Re: [-empyre-] Demand Nothing, Occupy Everything? California is burning ....
Many thanks to Brooke Singer (US), Ricardo Dimenguez (US) and our subscribers whose threads on viral communication, trans-border activism and physical movement practice were expecially relevant to the activities so pronounced in the state of California this past week. I was working with an undergraduate student yesterday who was complaining that he and his peers participate in activism virtually online and after reading Malcolm X he was if that was not a complacent place and space to exist in. I was happy to be able to show him the links that Ricardo, Ashley, David and Cara shared with us this past week. Week #4 on Viral Economies and Hactivating Design we welcome Trebor Scholz who organized the recent conference in NYC, The Internet as Playground and Factory and Machiko Kusahara who attended a recent conference here at Cornell University on Networks and Mobilities. Their respective biographies are below. After their introductory remarks I'm hoping that guests and contributors from previous weeks will join our subscribers in closing out the November discussion. Week # 4 Trebor Scholz (US) and Machiko Kusahara (Japan) Trebor Scholz teaches in the Department of Culture and Media Studies at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts in New York City. He graduated from the Art Academy in Dresden (Germany), University College London (UK), The Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, the Hochschule für Kunst und Gestaltung in Zürich (Switzerland) and The University of Plymouth (UK). Over the last two years, Scholz' work was comprised of writing, teaching, and conference organization. Dr. Trebor Scholz' research interests focus on social media, especially in education, art, and media activism (specifically outside the United States and Europe). His artwork was shown at several Biennials and he has contributed numerous book chapters and articles in the area of Internet Studies. Scholz presented at many dozen conferences worldwide. In 2004, he founded the Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC). Its mailing list, which he moderates, is one of the leading discussion forums in network culture. Autonomedia published The Art of Free Cooperation of which he is the co-editor in 2007. Scholz convened several major conferences including Kosova: Carnival in the Eye of the Storm, Free Cooperation (with G. Lovink), Share Widely, and Situated Technologies (with M. Shepard and O. Khan) and The Internet as Playground and Factory (2009). He is currently working on a monograph and an anthology on digital labor. http://digitallabor.org/ Machiko Kusahara is a scholar in media art, digital media culture and media history who is a professor at Waseda University, Tokyo, and currently a visiting scholar at the Art/Sci Center at UCLA. She came into the field of digital media in early 1980s as a curator, critic and theorist in computer graphics, co-curating and writing on the SIGGRAPH Traveling Art Show in Tokyo in 1985. Since then she curated, juried, organized and wrote internationally in digital art. She was also involved in launching the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo. Her major publications in English include: Telerobotics and Art -Presence, Absence, and Knowledge in Telerobotics Art (The Robot in the Garden, MIT Press 2000), From Ukiyo-e to Mobile Phone Screens - A Japanese Perspective (Migrating Images, House of World Cultures 2004), They Are Born to Play: Japanese Visual Entertainment from Nintento to Mobile Phones (Art Inquiry, 2004), Panorama Craze in Meiji Japan (Panorama Phenomenon 2006), Device Art: A New Approach in Understanding Japanese Contemporary Media Art (MediaArtHistories 2007), Device Art: Media Art Meets Mass Production (Digital by Design, 2008). Currently Prof. Kusahara's major activities are on two related fields: Device Art and Japanese history of visual entertainment from the 19th century. Device Art is a project that involves ten artists and researchers in Japan that focuses on developing and theorizing a new form of media art that connects art, technology, design and products, with five-year grant from JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency). The interplay between art, technology, culture and society has been the theme of her research. During this academic year Prof. Kusahara will be organizing Gadget OK!, a Device Art Symposium at UCLA. Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Demand Nothing, Occupy Everything? California is burning ....
