Red Art New Utopias in Data Capitalism

VOL 20 NO 1 VOLUME EDITORS LANFRANCO ACETI, SUSANNE JASCHKO,
JULIAN STALLABRASS / EDITOR BILL BALASKAS

The Leonardo Electronic Almanac is proud to announce the publication
of its frst LEA book, titled Red Art: New Utopias in Data Capitalism. The
publication investigates the relevance of socialist utopianism to the current
dispositions of New Media Art, through the contributions of renowned and
emerging academic researchers, critical theorists, curators and artists.
New Utopias in Data Capitalism
LEA is a publication of Leonardo/ISAST.
Copyright 2014 ISAST
Leonardo Electronic Almanac
Volume 20 Issue 1
January 15, 2014
ISSN 1071-4391
ISBN 978-1-906897-28-4
The ISBN is provided by Goldsmiths, University of London.
LEA PUBLISHING & SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
Editor in Chief
Lanfranco Aceti lanfranco.aceti@leoalmanac.org
Co-Editor
zden ahin ozden.sahin@leoalmanac.org
Managing Editor
John Francescutti john.francescutti@leoalmanac.org
Editorial Manager
alar etin caglar.cetin@leoalmanac.org
Art Director
Deniz Cem nduygu deniz.onduygu@leoalmanac.org
Editorial Board
Peter J. Bentley, Ezequiel Di Paolo, Ernest Edmonds, Felice
Frankel, Gabriella Giannachi, Gary Hall, Craig Harris, Sibel
Irzk, Marina Jirotka, Beau Lotto, Roger Malina, Terrence
Masson, Jon McCormack, Mark Nash, Sally Jane Norman,
Christiane Paul, Simon Penny, Jane Prophet, Jefrey Shaw,
William Uricchio
Cover Illustration
Bill Balaskas, Re: Evolution, 2013
Courtesy of the artist and Kalfayan Galleries,
Athens - Thessaloniki
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I S S N 1 07 1 - 4 3 9 1 I S B N 9 7 8 - 1 - 9 0 6 8 9 7 - 2 6 - 0 V OL 1 9 N O 4 L E ON A R D OE L E C T R ON I C A L MA N AC
LEONARDO ELECTRONIC ALMANAC BOOK, VOLUME 20 ISSUE 1
Red Art: New Utopias in
Data Capitalism
BOOK SENIOR EDITORS
LANFRANCO ACETI, SUSANNE JASCHKO, JULIAN STALLABRASS
BOOK EDITOR
BILL BALASKAS
L E ON A R D OE L E C T R ON I C A L MA N AC V OL 2 0 N O 1 I S S N 1 07 1 - 4 3 9 1 I S B N 9 7 8 - 1 - 9 0 6 8 9 7 - 2 8 - 4 L E ON A R D OE L E C T R ON I C A L MA N AC V OL 1 9 N O 4 I S S N 1 07 1 - 4 3 9 1 I S B N 9 7 8 - 1 - 9 0 6 8 9 7 - 2 6 - 0
The Leonardo Electronic Almanac
acknowledges the institutional support
for this book of
4
The publication of this book is graciously supported
by the Royal College of Art (Programme of Critical
Writing in Art & Design, Research Methods Course
and the School of Humanities Event Fund).
The publication of this book is kindly supported by the
University for the Creative Arts.
5
L E ON A R D OE L E C T R ON I C A L MA N AC V OL 2 0 N O 1 I S S N 1 07 1 - 4 3 9 1 I S B N 9 7 8 - 1 - 9 0 6 8 9 7 - 2 8 - 4
GROUNDS FOR THE POLITICAL AESTHETICS OF CULTURAL
COMMONS IN THE POST-MEDIUM CONDITION:
THE OPEN SOURCE CULTURAL OBJECT
Boris ukovi
POWERED BY GOOGLE: WIDENING ACCESS AND TIGHTENING
CORPORATE CONTROL
Dan Schiller & Shinjoung Yeo
HACKTERIA: AN EXAMPLE OF NEOMODERN ACTIVISM
Boris Magrini
COMMUNISM OF CAPITAL AND CANNIBALISM OF THE COMMON:
NOTES ON THE ART OF OVER-IDENTIFICATION
Matteo Pasquinelli
MATERIAL CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION AND HIDDEN
ROMANTIC DISCOURSES IN NEW MEDIA ARTISTIC AND
CREATIVE PRACTICES
Ruth Pags & Gemma San Cornelio
Taus Makhacheva
FROM TACTICAL MEDIA TO THE NEO-PRAGMATISTS OF THE WEB
David Garcia
COMMONIST RED ART: BLOOD, BONES, UTOPIA AND KITTENS
Lanfranco Aceti
CHANGING THE GAME: TOWARDS AN INTERNET OF PRAXIS
Bill Balaskas
SUGGESTIONS FOR ART THAT COULD BE CALLED RED
Susanne Jaschko
WHY DIGITAL ART IS RED
Julian Stallabrass
8
13
16
18
Volume 20 Issue 1
C O N T E N T S
22
44
58
72
82
94
124
6
DISSENT AND UTOPIA: RETHINKING ART AND TECHNOLOGY IN
LATIN AMERICA
Valentina Montero Pea & Pedro Donoso
THE THING HAMBURG: A TEMPORARY DEMOCRATIZATION OF
THE LOCAL ART FIELD
Cornelia Sollfrank, Rahel Pufert & Michel Chevalier
ARTISTS AS THE NEW PRODUCERS OF THE COMMON (?)
Daphne Dragona
LONG STORY SHORT
Natalie Bookchin
THE DESIRES OF THE CROWD: SCENARIO FOR A FUTURE
SOCIAL SYSTEM
Karin Hansson
FROM LITERAL TO METAPHORICAL UTOPIA: INTERCONNECTIONS
BETWEEN THE INNER STRUCTURE OF THE NEW MEDIA ART AND
THE UTOPIAN THOUGHT
Christina Vatsella
THE POINT SOURCE: BLINDNESS, SPEECH AND PUBLIC SPACE
Adam Brown
INVISIBLE HISTORIES, THE GRIEVING WORK OF COMMUNISM,
AND THE BODY AS DISRUPTION: A TALK ABOUT ART AND
POLITICS
Elske Rosenfeld
TAKEN SQUARE: ON THE HYBRID INFRASTRUCTURES OF THE
#15M MOVEMENT
Jose Luis de Vicente
WHEN AESTHETIC IS NOT JUST A PRETTY PICTURE:
PAOLO CIRIOS SOCIAL ACTIONS
Lanfranco Aceti
C O N T E N T S
136
148
164
174
182
192
198
214
224
232
7
E D I T O R I A L E D I T O R I A L
Does Red Art exist? And if so, who creates it and
where can we fnd it? This special issue of the Leon-
ardo Electronic Almanac addresses these questions
and collates a series of perspectives and visual essays
that analyze the role, if any, that Red Art plays in the
contemporary art world.
