Among recent events and projects documented in the Tactical Media Files we have included a number of highly visible, but also less prominent campaigns. The genre of ‘campaiging‘ or the ‘Art of Campaigning’ is still an important category within the wider realm of tactical media practices it seems. Besides addressing urgent social and political issues of various kinds, these campaigns from time to time also produce highly interesting engaging visual materials in their attempts to captivate the (media) audience.
Among the campaigns we documented are:
ArtLeaks, a collective platform initiated by an international group of artists, curators, art historians and intellectuals in response to the abuse of their professional integrity and the open infraction of their labor rights.
Misopolis, a new initiative unfortunately not by fashion brand Diesel to improve working conditions and to provide free abortion pills to its female factory workers, which could have been an appropriate gesture by Diesel. Diesel is one of the fashion brands that uses production factories that refuse to pay a living wage to their workers, violates their human rights and forces them to work in dangerous and unhealthy conditions.
Misopolis (www.dieselforwomen.com) claimed to provide free abortion pills to its female workers in order to set them free and to create a fun factory.
Free Pussy Riot – the high-proile international campaign for the release of detained members of the Russian performance art collective Pussy Riot.
Pussy Riot is an anonymous Russian feminist performance art group formed in October 2011. Through a series of peaceful performances in highly visible places, the group has given voice to basic rights under threat in Russia today, while expressing the values and principles of gender equality, democracy and freedom of expression contained in the Russian constitution and other international instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the CEDAW Convention.
M2M – Migrant to Migrant – the campaign that claims that every migrant is a medium:
M2M means from Migrant to Migrant.
M2M is a meeting point for migrants.
Like a camp fire.
Every migrant has a story, a message.
Every migrant is a messenger between there and here
and here and there..
Every migrant is a medium.
Occupy Monsanto a Call to Action for a Non-Hierarchical Occupation of Monsanto Everywhere: An expanding network of concerned individuals known as Occupy Monsanto, staging numerous protests at companies connected to the global trade of genetically engineered foods, also known as GMOs.
And the latest addition: GlobalNoise – a new intiative by activists involved in the Indignato, Occupy, #yosoy132, etc movements, who have begun a campaign to create GlobalNoise, a worldwide cacerolazo, or casserole march, on Saturday, October 13th, 2012. The hope is that local Occupations and Collectives will take up the call to march, using the method of a casserole march to highlight whatever issues are the most important to their community.
It would seem the Art of Campaigning is not dead yet..
TMF Editors