanized, are reduced to non-persons, are nobodies. They are the modern outlaw. Like their medieval counterpart they exist outside of the law and outside of the law's protection. Opposition to immigration controls requires defending all immigration outlaws.

Free Pussy Riot 

"Free Pussy Riot collective members Maria Alekhina, Ekaterina Samutsevich, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova from Russian prison and drop all charges now. Write a letter of support pussriotsolidarity@gmail.com visit the site freepussyriot.org & donate/sign petition"

• art,
• campaign,
• Religion,
• feminism,
• Russia,
• prison,
• women's rights

The Undisciplined and Punishment 

In the past several years a lively list serve has evolved that addresses issue of incarceration and justice in the United States. Each night I log on to messages that range from desperate pleadings for someone life to cautious discussions of what the slogans should be on the posters for the next Mumia march. There are technical descriptions of prison architecture and quests for herbal cures to cell block bronchitis epidemics. It is the underside of what is one of our leading industries: locking people up.

• mumia,
• prison,
• death row