Hola Ashley and all, Thanks so very much for the report. I am quiet proud of the actions and only wish our deep science sleep at UCSD would awaken to the grids that are happening between databodies and real bodies at the other UCs. Not sure what sort of fires would have to occur at my institution to have the students (sans tenured communities) to activate. Resistance on the Network: Disconnect! Take the Streets! Resistance on the Streets: Reconnect! Tweet them OUT! Abrazos, Ricardo Just like anything else it seems that they way a viral network is organized and implemented corresponds directly to its efficacy. I think here of Zach's proposed GRID project. The movement from one GRID to the next produces new GRIDs. It is the movement between networks that produces the change. It seems that in the case of the UC protests the efficacy of the system depends on successful movements between different networks. It is the movements between online networks such as email lists to online petitions, between different physical networks such as departmental meetings to banners hanging outside of buildings, and between online and physical networks such as buildings occupiers to their twitter followers. This is what has felt like the viral aspect of the system. In solidarity, Ashley On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Christiane Robbins c...@mindspring.commailto:c...@mindspring.com wrote: Hi Marco, Micha, everyone The irony implicit in your statement re: this situation begs for further explication + analysis: It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on strike is somehow out of fashion. And ... to add to the circulating narratives and links - I found it curious that the Chronicle for HE published this - http://chronicle.com/blogPost/California-Is-Burning/8915/?sid=atutm_source=atutm_medium=en Chris On Nov 19, 2009, at 8:34 AM, Marco Deseriis wrote: Hi Micha, yes, thank you for sharing those precious links. At UCSD, very few students, faculty and staff that I've talked to knew about or support the strike do. Myself and a handful of other faculty, staff and students are striking, but is the very idea of a strike not viral but more based in monolothic constituencies and factory models of labor? No, I just think that after 3-4 decades of resting on dreams of unabated growth Americans (and Californians in particular) need to be re-educated and reawakened as to what it means to lose one's job, as to what it means to fight for it, and what it means to risk of losing your job for defending it. So thank you for taking on this rather humongous task ;-) To me it is not a matter of virality but of culture. People in Latin America, Asia, Europe and all over the world keep going on strike for defending their jobs, demanding higher wages, security on the workplace, etc. It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on strike is somehow out of fashion. In actual fact, there exists a growing global movement to defend public education, and to build an entirely different model of knowledge sharing. You are probably familiar with this site: http://www.edu-factory.org which reports the news of 15 arrests at UCLA: http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=240:students-arrested-at-uclacatid=34:strugglesItemid=53 and whose picture eloquently show the response of public authorities to this growing mobilization. Perhaps the spreading occupations are more viral? I wonder about this as I start going on strike tomorrow and join actions at UCSD... Well, it is not up to me to say that strikes and occupations are just two sides of the same coin. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.aumailto:empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre C h r i s t i a n e R o b b i n s - J E T Z T Z E I T S T U D I O S - ... the space between zero and one ... Walter Benjamin LOS ANGELESISAN FRANCISCO The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.aumailto:empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre -- Ashley Ferro-Murray MA/PhD Student Dept. Theater, Dance Performance Studies University of California, Berkeley -- Ricardo Dominguez Associate Professor Hellman Fellow Visual Arts Department, UCSD http://visarts.ucsd.edu/ Principal
Re: [-empyre-] Demand Nothing, Occupy Everything? California is burning ....
