nettime Immaterial Civil War
activism in the cultural sector, creative industries and new economy have always remained within these fictional enclosures, making local protests and demanding more cultural welfare or stable contracts. Recently, a more radical demand to counter the exploitation of social creativity involves a basic income for all (see www.euromayday.org). Conversely, Rullani notes that a welfare system transfers both innovation and risk to the state apparatus reinforcing it. However, what Harvey suggests is to take action not only on the level of collective symbolic capital, but also on the level of the parasite exploiting the cultural domain. A difficult point difficult for the radical thought to grasp is that all the immaterial (and gift) economy has a material, parallel and dirty counterpart where the big money is exchanged. See Mp3 and iPod, P2P and ADSL, free music and live concerts, Barcelona lifestyle and real estate speculation, art world and gentrification, global brands and sweatshops. A form of resistance suggested by Harvey in the case of Barcelona is an assault on the myth of the creative city rather than wanna-be- radical reactions that can contribute to making it even more exclusive. If the people want to reclaim that symbolic surplus-value vandalised by a few speculators, all we can imagine is a re- negotiation of the collective symbolic capital. Here comes the option of a grassroots rebranding campaign to undermine the accumulation of symbolic capital and alter the flows of money, tourists and new residents attracted by specific marks of distinction (Barcelona as a tolerant, alternative, open-minded city, etc.). Moreover another field of action suggested here are the specific areas where the art of rent plays (particular districts like the Raval or Poblenou), where the symbolic accumulation could be reset by a less symbolic sabotage. In the case of Barcelona the parasite to spotlight is real estate speculation, but we could apply that insight to a broader scale. Recent forms of resistance have almost always been quite representative and media-oriented, dreaming of the rise of a new cognitariat or of a repoliticization of the collective imagery and its producers, like in the golden 60's. Many activists and artists - like Harvey - are aware of the risk of overcoding of their messages and practices. In the end many protest actions merely succeeded in focusing the attention economy around their target. Traditional boycotts of big brands sometimes turn into free advertisement in their favour. What recent activism and critical thought have never attempted to explore is the material (and economic) dimension connected to the symbolic. Creative workers should start to recognize the surplus-value of imagery they produce beyond their immaterial objects and all the remote political effects of any sign. Leaving the symbolic, entering the economy of the symbolic. We are waiting for a generation of cognitive workers able to mobilise out of the imagery. Matteo Pasquinelli, Barcelona, September 2006 1 Source: www.wikipedia.org/Creative_industries. The DCMS category list consists of production in the following sectors: Advertising, Architecture, Art and Antiques Market, Crafts, Design, Designer Fashion, Film and Video, Interactive Leisure Software, Music, Performing Arts, Publishing, Software and Computer Services, Television and Radio. 2 Source: www.creativecommons.org/about/history 3 M. Tronti, Operai e capitale, Torino: Einaudi, 1971. 4 M. Lazzarato, Puissances de l'invention: La Psychologie économique de Gabriel Tarde contre l'économie politique, Paris: Les empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2002. 5 M. Lazzarato, La psychologie économique contre l'Economie politique, in Multitudes n. 7, 2001, Paris. Extentended Italian version Invenzione e lavoro nella cooperazione tra cervelli in Y. Moulier Boutang (ed.), L'età del capitalismo cognitivo, Verona: Ombre Corte, 2002. Web: multitudes.samizdat.net/La-Psychologie-economique-contre-l.html 6 [translation mine] M. Lazzarato, Invenzione e lavoro nella cooperazione tra cervelli in Y. Moulier Boutang (ed.), L'età del capitalismo cognitivo, op. cit. 7 Ibid. 8 E. Rullani, L. Romano, Il postfordismo. Idee per il capitalismo prossimo venturo, Milano: Etaslibri, 1998; E. Rullani, La conoscenza come forza produttiva: autonomia del post-fordismo, in Capitalismo e conoscenza, Cillario L., Finelli R. (eds), Roma, Manifesto libri, 1998; E. Rullani, Le capitalisme cognitif: du déjà vu?, Multitudes n. 2, 2000, Paris,. 9 E. Rullani, Economia della conoscenza: Creatività e valore nel capitalismo delle reti, Milano: Carocci, 2004. 10 [translation mine] A. Corsani, E. Rullani, Production de connaissance et valeur dans le postfordisme, Multitudes, n. 2, May 2000. Paris. Original Italian version in Y. Moulier Boutang (ed.), L'età del capitalismo cognitivo, op
nettime An Assault on Neurospace (Misguided Directions for)
