Category Archives: public research

New Design Tactical Media Files + Reports & Documentation Amsterdam and Liverpool events online

We are very happy and proud that the new responsive design of the Tactical Media Files documentation resource is available online now, beautifully designed by Jeroen Joosse (who also delivered the visual design of the original TMF website), and implemented by developer André van Toly.
www.tacticalmediafiles.net

The main purpose of this redesign was to make the resource better accessible on other media devices and able to scale to virtually any size screen (hence a ‘responsive’ design). If for any reason someone would fee ‘nostalgic’ about the accustomed web-design we left that in place at the following address:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/classic

We will fine tune the new design further in the coming months, but meanwhile have been busy and there’s quite some other news as well, so do read on:

Documentation Videos and Reports of Amsterdam and Liverpool events online

Superflux, Drone Aviary (2015)

Superflux, Drone Aviary (2015)

While our exhibition How much of this is fiction. is still on at FACT in Liverpool, and will open at HeK in Basel on March 22, documentation and reports of public events in  Amsterdam and Liverpool are already available online:

• Report of the public debate Vox Populi and the Syrian Archive, at Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam on 21 January 2017:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/articles/45248
• Video Vox Populi and the Syrian Archive:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/videos/45066

• Report of the conference ‘The Society of Post-Control’, at Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam on 22 January 2017:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/articles/45265
• Video of the conference ‘The Society of Post-Control':
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/videos/45092

• Video: Meme Wars: Internet culture and the ‘alt-right’
Lecture by writer / researcher Florian Cramer at FACT Liverpool, 2 March, 2017:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/videos/45022
• Meme Wars: Post-lecture discussion:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/videos/45041

We hope you will enjoy the new design and the most recent additions to our ever growing resource.

TMF-editors:
Eric Kluitenberg
David Garcia

Final Program posted: As If / Vox Populi / The Syrian Archive / Meme Wars Lab / The Society of Post-Control

Tactical Media Connections public program, Amsterdam January 20 – 22, 2017.

As If - The Media Artist as Trickster
As part of the Tactical Media Connections public research trajectory tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and its connections to the present, a series of public events take place in Amsterdam between January 20 and 22, 2017. The public program includes an exhibition organised by Framer Framed in the Tolhuistuin cultural centre, opening on Friday January 20; a Meme Wars Lab workshop on Friday January 20; a public debate at Eye Filmmuseum on Saturday January 21, and a one day conference (‘The Society of Post-Control’) again at the Tolhuistuin on Sunday January 22.

The final program has now been posted on the Tactical Media Files main site and can be found here:
http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/events/39710

As If / Vox Populi / The Syrian Archive / The Society of Post-Control

Tactical Media Connections public program, Amsterdam January 20 – 22, 2017.

As part of the Tactical Media Connections public research trajectory tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and its connections to the present, a series of public events take place in Amsterdam between January 20 and 22, 2017. The public program includes an exhibition at Framer Framed in the Tolhuistuin cultural centre, opening on Friday January 20; a public debate at Eye Filmmuseum on Saturday January 21, and a one day conference (‘The Society of Post-Control’) again at the Tolhuistuin on Sunday January 22.

HeHe, La Révolte de Tremblay en France, 2017

HeHe, La Révolte de Tremblay en France, 2017

Please find below a brief program overview, followed by a detailed description of the different parts of the public program.

Enquiries can be directed at: postcontrol@xs4all.nl

Program Overview:

As If
The Media Artist as Trickster
Exhibition at Framer Framed, Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam,
20 January – 5 March 2017
Opening: Friday, January 20, 2017, 17.00

Curated by Annet Dekker and David Garcia, in collaboration with Ian Alan Paul

The exhibition As If: The Media Artist as Trickster focuses on politically inspired media art that uses deception in all its forms. It shows the artist as a trickster, as a ‘dark jester’, using a variety of hoaxes, hacks and ruses to reveal the hidden workings of power structures and the possibility of alternative futures. At the heart of As If is the desire to address one of today’s most urgent political issues: a radical shift in the boundary between fiction and reality in public discourse, in a world increasingly governed by ‘post-truth’ politics.