Red Art, these are two simple words that can gener-
ate complex discussions and verbal feuds since they
align the artist to a vision of the world that is Red or
Communist.
Nevertheless, even if the two little words when
placed together are controversial and flled with
animus, they are necessary, if not indispensable, to
understand contemporary aesthetic issues that are
afecting art and how art operates in the context of
social versus political power relations within an in-
creasingly technological and socially-mediated world.
Red Art could be translated within the contempo-
rary hierarchical structures as the art of the power-
less versus the art of the powerful, as the art of the
masses versus the art of the few, as the art of the
young versus the old, as the art of the technological
democrats versus the technological conservatives,
as the art of the poor versus the art of the rich... Or
it could be described as the art of the revolutionary
versus the status quo. In the multitude of the vari-
ous possible defnitions, one appears to stand out
for contemporary art and it is the defnition of art
as bottom-up participation versus art as top-down
prepackaged aesthetic knowledge. And yet, what does
Red Art stand for and can it be only restricted to Com-
munist Art?
The contemporary meaning of Red Art is diferent
from what it may have been for example in Italy in the
1970s, since so much has changed in terms of politics,
ideology and technology. It is no longer possible to
directly identify Red Art with Communist Art (as the
art of the ex Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or of
its satellite states and globalized Communist political
parties which were and continue to be present in the
West albeit in edulcorated forms) nor as the art of
the left, but there is a need to analyze the complexity
of the diversifcation and otherization of multiple geo-
political perspectives.
1

If todays Red Art has to redefne its structures and
constructs it becomes necessary to understand who is
encompassed within the label of Red Artists and what
their common characteristics are. Red Artists if we
wanted to use this category and their aesthetic pro-
duction cannot be reduced to the word Communist,
borrowing pass ideological constructs. An alternative
to the impasse and the ideological collapse of com-
munism is the redefnition of Red Art as the art of the
commons: Commonist Art.
2
If Red Art were to be
defned as the art of the commons, Commonist Art,
thereby entrenching it clearly within technoutopias
and neoliberalist crowd sourcing approaches for col-
lective participation, this would provide a contradic-
tory but functional framework for the realization of
Commonist Red Art:
Blood, Bones, Utopia and
Kittens
8
E D I T O R I A L
common practices, socially engaged frameworks, short
terms goals and loose/open commitments that could
be defned in technological terms as liquid digital uto-
pias or as a new form of permanent dystopia.
3
The XXIst century appears to be presenting us, then,
with the entrenched digitized construct of the common
versus the idea of the Paris Commune of 1871, thereby
ofering a new interpretation of the social space and an
alternative to traditional leftist/neoliberal constructs.
The idea of the common as an open access revolving
door, is opposed to the concept of the commune as a
highly regulated and hierarchical structure.
The semantic distinguo between commons and com-
munes becomes important since both terms are refec-
tions of constructions and terminological frameworks
for an understanding of both society and art that is
based on likes, actions and commitments for a com-
mon or a commune. The commitment, even when
disparagingly used to defne some of the participants as
click-activists and armchair revolutionaries,
4
is partial
and leaves the subject able to express other likes often
in contradiction with one another: e.g. I like the protests
against Berlusconis government and I like the programs
on his private TVs.
I fnd the idea of the commons (knowledge, art, creativ-
ity, health and education) liberating, empowering and
revolutionary, if only it was not expressed within its own
economic corporative structures, creating further layers
of contradiction and operational complexities.
The contradictions of contemporary Red Art and con-
temporary social interactions may be located in the
diference between the interpretations of common
and commune the commune upon which the Italian
Communist Party, for example, based its foundations in
order to build a new church.
The relationships in the commune of the Italian com-
munists (oxymoronically defned Cattocomunisti or
Catholic-communist) rests in faith and in compelled
actions, in beliefs so rooted that are as blinding as
blinding is the light of God in the painting The Con-
version of Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus by
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
[] and from the leadership an aggressive unwill-
ingness to allow any dissent or deviation. That
time produced one of the sharpest mental frosts
I can remember on the Left, the historian E. P.
Thompson would recall from personal knowledge
of the CP...
5
It is this blind faith that has generated the martyrs of
communism and heretical intellectuals, accusations
from which not even Antonio Gramsci was able to
escape. The vertical hierarchical structure of the com-
mune and of the Communist Party produced heretics
and immolations, but also supported artists, intellectu-
als, academics and writers that operated consonantly
with the partys ideals: people that sang from the
same preapproved institutional hymn sheet.
Stefania: This young generation horrifes me. Hav-
ing been kept for years by this state, as soon as
they discover to have two neurons they pack and
go to study, to work in the US and London, without
giving a damn for who supported them. Oh well,
they do not have any civic vocation. When I was
young at the occupied faculty of literature, I oozed
civic vocation. [] I have written eleven novels on
civic duty and the book on the ofcial history of the
Party.
Jep Gambardella: How many certainties you have,
Stefania. I do not know if I envy you or feel a sensa-
tion of disgust. [...] Nobody remembers your civic
vocation during your University years. Many instead
9
remember, personally, another vocation of yours
that was expressed at the time; but was consumed
in the bathrooms of the University. You have writ-
ten the ofcial history of the Party because for
years you have been the mistress of the head of
the Party. Your eleven novels published by a small
publishing house kept by the Party and reviewed by
small newspapers close to the Party are irrelevant
novels [...] the education of the children that you
conduct with sacrifce every minute of your life ...
Your children are always without you [...] then you
have - to be precise - a butler, a waiter, a cook, a
driver that accompanies the boys to school, three
babysitters. In short, how and when is your sacri-
fce manifested? [...] These are your lies and your
fragilities.
6
To the question, then, if Red Art exists I would have
to answer: YES! I have seen Red Art in Italy (as well as
abroad), as the Communist Art produced in the name
of the party, with party money and for party propagan-
da, not at all diferent from the same art produced in
the name of right-wing parties with state or corporate
money having both adopted and co-opted the same
systems and frameworks of malfeasance shared with
sycophantic artists and intellectuals.