Paper presented in a draft version at Utopia Reversed in Weimar, May =20 2005. An attempt to map new forms of activism in a post-internet framework. Half theoretical, half gonzo. Reader-friendly pdf recommended: http://www.rekombinant.org/download.php?op=3Dgetitlid=3D6 --- Matteo Pasquinelli An Assault on Neurospace (Misguided Directions for) We are implicit, here, all of us, in a vast physical construct of artificially linked nervous systems. Invisible. We cannot touch it. -- William Gibson, In the visegrips of Dr. Satan 1. A libidinal geology of media spaces What is the field that media art and media activism are meant to =20 occupy today? What is the place of the creative act? =46rom the modern =20= utopias to movie and television imagery into the cyberspace of =20 digital technologies, different kinds of media spaces populate =20 contemporary history and produce each their own characters, =20 conflicts, aesthetics and narrations. Quoting Michel Serres1 we can =20 say today: we inhabit a multiplicity of media spaces. The present =20 paper sketches out a short history of material and immaterial, =20 political and psychic media spaces, wondering with Jameson: why =20 should landscape be any less dramatic than the Event?2. According to =20= Henry Lefebvre (author of the seminal The production of the space3) =20 space is never a neutral background, but always the product of a =20 social conflict. In that sense we want to study its invisible =20 architecture, how our desires are invested in it, how new spaces are =20 opened by new technologies, languages and practices. We would like to =20= apply to media spaces what Lefebvre wrote in 1974, not without being =20 accused of fetishism: Today more than ever, the class struggle is =20 inscribed in space. Today's place of political and artistic action =20 is but a stratification of previous spaces, and we need a sort of a =20 geology of the invisible to write its history. We are aware that the first social impact of a given technology =20 is to modify the sense of place and generate its own collective =20 dimension (see Joshua Meyrowitz's research4). Recent history has been =20= dominated by continuous revolutions and colonizations of the human =20 biosphere by new species of devices and therefore our attention will =20 focus on technological media spaces and how the creative act inhabits =20= them. Witnessing the exodus of radical and innovative energies that =20 had populated cyberspace during the last decade, we wonder whether =20 they are gathering somewhere else. The space issue can never be =20 separated from the field of forces and conflicts generating it: we do =20= not want to use an Euclidean-Cartesian (or better, crypto-scientific) =20= approach as certain media culture does, adopting unconsciously some =20 kind of techno-determinism. Space is always traversed by a vital =20 force, by a desire. According to PoMo philosophers the West is living its libidinal =20 sunset: a continuous haemorrhage emptying bodies and cities and =20 leaving but relics and anaemic simulacra behind it (think about the =20 End of Grand Narratives, but also the crisis of democratic =20 institutions or the death of the artwork as we used to know it). And =20 after the crash of the new economy, crisis of net culture, impasse of =20= the no-war movement, whoever scouts around for new subverting =20 strategies against the post-9/11 new world (dis)order is told by =20 philosophers like Zizek that there is no escape out of the Code. We =20 are all part of homo sucker5: he/she who believes to be the one =20 manipulating indeed is the one being manipulated, he/she who believes =20= to laugh at the dominant Ideology indeed is strengthening its egemony =20= on himself/herself. And so on, from one dialectical impasse to =20 another, exactly like situationists saw no escape from the paranoia =20 of Spectacle or postmodernists from the End of History. In PoMo =20 dialectical toys, on one hand the libidinal energy seems to dissolve =20 itself into the phantasmagoria of consumerism, on the other hand it =20 is condemned to spin around itself in the vicious circles of =20 radicalism. The existential and political crisis of the West, then, =20 is not due to a haemorrhage of vital energies only, but even to their =20= confinement into self-referential circuits and spaces. Therefore we =20 wonder if the debate itself on the western art and politics crisis is =20= a prisoner of categories already evacuated by the energies of =20 history. We want to investigate the spaces where new energies are =20 expressing their existential angst, suspecting that there are new =20 spaces being populated out of the radar of academic philosophy, =20 institutional politics and art criticism. 2. The becoming-net of space Utopias and religious sagas have often been based on the evocation of =20= spaces radically other. Religion, as an intimate semiotic
nettime Operation Serpica Naro. Milan fashion industry spoofed by anti-precarity activists