Artists: Morehshin Allahyari, Arabian Street Artists, Paolo Cirio, Coco Fusco, Paul Garrin, Julian Oliver / Danja Vasiliev, Ian Alan Paul, Superflux, The Yes Men, UBERMORGEN, Wachter & Jud, Robert Ochshorn

http://framerframed.nl/en/exposities/expositie-as-if-the-media-artist-as-trickster

Vox Populi and The Syrian Archive
Documenting revolution and conflict in the digital age
Public Debate
Eye Film Museum
Saturday, January 21, 12.00 – 17.00

The program at Eye explores the complicated relationship between the activist moment, increasingly mediated by the participants in these events themselves and increasingly in near real-time, and the static character of the archive and its implicit ‘suspension of time’. We center for this on two ambitious projects under development:  Vox Populi – Archiving a Revolution in the Digital Age, of artist Lara Baladi, and The Syrian Archive, an initiative launched by a collective of human rights activists dedicated to preserving open source documentation relating to human rights violations and other crimes committed by all sides during the conflict in Syria.

Speakers: Lara Baladi (Vox Populi), Hadi Al Khatib & Jeff Deutch (The Syrian Archive), Robert Ochshorn, and guests. Moderated by Annet Dekker & Eric Kluitenberg

The Society of Post-Control
Conference
Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam
Sunday January 22, 12.00 – 18.00

Drawing on Michael Seemann’s concept of Digital Tailspin (“Kontrollverlust”) this expanded conversation will explore the idea that a situation has emerged where the overwhelming complexity of technological and socio-economic systems is giving rise to an ever increasing number of unpredictable and uncontrollable events. How do civic rights advocates, activists, image makers and artists respond to this evolving context of Post-Control? Are there new opportunities for progressive emancipatory politics that are able to surf the chaos as effectively as the insurgent populists of the new right (alt.right and beyond)? How to respond to ‘Post-Control’ online and offline?

Speakers: Michael Seemann, Geert Lovink, Marc Tuters, Kim de Groot, David Garcia, Ingrid Eel, Ian Alan Paul, Bernardo Gutiérrez , Steve Kurtz, and guests. Moderated by Eric Kluitenberg.

Context:

This program is part of Tactical Media Connections, a public research trajectory initiated in 2014 by Eric Kluitenberg and David Garcia tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and its connections to the present.
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/articles/3646

After Amsterdam the exhibition and associated events public events will travel to FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technologies in  Liverpool (2 March – 31 May 2017) and HeK (House of Electronic Arts), Basel (21 March – 21 May 2017), with a change of exhibition title to How Much of this is Fiction.

The programs in detail:

As If
The Media Artist as Trickster
Exhibition at Framer Framed, Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam,
20 January – 5 March 2017
Opening: Friday, January 20, 2017, 17.00

Curated by Annet Dekker and David Garcia, in collaboration with Ian Alan Paul

The exhibition As If: The Media Artist as Trickster focuses on politically inspired media art that uses deception in all its forms. It shows the artist as a trickster, as a ‘dark jester’, using a variety of hoaxes, hacks and ruses to reveal the hidden workings of power structures and the possibility of alternative futures. At the heart of As If is the desire to address one of today’s most urgent political issues: a radical shift in the boundary between fiction and reality in public discourse, in a world increasingly governed by ‘post-truth’ politics.

As well as acting as a timely reflection on the nature of truth in a time filled with fake news, misinformation, and tactical propaganda, the show also serves a historical purpose. Many of the high-speed media interventions showcased in the show are, to a degree, legacies of ‘Tactical Media’; a cultural and political movement that flourished briefly in the late 90s. Tactical Media was the first to combine the power of art, the tricks of the PR and advertising world, and an experimental approach to digital media, to mount hit-and run interventions in the media sphere.

As If will show how the legacies of this DIY media movement remain all around us. Whether it be the social media meme tactics of alt-right or the live streaming of police shootings to social and mainstream media platforms around the world; whether it be Trump’s midnight tweets or the exposure of the totality of the surveillance state through Snowden’s actions and information unveiled by Wikileaks: it is clear that the critical role of “do it yourself” media politics is as relevant today as ever.

