ART, RESISTANCE AND REBELLION ON THE NET Call to join the cybernetic edition of CompArte “Against Capital and its Walls, All the Arts”
July, 2017 Compañeroas, compañeras and compañeros of the Sixth: Artist and non-artist sisters and brothers [hermanoas, hermanas and hermanos] of Mexico and the world: Avatars, screennames, webmasters, bloggers, moderators, gamers, hackers, pirates, buccaneers and streaming castaways, anti-social network users, reality show antipodes, or whatever-you-call each person on the network, the web, the internet, cyberspace, virtual reality, or whatever-it’s-called: We are convoking you because there are some questions that are nagging at us: Is another internet, that is to say another network, possible? Can one struggle there? Or is that space without precise geography already occupied, captured, coopted, tied, annulled, etceterized? Could there be resistance and rebellion there? Can one make Art on the net? What is that Art like? Can it rebel? Can Art on the net resist the tyranny of codes, passwords, spam as the default search engine, the MMORPGs [massively multiplayer online role-playing games] of the news on social networks where ignorance and stupidity win by millions of likes? Does Art on, by, and for the net trivialize and banalize the struggle, or does it potentiate it and scale it up, or it is “totally unrelated, my friend, it’s art, not a militant cell”? Can Art on the net claw at the walls of Capital and damage it with a crack, or deepen and persist in those that already exist? Can Art on, by, and for the net resist not only the logic of Capital, but also the logic of “distinguished” Art, “real art”? Is the virtual also virtual in its creations? Is the bit the raw material of its creation? Is it created by an individual? Where is the arrogant tribunal that, on the Net, dictates what is and what is not Art? Does Capital consider Art on, by, and for the net to be cyberterrorism, cyberdelincuency? Is the Net a space of domination, domestication, hegemony and homogeneity? Or is it a space in dispute, in struggle? Can we speak of a digital materialism? The reality, both real and virtual, is that we know next to nothing about that universe. But we believe that in the ungraspable geography of the net there is also creation, art. And, of course, resistance and rebellion. You who create art there, do you see the storm? Do you suffer from it? Do you resist? Do you rebel? To try to find some answers, we invite you all to participate… (we were going to put “from any and all geographies”, but we think that the net is the place where geography matters least). Well, we invite you all to construct your answers, to construct or deconstruct them, with art created on, by, and for the net. Some categories in which you can participate (surely there are more, and surely you are already pointing out that the list is short, but, as you know, “what’s missing is yet to come”) are: Animation; Apps; Files and databases; Bio-art and art-science; Cyberfeminism; Interactive film; Collective knowledge, Culture jamming; Cyber-art; Documentary web; Experimental economies and finances; DIY electronics, machines, robots and drones; Collective writing; Geolocation; Graphics and design, creative hacking, digital graffiti, hacktivism and borderhacking; 3D printing; Interactivity; Electronic literature and hypertext; Live cinema, VJ [video-jaying], expanded cinema; Machinima; Memes; Narrative media; Net.art; Net Audio; Mediated performance, dance, and theater; Psycho-geographies; Alternate reality; Augmented reality; Virtual reality; Collaborative networks and translocalities (community design, translocal practices); Remix culture; Software art; Streaming; Tactical media; Telematics and telepresence; Urbanism and online/offline communities; Videogames; Visualization; Blogs, Flogs [Photoblogs] and Vlogs [Videoblogs]; Webcomics; Web series, internet soap operas, and that which you’ve already noted is missing from the list. So our invitation is extended to all those persons, collectives, groups, and organizations, real or virtual, that work from autonomous zones online, who use cooperative platforms, open source, free software, alternative licenses for intellectual property, and the cybernetic etceteras. We welcome the participation of all [todoas, todas and todos] culture-makers, independently of the material conditions in which they work. We invite you also so that different spaces and collectives around the world might show the works in their localities, according to their own customs, ways, interests, and possibilities. Do you already have something somewhere in cyberspace to tell us, show us, share with us, invite us to build collectively? Send us your link to add to the online exhibition hall of this digital CompArte. You don’t yet have a place to upload your material? We can offer it to you, and to the degree we’re able we can archive your material so that it is recorded for the future. In that case we would need you to give us a link to the cloud, cybernetic host, or similar thing of your preference. Or send it to us by email, or upload it to one of our clouds or to FTP. While we are offering to host all the material, because we would like it to be part of the archive of art on the solidaritous net, we are also going to link to other pages or servers or geo-locations because we understand that in the age of global capital, it’s strategic to decentralize. So, as you prefer: If you want to post the information on your websites, with your ways and customs, we can link to it. And if you need space, we are also here to host you. You can write us an email with the information about your participation. For example, the name of the creator(s), title, and the category in which you’d like it to be included, as well as a short description and an image. Also tell us if you have space on the internet and you just need us to post a link, or if you prefer that we upload it to the server. The material that we receive from the moment that the convocation is open will be classified in the different categories according to its (in)discipline. The participations will be made public during the days of the festival so that any individual or collective can navigate, use (or abuse) and share it in their meeting spaces, streets, schools, or wherever they prefer. The participations will be published as posts and links. We will also publish a schedule for direct streaming. The activities will be archived for anyone who doesn’t get a chance to see them live. The email to which you should write to send us your links and to communicate with us is: compas@comparte.digital The page on which the links to the participations will be uploaded, and which will be fully functioning starting August 1 of this year, 2017, is: http://comparte.digital On that page, from August 1 until August 12, we will also broadcast streamings and showings of different artistic participations from local cyberspace in different parts of the world. Welcome, then, to the virtual edition of CompArte for Humanity: “Against Capital and its Walls, All the Arts… Including the Cybernetic Ones” Ok, cheers, and no likes but rather middle fingers up and fuck the walls, delete Capital. From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Sixth Commission, Newbie but On-Line, of the EZLN. (With lots of bandwidth, my friend, at least as far as the waist is concerned -oh yeah, nerd and fat is hot-) July 2017. ______________________________________________ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://post.in-mind.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