[ the biggest and funniest hoax in years. enjoy. /m ] Serpica Naro: http://www.serpicanaro.com Press: http://www.serpicanaro.com/press/operazioness_web.zip (pdf di 4 MB) News, pics, video: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/02/306040.html http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/02/305973.html Milan Fashion Week Anti-precarity Action by Ben, 27.02.2005 At the end of Fashion Week in Milan, anti-precarity activists pulled off an ambitious spoof against the fashion industry and the mainstream media. The scene was set earlier in the week when protesters targeted the a cat walk show by Prada and issued a statement that there would be further protests and that the fashion show by the controversial japanese designer Serpica Naro. On Thursday another show was disrupted when eight women breached security and took over the cat walk and issued further statements over the microphone before being kicked out. Milans police contacted the press agent of Serpica Naro and warned them of the threats being made to disrupt her show which was schedualed to take place on saturday evening. The media ran a few stories and the agent for Serpica Naro was interviewed about the prospect of protests by anti-precarity activists. Saturday arrived and preparation for the Serpica Naro show were on the way while in a nearby social centre a gathering of activists swelled to around a hundred. On mass the protesters left the social centre and headed for the location of the fashion show which has been set up in a large marquee in a car park on a bridge over the railway by a large hotel. The police however had no intention of letting the protesters disrupt the fashion show and were present in large nummbers blocking all access to the bridge (the location being almost perfectly choosen to facilitate such protection). There was a stand off but the protesters werer laughthing rather than being intimidated or upset at being prevented from reaching their target. The police were rather confussed - the protesters showed the printed permission showing that they had infact official booked the bridge for an event. Even more confussing, the press agent for Serpica Naro was with the group of protesters, as were a group of models. Eventually the true came out - there was no famous japanese designer by the name of Serpica Naro. The whole fashion show was an elabroate hoax organised by anti-precarity campaigners who were now set to turn the tables on the media and the fashion industry with their own fashion show. The police were slow in accepting their fate and the egg on their face but eventualy stepped aside for the crowd to access the bridge. With cheers the police line fell away and the work began on transforming the marquee into a fashion show. At around 7pm the press began to assemble, still on the whole, unaware of the joke. The show began and Serpica Naros press agent took the mic to and explained the situation to the gathered media. At the same time, a mass of people had marched onto the bridge behind the banner of San Precario - the mythical patron saint of precarious workers. The group and the banner entered the marquee to cheers. The spot lights came on an traversed the cat walk as the show began. Seven models came out one at a time in custumes designed to expose and poke fun out of issues relating to the precarious nature of employement. Cameras flashed at TV cameras jostled for postion as the show continued. After the industrial couture there were additional fashion shows including Sailormars from London - a collection made entirely from waste fabric and trimmings thrown away by the garment industry of east london. The party continued into the night and the organisers of the spoof awaiting the mornings press to see exactly what their had reaped. The total cost of the action was in the region of five thousand euros. With the slogan Precarity is in Fashion, the campaign should hopefully shed a little media light on the issue for this week at least. --- [ Biography. Source: serpicanaro.com ] Tokyo based anglojapanese Serpica Naro has built up a strong reputation as a young designer who has consistently pushed the boundaries of fashion design. She graduated from Bunka Fashion College and is internationally known for innovative use of high tech fabrics and unusual cutting techniques. Her experimentation in areas removed from the mainstream have included the invention of disguise clothing as well as pioneering the use of reflective fabrics and bandages in fashion collections. Her diffusion collections have included the legendary NonConform range, the indispensable work wear of the late 90's, now revered by collectors. Inspired by the fusion of cultures in urban Tokyo and London and its distinctively varied nightlife, Serpica's following within the alternative and fashion industry remains strong. She has recently clothed Chloe Sevigny, Steffen Westmark from The Blue Van, Dot Alison and Lady Laditron amongst others, and has been