Thank you to everyone for the comments and news on the strikes on the UC campuses. For the last several years, besides attending live events here in Milwaukee, I've found that increasingly effective is the online sharing and signing of petitions; many of these work, or, beginning by spreading slowly through time, have created and do create generative updated versions of the petitions and gain ever more force as more and more people see that they are actually effective and begin signing themselves. I think since Reagan’s first term and almost first action as president—smashing the air controllers’ union—unions have become not just physically badly damaged in the USA, but the word itself has been distorted thro8ugh nonstop propaganda and become now a “dirty” word and concept for a great many persons. The back and forth supporting movement of smashing unions physically and economically—by physically I mean subversion by firing union workers and hiring much cheaper and less trained non union workers—this movement is supported at the same time by the attack on the language which makes unions appealing and strong sounding and converting the word into something smacking of both the ridiculous and the defeatist, something anachronistic and “a failure.” “Everyone knows they don’t work-=-just look how they are disappearing!” The words are supported by the actions and ice vers. I mentioned ridicule—one of the most effective tactics that Regan introduced was ridicule and cerataintn tones of voice which are like patronizing stabs in the back masked by a nice paternalist flashing Hollywood teeth. Since Reagan began this trend, ridicule has increasingly been used to drive out of “being with it” just about any “lefty” term you can think of. Another factor has been that since 9/11 I’ve noticed that academics as well as many others in different jobs and work sectors—are afraid to sing petitions because it might affect their jobs. One might be easily gotten rid of by a petition being used to show that Professor or student so –and-so is a “Jihad sympathizer” or “critical of Israel” or critical of the US policies aboard whether they be torture, rendition flights, drone bombings, support of Apartheid, and so forth. Now that the economic crises has made jobs even more precious, one may see even more of a drop off of certain sectors being willing to risk anything by singing a petition which can be pulled out and used as “evidence” at any time. The flipside of the viral techniques has been demontsrated by the Israeli State’s policy announced first last November and then stated more firmly and with greater scope in February of this year by then Foreign Minister tip Livni. This policy is what Minister Livni called “an assault” on Facebook my space you tube, the blogosphere –an assault on any sites which seem to be “critical of Israel” or remotely sympathetic to the Palestinian people’s cause. The idea is to wipe out such sites, or, to censor their statements, videos, and fotos and replace them with heavily pro-Israeli images, slogans, propaganda, posters and altered maps. This is viral “striking’ in the “assault” sense of the term for sure—and conducted by a State with the fourth largest military in the world to back it up if need be. The flip side of this tactic is to also cut off the electricity of the “other side’ so that they cannot conduct any sort of retaliatory campaign of their own. Increasing an anti-viral tactic has been just this—to turn off, cut off, bomb out, the electricity grids of large areas, and in this “deleted zone” undertake step two of the “extinguishing of light” which is the mass slaughter of civilians when they are “blacked out” from the gaze of the world. Rwanda was the first such example undertaken—before the massacres, the area designated for them was stripped of any communication with the outside world. All electronic contacts were severed, al telephone grids, electric grids etc were chopped apart and then in the deleted zones, the human beings were chopped down and deleted from existence on the ground. This tactic has been used to varying degrees in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Lebanon and Palestine, specifically Gaza, most recently to a greater extent than ever during the several years now siege by the assaults on the ground and electronically via deletion in January of this year. In the USA, this tact has been and is being used against the American Indians on the great majority of extremely poor rezervations. The living conditions and medical care of the American Indians is now tied with Haiti as the worst in the Western hemisphere. One effective tactic in this new form of eugenics/genocide is the lack of health care not only as care but as information—the excuse that is given for the total lack of information received by the Indians is that they live often n areas too remote for the Bureaucrats in charge locally to drag their asses into the car to drive
Re: [-empyre-] Demand Nothing, Occupy Everything? California is burning ....
Hi Marco, Micha, everyone The irony implicit in your statement re: this situation begs for further explication + analysis: It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on strike is somehow out of fashion. And ... to add to the circulating narratives and links - I found it curious that the Chronicle for HE published this - http://chronicle.com/blogPost/California-Is-Burning/8915/?sid=atutm_source=atutm_medium=en Chris On Nov 19, 2009, at 8:34 AM, Marco Deseriis wrote: Hi Micha, yes, thank you for sharing those precious links. At UCSD, very few students, faculty and staff that I've talked to knew about or support the strike do. Myself and a handful of other faculty, staff and students are striking, but is the very idea of a strike not viral but more based in monolothic constituencies and factory models of labor? No, I just think that after 3-4 decades of resting on dreams of unabated growth Americans (and Californians in particular) need to be re- educated and reawakened as to what it means to lose one's job, as to what it means to fight for it, and what it means to risk of losing your job for defending it. So thank you for taking on this rather humongous task ;-) To me it is not a matter of virality but of culture. People in Latin America, Asia, Europe and all over the world keep going on strike for defending their jobs, demanding higher wages, security on the workplace, etc. It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on strike is somehow out of fashion. In actual fact, there exists a growing global movement to defend public education, and to build an entirely different model of knowledge sharing. You are probably familiar with this site: http://www.edu-factory.org which reports the news of 15 arrests at UCLA: http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=240:students-arrested-at-uclacatid=34:strugglesItemid=53 and whose picture eloquently show the response of public authorities to this growing mobilization. Perhaps the spreading occupations are more viral? I wonder about this as I start going on strike tomorrow and join actions at UCSD... Well, it is not up to me to say that strikes and occupations are just two sides of the same coin. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre C h r i s t i a n e R o b b i n s - J E T Z T Z E I T S T U D I O S - ... the space between zero and one ... Walter Benjamin LOS ANGELESISAN FRANCISCO The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Demand Nothing, Occupy Everything? California is burning ....
