The Legitimacy of Illegality 

Webcasting often is seen as an alternative for experiments which would not be able to get a licence for ethertransmissions. The difficulty projects and broadcasting initiatives encounter when trying to get legal airspace has caused a limited view of the possibilities of working within the ether as such. It is already clear that connections between networks like the internet and the ether can be most interesting, but this is of course not the only reason to have a look at the possibilities of broadcasting more closely. The ether is still the easiest way to reach large numbers of people fast. We should always be aware it is there when we need it.

• politics,
• radio,
• tactical media

PGO - The Post-Governmental Organisation 

One of the four main themes of the N5M3 is the 'Post-Governmental Organisation', a title that is meant more polemically than descriptively. The 'PGO' label raises the question of the practical, political and ethical impli cations of strong, potentially global, independent organisations. The theme will be approached from different critical, analytical and ironic perspectives in a public debate, and the PGO Design-Show ("Get Organised!").

• post-governmental organisation

About the Tactical Media Files 

Welcome to the Tactical Media Files, a "living archive" for Tactical Media's present, past and future.

• tactical media

Video Vortex Reader II launched and available for download 

On Saturday, the 12th of March 2011, a few minutes before six, the second Video Vortex reader was  presented to the audience of the sixth edition of the Video Vortex conference. Editors Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers Miles invited the contributors to the second volume, who were present en masse, to celebrate the launch of the book on stage.

• art,
• network cultures,
• video activism,
• participatory media

Next 5 Minutes 3 

Amsterdam & Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 12-14 March, 1999

The third Next 5 Minutes, an Amsterdam based conference on tactical communications culture, featuring do-it-yourself media, dissident art and electronic media activists from around the world, took place on the 12th, 13th and 14th of March 1999.

N5M3 archived festival website

• tactical media,
• streaming media,
• post-governmental organisation,
• art of campaigning,
• tactical education,
• cyberfeminism

The Becoming Environmental of Power: Tactical Media After Control - Part I 

There is a last enterprise that might be undertaken. It would be to seek experience at its source, or rather, above that decisive turn where, taking a bias in the direction of our utility, it becomes properly human experience. (Bergson, 1991: 184).

• tactical media,
• media theory

Art After Activism? 

This debate will address some of the doubts that hard core activists have about the usefulness of art in a political context.

• art,
• activism

Twelve Theses on WikiLeaks 

Thesis 0

"What do I think of WikiLeaks? I think it would be a good idea!"
(after Mahatma Gandhi's famous quip on "Western Civilization")

• infopolitics,
• wikileaks

#Occupy Wallstreet 

The resistance continues at Liberty Square and worldwide!

OccupyWallSt.org is the unofficial de facto online resource for the ongoing protests happening on Wall Street. We are an affinity group committed to doing technical support work for resistance movements. We are not affiliated with Adbusters, anonymous or any other organization.

• urban intervention,
• street protest,
• tactical camping,
• occupy

It's the Political Economy, Stupid - The Global Financial Crisis in Art and Theory 

Book presentations:

Tuesday, 5 March 2013, 7:00 p.m.
Depot, Vienna
Oliver Ressler in conversation with Luisa Ziaja (held in German)
An event in cooperation with Open Systems - Zentrum für Kunstprojekte, Vienna

Friday, 8 March 2013, 7:30 p.m.
Home Workspace, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut
Book signing at 7:30pm and presentation at 8pm by Gregory Sholette

Thursday, 25 April 2013, 6:30 p.m.
Austrian Cultural Forum, New York
Book presentation with Gregory Sholette, Oliver Ressler and guests

• art,
• globalisation,
• economics

the banality of cyberpunk, short notes on wikileaks 

a year ago wikileaks was as known as any other hacker project on the
chaos computer congress in berlin. its organizers which you remember
only by surname were talking about technical and organisational
issues, smoking a joint and gathering collaborators and co-developers.
like often german or swedish hackers were running the backend of this
project. they like the technocratic part where organisation and code
goes together. here is where wikileaks has its center, and the idea of
it was rather a channel, a protocol, or a p2p network to allow more
transparency in information. the opposite movement against closing
down on information which belongs to the public, and a direct result
of a cyberpunk worldview, where an oligarchy of  a few corporations
runs the world.

• wikileaks

Chance 2000 - The Last Chance Party (1998) 

Right in time for the 1998 German elections, Christoph Schlingensief decided to found his own party with the futuristic-sounding name CHANCE2000 - motto: Vote Yourself!

• politics,
• campaign,
• democracy,
• trickster

Digital Partisans 

On Mute and the Cultural Politics of the Net

• politics,
• art,
• tactical media,
• diy media,
• infopolitics,
• independent media,
• media theory,
• media criticism

Tactical Media After 9-11 

It is tempting to portray '9-11' as a turning point. Gore Vidal warns that, since September 11, the US is in danger of turning into a "seedy imperial state." Make war, not politics. The new patriotism requires: "Disruption, including obstructing the view or hearing of others, will not be tolerated." The list of measures to restrict civil liberties, freedom of speech and privacy, or what?s left of it, doesn?t stop. A recent conference in Perth concluded that post-September 11 reporting adds to divisions and stereotypes. "The media's failure to provide more perspectives to news consumers and ask critical questions is fuelling a culture of fear and blame around the world, experts say."

• tactical media,
• 9/11

We are not surprised. 

We are not surprised.

We are artists, arts administrators, assistants, curators, directors, editors, educators, gallerists, interns, scholars, students, writers, and more—workers of the art world—and we have been groped, undermined, harassed, infantilized, scorned, threatened, and intimidated by those in positions of power who control access to resources and opportunities. We have held our tongues, threatened by power wielded over us and promises of institutional access and career advancement.

• politics,
• culture,
• art,
• sexual harassment

Next 5 Minutes 1 

The Next Five Minutes is a conference, exhibition and tv program taking place between 8th and 10th January 1993 in Amsterdam, that wants to leave behind the rigid dichotomy between the mainstream, commercial and national tv on one hand and  marginal independent tv on the other. Although these differences may still be important, N5M wants to focus on tv-makers crossing the borders of tv-making and going into the spaces that the tv-world still has to offer.

• politics,
• tactical media,
• community media,
• activism,
• next 5 minutes

The Language of Tactical Media 

"World War III will be a guerilla information war, with no division between military and civilian participation." -- motto of Tactical Media Crew, borrowed from Marshall McLuhan

• tactical media,
• theory

Tandem Surfing the Third Wave: Part 3 

This interview was conducted between subRosa and Ryan Griffis via email correspondence during the first half of 2003.

• feminism,
• tactical technology,
• cyberfeminism

Facial Weaponization Suite (2011 - 2014) 

Facial Weaponization Suite protests against biometric facial recognition–and the inequalities these technologies propagate–by making "collective masks" in community-based workshops that are modeled from the aggregated facial data of participants, resulting in amorphous masks that cannot be detected as human faces by biometric facial recognition technologies.

• art,
• hybrid space,
• surveillance

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