nettime Warporn warpunk! Autonomous videopoiesis in wartime
Warpunk is a squadron of B52s throwing libidinal bombs and radical images into the heart of the Western imagery. Full version edited by Arianna Bove and Erik Empson. Web, Pdf, italian and spanish translations here: www.rekombinant.org/article.php?sid=2364 --- Matteo Pasquinelli WARPORN WARPUNK! Autonomous videopoiesis in wartime Grinning monkeys How do you think you can stop war without weapons? The anti-war public opinion that fills squares worldwide and the cosmetic democracy of International Courts stand powerless in front of the raging US military. Against the animal instincts of a superpower reason cannot prevail: a homicidal force can be arrested only by another, stronger force. Everyday we witness such a Darwinian show: history repeating itself through a cruel confrontation of forces, whilst what rests is freedom of speech exercised in drawing-rooms. Pacifists too are accomplices of instinctive forces, because animal aggressiveness is inside us all. How do we express that bestiality for which we condemn armies? Underneath the surface of the self-censorship belonging to the radical left (not only to the conformist majority), it should be admitted publicly that watching Abu Ghraib pictures of pornographic tortures does not scandalize us, on the contrary, it rather excites us, in exactly the same way as the obsessive voyeurism that draws us to videos of 9/11 videos. Through such images we feel the expression of repressed instincts, the pleasure rising again after narcotized by consumerism, technologies, goods and images. We show our teeth as monkeys do, when their aggressive grin looks dreadfully like the human smile. Contemporary thinkers like Baudrillard and Zizek acknowledge the dark side inside Western culture. If 9/11 has been a shock for Western consciousness, Baudrillard puts forward a more shocking thesis: we westerners were to desire 9/11, as the death drive of a superpower that having reached its natural limits, knows and desires nothing more than self-destruction and war. The indignation is hypocrisy; there is always an animal talking behind a video screen. On the videowar battleground Before pulling the monkey out of the TV set, we have to focus on the battleground on which the media match is played. The more reality is an augmentation of mass, personal, and networked devices, the more wars become media wars, even if they take place in a desert. The First Global War started by live-broadcasting the 9/11 air disaster and continued with video-guerrilla episodes: everyday from the Iraqi front we received videos shot by invaders, militiamen, and journalists. Every action in such a media war is designed beforehand to fit its spectacular consequences. Terrorists have learnt all the rules of spectacular conflict while imperial propaganda, much more expert, has no qualms about playing with fakes and hoaxes (for instance the dossiers on weapons of mass destruction). Bureaucratic propaganda wars are a thing of the past. New media has generated guerrilla combat, opening up a molecular front of bottom-up resistance. Video cameras among civilians, weblogs updated by independent journalists, smart-phones used by American soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison: each represents an uncontrollable variable that can subvert the propaganda apparatus. Video imagery produced by television is now interlaced with the anarchic self-organized infrastructure of digital networked media that has become a formidable means of distribution (evidenced by the capillary diffusion of the video of the beheading of Nick Berg). Today's propaganda is used to manage a connective imagery rather than a collective spectacle, and the intelligence services set up simulacra of the truth based on networking technologies. The videoclash of civilizations Alongside the techno-conflict between horizontal and vertical media, two secular cultures of image face each other on the international mediascape. The United States embodies the last stage of videocracy, an oligarchic technocracy based on hypertrophic advertising and infotainment, and the colonization of the worldwide imagery through Hollywood and CNN. Nineteenth century ideologies such as Nazism and Stalinism were intimately linked to the fetishism of the idea-image (as all of western thought is heir to Platonic idealism). Islamic culture on the contrary is traditionally iconoclast: it is forbidden to represent images of God and the Prophet, and usually of any living creature whatsoever. Only Allah is Al Mussawir, he who gives rise to forms: imitating his gesture of creation is a sin (even if such a precept never appears in the Koran). Islam, unlike Christianity, has no sacred iconographic centre. In mosques the Kiblah is an empty niche. Its power comes not from the refusal of the image but from the refusal of its centralizing role, developing in this way a material, anti-spectacular, and horizontal cult. Indeed
nettime Who seized Simona Torretta?
