By David Garcia and Geert Lovink
Tactical Media are what happens when the cheap 'do it yourself' media,
made
possible by the revolution in consumer electronics and expanded forms
of
distribution (from public access cable to the internet) are exploited
by groups
and individuals who feel aggrieved by or excluded from the wider culture.
Tactical media do not just report events, as they are never impartial
they
always participate and it is this that more than anything separates
them from
mainstream media.
A distinctive tactical ethic and aesthetic that has emerged, which is
culturally
influential from MTV through to recent video work made by artists.
It began as a
quick and dirty aesthetic although it is just another style it (at
least in its
camcorder form) has come to symbolize a verite for the 90's.
Tactical media are media of crisis, criticism and opposition. This is
both the
source their power, ("anger is an energy" : John Lydon), and also their
limitation. their typical heroes are; the activist, Nomadic media warriors,
the
pranxter, the hacker,the street rapper, the camcorder kamikaze, they
are the
happy negatives, always in search of an enemy. But once the enemy has
been named
and vanquished it is the tactical practitioner whose turn it is to
fall into
crisis. Then (despite their achievements) its easy to mock them, with
catch
phrases of the right, "politically correct" "Victim culture" etc. More
theoretically the identity politics, media critiques and theories of
representation, that became the foundation of much western tactical
media are
themselves in crisis. These ways of thinking are widely seen as, carping
and
repressive remnants of an outmoded humanism.
To believe that issues of representation are now irrelevant is to believe
that
the very real life chances of groups and individuals are not still
crucially
affected by the available images circulating in any given society.
And the fact
that we no longer see the mass media as the sole and centralized source
of our
self definitions might make these issues more slippery but that does
not make
them redundant.
Tactical media a qualified form of humanism. A useful antidote to both,
what
Peter Lamborn Wilson described, as "the unopposed rule of money over
human
beings". But also as an antidote to newly emerging forms of technocratic
scientism which under the banner of post-humanism tend to restrict
discussions
of human use and social reception.
What makes Our Media Tactical? In 'The Practice of Every Day Life' De
Certueau
analyzed popular culture not as a 'domain of texts or artifacts but
rather as a
set of practices or operations performed on textual or text like structures'.
He
shifted the emphasis from representations in their own right to the
'uses' of
representations. In other words how do we as consumers use the texts
and
artifacts that surround us. And the answer, he suggested, was 'tactically'.
That
is in far more creative and rebellious ways than had previously been
imagined.
He described the process of consumption as a set of tactics by which
the weak
make use of the strong. He characterized the rebellious user (a term
he
preferred to consumer) as tactical and the presumptuous producer (in
which he
included authors, educators, curators and revolutionaries) as strategic.
Setting
up this dichotomy allowed him to produce a vocabulary of tactics rich
and
complex enough to amount to a distinctive and recognizable aesthetic.
An
existential aesthetic. An aesthetic of Poaching, tricking, reading,
speaking,
strolling, shopping, desiring. Clever tricks, the hunter's cunning,
maneuvers,
polymorphic situations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well as warlike.
Awareness of this tactical/strategic dichotomy helped us to name a class
of
producers of who seem uniquely aware of the value of these temporary
reversals
in the flow of power. And rather than resisting these rebellions do
everything
in their power to amplify them. And indeed make the creation of spaces,
channels
and platforms for these reversals central to their practice. We dubbed
their
(our) work tactical media.
Tactical Media are never perfect, always in becoming, performative and
pragmatic, involved in a continual process of questioning the premises
of the
channels they work with. This requires the confidence that the content
can
survive intact as it travels from interface to interface. But we must
never
forget that hybrid media has its opposite its nemesis, the Medialen
Gesamtkunstwerk. The final program for the electronic Bauhaus.
Of course it is much safer to stick to the classic rituals of the underground
and alternative scene. Bu tactical media are based on a principal of
flexible
response, of working with different coalitions, being able to move
between the
different entities in the vast media landscape without betraying their
original
motivations. Tactical Media may be hedonistic, or zealously euphoric.
Even
fashion hypes have their uses. But it is above all mobility that most
characterizes the tactical practitioner. The desire and capability
to combine or
jump from one media to another creating a continuous supply of mutants
and
hybrids. To cross boarders, connecting and re-wiring a variety of disciplines
and always taking full advantage of the free spaces in the media that
are
continually appearing because of the pace of technological change and
regulatory
uncertainty.
Although tactical media include alternative media, we are not restricted
to that
category. In fact we introduced the term tactical to disrupt and take
us beyond
the rigid dichotomies that have restricted thinking in this area, for
so long,
dichotomies such as amateur Vs professional, alternative Vs mainstream.
Even
private Vs public.
Our hybrid forms are always provisional. What counts are the temporary
connections you are able to make. Here and now, Not some vaporware
promised for
the future. But what we can do on the spot with the media we have access
to.
Here in Amsterdam we have access to local TV, digital cities and fortresses
of
new and old media. In other places they might have theater, street
demonstrations, experimental film, literature, photography.
Tactical media's mobility connects it to a wider movement of migrant
culture.
Espousedby the proponents of what Nie Ascherson described as the stimulating
pseudo science of Nomadism. 'The human race say its exponants are entering
a new
epoch of movement and migration. The subjects of history once the settled
farmers and citizens, have become the migrants,the refugees the gastarbeiters,
the asylum seekers, the urban homeless.'
An exemplery example of the tactical can be seen in the work of the
Polish
artist Krzystof Wodiczko who 'perceives how the hordes of the displaced
that now
occupy the public space of cities squares, parks or railway station
concourses
which were once designed by a triumphant middle class to celebrate
the conquest
of its new political rights and economic liberties. Wodiczko thinks
that these
occupied spaces form new agoras. which should be used for statements.
'The
artist', he says, 'needs to learn how to operate as a nomadic sophist
in a
migrant polis.'
Like other migrant media tactitions Wodiczko has studied the techniques
by which
the weak become stronger than the opressors by scatering , by becoming
centreless, by moving fast across the physical or media and virtual
landscapes.
'The hunted mustdiscover the ways become the hunter.'
But capital is also radically deterritorialized. This is why we like
being based
in a building like De Waag, an old fortress in the center of Amsterdam.
We
happily accept the paradox of *centers* of tactical media. As well
as castles in
the air, we need fortresses of bricks and mortar, to resist a world
of
unconstrained nomadic capital. Spaces to plan not just improvise and
the
possibility of capitalizing on acquired advantages, has always been
the preserve
of 'strategic' media. As flexible media tacticians, who are not afraid
of power,
we are happy to adopt this approach ourselves.
Every few years we do a Next 5 Minutes conference on tactical media
from around
the world. Finally we have a base (De Waag) from which we hope to consolidate
and build for the longer term. We see this building as a place to plan
regular
events and meetings, including coming The Next 5 Minutes. We see the
coming The
Next 5 Minutes (in january 1999), and discussions leading up to it,
as part of a
movement to create an antidote to what Peter Lamborn Wilson described,
as 'the
unopposed rule of money over human beings.'
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