Featuring works by twelve artists/artist collectives – all united in their underlying purpose of engaging with urgent social and political events – the show includes exciting new commissioned work by Morehshin Allahyari (IR).

Artists
Morehshin Allahyari, Arabian Street Artists, Paolo Cirio, Coco Fusco, Paul Garrin, Julian Oliver / Danja Vasiliev, Ian Alan Paul, Superflux, The Yes Men, UBERMORGEN, Wachter & Jud, Robert Ochshorn

Exhibition design
The exhibition is organised into two principal areas created in close collaboration with the exhibition designer Ruben Pater. Zone 1: The Newsroom and Zone 2: Guantanamo Bay Museum of Art and History.

The Newsroom looks into hacks and fabricated ‘news fictions’ where deception or provocation has interfered with the media landscape, and opened up for discussion and debate. Showcasing a number of interconnected works, this zone demonstrates how these tactics are grounded in a long history of politicised hoaxes and hacks eventually morphing into contemporary, web-based activism.

For the second part of the exhibition, the curators invited artist and chief-curator Ian Alan Paul of the Guantanamo Bay Museum of Art and History (GBmah) to co-curate and present a series of interconnected installations revealing the way in which the trickster ethos is used to interrogate a number of urgent related themes and issues. Works range from subversive acts of resistance by Arabian Street Artists and UBERMORGEN, to digital acts of cultural reclamation from Morehshin Allahyari, and the latest satirical campaign of The Yes Men.

Public Research
As If is an example of “public research”, presented in various aspects of the exhibition. The role and risks of hoaxes will be explored, highlighting the urgent need to develop a more “populist language” for progressive politics. The extensive public program will consist of talks, live performances, exhibition tours, and film screenings, to relate the exhibition to the contemporary context.

As If: The Media Artist as Trickster has been developed in partnership with FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) Liverpool (UK) and HeK (House of Electronic Arts), Basel (CH). Iterations of the exhibition and its accompanying programmes will take place at these venues between 2 March – 31 May 2017, and 21 March – 21 May 2017, respectively, with a change of exhibition title to How Much of this is Fiction.

Presented with the support of Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Tolhuistuin, Creative Industries Fund NL, and Video Data Bank.

 

Vox Populi and The Syrian Archive
Documenting revolution and conflict in the digital age
Public Debate
Eye Film Museum
Saturday, January 21, 12.00 – 17.00

Friday of Victory, Tahrir Square, Cairo. Photo by Lara Baladi, 2011.

Friday of Victory, Tahrir Square, Cairo. Photo by Lara Baladi, 2011.

The program at Eye explores the complicated relationship between the activist moment, increasingly mediated by the participants in these events themselves and increasingly in near real-time, and the static character of the archive and its implicit ‘suspension of time’. We center for this on two ambitious projects under development:

Vox Populi – Archiving a Revolution in the Digital Age, of Egyptian-Lebanese artist Lara Baladi, which draws on the vast materials produced during the original uprising in Egypt against the military regime of Hosni Mubarak and their aftermath, collected by a group of artists, writers, theatre makers who would subsequently go on to found the Mosireen independent media centre in Cairo.
http://tahrirarchives.com

The Syrian Archive, an initiative launched by a collective of human rights activists dedicated to preserving open source documentation relating to human rights violations and other crimes committed by all sides during the conflict in Syria.
https://syrianarchive.org

Next to the complicated politics and ethics of these online archiving initiatives we want to question what  the role of the artist is in such processes – a kind of stage designer? a choreographer? a facilitator?  Or perhaps a creator of imaginative ‘interfaces’ as in the work of the American artist Robert Ochshorn, whose stunning interfaces for digital rich media collections far transcend the realm of ‘design’ into a new kind of art form. Ochshorn will also present his remarkable work during the event.