italian movement and political situation are frozen by this kidnapping. counter-detections are reaching the mainstream surface, not of the italian media of course. we hope in liberation: conspiracy (?) theories mean always the worst scenario. /m follow related fallout on: http://news.google.com/news?q=3Dwho+seized+simona+torretta _ _ _ http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1305624,00.html http://www.nologo.org/ Who seized Simona Torretta? This Iraqi kidnapping has the mark of an undercover police operation Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill Thursday September 16, 2004 The Guardian When Simona Torretta returned to Baghdad in March 2003, in the midst of the shock and awe aerial bombardment, her Iraqi friends greeted her by telling her she was nuts. They were just so surprised to see me They said, 'Why are you coming here? Go back to Italy. Are you crazy?' But Torretta didn't go back. She stayed throughout the invasion, continuing the humanitarian work she began in 1996, when she first visited Iraq with her anti-sanctions NGO, A Bridge to Baghdad. When Baghdad fell, Torretta again opted to stay, this time to bring medicine and water to Iraqis suffering under occupation. Even after resistance fighters began targeting foreigners, and most foreign journalists and aid workers fled, Torretta again returned. I cannot stay in Italy, the 29-year-old told a documentary film-maker. Today, Torretta's life is in danger, along with the lives of her fellow Italian aid worker Simona Pari, and their Iraqi colleagues Raad Ali Abdul Azziz and Mahnouz Bassam. Eight days ago, the four were snatched at gunpoint from their home/office in Baghdad and have not been heard from since. In the absence of direct communication from their abductors, political controversy swirls round the incident. Proponents of the war are using it to paint peaceniks as naive, blithely supporting a resistance that answers international solidarity with kidnappings and beheadings. Meanwhile, a growing number of Islamic leaders are hinting that the raid on A Bridge to Baghdad was not the work of mujahideen, but of foreign intelligence agencies out to discredit the resistance. Nothing about this kidnapping fits the pattern of other abductions. Most are opportunistic attacks on treacherous stretches of road. Torretta and her colleagues were coldly hunted down in their home. And while mujahideen in Iraq scrupulously hide their identities, making sure to wrap their faces in scarves, these kidnappers were bare-faced and clean-shaven, some in business suits. One assailant was addressed by the others as sir. Kidnap victims have overwhelmingly been men, yet three of these four are women. Witnesses say the gunmen questioned staff in the building until the Simonas were identified by name, and that Mahnouz Bassam, an Iraqi woman, was dragged screaming by her headscarf, a shocking= religious transgression for an attack supposedly carried out in the name of Islam. Most extraordinary was the size of the operation: rather than the usual three or four fighters, 20 armed men pulled up to the house in broad daylight, seemingly unconcerned about being caught. Only blocks from the heavily patrolled Green Zone, the whole operation went off with no interference from Iraqi police or US military - although Newsweek reported that about 15 minutes afterwards, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away. And then there were the weapons. The attackers were armed with AK-47s, shotguns, pistols with silencers and stun guns - hardly the mujahideen's standard-issue rusty Kalashnikovs. Strangest of all is this detail: witnesses said that several attackers wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms and identified themselves as working for Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister. An Iraqi government spokesperson denied that Allawi's office was involved. But Sabah Kadhim, a spokesperson for the interior ministry, conceded that the kidnappers were wearing military uniforms and flak jackets. So was this a kidnapping by the resistance or a covert police operation? Or was it something worse: a revival of Saddam's mukhabarat disappearances, when agents would arrest enemies of the regime, never to be heard from again? Who could have pulled off such a coordinated operation - and who stands to benefit from an attack on this anti-war NGO? On Monday, the Italian press began reporting on one possible answer. Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, from Iraq's leading Sunni cleric organisation, told reporters in Baghdad that he received a visit from Torretta and Pari the day before the kidnap. They were scared, the cleric said. They told me that someone threatened them. Asked who was behind the threats, al-Kubaisi replied: We suspect some foreign intelligence. Blaming unpopular resistance attacks on CIA or Mossad conspiracies is idle chatter in Baghdad, but coming from Kubaisi, the claim carries unusual weight; he has ties with a range of
nettime Who seized Simona Torretta?
