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

Tactical Media in Brazil - Submidialogia conference report 

The four-day conference on the campus of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) brought together many key persons from the tactical media movement of Brazil and some of their counterparts in the Brasilian government.
The movement is converging from roots in free radio, free software, hardware hacking, art and social movements. It is currently focussed around a large-scale project master-minded by Claudio Prado and supported by the Ministry of Culture: ?Pontos de Cultura? (Culture Spots) which is aiming to empower up to 600 cultural projects with free software-based multimedia production and publication facilities.

• tactical media,
• Brazil

Conference Report ‘The Society of Post-Control’
 

Summary of the extended conversation on the emergence, consequences, and activist responses to the concept of "post-control"
Report of the conference 'The Society of Post-Control', organised by Eric Kluitenberg and David Garcia, tying into the opening of the exhibition As If.

• art,
• infopolitics,
• info-activism,
• culture jamming,
• meme wars,
• visual culture

Tactical Television in Italy 

Overview and manifesto of urban tv movements in Italy

• urban intervention,
• tactical television,
• telestreet

Security through InSecurity 

Increase the level of paranoia.....
bombs in the metro.....bombs in Oklahoma......
bombs in the World Trade Center.....bombs in Mururoa.....
Who are the real terrorists?

Hippy Cull 

from Underground, PO Box 3285, London, SW2 3NN, UK

1. Neo-hippyism is upon us: a bumper pack of seriously dumb tendenciesthat cripple processes of change. Some of these tendencies relate toideas, and some of them to action, they range from the 'political' tothe way people dress. They form the aesthetic, theoretical and materialdatabases people use to inform and develop what they are getting up to.This database needs reformatting.

Cybernetics & Entheogenics 

Abstract of the lecture by Peter Lamborn Wilson
For the 'Next Five Minutes" Conference, Amsterdam, january 1996

The Disappearance of Public Space on the Net 

The Internet was started in the 1970's by the U.S. Defense Departmentas a communications tool and is now being bought out by I.B.M., M.C.I.and other megaCorporations. April, 1995 marked the closing of theNational Science Foundation's part of the internet, and signaled thebeginning of the end of the publicly funded computer networkinfrastructure.

• network cultures,
• net.activism

Constructing the Digital Commons 

March 2003

Democracy can be understood in two notably distinct ways. In the institutional view democracy is understood as the interplay of institutional actors that represent 'the people' and are held accountable through the plebiscite; public votes, polls and occasionally referenda. The second view on democracy is radically different in that it sees the extent to which people can freely assemble, discuss and share ideas about vital social issues, organise themselves around these issues, and can freely voice their opinions in public fora, as a measure for just how democratic a given society is.

• public space,
• public domain,
• digital commons

Unser Feind, das Internet 

- Ethische NETZPRINZIPIEN

Impulsreferate etablieren eine engagierte RL Diskussion, die Im Netz fortgefuehrt und in Newsgroups konkretisiert wird.
Der Wunsch und die Notwendigkeit zur Entwicklung neuer Terminologien und originaerer Diskurse wurde evident. Nach den Jahren des Zitierens ist es an der Zeit und wird durch neue Lebensrealitaeten im elektronischen Netzwerk und aufgrund internationaler Erfahrungen mit der Praxis regulativer Eingriffe neue Begriffe, Strukturen und Theorien zu entwickeln. Jeder kann sich aktiv an dieser Koevolution technischer und Inhaltlicher Verbindungen beteiligen!

Dawn of the Organised Networks 

At first glance the concept of "organised networks" appears oxymoronic. In technical terms, all networks are organised. There are founders, administrators, moderators and active members who all take up roles. Think also back to the early work on cybernetics and the "second order" cybernetics of Bateson and others. Networks consist of mobile relations whose arrangement at any particular time is shaped by the "constitutive outside" of feedback or noise.[1] The order of networks is made up of a continuum of relations governed by interests, passions, affects and pragmatic necessities of different actors. The network of relations is never static, but this is not to be mistaken for some kind of perpetual fluidity. Ephemerality is not a condition to celebrate for those wishing to function as political agents.

• tactical media,
• network cultures,
• activism,
• net.activism,
• post-governmental organisation,
• info-activism

A Personal Map of the Resistance Movement in France 

For many reasons, the 80's, years of the Mitterand socialist government, were years in which grass roots movements got institutionalized and traditional activism was "out". The logic of the Republic (everybody is equal without distinction) allied with traditional individualism and clanic behaviour ("la guerre des chapelles") forbid the emergence of non dominant/non normalized subjectivities. This tradition is still alive today. The 68 generation didn't feel necessary to pass on their knowledge to younger generations. From their point of view, they created new ways to go about the world by themselves, so should the new generations. The notion of alternative and activism became stigmatized. It wasn't a very tactical in those years to position oneself in terms of an alternative. As a result, by the beginning of the 90, the most visible part of the intellectuals and the grass roots movements seams to be lobotomized.

• politics,
• campaign,
• tactical media,
• activism,
• public domain,
• civil disobedience

Vectorial Empires 

01. These are precarious times. These are eventful times. Let us note some of the symptoms of this instability. There is September 11,and the prospect of a new form of American empire that uses September11 as its pretext. There is the global stock market slide, triggered by the collapse of American tech stocks, which altered the lives of chip-makers in Korea and Coltan miners in the Congo. These are instances of what I call weird global media events. They are events because they are singular. They are media events because they happen in a vectoral space of communication. They are global media events because they call a world into being. They are weird global media events because they defy explanation. They subsume every explanation as mere ripples and eddies in their wake.

• politics,
• tactical media,
• infopolitics

 VakuumTV

VakuumTV was founded in February 1994 on the initiative of László Kistamás. Its members presented weekly broadcasts on Monday nights at the most popular cultural club in Budapest, Tilos az Á.

• tactical media,
• tactical television

Introduction Sarai Reader 04: Crisis / Media 

"The darkest, hottest place in hell waits for that repulsive angel choir
Which, at the hour when crisis strikes, sings equivocal, neutral songs".
Dante, Inferno, Canto III.

• crisis,
• media criticism,
• India

Escaping Assad and Revolution in Rojava 

An interview with a Syrian activist in exile, code-named Sami, published by Occupy.com draws attenton once more to the radical experiment in real-life bottom-up matriarchal democratic design unfolding  against all odds in the autonomous Kurdish region of Rojava in Northern Syria. We are republishing two short texts here on this subject matter to speculate about the question if 'Rojava' could offer a repeatable model for post-governmental political design?

• politics,
• war,
• Revolution,
• feminism,
• design,
• post-governmental organisation

Finissage Really? Art and Knowledge in Time of Crisis - 29 September 2024 

On Sunday September 29 the exhibition Really? Art and Knowledge in Time of Crisis concludes with a series of interlocked conversations that explore how artists address the erosion of trust in knowledge and the rise of disinformation, through their investigative and critical practices.

Sunday September 29, 10.00 - 16.00
Framer Framed, Amsterdam

Hybrid off/online performance UKRAiNATV, 17.00 - 18.00

• politics,
• art,
• archive,
• activism,
• theory,
• media theory,
• surveillance,
• knowledge,
• documentation,
• infrastructure,
• forensics

Taking Care of Things! 

Archives - Life-Cycles - Care
TMF editors Eric Kluitenberg and David Garcia have been invited to participate in the workshop "Taking Care of Things!" in Lüneburg, Germany, January 15-18, organised by the Post-Media Lab / Centre for Digital Cultures - Leuphana University, and Habits of Living in cooperation with the Stadtarchiv Lüneburg.

• archive,
• theory,
• tactical research

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?

• activism,
• diy media