[iDC] A Reflection on the Activist Strategies in the Web 2.0 Era

[Ryan Griffis]

Hi,
Curt's points are well made i think in this discussion, and (with  
Nato) hits the nail on the head in terms of the problems of de  
Certeau-ian notions of tactics as resistance. But i wonder about this  
collapse of a range of behaviors into the smooth container of  
"consumption". Perhaps i don't understand what you're getting at Curt  
with this difference between "tactical media" and "tactical  
consumption? de Certeau was never wholly in the realm of analogy...  
his theoretical understanding of "tactics" was based on realized  
behaviors, not just representations of them - following from  
Lefebvre's "spatial practices". And his ideas about "mediators" in  
the form of "linking agents" were likewise rather concrete regarding  
media - applicable to web2.0 "social software", but also to zines and  
pamphlets (see _The Capture of Speech and Other Political Writings_,  
1997) But again, maybe i'm misunderstanding something?
Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams' earlier ideas of media reception  
and production are i think of value here (and too often left out,  
IMHO) especially in bridging the political gap between the media  
apparatus and content in a way that doesn't merely merge them, but  
binds them in a dialectic.
Brian Holmes' short essay from a few years back (that i just  
discovered in his more recent "Unleashing the Collective Phantoms"  
book), "Liar's Poker" on the contradictions within aesthetic  
"activist" practices is worth a read. Opening with the line "when  
people talk about politics in an artistic frame, they're lying," it  
goes after the "performative codes" (to use Hall's term) at play in  
"political art."
http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft.php?id=34&pos=1&textid=1276&lang=en
It ends with:
"The rising fortunes of interventionist art, the multiplication of  
exhibitions devoted to sociopolitical issues and activist campaigns,  
are proof enough that something political is at stake in the artistic  
field. And the stakes keep rising, as artists, curators and critics  
vie for radicality, relevancy, effectiveness and meaning. But one  
must constantly question what kind of currency we\'ll get when the  
chips are cashed in...
What is ultimately at stake is the very definition of autonomy, which  
can no longer be established in the sphere of representation alone.
Right now, the greatest symbolic innovations are taking place in self- 
organization processes unfolding outside the artistic frame. And it  
is from the reference to such outside realms that the more  
concentrated, composed and self-reflective works in the museum take  
their meaning. The only way not to impoverish those works, or to  
reduce them to pure hypocrisy, is to let our highest admiration go  
out to the artists who call their own bluffs - and dissolve, at the  
crisis points, into the vortex of a social movement."
Reading Brian's essay reminded me of a Raymond Williams statement  
from "The Long Revolution" that I has always stuck in my head:
"To put on to Time, the abstraction, the responsibility for own  
active choices is to suppress a central part of our experience."
Best,
ryan