In order to understand the misery of this kind of Red
Art one would have to look at the Italian aesthetiza-
tion of failure which successfully celebrates failure in
the Great Beauty by Paolo Sorrentino when the char-
acter of Stefania, and her oozing civic duty, is ripped
apart. It is a civic responsibility that is deprived and
devoid of any ethics and morals.
7
This is but one of the multiple meanings of the con-
cept of Red Art the defnition of Red Art as Com-
munist Art, is the one that can only lead to sterile
defnitions and autocelebratory constructs based on
the aesthetic obfuscation of the lack of meaning as a
tool for the obscurity of the aesthetic to act as a pro-
ducer of meaning when the artist producing it is inept
at creating meaning.
8
Even more tragically, Red Art
leads to the molding of the artist as spokesperson of
the party and to the reduction of the artwork, when-
ever successful, to advertising and propaganda.
Commonist Art, founded on the whim of the like and
trend, on the common that springs from the aggrega-
tion around an image, a phrase, a meme or a video, is
able to construct something diferent, a convergence
of opinions and actions that can be counted and
weighed and that cannot be taken for granted. Could
this be a Gramscian utopia of re-construction and re-
fashioning of aesthetics according to lower commons
instead of high and rich exclusivity, which as such is
unattainable and can only be celebrated through dia-
mond skulls and gold toilets?
Commonist Art the art that emerges from a com-
mon is a celebration of a personal judgment, par-
tially knowledgeable and mostly instinctive, perhaps
manipulated since every other opinion is either ma-
nipulated by the media or the result of international
lobbys conspiracies or it can be no more than a rein-
forcement of the society of the simulacra. Conversely,
it may also be that the image and its dissemination
online is the representation of a personal difdence
towards systems of hierarchical power and endorse-
ment that can only support their own images and
meanings in opposition to images that are consumed
and exhausted through infnite possibilities of inter-
pretation and re-dissemination.
9
If Commonist Art ofers the most populist minimum
common denominator in an evolutionary framework
determined by whims, it is not at all diferent from
the minimum common denominator of inspirational/
aspirational codifed aesthetics that are defned by
the higher echelons of contemporary oligarchies that
1 0
E D I T O R I A L
on the whims of a liquid Internet structure where
people support within their timelines an idea, a utopia,
a dream or the image of a kitten.
11
This piece of writing and this whole volume is dedi-
cated to the victims of the economic and political
violence since the beginning of the Great Recession
and to my father; and to the hope, hard to die of, that
some utopia may still be possible.
Lanfranco Acet
Edtor n Chef, Leonardo Electronc Almanac
Drector, Kasa Gallery
have increasingly blurred the boundaries of fnancial
and aesthetic realms.
Commonist Art if the current trends of protest will
continue to afrm themselves even more strongly
will continue to defy power and will increasingly seek
within global trends and its own common base viable
operational structures that hierarchies will have to
recognize, at one point or the other, by subsuming
Commonist Art within pre-approved structures.
Red Art, therefore, if intended as Commonist Art
becomes the sign of public revolts, in the physical
squares or on the Internet. It is art that emerges with-
out institutional approval and in some cases in spite
of institutional obstacles. Gramsci would perhaps say
that Commonist Art is a redefnition of symbolic cul-
ture, folk art and traditional imageries that processed
and blended through digital media and disseminated
via the Internet enable Red Art to build up its own lan-
guages and its own aesthetics without having to be
institutionally re-processed and receive hierarchical
stamps of approval.
Red Art can also be the expression of people whose
blood and tears literally mark the post-democra-
cies of the frst part of the XXIst century. Non-political,
non-party, non-believers,
10
the crowds of the In-
ternet rally around an argument, a sense of justice, a
feeling of the future not dominated by carcinogenic
politicians, intellectuals and curators, that present
themselves every time, according to geographical and
cultural spaces, as Sultans, Envoys of God, or even
Gods.
Red Art, the Commonist Art that perhaps is worth
considering as art, is the one that is self-elevated, built
on the blood and bones of people still fghting in the
XXIst century for justice, freedom and for a piece of
bread. Art that rallies crowds likes and dislikes based
1 1
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1. Larry Ray, At the End of the Post-Communist Transfor-
mation? Normalization or Imagining Utopia?, European
Journal of Social Theory 12 (August 2009), 321-336.
2. Commonism was used by Andy Warhol. In this essay the
word is rooted in Internet commons, although similarities,
comparisons and contiguities exist with the earlier usage.
Thus Warhols initial preference for the term Commonism
was as ambivalent, and ambiguous, as the oscillating signs
Factory and Business. Although it firted with confations
of the common with the Communist (from cheap and
low to dignity of the common man), the term betrayed
no hidden, left-wing agenda on Warhols part. Caroline
A. Jones, Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar
American Artist (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press, 1996), 205.
3. For one thing, utopia has now been appropriated by
the entertainment industry and popular culture what
is termed the contemporary liquid utopia as a kind of
dystopia. Anthony Elliott, The Contemporary Bauman
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 17.
4. The blurred lines between real and virtual do not exempt
click-activists or armchair revolutionaries from the
persecutions and abuses of the state police. The sitting
room within ones home becomes the public space for
confict and revolts. One example of many around the
globe: Alexander Abad-Santos, Turkey Is Now Arresting
Dozens for Using Twitter, The Wire, June 5, 2013, http://
www.thewire.com/global/2013/06/turkey-twitter-ar-
rests/65908/ (accessed January 10, 2014).
5. David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 (London:
Bloomsbury, 2007), 342.
6. The English translation from the Italian is from the author.
La Grande Bellezza, DVD, directed by Paolo Sorrentino
(Artifcial Eye, 2014).
7. Anti-communism was never accepted as the moral equiva-
lent of anti-fascism, not only by my parents but also by the
overwhelming majority of liberal-minded people. The Left
was still morally superior. Nick Cohen, Whats Left?: How
the Left Lost its Way (London: Harper Perennial, 2007),
3. La questione morale or the moral issue in English is
the problem indentifed by Enrico Berlinguer and that
questioned the role of the Communist party and the Left
in general in Italy. The moral issue has not been resolved
to this day and is at the core of the current impossibility
to distinguish between the ideological frameworks of
Left and Right since both political areas are perceived
as equally and intrinsically corrupt as well as tools for
an oligarchic occupation of democracy. For the original
interview in Italian of Enrico Berlinguer see: Eugenio
Scalfari, Intervista a Enrico Berlinguer, La Repubblica,
July 28, 1981 available in La questione morale di Enrico
Berlinguer, Rifondazione Comunistas website, http://web.
rifondazione.it/home/index.php/12-home-page/8766-la-
questione-morale-di-enrico-berlinguer (accessed March
20, 2014).
