Critical
Art Ensemble
is a collective of five artists of various specializations
dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, radical politics,
and critical theory.
Tactical Media - Next Five
Minutes 1997
Traditional practitioners of anti-authoritarian
resistance tend to dwell on the micro-phenomena of tactics. This is
understandable, since tactical activity has many of the
characteristics that are valued by this variety of activist. Tactics
are immediate; they address a particular real space situation; they
are grounded in a sense of "community;" they can deliver moments of
empirical freedom; and their ad hoc nature prevents them from
transforming and solidifying into a structure of authority. At the
same time, the very elements which make tactics a focal point for
some resistant groups also reveal the weakness of overemphasizing
this particular category of struggle. Real space tactics alone tend
to remove a situation from the continuity of space and time, and
treat the event as an independent unit. The problem here is that
tactical planning and activity in real space is far too localized and
limited. Consequently, the apparatus of punishment has easily
designed countertactics not only to contain a resistant situation,
but also to control the representation of the event after it has come
to an end. Pancapitalism, using a strategy of continuous
counterinsurgency, has constructed a sight machine that allows not
only for the total visualization of its theater of operations, but
also facilitates either a rapid distribution of its interpretation of
the meaning of a given situation, or an accelerated reduction of an
event into invisibility. Resistance thus becomes imprisoned in a
particular moment in time, and locked into a particular area in
space. The corporate state clearly understands that contained
localized activity, even in aggregate form, does not affect general
policy construction and deployment. CAE believes that no one
understands the unfortunate condition of traditional tactics and
their fetishization better than radical electronic media activists,
artists, and theorists. Hence, these groups must ask: What are we to
do now? Resistance in the age of the virtual requires extreme
reorganization, if it is to be successful at this crucial moment in
history. All the tactics of the past must be reviewed with an
intensely skeptical eye, and in addition, all other elements of
struggle must also be reconsidered. The radical left cannot afford to
focus solely on tactics in real or even in virtual space, nor can it
act as if tactical planning and activity exist in a vacuum. Strategy,
logistics, resistant social organization, and even radical
subjectivity itself should all be re-evaluated. The reason for such
extreme measures is clear: The radical left is losing the means to
appropriate, distort, or even blind the vision of the sight machine;
however, on the virtual battlefields of the new media apparatus,
resistant powers are finding the means for visual disruption, as well
as the methods for disturbing the construction and deployment of
authoritarian policy. Through the use of critique, resisters can map
the virtual terrain, and from this information, new tactics of
resistance can be deduced. However, possibilities are also needed
other than reactive tactics filtered through instrumental aims.
Tactics which spring from nonrational, nonutilitarian, perverse, and
unreasonable consciousness, as well as from absurd and delinquent
social currents, should also be investigated with equal vigor
.
BwO:
BwO NOW. BwO NOW. BwO NOW. Imperfect flesh is the
foundation of screenal economy. The frenzy of the electronic sign
oscillates between perfection and excess, production and
counter-production, panic and hysteria. BwO now. The electronic body
is the perfect body. The electronic body is the complete body. It
seduces all who see it into the bliss of the surface. It reinscribes
the flesh as the sight of the abject, the disgusting. BwO now. The
electronic body is the perfect body. The electronic body is a body
without organs. It is both self and mirrored self. The electronic
body does not decay, it does not need the plastic surgeon's scalpel,
lipo-suction, make-up or deodorant. The electronic body cannot
suffer, not physiologically, not psychologically, not sociologically.
It is not conscious of separation. The electronic body seduces all
who see it into the bliss of counter-production by offering the hope
of a bodily unity that will transcend consumption. But the poor
pathetic organic body, always in a state of becoming. Perhaps if it
consumed just one more product, it too could become whole, perhaps it
too could become a body without organs, sliding in screenal space.
But the electronic body oscillates between panic perfection and
hysterical decay. The electronic body reinscribes the flesh as the
site of the abject. At any moment the organic body could fracture and
its surface could decay with sickness, ooze and the squirting of
anti-social fluids. The electronic body has consistently shown the
splitting of skin, the eruption of pus, the projecting of vomit, the
spilling of guts. Any sign of the organic in screenal space exists
only to instill fear, contempt and embarrassment. BwO dreams of a
body that never existed. BwO dreams of a body that never existed. BwO
dreams of a body that never existed. Bwo Now.
Deep spectacle began with the advent of urban planning in the 19th
Century, when all the architectural micro-phenomena of spectacle were
networked into a unified manifestation of bourgeois ideology. Shortly
after this development, spectacle took increasingly huge leaps
forward by incorporating generations of electronic mass media
(telegraph, radio, cinema, television) into the visual apparatus.
