Legacies of tactical media

1. Legacies of tactical media Eric Kluitenberg

2. Indeling. • Opkomst van sociale protesten. • Antiglobalisme. • Midden-oosten. • Zuid-Europa • Representatie van de protesten.

3. Politiek en media. • ‘take the square’ vs. Electronic isolation. • ‘It seems that only the transgression into public spaces can break the hold of these insular electronic circulations’ (7). • Maar: • Camera in handen van duizenden. • Verandering?

4. Politiek en media. ‘Itwouldbepossible to imposeanextendable series of contradictorymbutequallysimplistic labels on top of what is unfoldingon squares and screens right beforeoureyes: • The birth of realdemocracy; • radicaltransparency; • globalinformation meltdown, the long feared ‘informationbomb’ of Paul Virilio, finallyunleashingitsdestructive power on the veryfabric of society; • business as usual (‘Whatevent?’); • information is free but politics remainsclosed; • everybodycame and went; • the net delusion is complete;

5. Politiek en media. • communicative capitalism shed its secret spell of ‘publicity’; • precession of the simulacra; • the revolution never happened; • the camcorder revolution is complete; • synveillance, everybody watching everybody, initiates the final stage of the network society of control’ (8)

6. Politiek en media. • ‘As a communicativestructure the internet has always been a double-edgedsward. More thanmerelydecentralised, it is characterisedby a distributedstructurethatlocates the emphasis of media activity at the nodes of the networkratherthan at anycentre (…) However, thisnetworking of the nodes, whileinvigoratingmarginalisedactors in social, political, cultural and artisticfields, alsoimplies a measure of insularitythat is hard to shedortranscend’.

7. Politiek en media. • ‘The distributed structure of the digital network could thus be seen as the very antithesis of publicness. Combined with the inherent abstraction of the digital code, it seems to defy the deep longing for public visibility and encounter that fuels the expression of dissent and the escape from the marginalisation and silence that underpin tactical media operations.’ (9)

8. Politiek en media. • ‘the networkedcommunicationexchangesdisplace these libidinalforces (politieke krachten) in processes of communication, discussion, inclusion, and participationcapturedby a ‘strangeconversion of democracy and capitalism in networkedcommunicationsand entertainment media’ thatshe (Dean) terms ‘communicativecapitalism’. As these communicativeexchangesarecommodified and capitalisedtheycreatemassivedistortions of wealth and power, to ‘enrich the few as itplacates and diverts the many’. (10)

9. Politiek en media. ‘It is the body, and the body alone, that can act as a libidinal force breaking through the containment of the virtualised ‘circuits of drive’ that attempt to capture the restless desire of the contemporary subject for the encounter in public with the unknown other’. (10)

10. Hybrid space • ‘In the most literalsense the media have movedinto the streets and, althoughextremely recent, thisphenomenon is alreadyaccepted as a vernacular of contemporarylife’. ( 11) • ‘Contemporarysubjects are entrapped in insularnetworks of communicative exchange thatupholdmassivedistortions of wealth and power. It is these distortionsthat are nowbeingcritiquedon the streets and in the squares. The big questionbeforeus is whether the hybridlinking of mediated and embodied exchange canultimately help to break thisentrapment’. (12)

11. Tactical media • Yes Man • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av8AbVjcBMk • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI • ‘The term ‘tactical media’ refers to a criticalusage and theorisation of media practicesthat draw on all forms of old and new, bothlucid and sophisticated media forachieving a variety of specific non-commercial goals and pushing all kinds of potentiallysubversivepolitical issues’ (13).

12. Tactical Media • Eigenschappen en risico’s: • Rol amateurs vs. Affectivelabour. • No definition, nostrategy vs. lack of permanence. • ‘The hopesplacedon the value of amateur practice mirror the failing belief in the efficacy of radical video to restore the balancebetweencivic engagement, media production and democracy, and to challange the dominant wasteland of commercial television’. (16)

13. Tactical Media • De Certeau: • Tactical = nomadic. • Strategic. • De Landa: war machine. • Minoritair of majoritair? 20

14. Tactical Media • Tactical vs. Strategic • ‘De Certeauremarksthatit is a definingcharacteristic of strategic power thatitinvariablyattempts to claim a space of itsown and than to keep itbyanymeansnecessary. Thosewholack power cannot claim a territoyordefine a space of theirown, buttheycanoperate in the strategicspacesdefinedbyothers. Obviouslysuchoperations are alwaystemporaryincursions.’ (9) • War machine. • Minoritair of majoritair. • Media vs. Straat.

15. Tactical Media • 10 tactics. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKqDJySN5No • Tactical Media files: • http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/index.jsp • http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/video.jsp?objectnumber=42965 • Critical Art Ensamble: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=a1vuVkxeJEs • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikNO1ANHIQs