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

[Curt Cloninger]

Thanks Lucia,

I'm admittedly hijacking and redefining what de Certeau strictly 
means by "strategy." I think artists can and do practice a form of 
"weak" strategic production. I think about Shepard Fairey evolving 
from this work ( 
http://blogrivet.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/andre_the_giant.jpg ) 
to this work ( 
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2247/2231258092_43d8e672b5.jpg , 
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3319/3210412136_b4918e6bea.jpg?v=0  )
). Not that Fairey is a very good example of someone purposefully 
controlling his own influence, but his influence has shifted from 
tactical to strategic.

I'm not proposing a leftist utopian revolution, but I am goading for 
something beyond "making due" with perpetual "resistance." I'm 
wanting to talk about something in the middle of these two extremes 
(or something that rapidly moves back and forth between them). I 
agree with Ryan's post regarding "the matter of concern that such 
tactics are supposed to address." To simply be tactically resistant 
doesn't de facto constitute efficacy (or radicality, or interesting 
art).

Yes, failure. Right on. And not just a mimetic re-presentation of 
failure, or a syntactic definition of failure, but the real-time 
performance of failure. And I woul add (among thousands of 
potentially efficacious artistic moves) -- mind control, massive 
pseudonymous meme distribution, hypertrophy, institutional critique 
as abstract expressionist brushstroke, perpetual self-undermining as 
talisman, curation as personal introspection, 
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513SZR65EQL._SL500_AA240_.jpg ,
http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/museumjt_2035_11671824 ,
http://www.starstore.com/acatalog/MM3Fly-01.jpg  .

Best,
Curt