When the rapid growth and the insidious function of the spectacle
were finally strategically identified and attacked in the 60s, an
understandable error was made in assessing the overall use of the
media apparatus. Rather than being developed as a great homogenizer
of populations, it was constructed as a means to narrowcast
specialized identities to various social aggregates, as well as to
articulate social boundaries beneficial to a multinational ruling
class, and to generate nationalist illusions of welfare capitalism.
On the other hand, the early critics of spectacle were quite correct
when they argued that the media apparatus is the primary means of
mediating social relationships. The response to this development
emerged in the form of the tactics of subversion. The power of
counterspectacle to subvert authoritarian representation rests on
three strategies: The first intends to reveal the exploitive
ideological imperatives that the spectacle masks, the second intends
to reveal all that spectacle erases, and the third intends to
collapse spectacle into its own meaningless rhetoric. Very quickly,
tactics for subverting spectacularized representation surfaced in
forms such as detournment, appropriation, radical juxtapositioning,
conceptualism, and plagiarism. These methods were combined with
research into alternative means of distribution, such as guerrilla
and invisible theater and graphics, pirate radio and television, and
even the hostile appropriation or jamming of state media distribution
centers. It was soon realized (after '68) that the successes of such
actions were temporary, because the power of the spectacle to
resituate itself made it possible for it to reconsume subversive
practice, and because of the strong corporate hold on distribution
networks. A realization quickly emerged that resistant tactics had to
continually evolve to remain disruptive, and that the idea of
achieving social utopia had to be surrendered once and for all. To
complicate the problem further, just as the strategies of subversion
began to bloom, spectacle lost its place as the key to power. It was
rapidly reduced to a hollow regional garrison-a mere trace of the
antiquated notion of power as presence. A new decentralized
communication apparatus arose, made possible by the ascendancy of
computer and satellite technology, that allows multinational power to
retreat into absence, where it is free from the theater of subversive
operations because it can be everywhere yet nowhere simultaneously.
From this moment on, the tactics of subversion have survived
primarily to support virtual strategies and tactics that have yet to
be fully developed.
Cyborg as Bureaucrat:
You know, I always thought technology was going to
make my life easier. I'm told that the dawn of the information age is
upon me, and that information technology will be designed for premium
convenience. But whose convenience? Not mine. Convenience really
means "efficiency," and that always means more work. I turned in my
typewriter for a powerful computer believing that I would have more
free time to spend with family and friends. Then the office raised
the rate of production. Not only do I have to work harder, but I have
to use my holiday time to attend computer classes in order to keep up
with the latest software. The corporate futurologists talk of
evolution, revolution, new horizons, and global vision. Well, their
global vision is blinding me. My computer has a program that counts
my keystrokes. It watches me all the time, and tells me when I am not
working hard enough. It's like the computer is my boss. Every time I
leave my computer, I return to find the message "insufficient data
entry" posted on the screen. What's really frightening is that I've
actually begun to care. I hesitate to leave my work station for any
reason. I question, and even ignore, my own needs and desires, and
instead concern myself with the demands of my computer. Perhaps if I
go on-line I'll find someone to talk to, and to commiserate with. But
this technology connects me to a thousand voices I cannot hear. I
reach out and touch no one. Sure, it's a world without borders but
it's a world without people too. I am seperated from others more than
I've ever been. Text on a screen is poor company. This new day isn't
exactly how I imagined it. It certainly isn't how the corporations
described it. They just want to plug me in, and I can't unplug
myself. I'm hooked-up, inserted, unfulfilled, but ready to go. Just
another office drone. Perhaps the only release is self-sabotage--to
short-circuit the fear that keeps me tied to my machine. I hack
myself to reestablish the boundaries between my flesh and their
technology.
The resistant situation has deteriorated, and not just on the
sociological level. Since the emergence of the virtual sweat shop,
individuals caught in the labor machine have experienced a sharp
increase in the intensity of alienation in their everyday lives. The
corporate desire to attach the worker or the bureaucrat to the tools
of production is certainly nothing new; however, what has changed is
the design of the machines to which the worker can be attached. The
current generation of machines now simulate authoritarian
consciousness. Not only is the boundary between flesh and machine
continuing to erode, but organic consciousness is being invaded and
colonized by alien mental structures. The sight machine not only
scans the surface of the body, but it also penetrates the mind, and
infects it with data-driven consciousness and machinic intelligence.