8. Under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth;
behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues
the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; the
circuits of communication are the supports of an ac-
cumulation and a centralization of knowledge; the play of
signs defnes the anchorages of power; it is not that the
beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed,
altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual
is carefully fabricated in it Michel Foucault, Panopti-
cism, in The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader,
ed. Vanessa R. Schwartz and Jeannene M. Przyblyski (New
York, NY: Routledge, 2004), 78.
9. There are those who think that the image is an extremely
rudimentary system in comparison with language and
those who think that signifcation cannot exhaust the im-
ages inefable richness. Roland Barthes, Rhetoric of the
Image, in Visual Culture: The Reader, ed. Jessica Evans
and Stuart Hall (London: Sage Publications, 1999), 33.
10. Non-believers stands for skeptics and does not have a
religious connotation in this context.
11. Lanfranco Aceti, Our Little Angel, Lanfranco Aceti Inc.,
personal website, January 10, 2014, http://www.lanfran-
coaceti.com/portfolio-items/our-little-angel/ (accessed
January 10, 2014).
1 2
E D I T O R I A L
There is a new spectre haunting the art world. Not
surprisingly, it has been put forward in recent arti-
cles, panel discussions and books as the ism that
could, possibly, best describe the current disposi-
tions of contemporary art. The name of the spectre
is post-internet art.
1
Unlike, however, its counter-
part that was released in the world by Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels in 1848,
2
this contemporary spectre
has not arrived in order to axiomatically change the
established order of things; conceivably, it has arrived
in order to support it.
Post-internet art refers to the aesthetic qualities
defning todays artistic production, which is often
infuenced by, mimics, or fully adopts elements of the
Internet. At the same time, the term incorporates the
communication tools and platforms through which
contemporary artworks reach their intended (or non-
intended) audiences. Notably, in his book Post Internet
(2011), art writer Gene McHugh suggests that regard-
less of an artists intentions, all artworks now fnd a
space on the World Wide Web and, as a result, []
contemporary art, as a category, was/is forced, against
its will, to deal with this new distribution context or
at least acknowledge it.
3
Quite naturally, this would
seem like a strong oppositional force directed against
the modus operandi of the mainstream art world. Yet,
further down in the same page, McHugh characterizes
this acknowledgement as a constituent part of the
much larger game that is played by commercial gal-
leries, biennials, museums and auction houses.
Thus, there are inevitable contradictions and chal-
lenges in the role that post-internet art is called to
fulfl as a movement and/or as a status of cultural
production. Firstly, there is an easily identifable anxi-
ety to historicize a phenomenon that is very much in
progress: the Internet is changing so rapidly, that if we
think of the online landscape ten years ago, this would
be radically diferent from our present experience
of it. Furthermore, the post-internet theorization of
contemporary art runs the danger of aestheticizing (or
over-aestheticizing) a context that goes well beyond
the borders of art: in the same way that we could talk
about post-internet art, we could also talk about post-
internet commerce, post-internet dating, post-internet
travel, post-internet journalism, etc. Therefore, the
role and the identity of the post-internet artist are not
independent of a much wider set of conditions. This
false notion of autonomy is quite easy to recognize
if we think, for instance, of post-radio art or post-
television art or, even, post-videogames art, and the
inherent structural and conceptual limitations of such
approaches.
4
Most importantly, however, any kind of aestheticiza-
tion may readily become a very efective tool of de-
politicization. The idea of distributing images, sounds
and words that merely form part of a pre-existing
system of power, inescapably eradicates the political
signifcance of distribution. The subversive potential-
ity inherent in the characterisation of a network as
distributed was systematically undermined over the
1990s and the 2000s, due to the ideological perva-
Changing the Game:
Towards an Internet of
Praxis
1 3
siveness of neoliberalism during the same period. Dis-
tribution not to mention, equal distribution could
have enjoyed a much more prominent role as a natural
fundament of the Web and, accordingly, as a con-
tributing factor in any investigation of digital art. Last
but defnitely not least, one cannot ignore the crucial
fact that apolitical art is much easier to enter the art
market and play the game of institutionalization (and
vice versa).
To the question: could the Internet and new media
at large become true game changers in the current
historical conjuncture? What does red art have to
propose, and how does it relate to the previously de-
scribed post-internet condition?
Interestingly, the term post-internet art was born
and grew parallel to the global economic crisis and the
Great Recession of 2009. One the most important
objectives of the social movements that were engen-
dered by the crisis has been the efort to reclaim and
re-appropriate. This aspiration referred not only to
economic resources, but also to social roles, demo-
cratic functions, human rights, and of course urban
spaces. Syntagma Square in Greece, Puerta del Sol in
Madrid, Zuccotti Park in New York, as well as some of
the most iconic public locations around the world saw
diverse, or even irreconcilable in some cases crowds
demand change. Within the reality of Data Capitalism
and its multiple self-generated crises, people increas-
ingly felt that they have now been totally deprived of a
place (topos in Greek).
It is worth remembering that the coiner of utopia,
Thomas More, chose an island as the location where
he placed his ideal society.
5
Any island constitutes a
geographic formation that privileges the development
of individual traits through a natural process of appro-
priation. This encompasses both the material and the
immaterial environment as expressed in the landscape,
the biology of the diferent organisms, and most
relevant to our case culture. Notably, when it comes
to connecting utopianism with the cultural paradigm
of new media art, we should not focus merely on the
lack of a physical space (as articulated, for instance,
through cyberspace); rather, we should address the
juxtaposition of topos with a potentially empty no-
tion of space. The transcendence of space in a digi-
tal utopia absolutely necessitates the existence of a
topos. In a similar way to the one that Marx sees capi-
talism as a stage towards a superior system of produc-
tion (communism),
6
the construction of a topos is a
prerequisite for the fourishing of utopianism.
Red Art can be understood as a tool for the creation
of such topoi. The lesson that new media artists
can learn from the political osmoses catalyzed by
the economic crisis is that, in order to be efective,
cyberspace should become part of a strategy that
combines physical and online spaces, practically and
conceptually, whilst taking into account the individual
traits of both. The necessity expressed through this
combination constitutes (at least partly) a departure
from the developing discourses around the Internet
of Things or the Internet of Places.