Good morning from Berkeley, I wasn't participating in yesterday's discussion about viral networks/UC protests because I was standing in the rain with close to 2,000 Berkeley protesters while we waited outside of Wheeler Hall as friends and colleagues occupied the building. So, please forgive me if I am returning to an already closed conversation, but allow me to indulge in a reflection on yesterday's successful and widespread strike activities. At Berkeley there are four groups representing different populations of the campus. As far as I know, there are two faculty groups, one graduate student group and one undergraduate group. With representatives from each group serving on all other committees, these four groups are in close communication and have used what is being referred to here as grassroots activism to successfully hold a 5,000 person walk-out in September, several events in October and a three day strike this week. Starting from the four groups email is used to communicate with departmental representatives who then communicate with departments. Whether organization is departmental, building wide, or committee based, the word hasn't stopped there. The fact that the students involved in yesterday's building occupation were communicating with fellow organizers and activists via email, twitter and facebook seems significant. Of course there are debates regarding whether or not viral networks and online activism have replaced the need for physical protest. It is, after all, easier to sign an online petition (of which there have been many connected to the UC Strikes) than it is steer clear of office resources for three days, or stand in the rain for hours on end. I am sure that we are all well aware of examples supporting both sides of that argument. Still, twitter and facebook updates kept a good deal of protesters mobilized yesterday. Consistent updates from the inside of Wheeler assured a wet crowd that their support was indeed necessary, building occupiers' view from the top floors of Wheeler Hall were shared through twitter accounts to help students spread evenly around the building to block police movement, and facebook updates alerted crowds immediately when arrests were taking place and how to best continue supporting the occupation efforts. Just like anything else it seems that they way a viral network is organized and implemented corresponds directly to its efficacy. I think here of Zach's proposed GRID project. The movement from one GRID to the next produces new GRIDs. It is the movement between networks that produces the change. It seems that in the case of the UC protests the efficacy of the system depends on successful movements between different networks. It is the movements between online networks such as email lists to online petitions, between different physical networks such as departmental meetings to banners hanging outside of buildings, and between online and physical networks such as buildings occupiers to their twitter followers. This is what has felt like the viral aspect of the system. In solidarity, Ashley On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Christiane Robbins c...@mindspring.comwrote: Hi Marco, Micha, everyone The irony implicit in your statement re: this situation begs for further explication + analysis: It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on strike is somehow out of fashion. And ... to add to the circulating narratives and links - I found it curious that the Chronicle for HE published this - http://chronicle.com/blogPost/California-Is-Burning/8915/?sid=atutm_source=atutm_medium=en Chris On Nov 19, 2009, at 8:34 AM, Marco Deseriis wrote: Hi Micha, yes, thank you for sharing those precious links. At UCSD, very few students, faculty and staff that I've talked to knew about or support the strike do. Myself and a handful of other faculty, staff and students are striking, but is the very idea of a strike not viral but more based in monolothic constituencies and factory models of labor? No, I just think that after 3-4 decades of resting on dreams of unabated growth Americans (and Californians in particular) need to be re-educated and reawakened as to what it means to lose one's job, as to what it means to fight for it, and what it means to risk of losing your job for defending it. So thank you for taking on this rather humongous task ;-) To me it is not a matter of virality but of culture. People in Latin America, Asia, Europe and all over the world keep going on strike for defending their jobs, demanding higher wages, security on the workplace, etc. It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on
