Search results for 'campaign'

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In memoriam: Oleg Kireev 

On Friday April 3, 2009 we received the terribly sad news that our friend and ever inspiring colleague Oleg Kireev from Moscow had died, apparently as a result of suicide. We are left behind as friends and colleagues, bereaved and puzzled by this dramatic fact. Kireev was a prominent guest in some of the most important projects in the art / media / politics triangle, which we had the honour developing at De Balie. Kireev was a crucial figure in circles of free culture, media activism and the arts in Moscow, one of the most demanding environments for such activity one can think of.

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Justice for Cecily 

Cecily McMillan was brutally arrested at an event marking the 6 month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street on March 17, 2012. In the course of her arrest she sustained a violent police beating resulting in bruised ribs and a seizure. Cecily was hospitalized for those injuries. The egregious incident received extensive media coverage. Cecily was later charged and convicted with felony assault of a police officer, Assault 2nd degree, a Class D felony in NY, which carries a sentence of up to 7 years in prison.
A support campaign for the Occupy Wall Street organizer and activist is raising media attention and financial support.

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Engineering of Consent 

One of the major challenges facing citizen groups campaigning to prevent, minimize, limit or regulate socially-irresponsible or environment-degrading practices of transnational corporations is how to deal with the corporations' increasing call for 'dialogue' and 'cooperation'. Many transnational corporations say they have seen the error of their ways and have rectified their mistakes. Eager to do their best for 'our common future', they claim to be listen to their critics. Thus 'dialogues' with companies or industry organizations are frequently portrayed as the way ahead for citizen groups seeking corporate accountability, rather than 'confrontational' strategies such as boycotts. What are the dangers and limits of doing so?

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    Reclaim the Streets: The Film and Other Media Tactics 

    The Disorganisation

    Reclaim the Streets (RtS) cannot be understood as a campaign, although some of its methods are very similar. There are now RtS groups in thirty cities organising illegal street parties. Most of these groups only exist for the event, and many of the activists are involved in local campaigns during the rest of the year. There is no membership or official line although many would like to see a wider global strategy. As a movement, RtS is only four years old, and it could grow in unpredictable ways.

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    The Avant-Garde Never Gives Up 

    The avant-garde never gives up. And tactical media has produced (at least) three different theaters of operation to wage its struggle: media activism, pure tactical aesthetics, and net conceptualism. The first allows for "formal" net.art tactics (materialist, structural), the latter two allow for "real" net.art tactics (native presence, site-specificity).

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    A Brief History of the Noborder Network 

    It wasn't exactly the right place nor really the right time to launch a political campaign which publicly called for a series of offenses against the law, yet when the call "No one is illegal" went out exactly five years ago at documentaX, the usual reservations counted little. In the Orangerie which had been temporarily arranged as a media laboratory, at the end of the visitors' course of the well-known Kassler art exhibition, a dozen political and media activists from all Germany's bigger cities met up at the end of June 1997 in order to publish an appeal.

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    Art Rant 

    Geert Lovink wrote:

    A gap is now in danger of getting bigger: old school video journalism, done by political activists, versus a thriving technology based network of media artists. Complaints about an 'eighties' style of amateurism of video works are on the rise. On the other hand, a depolitization of electronic arts is apparent as well. Or do we speak here about a mutual non-understanding? A return of the outworn difference between activist and artist? Can the concept of 'tactical media' present itself as a easy synthesis?

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