7
Alternatively, or
additionally, what is proposed here is the formulation
of an Internet of Praxis (including, of course, artistic
praxis). This approach is vividly refected in several of
the projects examined in this publication, as well as in
the theoretical frameworks that are outlined.
Digital art is today in a position to capitalize on the
participatory potentialities that have been revealed
by the socio-political events that defned the early
2010s. The reconceptualization of cyberspace as a
cybertopos is a constituent part of this new ground
on which people are called to stand and build. Accord-
ingly, the emergence of a culture of post-net partici-
pation in which digital media transcend physical space
by consolidating it (instead of merely augmenting
it), may allow us to explore concrete utopias
8
to a
greater extent than ever before in recent times. It is by
actively pursuing this objective that we would expect
to change the rules of the game. Artists are often the
frst to try.
Bill Balaskas
1 4
E D I T O R I A L
1. The term post-internet art is attributed to artist Marisa
Olson. See Gene McHugh, Post Internet (Brescia: LINK
Editions), 5.
2. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Manifesto of
the Communist Party in London, on February 21, 1848.
3. Gene McHugh, Post Internet, 6.
4. The etymological comparison between the terms post-
internet art and postmodern art could also highlight this
context. Notably, in the case of this juxtaposition, post-
internet art puts a tool (the Internet) in the position of a
movement (Modernism). If we were to consider the Inter-
net as a movement, then, the natural historical link that
would be established through the term post-internet art
would be with net art. Nevertheless, such a decision would
assign net art to a status of legitimization, towards which
major museums, curators and art fairs have shown a rather
consistent hostility. In this instance, historicization be-
comes a foe, since it would refute a neutral relationship
of the Web with art. This perspective is closely connected
with the formation of an abstract notion of universalism,
to which I refer further down (see endnote 8).
5. Thomas Mores Utopia was frst published in 1516, in Bel-
gium. There are several translations of the book.
6. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto,
with an introduction by David Harvey (London: Pluto Press,
2008), 51: What the bourgeoisie therefore produces,
above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory
of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
7. The Internet of Things represents a vision in which physi-
cal items become smart objects by being equipped with
sensors that can be remotely controlled and connected
through the Internet. The Internet of Places focuses on
the spatial dimension of the capacities that Web 2.0 of-
fers. For an account of the Internet of Things, see Mattern,
Friedemann and Christian Floerkemeier, From the Inter-
net of Computers to the Internet of Things, in Informatik-
Spektrum, 33 (2010): 107121, http://www.vs.inf.ethz.ch/
publ/papers/Internet-of-things.pdf (accessed February
20, 2014). For an account of the Internet of Places, see
Giuseppe Conti, Paul Watson, Nic Shape, Rafaele de Ami-
cis and Federico Prandi, Enabling the Internet of Places:
a virtual structure of space-time-tasks to fnd and use
Internet resources, in Proceedings of the 2nd Interna-
tional Conference on Computing for Geospatial Research
& Applications (New York: ACM, 2011), 9.
8. For more on the concept of concrete utopias see Ernst
Bloch, The Principle of Hope, tr. Neville Plaice, Stephen
Plaice, and Paul Knight, 3 vols (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).
Bloch diferentiates between abstract utopias and con-
crete utopias, associating the latter with the possibility of
producing real change in the present. Concrete utopias
should not be confused with seemingly similar theoriza-
tions such as Nicolas Bourriauds microtopias, which
structurally aim at preserving the existing status quo.
Bourriaud asserts in Relational Aesthetics (2002) that it
seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our
neighbours in the present than to bet on happier tomor-
rows. Quite evidently, this approach stands far from the
universalism that he advocates in his Altermodern Mani-
festo (2009) as a direct result of new technologies and
globalization. At a time when neoliberal capitalism was
entering its worst ever crisis, Bourriaud chose to largely
ignore this context and build on a concept that in the
end is apolitical and counter-utopian. Post-internet art
appears to follow a comparably dangerous trajectory.
1 5
What is Red Art? Or rather: what could Red Art be
in todays post-communist, post-utopian world, a
world shaken by conficts engendered by contrary
beliefs and ideologies which have little to do with
communism? A world in which countries and socie-
ties are disrupted by territorial disputes, and by bloody
fghts about questions of religious identity, national
identity, and ideology? Where communism has been
overrun by capitalism with rare exception; where the
European left movement is weak. Where the post-
industrial era has produced an economic reality that is
orders of magnitude more complex, transnational and
therefore more difcult to control or change, than his-
tory has ever seen. In this situation, can there (still) be
art that deals with ideas of communism constructively,
or does contemporary art look at communist ideals
only with nostalgia?
And lets be clear: is art that simply speaks out against
capitalism, globalisation and neo-liberalism from a
leftist position is this kind of art red per se? Do we
expect Red Art to be red in content, for instance, in
directly addressing topics such as class struggle, the
negatives of capitalism and a new neo-liberal world
order? And if it does, is it enough to be descriptive
or do we want art to be more than that, i.e., provok-
ing, forward-thinking or even militant? In 1970, Jean-
Luc Godard drafted a 39-point manifesto Que faire?
What is to be done? that contrasted the antagonistic
practices of making political flms and making flms
politically. It called unequivocally for art that actively
takes up the position of the proletarian class and that
Suggestions for Art That
Could Be Called Red
1 6
E D I T O R I A L
aims for nothing less than the transformation of the
world. With his legacy, what kind of objectives do we
request from Red Art? Do we really still think that art
can change the world or is that another idea from the
past that has been overwritten by something that we
like to call reality? Can art that is for the most part
commercialised and produced in a capitalist art mar-
ket be red at all, or does it have to reject the system
established by galleries, fairs and museums in order to
be truly red?
Decades ago, when artists started to use new media
such as video and the computer, their works were
new in the way they were produced and distributed,
and changed the relationship between artists and their
collaborators as well as between the artworks and
their audiences and users respectively. Most of this
new-media-based art circulated outside the ordinary
market and found other distribution channels. The
majority of works were inspired by a quest for the
new and consistently broke with old aesthetic prin-
ciples and functions. Much of it was also driven by a
search for the better, by overthrowing old hierarchies
and introducing a more liberal and inclusive concept
of the world, based on self-determination and active
participation. Last but not least the emergence of the
Internet brought us a fertile time for new and revisited
utopias and artistic experiments dealing with collabo-
ration, distribution of knowledge, shared authorship,
and appropriation of technologies. Today we know
that neither the Internet nor any other new technol-
ogy has saved us, but that the hopes for a more demo-
cratic world and alternative economies sparked by it
have come true, if only to a minor degree.