In support of this development, the spectacular wing of the sight
machine barrages populations with seductive double-edged promises of
convenience, body reconfiguration, new spirituality, re-emergent
community, and democratic access to knowledge and speech. Thus far,
this spectacular media campaign has managed to convince increasing
numbers of individuals that technology exists solely for their
liberation. But anyone who has spent even a moment at a virtual
workstation knows that these machines were not designed or deployed
out of any intention to liberate, but as a means to increase control
of an individual (while simultaneously making considerable profit)
through increased mediation of social interaction, and by implanting
mechanisms of interior self-surveillance. The consequence is an
intensified form of social alienation that conjures feelings of
loneliness and separation so profound that consciousness is looped
back into now-purified cycles of production and consumption. Having
lost the primary pleasures of sexuality, sociability, mind
alteration, and other nonutilitarian possibilities, individuals have
no choice but to engage in work (alienated production) and in forced
leisure (asocial consumption) in a futile attempt to find pleasure
and self-satisfaction. This situation has been met first and foremost
by the tactics of refusal. In its most naive form, refusal of the
cyborg mind-meld manifests itself in reactive and desperate forms of
neo-Luddism, such as smashing televisions or blindly crippling
computers. At a more sophisticated level of resistance are the
tactics of selective refusal; that is, some develop a philosophy of
technology that allow them to separate the more utopian
characteristics from those detrimental to individual autonomy, and
then they act accordingly. Representation to assist individuals in
this consciousness-raising process is one of the most significant
contributions that producers of counter-spectacle can presently make.
The final level, which is limited due to inequitable distribution of
education, hardware, and software, is not negating, but affirming.
Those with the ability to do so should continue to imagine and create
hardware, software, and networking strategies that resist, to the
highest degree possible, the pancapitalist imperatives of control,
consumption, and production. The difficulties of achieving such ends
cannot be overstated, but such is the task for a new generation of
visionaries.
Data Body:
I am not real. I am redundant. I am simulation
living in physical space. My function is to mediate the intersection
between information and production. What is real? Real is the
information that validates my existence as cyborg. Real is my data
body--the flow of files which represent me. Correction. I represent
them. The data is the original; I am the counterfeit. Look at all
files that intersect my organic subjectivity: Credit files, travel
files, education files, medical files, employment files,
communication files, political files, tax files, investment files,
consumption files, files onto infinity. Were it not for these digital
abstractions, I would have no existence in the realm of the social.
These files explain to others the nature of my social role and
cultural identity. As an individual my input is considered
contaminated. Desire is to be programed into my life by those who
control my data body. My being-in-the-world is reduced to the
political and economic result of my daily activities. All my actions
are carefully surveilled and statistically scrutinized to make
certain that I follow the commands of my program, and that I do not
exceed the program's parameters. When I came to this territory, I was
stopped by an official at the airport. He took my passport, and
scanned it. I cannot say specifically what he discovered, but I am
sure that my data body assured him that I, this organic mass before
you, was permitted to cross geographic borders. Nothing I might say
was of the least significance to the official. Cyborgs have no common
language. But we can interface with the data body, so we are never
alone. Is this not better living through technology?
The appearance of the mature form of the data body is an indicator of
two problems that plague resistant culture. The first is a
micro-level problem, of concern to all people (whether they know it
or not) in technologically saturated societies: Now that the data
body has appropriated and defines one's social being in the world,
how can control of this virtual twin be returned to the individual so
he or she can again have the sovereignty to construct and control
personal representation in the realm of the social? The second
concern is a macro-level problem: If the data body is indicative of
an absent virtual power which controls information and constructs
social policy for purposes of domination, how can this virtual power
be confronted (made present) and challenged by resistant forces?
There is no choice but to meet this two pronged menace with the
tactics of direct attack. Unfortunately, such tactics are severely
underdeveloped. Much like the tactics of refusal, electronic
resistance seems to be reactive and blindly destructive. Typical of
this situation are offenses such as electronic assassination
(electronic attacks on the data bodies of offensive individuals),
random release of viruses, idiosyncratic security breeches, and other
adolescent pranks. While these actions do offer the perpetrators
moments of amusement, they too often hurt the undeserving, or alert
members of the elite virtual class to weaknesses in their security
systems, which in turn helps strengthen virtual bunkers.
Individualized attacks should focus on reappropriating one's own data
body using the tactic of data corruption or deletion. This way the
individual can maintain relative control his or her own virtual
representation. The tactics needed to attack the policies and
practices of the elite virtual class are much different. Here, there
is a profound need for informed strategic action. This means that
first, the elite must be returned to sedentary status (as opposed to
its current nomadic status), and second, that something of value to
virtual power must be appropriated and withheld. CAE suggests that
nomadic power can be found in presence in the virtual environments of
cyberspace, and second, that the object of value to be appropriated
is vital information (such as research and development data bases),
or the conduits of information transfer themselves. Without total
information access, or deprived of full velocity information
transfer, the networks of vision and production collapse under the
weight of their own inertia. In the end, it will be cheaper for
virtual power to negotiate its policies rather than for it to sustain
unrelenting hits on its communication system. Resistant forces no
longer require violence nor destruction to obtain their goals. All
that is needed are courageous virtual activists with the skills to
slow the velocity of the system. This is the heart of the tactics of
electronic civil disobedience.
Référence: http://mailer.fsu.edu/~sbarnes/lectures/script.html