This program is part of Tactical Media Connections, a public research trajectory tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and its connections to the present.
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/articles/3646

Speakers:
Lara Baladi
http://arts.mit.edu/artists/lara-baladi
http://tahrirarchives.com/read-me
Hadi Al Khatib
https://cihr.eu/hadi-al-khatib/
Jeff Deutch
https://cihr.eu/jeff-deutch
Robert Ochshorn
http://teleputer.org
Charles Jeurgens
http://www.uva.nl/over-de-uva/organisatie/medewerkers/item/k.j.p.f.m.jeurgens.html?f=charles+jeurgens

We ask a number of well-informed local respondents to react to the presentations to create a lively conversation throughout this event.

Moderated by Annet Dekker & Eric Kluitenberg


The Society of Post-Control

Conference
Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam
Sunday January 22, 12.00 – 18.00

In his essay Digital Tailspin, German media researcher Michael Seemann maintains that we have irrevocably lost control of our digital data. Seemann outlines ten rules for our relationship to the Internet under conditions of post-control. [1] The unstoppable series of high-profile leaks (far beyond the confines of WikiLeaks), the recent hacks of users databases of massive online consumer services, and the excessive personal data-mining practices of mainstream social media platforms, all testify to this.

While this loss of control is primarily driven by technology, it is not restricted to the digital domain. Seemingly uncontrollable flows of migration, the ruthless forces of economic globalisation and global finance, along with the growing weight of ecological and demographic pressures all contribute to the sense that control is at best only temporary and partial. We call this context in which technological, demographic and socio-economic systems have reached such levels of overwhelming complexity that they produce an increasing number of unpredictable (and therefore uncontrollable) outcomes The Society Of Post-Control.

What American Lebanese theorist, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, dubbed “Black Swan events”, low predictability and high impact events, are quickly becoming a part of everyday reality. The first to identify and address these developments systematically was Sociologist, Ulrich Beck in the book the Risk Society (1986) in which he argued that post-war social capitalism’s program of managing risk by making side effects calculable was being progressively eroded by an increasingly borderless world with its communications networks and complex supply chains we call globalisation. Beck argued that institutions including the natural sciences were still struggling to understand or accept the crucial difference between the era of probability and that of radical uncertainty, let alone come to terms with the fact that it was radical uncertainty that had become dominant.

The current drive of governments and intelligence agencies to deploy ever more dense networks of surveillance technology only adds to the overall complexity of these systems, thereby increasing the potential of generating unpredictable and uncontrollable (‘Black Swan’) events. This seems to be a self-defeating strategy. At the same time, the tactics of political engagement once identified with tactical media, culture jamming and what the Situationist’s frontman Guy Debord once described as ‘détournement’, turning the narratives of established power against themselves, is no longer the exclusive domain of progressive political and civic agents. The ‘meme wars’, once identified by Adbuster’s Kalle Lasn and Micah White have been effectively appropriated by reactionary political forces, not least by the so-called “alt.right” groups during the last US Election in support of the Trump campaign, and with great success. Even the creators of famous image memes such as Pepe the Frog admit that they have lost control over their own creations. [2]

How do civic rights advocates, activists, image makers and artists respond to this evolving context of Post-Control? Are there new opportunities for progressive emancipatory politics that are able to surf the chaos as effectively as the insurgent populists of the new right? In short, how to respond to ‘Post-Control’ online and offline?

These questions we intend to discuss in a one-day discussion gathering at the Tolhuistuin, in a conversation across different disciplinary and political boundaries, as part of the Tactical Media Connections public research trajectory. [3]

References:
[1]  Michael Seemann, Digital Tailspin: Ten Rules for the Internet After Snowden (2015):
http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/no-09-digital-tailspin-ten-rules-for-the-internet-after-snowden-michael-seemann
[2]  Daily Dot: Pepe the Frog creator says pro-Trump memes ‘just a phase’
www.dailydot.com/unclick/matt-furie-pepe-the-frog-alt-right
[3]  Tactical Media Connections:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/articles/3646