So how do artists respond to this post-communist,
post-utopian condition? What can be discussed as
Red Art in the recent past and present? In this issue of
Leonardo we have gathered some answers to these
questions in the form of papers, essays and artworks,
the latter produced especially for this purpose. Bring-
ing together and editing this issue was challenging
because we decided from the start to keep the call
for contributions as open as possible and to not pre-
defne too much. We were interested in what kind of
responses our call would produce at a moment when
the world is occupied with other, seemingly hotter
topics, and it is fascinating to note that the resulting
edition quite naturally spans decades of art produc-
tion and the respective new technologies as they
related to ideas of social equality and empowerment
from video art to net art to bio art. This issue shows
that the search for alternative ideas and perspectives,
and an adherence to leftist ideals is neither futile nor
simply nostalgic. But that this search is ever more
relevant, particularly at a time when European politics
is seemingly consolidating and wars around the world
are establishing new regimes of social and economic
inequality.
Susanne Jaschko
17
The divide between the art shown in major muse-
ums and art fairs and that associated with the new
media scene has been deep and durable. Many crit-
ics have puzzled over it, particularly because there is
much that the two realms share, including the desire
to put people into unusual social situations.
1
Yet
some of the reasons for the divide are plain enough,
and they are about money, power and social distinc-
tion. The economic divide is across competing models
of capitalist activity: the exclusive ownership of ob-
jects set against the release of reproducible symbols
into networks with the ambition that they achieve
maximum speed and ubiquity of circulation. The social
divide is between a conservative club of super-rich
collectors and patrons, and their attendant advisors,
who buy their way into what they like to think of as a
sophisticated cultural scene (Duchamp Land), against
a realm which is closer to the mundane and more
evidently compromised world of technological tools
(Turing Land).
2
Power relations are where the divide
appears starkest: in one world, special individuals
known as artists make exceptional objects or events
with clear boundaries that distinguish them from run-
of-the-mill life; and through elite ownership and expert
curation, these works are presented for the enlighten-
ment of the rest of us. In the new media world, some
artists but also collectives and other shifting and
anonymous producers ofer up temporary creations
onto a scene in which their works are open to copying,
alteration and comment, and in which there is little
possible control of context, frame or conversation.
This description of the divide has been put in extreme
terms for the sake of clarity, and there are a few
instances of the split appearing to erode.
3
Yet its
persistence remains one of the most striking features
of the general fragmentation of the fast-growing
and globalising art world. That persistence rests on
solid material grounds, laid out by Marx: the clash of
economic models is a clear case of the mode and rela-
tions of production coming into confict, and is part
of a much wider confict over the legal, political and
social aspects of digital culture, and its synthesis of
production and reproduction.
4
Copyright is one arena
where the clash is very clear. Think of the eforts of
museums to control the circulation of images and to
levy copyright charges, while at the same time sur-
rendering to the camera-phone as they abandon the
attempt to forbid photography in their galleries.
So where is Red Art and the left in this scenario?
Amidst the general gloom and lassitude that has beset
much of the Left in Europe and the US, the develop-
ment of the digital realm stands out as an extraor-
dinary gain. It allows for the direct communication,
without the intermediary of newspapers and TV, of
masses of people globally who turn out to be more
egalitarian, more environmentally concerned and
more seditious than the elite had bargained for. Alex-
ander Cockburn, with his long career in activism and
journalism, remarks:
Why Digital Art is Red
1 8
E D I T O R I A L
Thirty years ago, to fnd out what was happening
in Gaza, you would have to have had a decent
short-wave radio, a fax machine, or access to
those great newsstands in Times Square and
North Hollywood that carried the worlds press.
Not anymore. We can get a news story from []
Gaza or Ramallah or Oaxaca or Vidarbha and
have it out to a world audience in a matter of
hours.
5
It is hard to ban social media, it has been claimed, be-
cause it entwines video fads, kittens and politics (and
banning kittens looks bad). So the insight attributed
by some to Lenin that capitalists will sell us the rope
with which to hang them is still relevant.
6
In an era in which the political and artistic avant-
gardes have faded, the afliation of the art world
that is founded upon the sale and display of rare and
unique objects made by a few exceptional individuals
in which high prices are driven by monopoly rent ef-
fects tends to be with the conspicuous consumption
of the state and the super-rich.
7
Here, the slightest
taint of the common desktop environment is enough
to kill aesthetic feeling. The afliation of at least some
of new media art is rather to the kitsch, the populist,
and to the egalitarian circulation of images and words,
along with discourse and interaction. New media art-
ists who push those attachments work against some
of the deepest seated elements of the art world
ethos: individualism, distinction, discreteness and
preservation for posterity (and long-term investment
value). It should be no surprise that they are frequent-
ly and without qualifcation denied the status of artist.
It is also clear why the death of leftist ideas in elite
discourse does not hold in new media circles, where
the revival of thinking about the Left, Marxism and
Communism is very evident.
8
The borders of art are
blurred by putting works to explicit political use (in
violation of the Kantian imperative still policed in the
mainstream art world).
9
Very large numbers of peo-
ple are continually making cultural interventions online,
and value lies not in any particular exceptional work
but in the massive fow of interaction and exchange. In
that world, as it never could in a gallery, the thought
may creep in that there is nothing special about any
one of us. And this may lead to the greatest scandal
of all: think of the statements that artists who deal
with politics in the mainstream art world are obliged
to make as their ticket of admission my art has no
political efect. They have to say it, even when it is pa-
tently absurd; and they have to say it, even as the art
world itself becomes more exposed to social media,
and is ever less able to protect its exclusive domain
and regulate the efects of its displays. So at base, the
divide is economic, but at the level of what causes the
repulsion from digital art that puts collectors and
critics to fight it is deeply and incontrovertibly politi-
cal.
10
They run headlong from the red.
Julan Stallabrass
1 9
1. On the afnity between new media art and socially
engaged art, including relational aesthetics, see Edward
Shanken, Contemporary Art and New Media: Toward
a Hybrid Discourse?, http://hybridge.fles.wordpress.
com/2011/02/hybrid-discourses-overview-4.pdf (accessed
March 31, 2014).
