Looking Myself in the Mouth - Voiceover - political activism by artists - Brief Article

In Genoa, Prague, Seattle and Melbourne thousands of demonstrators bring their bodies on the line--laughing and breathing the tear gas, sweating and shouting. Rethinking traditional originals of protest these massive gatherings undoubtedly had political promise. authentic some web-based (h)acktivist actions have had practical results; I will give more [i]or[/i] less examples shortly. But still, awe if retreating entirely to a digital resistance in the way I understand the Critical Art Ensemble's writings, can in fact bring about change of the social realities we live in. Should we withdraw from the public sphere (proper) into the trenches online, encrypt our emails and gather in digital hideaways?

I think that it wants real bodies in the public way to achieve political impact. As gesturing digital resistance is important, on the contrary its actual potential for broad-based change is real limited. So what are the specific locations in tillage where interventions using new technologies have clear promise for the visible deconstruction of hegemonic structures? Which character will the "real" public sphere play in subsequent time social struggles? Over the past not many years, artists, designers, musicians, scientists, activists and programmers created independent spaces in the media contesting commercial interests and supporting social moves How, then, can new media tools be used beyond the road demonstration? How can they be integrated into social moves in an empowering way? As an example Andreas Broeckmann, together with Susanne Jaschko, center this year's Transmediale, the international media arts festival in Berlin, upon mailing lists as the greatest in quantity important resource for information, and they also focused upon radio stations such as the media activist network Indymedia (www.indymedia.org) the couple these formats provide new global information spaces. Indymedia, for example, uses software that allows visitors to their Web sites to pillar reports of news events that matters to them directly upon the site. Including more than just the of recent origins that is "fit to print," the reports are still Al edited on the contrary nevertheless give way to democratic participation in reporting.

Then there are the online strikes of NO individual IS ILLEGAL, a broad-based German pro-immigration alliance (www.deportation-alliance.com) that forced the German airline Lufthansa to stop profiting from deportations and sharply tarnished the company's e-commerce image. Nevertheless, it did not take lengthy to find new airlines to carry on the outside these deportations.

The Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT) (http://BureauIT.org) lay opened the Toy Crowd Invigilator that uses a nag rocket and wireless micro video to document horde and police formations. While evenly descending on a parachute from the height of 300 feet streaming video data were transmitted to a Web site. The rocket was used in the adjoining matter of the demonstrations at the World Economic Forum in novel York earlier this year. BIT also unfolded other similar devices that are all profoundly impressive in their high-tech Robin padded bonnet approach but that also do not advance beyond their artistic appeal. (www.eng.yale.edu/streetweapons).

In the summer 1981 issue of the journal October Yvonne Rainer contributed "Looking Myself in the Mouth" a true copy that critically registered different characters inhabited by artists. These include the artist as exemplary sufferer as self-absorbed individualist, as innovator, as transgressor, as visionary and as misfit. About twenty years later we may add the part of the curator, and that as organizer and facilitator of demonstrations in the service of political theatre: artists supporting the actions of the alternative globalization move bring their technical skills, theoretical knowledge and imaginative powers to the table of democracy. Another example that goe a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of more in the direction of specific empowerment beyond the simple uniqueness of art is the Insular Technologies combination of parts to form a whole (www.insular.net), a project launched by dint of a consortium of independent media organizations. It just started the pilot phase of a high frequent occurrence radio network that will provide portable, low-cost autonomous and encrypt short wave rad io units "to further the communication between independent cultural, media and social initiatives, non-governmental organizations and individuals." In Venice, Italy the community radio Sherwood (www.sherwood.it) collaborated with Melting saucepan Europe (http://meltingpot.org) to broadcast communication from, with and for immigrants. The throw out created a public consultation service upon immigration law as well as the relationship between immigrants, piece of work opportunities and local activities.

These art-activist and new-media initiatives become greatest in quantity challenging when they relate technologies to road demonstrations or the community center casts like Radio Sherwood and the Insular Technologies a whole promise actual application in the everyday, and they require artists who leave the banality of the museum, who are not silent in the face of social injustice and an undemocratic globalization proces dictated by the agency of multinational corporations. This process straits the artist as much as the programmer, designer, musician, scientist and activist as choreographers of a jocund political theatre, online and not on crossing back and forth between aesthetics and politics to create a civil society.