Speakers:
Michael Seemann
www.michaelseemann.de
http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/no-09-digital-tailspin-ten-rules-for-the-internet-after-snowden-michael-seemann
Geert Lovink
http://networkcultures.org/geert
Ingrid Eel
https://ingrideel.com/bio
Ian Alan Paul
www.ianalanpaul.com/about-me
Bernardo Gutiérrez
www.bernardogutierrez.es/indexen.html
http://codigo-abierto.cc
Steve Kurtz
http://critical-art.net
Marc Tuters
www.uva.nl/over-de-uva/organisatie/medewerkers/content/t/u/m.d.tuters/m.d.tuters.html
Kim de Groot
http://www.kimdegroot.nl
David Garcia
http://new-tactical-research.co.uk
Eric Kluitenberg (moderator)
www.tacticalmediafiles.net/persons/207

Support:

Tactical Media Connections and the public program is made possible by the generous support of:
Creative Industries Fund NL
Fonds 21
Stichting Democratie & Media / Democracy & Media Foundation
AFK – Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst
NL Ministry of Education, Culture and Science
Mondriaan Fund
And our partner organisations.

Tactical Media Connections update: May 1, 2015

A public research trajectory tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and its connections to the present.

Tactical Media Connections is an extended trajectory of collaborative research tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and mapping the relationships between its precursors and its progeny. The program is realised through a series of meetings and exhibitions, culminating in the publication of a Tactical Media Anthology with contributions and dialogues ranging across generations and territories.
Tactical-Media-hand
Taken as a whole the project seeks to engage the many threads and practices that have emerged out of and relate back to the classical moment in the middle of the 1990s when Tactical Media was identified – not least through the renowned Next 5 Minutes festival series, when it came to be understood as a constellation of different yet connected cultures of contestation, operating at the specific intersection of art, media, technological experimentation and social/political activism. Central to the idea of Tactical Media was a nomadic movement between mainstream media channels, alternative cultures and dissident lifestyles by those groups who felt somehow aggrieved, misrepresented or otherwise marginalised in the wider public domain.

Unlike the “social turn” and other manifestations of community arts and post-studio practice, that emerged in the 1990s, Tactical Media has not become another an art-world genre. Its scope and significance has gone far beyond the accepted confines of the art scene. This lack of rootedness in a single discourse means it has largely escaped institutional capture. It has however paid a high price for avoiding any kind of strategic grounding with a bad case of historical amnesia. This widespread amnesia has meant that the scope and achievements of this movement are frequently forgotten or overlooked, rendering important lessons unavailable to subsequent generations of practitioners and activists.

In developing Tactical Media Connections, we have avoided fixed definitions, we are instead treating the moment when Tactical Media was initially named and described as a key reference point or rather a “point of lost origin”, a temporal vector enabling us to move in two directions at once: On the one hand we can reflect on the precursors, without getting lost in history. On the other hand we can look towards Tactical Media’s progeny and legacies, and their possible futures from an extended and more deeply informed perspective. As a framework it is designed to manage the extreme complexity we are unleashing. Exploiting this temporal vector we need no longer use the term Tactical Media to cover every practice that appears relevant. Rather this “point of lost origin” can be seen as one important moment of convergence in these evolving cycles of contestation and engagement, at a moment in time when anyone can ‘become the media’ at the touch of a screen.

Trajectory

The Tactical Media Connections public research project got underway with an international research meeting at Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam’s new cultural centre, in July 2014. The meeting was  combined with a public debate on “Art and Political Conflict”, organised in collaboration with Framer Framed, the gallery and exhibition agency at the Tolhuistuin. Since then activity has shifted to ‘behind the scene’ activities. In the past months we have been developing the different ‘components’ of our trajectory; the publication – a comprehensive anthology of Tactical Media; the first stage of a thorough upgrade of the Tactical Media Files online documentation resource; and preparations for a  series of public events and exhibitions to be organised in the Fall of  2016 and Spring 2017 in The Netherlands and the UK.

MIT Press confirmed as publisher for the Tactical Media Anthology

We are delighted that the MIT Press has agreed to publish the Tactical Media Anthology, which is scheduled to launch in the second half of 2016. The book as a whole will be ± 450 pages, as a full-colour edition, edited by Eric Kluitenberg and David Garcia in close consultation with Brian Holmes. Our ambition is to do justice to the full scope and significance of Tactical Media activity over the past three decades: connecting debates, controversies and experiences of various generations of artists, activists, media makers and theorists across different periods and territories, and relate these to the current situation, which might be described as the Post-Occupy / Post-Prism era. We see a particular urgency to revisit these debates and link experiences of different generations at this critical juncture.