2. The reference is to Lev Manovich, The Death of Com-
puter Art, Lev Manovichs website, 1996, http://www.
manovich.net/TEXT/death.html (accessed March 31,
2014). The complicity of both worlds with establishment
powers has been criticised since the origin of the divide.
For an early example of the engagement of computer art
with the military-industrial complex, see Gustav Metzger,
Automata in History: Part 1, Studio International (1969):
107-109.
3. See Domenico Quaranta, Beyond New Media Art (Brescia:
Link Editions, 2013), 4-6. Quarantas book ofers a
thoughtful and accessible account of many of the aspects
of the divide.
4. Marx discusses the efects of the transformations of
the industrial revolution in the chapter Machinery and
Large-Scale Industry, in Capital. See especially, Karl Marx,
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, trans.
Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books,
1976), 617f. On the online synthesis of production and
reproduction see my book, Internet Art: The Online Clash
of Culture and Commerce (London: Tate Gallery Publish-
ing, 2003), ch. 1. Capital is available online at Marxist.org,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/
index.htm (accessed March 31, 2014).
5. Alexander Cockburn, A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip
Through Political Scandal, Corruption and American Cul-
ture (London: Verso, 2013), 441.
6. According to Paul F. Boller, Jr. and John George it is a
misattribution. See They Never Said It: A Book of Fake
Quotes, Misquotes & Misleading Attributions (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989), 64.
7. On monopoly rent and art, see David Harvey, The Art
of Rent: Globalization, Monopoly and the Commodifca-
tion of Culture, Socialist Register (2002): 93-110. Harvey
uses Marxs example of vineyards as a prime example of
monopoly rent: the wine from a particular vineyard is a
unique product, like the products of a particular artist. The
article is available here: http://thesocialistregister.com/
index.php/srv/article/view/5778/2674 (accessed March
31, 2014).
8. See, for example: Alain Badiou, The Communist Hypoth-
esis, trans. David Macey and Steve Corocoran (London:
Verso, 2010); Bruno Bosteels, The Actuality of Commu-
nism (London: Verso, 2011); Costas Douzinas and Slavoj
iek, eds., The Idea of Communism (London: Verso,
2010) and the follow-up volume Slavoj iek, ed., The Idea
of Communism 2: The New York Conference (London:
Verso, 2013); Boris Groys, The Communist Postscript,
trans. Thomas Ford (London: Verso, 2010). For the most
concerted attempt to revise and extend Marxist thinking,
see the journal Historical Materialism, http://www.histori-
calmaterialism.org/journal (accessed March 31, 2014).
9. See Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito, At the Edge of Art (Lon-
don: Thames & Hudson, 2006).
10. Remember Bataille: Communist workers appear to the
bourgeois to be as ugly and dirty as hairy sexual organs,
or lower parts [] Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess:
Selected Writings, 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoekl (Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 8.
2 0
E D I T O R I A L
2 1
A R T I C L E
INTRODUCTION
The open source concept of software production
and distribution has brought about its own vision
of the commons, remaking this notion of an old
heritage in the light of digital production forms.
1

The term commons dates back to medieval England
when it referred to land and its resources upon which
a community of people had joint rights of use as a
means to sustenance.
2
Up to the present day, the
Grounds for the Political Aesthetics of Cultural
Commons in the Post-medium Condition
THE OPEN SOURCE
CULTURAL OBJECT
boris.cuckovic@gmail.com
by
Bori s ukovi
2 2
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
use of the term has been expanding and it has been
applied not only to common land, but also to environ-
mental and cultural resources such as rivers or heri-
tage sites, as well as software and information.
3
In its
contemporary form, the concept of the commons is
associated with modes of sharing common property,
thus standing in direct opposition to the concept of
private property rights, one of the fundaments of
economic liberalism. As such, it has gained political
currency, as well as critique. Its viability was contested,
most famously, in Garret Hardins formulation of
the tragedy of the commons.
4
Hardins tragedy
is based on a metaphor of common land employed
for cattle herding. Since individual owners of cattle
are concerned with maximizing their profts, they at-
tempt to consume more resources at the expense of
Figures 1-4. Stills from Elephants Dream digital animated movie, Orange Open Movie Project,
2006. Netherlands Institute for Media Art, dir. Bassam Kurdali, Blender Foundation. Used with
permission via the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.5, Blender Foundation / Nether-
lands Institute for Media Art / www.elephantsdream.org, 2006.
Based on the open animated movie Elephants Dream and the Free Univer-
sal Construction Kit project, I delineate and critically examine open source
cultural production as a specifc practice of the contemporary post-medi-
um condition (Krauss, Manovich). I explore how the open source model of
the commons is translated into aesthetic strategies when the open source
concept is applied to cultural production. Furthermore, I suggest a model
for the cultural object in the post-medium condition, grounded in the way
in which this practice afrms its source material. Through this model, I
propose categories for the articulation of specifcity in practices of the
post-medium condition. These categories are further analyzed amid the
tensions of commodity market. The discussion proceeds to relate open
source cultural practice to issues relevant to the tradition of materialist
aesthetics. In particular, the open source artwork is read against the grain
of modernist political aesthetics, critically comparing the new media condi-
tion of open source production with the political imperative of accessing
the mode of production (Benjamin). In conclusion, I outline the politico-
aesthetic function ascribed by this practice to digital cultural commons.
2 3
A R T I C L E
others, thus causing the collapse of the system. David
Harvey succinctly formulated the counterpoint to this
argument: if the cattle as well as the land were held
in common, the metaphor would not work.
5
Clearly,
there are diferent defnitions of what the commons
are or might be, and I will here focus on the one
brought about by the open source concept. More spe-
cifcally, I will take up the following question: how does
the open source model of the commons translate into
an aesthetic strategy when the open source concept
is applied to cultural production?
I will explore open source cultural practice as a specifc
structuring of the (digital) object that emerges from a
politically strategic constellation of production catego-
ries, especially source materials. What is the role of
this object-structure in establishing the open source
mode of todays cultural commons? Moreover, consid-
ering the political potency of the idea of the commons,
how does this role relate to the tradition of materialist
political aesthetics and its aims and strategies? After
the introduction of select examples, those questions
will be discussed in the ensuing sections, which are
organized on the basis of the respective contexts
and discourses in which this practice takes place: the
post-medium condition, the commodity market and
materialist aesthetics.
1. OPEN SOURCE IN CULTURAL PRACTICE
INTRODUCTION OF EXAMPLES
Open source is a term originating from debates in the
1990s regarding software production and distribu-
tion.
