Mediate YourSelf! 

At the end of the third 'Next 5 Minutes' conference on tactical media (March 1999) in Amsterdam, an interesting discussion emerged around the question of how the minor media practices elaborated and highlighted in this vibrant event would ever reach a wider audience for lack of being covered by any mainstream outlet. At one point, some people from the back of the room (unfortunately I don't know anymore who exactly, I believe an Italian group), shouted: 'We don't want to be mediated - we mediate ourselves!'

• community media,
• diy media,
• streaming media,
• media theory,
• media criticism,
• participatory media,
• self-mediation

Holding Out for Un-alienated Communication 

"In August 1996, we called for the creation of a network of independent media, a network of information. We mean a network to resist the power of the lie that sells us this war that we call the Fourth World War. We need this network not only as a tool for our social movements, but for our lives: this is a project of life, of humanity, humanity which has a right to critical and truthful information."

These were the words of Subcomandante Marcos, speaking in 1997 from Chiapas in the midst of the Zapatistas' guerrilla information war against the Mexican state and the neocolonialism reflected in NAFTA. Marcos's powerful statement and Zapatista stories of struggle were circulated from the jungle of Chiapas on mailing lists, listservs, and websites, capturing the imagination of activists around the world and galvanizing a wave of new grassroots media projects. Perhaps no project more purely embodied this response than the Indymedia network, which was launched in November 1999 at the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings and quickly grew into a global network of news websites.

• community media,
• grassroot journalism,
• activism,
• diy media,
• globalisation,
• independent media,
• info-activism,
• participatory media

Howard Slater

Howard Slater is a London-based writer and researcher. His texts have appeared in Datacide,as part of the collaborative TechNet project, and under pseudonym in Alien Underground, Shimmer and The Techno Connection. He is the editor of 'Break/Flow'.

• media theory,
• media criticism

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).

• art,
• tactical media,
• next 5 minutes,
• art of campaigning

 California Department of Corrections

The California Department of Corrections (CDC) has established an organizational structure which provides for efficient and effective management of all facets of advertising to include care, treatment, discipline, training, and employment.

• public space,
• culture jamming,
• billboard improvement

Daniel van derVelden

Daniel van der Velden is a graphic designer and writer. He graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy, and studied in Maastricht at the Jan van Eyck Academie under Michael Rock, Armand Mevis, Paul Elliman, Karel Martens and Jan van Toorn.

• design,
• wikileaks

Aalam Wassef

Aalam Wassef, 38, is an Egyptian independent artist (installations, new media), blogger and internet activist.
He is based in Cairo in El Khalifa area.

• art,
• net.activism,
• middle east

Gregg Bordowitz

Gregg Bordowitz is a film and video maker and writer whose works have been shown at the Guggenheim New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and Centre d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble.

• art,
• aids activism

Elias Muhanna

Elias Muhanna is the writer of Qifa Nabki [?ki-f? ?neb-k?] a blog about Lebanese politics, history, and culture. He is a PhD student in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Harvard University. He works on classical Arabic literature, Islamic social and intellectual history, and has published on subjects ranging from medieval encyclopaedism to travel literature, to the material culture of the pre-modern Mediterranean world.

• middle east

David Cox

David Cox is an award winning film-maker, digital media artist, writer, and cultural critic who has lived and worked in Britain, the United States and Australia. His films include OTHERZONE, PUPPENHEAD and BIT. He obtained his Masters Degree in 2003 from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia. He holds a Graduate Diploma in Applied Film and Television (with Honors) in 1990 from Melbourne's Swinburne School of Film and Television. He also holds a Bachelor of Education degree from Deakin University, Australia.

• culture jamming

California Department of Corrections

The California Department of Corrections (CDC) has established an organizational structure which provides for efficient and effective management of all facets of advertising to include care, treatment, discipline, training, and employment.

Rachel Baker

Rachel Baker is a network artist based in London. Between 1991 and 1996 she attended art colleges including Exeter College Of Art and Design, Newport School of Art and Design, and Goldsmiths College where she completed an MA in Design Futures, studying internet + audio communications and pseudo-interactive marketing.

Tactics of Protest Now 

This discussion explores tactical media in contemporary culture and social movements. In response to a deep economic, political, and cultural crisis, new social movements are challenging the dominant political and economic order. Tactical media, David Garcia says, has emerged through, 'the impact of the rise of small-scale DIY media, tools and networks in art, social and political activism, and the rise of new social movements.' How can tactical media connect with and re-contextualise the traditional methods of propaganda and create new alternative forms of action for the future?

• art,
• tactical media,
• design,
• tactical education,
• occupy

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