pockets-of-resistance

Drew Hemment. Position paper, 2003.

Pockets of resistance will look at forms of political activism that have developed over the last 30 years by critically appropriating media technologies, and that, by operating within the arts and the cultural sphere, have opened new spaces for intervention, campaigning and mobilisation outside the orbit of conventional campaigning groups, NGOs and Parliamentary Politics. Within media art there is a long history of politically engaged work that blurs the distinction between art and activism, dating back to the 1970s and the work of TVTV, Downtown Community Television, Joseph Beuys and others. More recently, groups such as Electronic Disturbance Theatre, RTMark and EToy have continued to explore the fertile ground between the arts, media and politics, whilst connecting with wider political movements, from Chiapas to Seattle, and employing a range of tactics and techniques, from culture jamming to the virtual sit-in and denial-of-service. The session will look at some of the individual strategies employed, as well as issues raised by movements such as Indymedia and Open Source, and examine the implications for traditional campaigning groups.

While there is no single movement or conceptual approach that links the many forms of media activism, a number of common concerns can be identified. One such concern is in seeking to examine, expose, and intervene in the power relationships inherent in media technologies. A critical stance to new media is required to be sensitive, not only to its possibilities, but also to its limitations and inequities. This suggests that it is not enough to simply view digital media as a neutral 'tool' that can be simply picked up and used or left on the shelf.

A related interest is in how the spread of media technologies throughout the social realm has shifted the ground upon which political debate and action takes place, and given rise to new concerns such as how the membranes of an emerging social fabric are constituted by datastreams (of military surveillance, criminal databases, immigration authorities, financial transactions, etc) outside the control of any one individual, organisation or state. This suggests that activists need not only to consider how digital media can expand the resources available for use in campaigns whose terms and aims come preset, but also the extent to which new strategies and new kinds of campaigning are required that respond directly to the political realities of a wired world.

Media activists have also sought to address ways in which the political landscape has changed more generally. The power of national governments is eroded by corporations and unelected international bodies, undermining the efficacy of traditional advocacy. And, as the way in which governments were able to disregard the recent anti-war demonstrations showed, seeking to influence public opinion is not always enough – forcing us to re-examine, if not abandon, many of the basic assumptions of traditional campaigning.

The new corporate power structures are accompanied by different kinds of control, as democratic debate is replaced by the manufacture of consent through the control and manipulation of images and media content. By working within the cultural domain, upon the ways in which images are produced and consumed, media activism provides an alternative voice in a media saturated world, and the means to challenge and resist the cultural and political stranglehold of corporations and the advertising industry.

Finally, the session will look at how media activists and artists can respond to the new conditions that have emerged since September 11 and the War in Iraq. The practice of ‘embedding’ journalists in military convoys was a cynical conceit, but it also serves to remind us both of the partiality of news media and of the way in which digital media are now so central to the way that political events unfold. Media activism may be forced to shed some of its innocence in response to an increasingly militarised and polarized world, but its repertoire of tactics may also be called upon as never before.

The online and offline worlds are not separate but inextricably intertwined, and media activism is here seen as a complement to conventional campaigning methods, rather than as an alternative. But nevertheless media activism throws up new possibilities and poses new questions that are both an opportunity and a challenge for traditional campaigning groups.