italian movement and political situation are frozen by this kidnapping. counter-detections are reaching the mainstream surface, not of the italian media of course. we hope in liberation: conspiracy (?) theories mean always the worst scenario. /m follow related fallout on: http://news.google.com/news?q=3Dwho+seized+simona+torretta _ _ _ http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1305624,00.html http://www.nologo.org/ Who seized Simona Torretta? This Iraqi kidnapping has the mark of an undercover police operation Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill Thursday September 16, 2004 The Guardian When Simona Torretta returned to Baghdad in March 2003, in the midst of the shock and awe aerial bombardment, her Iraqi friends greeted her by telling her she was nuts. They were just so surprised to see me They said, 'Why are you coming here? Go back to Italy. Are you crazy?' But Torretta didn't go back. She stayed throughout the invasion, continuing the humanitarian work she began in 1996, when she first visited Iraq with her anti-sanctions NGO, A Bridge to Baghdad. When Baghdad fell, Torretta again opted to stay, this time to bring medicine and water to Iraqis suffering under occupation. Even after resistance fighters began targeting foreigners, and most foreign journalists and aid workers fled, Torretta again returned. I cannot stay in Italy, the 29-year-old told a documentary film-maker. Today, Torretta's life is in danger, along with the lives of her fellow Italian aid worker Simona Pari, and their Iraqi colleagues Raad Ali Abdul Azziz and Mahnouz Bassam. Eight days ago, the four were snatched at gunpoint from their home/office in Baghdad and have not been heard from since. In the absence of direct communication from their abductors, political controversy swirls round the incident. Proponents of the war are using it to paint peaceniks as naive, blithely supporting a resistance that answers international solidarity with kidnappings and beheadings. Meanwhile, a growing number of Islamic leaders are hinting that the raid on A Bridge to Baghdad was not the work of mujahideen, but of foreign intelligence agencies out to discredit the resistance. Nothing about this kidnapping fits the pattern of other abductions. Most are opportunistic attacks on treacherous stretches of road. Torretta and her colleagues were coldly hunted down in their home. And while mujahideen in Iraq scrupulously hide their identities, making sure to wrap their faces in scarves, these kidnappers were bare-faced and clean-shaven, some in business suits. One assailant was addressed by the others as sir. Kidnap victims have overwhelmingly been men, yet three of these four are women. Witnesses say the gunmen questioned staff in the building until the Simonas were identified by name, and that Mahnouz Bassam, an Iraqi woman, was dragged screaming by her headscarf, a shocking= religious transgression for an attack supposedly carried out in the name of Islam. Most extraordinary was the size of the operation: rather than the usual three or four fighters, 20 armed men pulled up to the house in broad daylight, seemingly unconcerned about being caught. Only blocks from the heavily patrolled Green Zone, the whole operation went off with no interference from Iraqi police or US military - although Newsweek reported that about 15 minutes afterwards, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away. And then there were the weapons. The attackers were armed with AK-47s, shotguns, pistols with silencers and stun guns - hardly the mujahideen's standard-issue rusty Kalashnikovs. Strangest of all is this detail: witnesses said that several attackers wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms and identified themselves as working for Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister. An Iraqi government spokesperson denied that Allawi's office was involved. But Sabah Kadhim, a spokesperson for the interior ministry, conceded that the kidnappers were wearing military uniforms and flak jackets. So was this a kidnapping by the resistance or a covert police operation? Or was it something worse: a revival of Saddam's mukhabarat disappearances, when agents would arrest enemies of the regime, never to be heard from again? Who could have pulled off such a coordinated operation - and who stands to benefit from an attack on this anti-war NGO? On Monday, the Italian press began reporting on one possible answer. Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, from Iraq's leading Sunni cleric organisation, told reporters in Baghdad that he received a visit from Torretta and Pari the day before the kidnap. They were scared, the cleric said. They told me that someone threatened them. Asked who was behind the threats, al-Kubaisi replied: We suspect some foreign intelligence. Blaming unpopular resistance attacks on CIA or Mossad conspiracies is idle chatter in Baghdad, but coming from Kubaisi, the claim carries unusual weight; he has ties with a range of
nettime Political Games