The publication will include among others contributions by Michael Dieter, Brian Holmes, DeeDee Halleck, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Critical Art Ensemble, Mathew Fuller, David Garcia, Paulo Gerbaudo, Lev Manovich, Özge Celikaslan, Graham Harwood, Rodrigo Nunes, Saskia Sassen, Clement Apprich, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Caroline Nevejan, Daoud Kuttab, Konrad Becker, Brandon Jourdan, Seda Gürses, Cornelia Sollfrank, Geert Lovink, Marianne Maeckelbergh, Ned Rossiter, Eric Kluitenberg, Simona Lodi, Marcell Mars, Tobias Revell, Simona Levi, Heath Bunting, Nat Muller, Felix Stalder, Ted Byfield, Julian Oliver, Danja Vasiliev, Mike Stubbs, McKenzie Wark, and others to be confirmed.

Tactical Media Files website relaunched with reconstituted video archive

The online documentation resource Tactical Media Files, originally launched in the Fall of 2008, has been rebuilt from the ground up. While design changes have so far been minimal, important work has been done to ensure the longer term sustainability of the resource. The site is an entry point to the extensive collection of materials around the practices of Tactical Media in many different places and aims to make them accessible for current and future generations of artists, activists, researchers and the general audience. An important part of the resource are the materials sourced from contributions made over the years by visitors to each edition of the Next 5 Minutes festivals and held by the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, where the physical materials remain accessible in their original formats.

The most significant  aspect of this renewal process is that the extensive video archive of the Tactical Media Files has been restored and can now be freely accessed across different viewing devices. In the next phase of development the emphasis will shift towards an overhaul of the visual design of the website and a further extension of the functionality of the video archive. We are also keen on exploring more experimental approaches to the materials contained in the resource and aim to work together with curators, artists, technical developers and theorists on this as part of our on-going research trajectory. More about that in future updates.
www.tacticalmediafiles.net

Public event-series and exhibitions 2016 – 2017

Agreements are in place with a variety of partner organisations for a series of public events and exhibitions to be organised in the Fall of 2016 and early 2017, in The Netherlands and the UK. These events will include conferences and public debates, a larger screening event and public debate around the Global Uprisings documentary project, and two substantial exhibitions curated by Nat Muller and David Garcia in close consultation with Josien Peterse and Cas Bool, co-directors of Framer Framed in Amsterdam, and Mike Stubbs, director of FACT in Liverpool. The aim is to commission a number of new works which will  travel from The Netherlands to the UK and possibly beyond and will include screening events and workshops.

In the run up to the final series of events we aim to organise a number of local development meetings or Tactical Media Labs, in the UK and in NL. These will act as local connection points for researchers, artists and activists who want to engage more actively in this project. If you are interested to become involved in these meetings or the project please contact the projectors initiators Eric Kluitenberg and David Garcia.

Partner organisations

Partner organisations with whom initial agreements have been made so far include Cultural Center Tolhuistuin, Framer Framed, EYE Film Institute, the Institute of Network Cultures, The Showroom in London, FACT – Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Cool Mediators Foundation (production), and Bournemouth University’s COLAB.

Preliminary Research Questions:

To guide this exploration we have formulated the following research questions during our initial meeting at the Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam:

•    How can we evaluate the remarkable developments in what we indicate as the post-occupy / post prism era? How do they relate to longer term questions of engagement in public culture and the formation of new politics giving voice to the voiceless, in pursuit of a more open and equitable future?

•    How resilient and comprehensive do the definitions of Tactical Media proposed in the 1990s appear in retrospect today? Were some aspects missed or distorted by the classic definitions? And how do they speak to the present and present generations of activists, artists, thinkers, theorists, researchers, media tacticians, out in the streets and the networks?

•    Does the extensive occupation of popular social media platforms in the 2011 uprisings (or ‘movement(s) of the squares’) signal an end of the “cyber separatism” of the Indymedia generation ? And does their extensive use of these platforms signal a new pragmatic populism for this generation’s media activists? Have projects with great public impact, such as WikiLeaks, neutralised the critique of media intervention as being trapped in networks of insularity and semiotic corruption?

