Re-Occupy #D17 

An all day performance event at Duarte Square, 6th and Canal

On Saturday, December 17th, noon, Occupy Wall Street - with support from more than 1400 faith leaders, elders of the civil rights movement, prominent artists and community members - will gather at noon in Duarte Square, downtown Manhattan, for an all day performance event. This event is part of a call to re-occupy in the wake of the coordinated attacks and subsequent evictions of occupations across the nation and around the world.

• occupy

NEURO networking Europe 

From February 27th to 29th young artists, filmmak- ers, musicians, theorists and activists from all over Europe and many other parts of the world meet at the Muffathalle in Munich for NEURO; a number of events, speeches, discussions, presentations, performances, concerts and actions reflecting the pulse of the age. About two years after the first make-world festival, NEURO will again interface with current debates around migration and mobility, racism and nationalism, civil society and global mobilisation, networking and new technologies, informatisation and precarious labour, education and control society, common organising, and digital culture.

• network cultures,
• infopolitics,
• net.activism,
• net criticism

Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East 

Ibraaz Publishing and I.B. Tauris are pleased to announce the book launch of Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East, edited by Anthony Downey.

• media theory,
• media criticism,
• middle east,
• visual culture

The 'art' of disappearing 

Thereis no place in the Netherlands for the odd one out. Strangers can beassimilated or deported and sick people can be cured or euthanised, butthe dreamer and the bohemian will not fit in a straight-jacket. Thereare only paved roads to follow in this country and those who cannot orwill not follow these roads are doomed. Sooner or later that odd oneout will be given a choice: either he will lay hands on himself or hewill be lend a hand with his choice. After that he can rot in his graveuntil after long the time is ripe to memorise his peculiarity at astrictly limited occasion.

Islam and Tactical Media in Amsterdam 

Essay written in August 2002 for the New York University Tactical Media Lab, organised by the NYU Center for Media, Culture and History.

• tactical media,
• community media,
• islam

A Virtual World is Possible: From Tactical Media to Digital Multitudes 

I.

We start with the current strategy debates of the so-called 'anti-globalisation movement', the biggest emerging political force for decades. In Part II we will look into strategies of critical new media culture in the post-speculative phase after dotcommania. Four phases of the global movement are becoming visible, all of which have distinct political, artistic and aesthetic qualities.

• politics,
• tactical media,
• infopolitics,
• net.activism,
• net criticism

Electronic Civil Disobedience, Simulation, and the Public Sphere 

What counts in the long run is the "use" one makes of a theory....We must start from existing practices in order to retrace the fundamental flaws.
--Felix Guattari, "Why Marx and Freud No Longer Disturb Anyone"

In 1994, when Critical Art Ensemble first introduced the idea and a possible model of electronic civil disobedience (ECD) as another option for digital resistance, the collective had no way of knowing what elements would be the most practical, nor did it know what elements would require additional explanation. After nearly five years of field testing of ECD by various groups and individuals, its information gaps have become a little more obvious and can finally be addressed.

• civil disobedience

Binary Dispatches 

net.radio days 98 was this year's manifestation of the annual Radio Days forum, exploring the innovation and experimentation of radio art.  This year's conference was hosted in Berlin in June of this year. It was a symposium focused on a new generation of streaming media practitioners, utilising software such as Real Audio to broadcast audio content live on the internet.  This phenomena is being dubbed, net.radio.

• radio,
• streaming media

The Brazilian Context 

Many are the social, political or economic problems in Brazil. Socially, there's an extremely unequal distribution of wealth. Such a big social unequality is reflected, for example, in the extreme differences between the center and the periphery in the big cities, regional unequalities, criminality, racism. Besides that, we live in an unnoficial police state that acts in defense of the elites, murdering and arresting poorer citzens, because of the color of their skin or social condition.

• tactical media,
• Brazil

Statement by Ashkal Alwan on the indefinite postponement of Home Works 8 

We do not regret to inform you that Ashkal Alwan is indefinitely postponing all programmes and events scheduled to take place from October 17-27, 2019 as part of the 8th edition of Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices.

• politics,
• art,
• civil disobedience,
• middle east,
• street protest

Tactical Media, the Second Decade 

The tactical media concept originates in post-1989 Europe when political change coincided with a wild phase in thinking about media technologies. It was the decade when both artists and activists started to discover digital technologies on a massive scale. Prizes dropped and expectations rose to incredible heights.

• tactical media,
• media theory

Report: Public Debate 'Vox Populi and The Syrian Archive'
 

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..

• art,
• war,
• archive,
• middle east,
• street protest

Absorption and Exposure 

I am interested in a certain sense of wanting to be "in" something: to participate in it, to connect with it, to synchronize with it, to be caught up with it, rather than to visually possess it. The desire to be attuned to something that is happening, or that might happen at any moment -- not necessarily as a conscious thought, but as a vaguely felt expectation. The desire to move toward something that is (or might be) happening, in order to absorb its force, touch it, taste it, surrender to it -- rather than simply to observe it.

• art,
• theory,
• surveillance

Contestational Robotics 

Keywords: robots / contestation / public space / expression management

• contestational robotics,
• public space,
• expression management

Political Ecology Begins When We Say "Black Lives Matter" 

"They say it's a joke they say it's a game." The slogan was launched on the Chicago streets by the group We Charge Genocide, in the middle of a demo demanding reparations for victims of police torture. The folks on the street chanted those words, we hurled them out of our mouths in staccato bursts, while looking round at the passers-by who pretended not to notice. What the chant means is either enigmatic, or it's painfully obvious. There is a kind of disdain that minimizes a death or a beating or a torture or a life sentence for black people in the name of lawfulness, efficiency, morality and humanist ideals. That kind of disdain has made democracy impossible in the US - and other places too.

• cartography,
• activism,
• social justice,
• democracy,
• BlackLivesMatter

At Frontiers 

Frequently at frontiers we are asked, "Anything to declare?"

The wisest thing to do when faced with the scrutiny of a border official is to say that you have "nothing to declare", and quickly move on. Crossing borders usually entails an effort not to say too much, or at least to get by with saying very little. A degree of reticence is the mark of the wise and experienced traveller.

• no border,
• borders

Distance versus Desire 

The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realise the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of telepresence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the reinvigoration of  the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favour of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style.  As current systems of hypermobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits - most prominently in the intense debate on global warming - citizens and organisations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced telepresence technologies.

• electrosmog,
• im/mobility,
• telepresence