[bbc on italian creactvism, euro mayday parade, chainworkers and Molleindustria's political videogames. /m] http://www.bbcworld.com/content/template_clickonline.asp? pageid=666co_pageid=3 BBC WORLD Political Games August 26th 2004 Computer Games are not normally particularly thought-provoking. In fact, most gamers would prefer to shut themselves off from the outside world while playing. But in recent years games with a message have emerged, aiming to make those who play them a little more aware. David Reid met up with some Italian activists for whom politics is the name of the game. Steeped in history and wealth, Milan - Italy's commercial capital - seems an unlikely place for a revolution. However, venture down a side street off the tourist map and you can find the Centro Sociale La Pergola. It is a gathering point for a group of Milan's young radicals. Many of them are media professionals for whom the Internet has become an essential tool for political organisation. Alex Foti, of www.chainworkers.org explains why. It's because it's a many-to-many medium, whereas traditional politics is done one-to-many - from Gates to many, from Murdoch to many, from Berlusconi to many and so on. It is a way of harnessing the wisdom and vitality of the crowds. Social research has proved that groups, when confronted with well-defined problems, show a marked interest in them. To find out more about Chainworkers.org, look for the 'Who are we? - in English' graphic on their site. The Internet allows the Centro to organise political demonstrations cheaply and easily. But for activists who can't take to the streets, the organisation's web-site, Molleindustria, or 'soft industry', has offered them the virtual equivalent - an online MayDay parade which allows people to add to the throng and stylise their own demonstrator. Yet it is for video games that Molleindustria is best known. In line with its radical politics, the aim of the games is to highlight what its creators believe is most unfair about global capitalism and the modern labour market. Their online game, Tamatipico, gives players their very own employee whom they have to keep happy to maintain production. Fail to give your worker enough sleep or time in front of the TV and he calls in sick or goes on strike. But ultimately the boss has the upper hand: if you're unhappy with your worker's performance, you can fire him on the spot. Games designer Paulo Pedercini explains Molleindustria's thinking. We don't think it's enough to simply change the graphics' look, or to change the characters in order to give a different message. The real meaning of a video - its ideology - is expressed mainly through the internal rules of the game, its structure and mechanisms. This approach is best illustrated by the Uruguayan group, Newsgaming. They've produced a Shockwave-based game called September 12th. In its frightening logic, players hunt down terrorists. But with clumsy missiles, collateral damage is impossible to avoid. Meanwhile their game Madrid, if it can be called a game, is sombre in its simplicity. The rules require players to click on the candles so they burn brighter. But like all remembrance, the flames eventually fade. The producers of these games are developing a sort of gaming counter-culture, seeing themselves as the latest in a line of political satirists playfully poking fun at passers-by or at those in power. One of the main targets of such games is the United States, because of the internationalisation of its culture and more recently the war against terrorism. But Americans themselves, indeed none other than the Republican Party, are using video games to score political points. The Republicans' version of space invaders is Tax Invaders. It depicts Republican President George W. Bush as the only hope in the battle against high taxes. Video games are normally a form of escape - a way to tune out from the troubles of the world. However, the producers of this new breed of game have shown they can also act as an effective vehicle for political expression. # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime WARPORN WARPUNK! Autonomous videopoiesis in wartime
with weapons as an aesthetical gesture. On the contrary it uses radical images as weapons of legitimate defense. Warpunk uses warporn in a tragic way, overcoming western culture and counter-culture self-censorship. Above all we are afraid of the hubris of American war lords, of the way they face any obstacle trampling written and unwritten rules. How can you stop such a threat opposing a victim imagery, holding up white-painted hands or organising Abu Ghraib-like piles in any demonstration? Victimism is a bad adviser, is the definitive validation of Nazism, is the sheep baa making the wolf more and more indifferent. The global movement is quite a good example of weak thought and reactive culture. Perhaps because it has never developed a thought about tragic, a thought about war, violence and death, on the contrary of what war lords and terrorists did. A tragic thought is the gaze able to dance on any image of the abyss. In the I like to watch video by Chris Korda (download available on www.churchofeuthanasia.org) porn scenes of oral sex and masturbation are mixed with football and baseball matches and with well-known NY911 images. The phallic imagery is brought to the climax: the Pentagon is hit by an ejaculation, multiple erections are turned into the NY911 skyline, the Twin Towers themselves become the object of an architectural fellatio. Such a video is the projection of the lowest instincts of the American society, of the common ground that bind spectacle, war, pornography, sport. It's an orgy of images that shows the real western background. Warpunk is a squadron of B52s throwing libidinal bombs and radical images into the earth of western world imagery. Matteo Pasquinelli matATrekombinantD0Torg # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime Radical machines against the techno-empire