•    What role can the idea of Tactical Media and its progeny play during the inevitable periods of latency in the cycles of protest ?  In this and other contexts can Tactical Media research help to identify new networks of resistance and change in the control society?

To take stock, discuss and debate, and begin a more collective appreciation of these questions is what this public research trajectory is meant for.

Support

The Tactical Media Connections project and the preparation for the Tactical Media Anthology  are financially supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL and the Mondriaan Fund.

SCI+MF_logo_medium

Project updates are published a.o. on our blogs:
http://blog.tacticalmediafiles.net
http://new-tactical-research.co.uk

Tactical Media Connections

A public research trajectory tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and its connections to the present

Under the working title ‘Tactical Media Connections’ the editors of the Tactical Media Files, David Garcia and Eric Kluitenberg have begun an extensive public research project that seeks to trace and develop the connections between the phenomenon of Tactical Media as it was identified in the early 1990s, not least through the renowned series of Next 5 Minutes festivals and conferences on Tactical Media ( www.n5m.org – organised four times between 1993 and 2003), and current critical practices operating at the intersection of art, media, activism, technological experimentation and political contestation.

Tactical-Media-hand

‘The hand covering the camera’ – logo Next 5 Minutes 4 festival (2003)

Context:

Among the initiators and organisers of the Next 5 Minutes in the 1990s and within the wider constituency around these events, the naming of ‘Tactical Media’ as a ‘movement’ has always been and remains contentious. Nonetheless this designator did allow for a certain mutual recognition. It had become clear that a specific constellation of art, experimental media, and political activism was being practiced by large numbers of groups and individuals around the world to such an extent as to suggest that a relatively stable cultural compound had emerged which required a distinctive category. Some of us preferred to regard Tactical Media as an evolving cluster of practices developed out of the desire and need to insert ourselves into the cracks appearing in the edifices of broadcast media, (information) technology, and mainstream culture. In the process important new spaces emerged for dissenting views and dissident life styles, politics, and aesthetics.

The need for another ‘global’ edition of the Next 5 Minutes seemed to dissipate in the early 2000s with the arrival of ‘mass self-mediation’ through the proliferation of mobile devices that put  ‘the camera’ (as a metaphor for appropriated media and technological tools) not just in the hands of a select group of artists, community organisers and political activists, but literally in the hands of anyone who cared enough to make a statement in the media sphere. However, we continued to follow the destinies of these artist-activist desires through the changing media sphere. Our principal platform for this process of gathering and documentation was the Tactical Media Files (www.tacticalmediafiles.net), an online resource started in 2008. We have subsequently held intermittent public gatherings connected to this resource such as the Media Squares symposium at De Balie in Amsterdam, September 30, 2011.

Pressure to revisit these issues in a more substantial and comprehensive way began to build with the onset of a series of ‘global events’ which started to take shape in the course of 2010, quite independent of the people and organisations originally involved in the Next 5 Minutes or identifying with the notion of Tactical Media. These events significantly shifted its context, giving it both new urgency as well complicating the political, cultural and wider public context in which the concept of Tactical Media operates.

Arguably this started with the release of the Collateral Murder video by WikiLeaks (April 2010), which suddenly seemed to renew the potency of media as a tactical tool, enabling apparently powerless actors to turn the tables on the powerful, cutting right across all the distinctions between mainstream, alternative, professional and self-produced media, mitigating the usual chasm between internet-based media and mass media such as print, broadcast, satellite television, and beyond. Though its origins were deeply rooted in internet and hacker cultures this intervention was certainly not limited to them. The ability of WikiLeaks to cut across these highly differentiated domains made it not only very effective in terms of public impact, but also (for us at least) instantly recognisable as ‘Tactical Media’.

