Search results for 'criticism'

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Utopian Promises-Net Realities 

The need for net criticism certainly is a matter of overwhelming urgency. While a number of critics have approached the new world of computerized communications with a healthy amount of skepticism, their message has been lost in the noise and spectacle of corporate hype-the unstoppable tidal wave of seduction has enveloped so many in its dynamic utopian beauty that little time for careful reflection is left. Indeed, a glimpse of a possibility for a better future may be contained in the new techno-apparatus, and perhaps it is best to acknowledge these possibilities here in the beginning, since Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) has no desire to take the position of the neoluddites who believe that the techno-apparatus should be rejected outright, if not destroyed. To be sure, computerized communications offer the possibility for the enhanced storage, retrieval, and exchange of information for those who have access to the necessary hardware, software, and technical skills. In turn, this increases the possibility for greater access to vital information, faster exchange of information, enhanced distribution of information, and cross cultural artistic and critical collaborations. The potential humanitarian benefits of electronic systems are undeniable; however, CAE questions whether the electronic apparatus is being used for these purposes in the representative case, much as we question the political policies which guide the net's development and accessibility.

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make world paper 2 

The World Social Forum, organized twice in Porto Alegre 2001 and 2002, not only prompted a flurry of autonomous self-organization, crossborder organization, and creative media interventions. It also initiated an intense process of analysis and reflection on the tricky question of a 'global' dynamic of self-organization.

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The End of a Paradise 

In tactical media circles the Amsterdam media landscape has long been treated as a Utopian model because of her free radios, open tv-channels and digital public spaces. The last few years this media paradise is under threat. How did this come about? And is it still possible to reverse this development? This is the theme of the Amsterdam Media Debate. Nina Meilof (The Digital City - DDS), Andreas Baader and Josephine (Radio Patapoe), Frank (Radio de Vrije Keyser) and media-activists Patrice Riemens, Geert Lovink and Menno Grootveld prepared the grounds for the discussion.
The aim of the Amsterdam Media Debate during The Next 5 Minutes is to explain to the international participants that big changes are underway here. They may perhaps learn something from our experiences, but we would also like to try and find out what the differences are with other big cities and with other countries. What are these big changes and how is the situation at the present moment?

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The Fascist Simulation 

In the United States, fascism presently unfolds as a simulation. The fascist simulation constitutes itself as a pixelated sea of livestreams, images, posts, and comments, circulating widely as its own networked, autonomous model of reality. It is enacted as an ensemble of people, social media platforms, presidential tweets, superspreader events, confederate flags, television chyrons, informatic infrastructures, automatic rifles, toxic masculinities, MAGA hats, racist hashtags, and video game servers. It is fascist ideology reified through consumer technology.

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The Power of Social Media - The Helplessness of Traditional Media and #direngeziparki #direnankara, #direnizmir 

Residents of Istanbul started a peaceful sit-in as a reaction to the city governments plans to demolish Taksim Square's Gezi Park on the May 29th 2013. The demolition was part of the plan to replace the park and construct a shopping mall on one of the only green areas left in the central cross road of Istanbul. The reaction was sparked by a decision making process that lacked any consultation with citizens. Inhabitants of the city initiated this on-site protest to raise their voices against the demolition plans, but also to exercise their right to freedom of speech and to freedom of assembly in a democratic society.

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Syrian Hands Raised: User Generated Creativity Between Citizenship and Dissent 

As much as images of violence, civil war, and sectarian strife become prominent in the media narrative of the Syrian uprising, little gems of innovative cultural production, artistic resistance, and creative disobedience continue to sprout across the virtual alleys of the Internet. These creative gems are also the germs of a viral peer-production process at work at a grassroots level in the new Syrian public sphere. Such acts of creativity - mash-ups, cartoons, slogans, jokes, songs, and web series - are probably too small and inconsistent in impact compared to the horrific magnificence that shelling, bombing, sniping, and killing scenes that provide daily fodder to global television viewers. It is also challenging to discover them; in fact, as remarked by Tunisian blogger Sami ben Gharbia at the Arab Bloggers meeting in Tunis (3-6 October 2011), Facebook is not the most suitable platform for activists to store, archive, tag, search for content, and give it a context.

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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.

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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.

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    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).

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    Die Informationsbombe 

    Ausgestrahlt im Deutsch-Franzoesischen Kulturkanal ARTE November 1995.


    In den fuenfziger Jahren hat Albert Einstein gesagt, dass wir es mitdrei Bomben zu tun haetten. Die erste, die Atombombe, sei bereitsgezuendet. Die zweite sei die Informatikbombe; die dritte, dieBevoelkerungsbombe, werde im 21. Jahrhundert explodieren. Gegenwaertigexplodiert die Informatikbombe. Neue Technologien, insbesondere dieMoeglichenkeiten zur Schaffung virtueller Welten, veraendern Kultur,Politik und Gesellschaft grundlegend. Zu diesem Thema diskutieren heuteabend im Gespraech der Stadtplaner und Philosoph Paul Virilio undFriedrich Kittler, Medienspezialist an der Humboldt Universitaet inBerlin.

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    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.

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    We Make Radical Media You Make Adverts 

    A corporate media group has trade-marked the phrase "Radical Media" and is trying to ban Peace news, New Internationalist, Red Pepper and others from using it in the title of a conference?

    Following a recent Diary item in the Guardian, indymedia is today reporting on the story that a corporate media group has forced us to change the name of our conference. Readers are invited to attend a demonstration outside @Radical Media's London office, Tuesday, 3rd May 2011, 5pm, London W1T 7AA.

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    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.

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