[ dear nettimers, orig. for framemagazine.org and neuro.kein.org /m] rtf + pdf: http://www.rekombinant.org/article.php?sid=2264 Radical machines against the techno-empire. From utopia to network by Matteo Pasquinelli Everyone of us is a machine of the real, everyone of us is a constructive machine. -- Toni Negri Technical machines only work if they are not out of order. Desiring machines on the contrary continually break down as they run, and in fact run only when they are not functioning properly. Art often takes advantage of this property by creating veritable group fantasies in which desiring production is used to short-circuit social production, and to interfere with the reproductive function of technical machines by introducing an element of dysfunction. -- Gilles Deluze, Felix Guattari, L'anti-Oedipe What is knowledge sharing? How does the knowledge economy function? Where is the general intellect at work? Take the cigarettes machine. The machine you see is the embodying of a scientific knowledge into hardware and software components, generations of engineering stratified for commercial use: it automatically manages fluxes of money and commodities, substitutes a human with a user-friendly interface, defends private property, functions on the basis of a minimal control and restocking routine. Where has the tobacconist gone? Sometimes he enjoys free time. Other times the company that owns the chain of distribution has replaced him. In his place one often meets the technician. Far from emulating Marx's Fragment on machines with a Fragment on cigarette machines, this unhealthy example is meant to show how postfordist theories live around us and that material or abstract machines built by collective intelligence are organically chained to the fluxes of the economy and of our needs. Rather than of general intellect we should talk of general intellects. There are multipleforms of collective intelligence. Some can become totalitarian systems, such as the military-managerial ideology of the neocons or of Microsoft empire. Others can be embodied in social democratic bureaucracies, in the apparatus of police control, in the maths of stock market speculators, in the architecture of our cities (every day we walk on concretions of collective intelligence). In the dystopias of 2001 Space Odysseyand The Matrix, the brain of machines evolves into self-consciousness to the point of getting rid of the human. 'Good' collective intelligences, on the other hand, produce international networks of cooperation such as the network of the global movement, of precarious workers, of free software developers, of media activism. They also produce the sharing of knowledge in universities, the Creative Commons open licenses and participative urban planning, narrations and imaginaries of liberation. From a geopolitical perspective we could figure ourselves in one of Philip Dick's sci-fi paranoia: Earth is dominated by one Intelligence, but inside of it a war unfolds between two Organisations of the general intellect, opposed yet intertwined. Used to thetraditionalrepresentativeforms of the global movement we fail to grasp the new productive conflicts. Concerned as we are about theimperial war, we do not appreciate the centrality of this struggle. Following Manuel Castells, we define the movement as aresistance identity that fails to become aprojectidentity. We are not aware of the distance between the global movement and the centre of capitalist production. Paraphrasing Paolo Virno, we say that there already is too much politics in new forms of production for the politics of the movement to still enjoy any autonomous dignity.[1] The events of 1977 (not only in Italy but also in the punk season) sanctioned the end of the 'revolutionary' paradigm and the beginning of that of movement, opening new spaces of conflict in the fields of communication, media and the production of the imagery. These days we are discovering that the 'movement' as a format needs to be overcome, in favour of that of network. Three kinds of action, well separated in the XIXth century - labour, politics and art - are now integrated into one attitude and central to each productive process. In order to work, do politics or produce imaginary today one needs hybrid competences. This means that we all are workers-artists-activists, but it also means that the figures of the militant and the artist are surpassed and that such competences are only formed in a common space that is the sphere of the collective intellect. Since Marx's Grundrisse, the general intellect is the patriarch of a family of concepts that are more numerous and cover a wide range of issues:knowledge-based economy,information