One year on, however, WikiLeaks already seemed a distant and vague memory in the media-avalanche that was unleashed by  the deeply media saturated massive popular protests in different countries in North Africa and the Middle East, mirrored increasingly in other protests in Southern Europe against the disastrous austerity/ precarity policies that threatened to exclude an entire generation from a proper participation in societal life. This, of course in turn was followed by the wave of #Occupy protests in the US and their progeny elsewhere.  If Tactical Media seemed to have disappeared in the maelstrom of YouTube trivia by early 2010, it was back with a vengeance a year later!

This resurgence of mediatised contestation does not mean that the current context can be easily understood in terms of what has previously been learned from over twenty years of Tactical Media. In 2011 we saw that despite all the standardisation, simplification and attempted normalisation, the media applications rolled out by the corporations could be still be used molecularly to express highly singular utopian ambitions of equality, reform and even regime changes. They could be used for the self-organisation of demonstrations and occupations as well as tactical irruption in the mainstream media (TV, press). But this time, they were used on a massive scale. At the same time, the especially strong Spanish Indignados and US Occupy movements showed that new DIY inventions are still entirely possible. So tactical media reveals itself NOT to have been an Amsterdam invention and not merely a curatorial concept as one might have surmised in, say, 2005. Instead, it really names an epochal phenomenon which continues to evolve (in Brazil in the lead-up to the World Cup, for instance).

The massive scale of the popular protest waves around since 2011 has also not meant that contested political, economic, material conditions, and cultural and ideological conflicts are now en route to being resolved. If anything the political and cultural landscape looks increasingly fragmented. Political changes filled with hope have turned around bitterly (Egypt), and in some cases protests have descended into nightmares (Syria).

These contradictory phenomena have called the very efficacy of media intervention (and popular protest along with it) into question. Most notably the hope of using the interconnected distributed communications structure of the internet as a space of relative autonomy has been dashed by the on-gong revelations that broke with the Snowden / NSA files disclosures – the situation seems worse than ‘our’ darkest expectations. Is it true, as many a pundit has claimed, that ‘the internet is broken’? Beyond repair?

Preliminary Research Questions:

This situation sketch leads us to a number of preliminary research questions:

How can we evaluate the relationship between these remarkable developments in the last few years and the eternal questions of engagement in public culture and the formation of new politics giving voice to the voiceless, in pursuit of a more open and equitable future?

And more specifically for those of us who have ‘lived through’ the experience of Tactical Media in the 1990s, how can we connect the invaluable knowledge and experience from that time to current generations of activists, artists, thinkers, theorists, researchers, media tacticians, out in the streets and the networks?

How robust and comprehensive do the definitions of Tactical Media proposed in the 1990s appear in retrospect today? Were some aspects missed or distorted by the classic definitions? And how do they speak to the present?

To take stock, discuss and debate, and begin a more collective appreciation of these questions is what this public research trajectory is meant for.

Focus:

We want to give focus to these questions and the exploration we intend to undertake through two tightly interconnected instruments:

First by developing this public research trajectory, which will result in a number of small-scale and highly focussed research meetings in the second half of 2014 and first half of 2015. The trajectory is started with a first exploratory meeting July 4-6, and a public debate on ‘Art and Political Conflict’ at cultural centre De Tolhuistuin in  Amsterdam, July 6 (14.00 – 17.00). These research meetings will lead up to  a number of public gatherings and events later in 2015 in the UK and in The Netherlands, organised with a variety of partners.

In combination with this public research trajectory we want to develop the plan for a collectively written/edited anthology of Tactical Media that intends to address the questions above and many more, and mark this significant moment in time in the 1990s when the concept was first identified and its vigorous resurgence in the 2010s.

Editorial Notice:

This text, as a starting point for the intended public research trajectory, has been written by Eric Kluitenberg and David Garcia in close consultation with Brian Holmes.

Online Resources:

For updates on the Tactical Media Connections public research trajectory  please refer to our blogs:
http://blog.tacticalmediafiles.net
http://new-tactical-research.co.uk

Documentation of the evolving practices of Tactical Media is collected at:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net

Further materials are collected in the website of Brian Holmes’ ‘Tactical Media Generation’ project:
http://autonomousuniversity.org/content/tactical-media-generation

Support:

Tactical Media Connections is supported by the e-culture program of the Creative Industries Fund NL.