6
This widespread notion refers to software for
which the original source code is made freely available
and may be redistributed and modifed.
7
The concept
that it denotes involves open and communal qualities
of production and public distribution of software, prin-
ciples that stand in direct opposition to a proprietary
model of technological production.
8

9
These prin-
ciples have been translated into other felds, including
that of cultural production. I will introduce two such
examples of cultural practice which embrace the open
source concept in order to produce a working outline
of the issues raised by this practice.
The animated short flm Elephants Dream was re-
leased in 2006 as the worlds frst open movie.
10
Its
source material, namely all 3D models, textures and
audio fles, are freely available to download from the
site of the project.
11
Furthermore, the tools used to
produce it, most importantly the three-dimensional
computer modeling environment Blender 3D, are
open source programs.
12
These two factors make it
possible for the recipients to explore how this animat-
2 4
A R T I C L E
ed movie is made. Further, through access to its pro-
duction elements, it ofers the possibility to re-make
the movie or use its components in new projects. This
may occur free of charge under the Creative Com-
mons license, provided that attribution to the original
project is given.
13
In the context of cultural produc-
tion, having an open source structure does not neces-
sarily point to the openness of the source code, as is
the case with software products. Elements of a higher
order such as the digital 3D models of Elephants
Dream can be understood as the source material for
a given cultural object. This also means that the high
threshold of required programming skills necessary
for participation in an open source software project is
somewhat lowered. It is, however, still present in the
form of the threshold posed by the skills necessary
for digital 3D modeling. Keeping this in mind, let us
consider the following questions: what exactly does
a source represent for a cultural object? What kind
of access to modes of production does this openness
provide? And, what are the conditions in which such a
source can be appropriated and employed in diferent
production processes?
Another example of open source principles present
in cultural practice is the Free Universal Construction
Kit (2012), a collection of adapter blocks that enable
interoperability between ten childrens construction
toy lines, such as those of LEGO or Tinkertoys.
14
This
design project was developed by hacker and techno-
cultural organizations F.A.T. and Sy-lab with the aim
of encouraging new forms of interplay between
otherwise closed systems.
15
The project provides
missing pieces that corporations in market competi-
tion do not produce, such as a LEGO block that can be
combined with KNex gears or Lincoln Logs cylin-
ders.
16
This intervention into enclosed commodity
systems and their prescribed modes of use is realized
and distributed through the open source availability of
digital designs of the missing pieces, which are made
freely available to download.
17
The design models
are available in .STL format, which is very convenient
for computer-aided manufacturing techniques such as
3D printing. The idea is to make possible the print-
ing of the necessary adapter piece, either on a home
printer or through a specialized 3D printing service.
18

The sharing of digital source materials is here linked
with issues of mass-manufactured physical commodi-
ties through the lens of openness, which is one of
the more prominent idiosyncrasies in the discursive
feld of digital culture. I will, for now, leave aside the
discussion of the actual position this project occupies
in relation to the dominant mode of commodity pro-
duction, and frst focus on what these examples bring
to light about digital source material and its potential
critical capacity.
For each of these examples, I argue that integrat-
ing open source principles is just as integral to the
project as are their respective conventionalized
cultural practices, animation and design. The open
source concept is not merely an interesting technical
innovation or a phenomenon of the contemporary
digital environment that is accepted by new media
artists and employed in their creative explorations of
digital media and culture. Rather, adopting the open
source principles means inheriting a particular cultural
politics with concern for issues of property and access.
A specifc politics concerning their source material is
what sets these examples apart from new media or
contemporary art projects that are based on compa-
rable cultural forms.
2. THE SOURCE-EXECUTANT MODEL OF THE POST-
MEDIUM OBJECT
Examples of open source principles of production
and distribution in cultural practice can be found in
a variety of media forms such as digital animations,
2 5
A R T I C L E
images, web sites, games, etc. This practice is not tied
to a particular medium or format, and its specifc-
ity cannot be extrapolated from this basis. Another
way to go about this is to consider the open source
cultural object as a manifestation of the post-medium
condition, relying on Rosalind Krauss introduction of
the term post-medium,
19
as well as the post-media
argument employed by new media scholars Peter
Weibel and Lev Manovich.
20
I will frst summarize
these accounts and, then, revisit the framework of the
post-medium condition in light of the relations and
categories established by the open source cultural
object.
Introduced by Krauss, the term post-medium refects
the decline of the modernist concept of medium-
specifcity. It refers to the situation in which artistic
practices can no longer derive their essence from
the physical medium in a modernist search for purity.
According to Krauss, reductive modernism turned
its pursuits of medium specifcity into its opposite
(intermedial) end: art in general as embodied in con-
ceptual art. Another example of this condition would
be a practice such as installation art, which manifests
itself in several diferent media, often employed simul-
taneously. Historically-established mediums such as
painting and sculpture are replaced by generic art.
New media scholars deal with similar issues through
the post-media argument, which makes it possible
to bring them into discussion with the art-historical
understanding of the situation. It is in this sense
that Weibel and Manovich use the term post-media.
Weibel focuses primarily on the technical aspect of
the post-media condition where no single medium is
dominant any longer; instead, all of the diferent me-
dia infuence and determine each other.
21
It would
seem that the production process of open source
cultural objects provides a platform for such mixing
of the media, and might be considered as an expres-
sion or a symptom of this condition. For example, the
3D models from Big Buck Bunny (2008), the second
open movie that was produced and distributed under
the same terms as Elephants Dream, are employed in
an open game titled Yo Frankie! (2008).
22
Manovich characterizes the digital attack on older
media as the ultimate blow to the materiality and
specifcity of practices, since the computer imposed
its own operations across the media, such as copy and
paste, morphing or interpolation.
23
These opera-
tions can be applied, regardless of the medium, to
photography, images, sounds and moving images, thus,
blurring the distinctions between photography and
painting, as well as between flm and animation.
24

Predictable as it may be for digital media scholars,
there is a special emphasis on the universal machine
that makes the enduring culturally and socially coded
specifcity collapse.
In contrast to these accounts of how digital media
forms de-specify objects of aesthetic production,
one could claim that adopting open source practice
2 6
A R T I C L E
as a distinct cultural form implies that some form of
specifcity still resides within the object itself. After all,
the open source concept is established in its particular
confguration of the object, in its structuring of the
source material, rather than as a purely contextual
or discursive category. Therefore, an articulation of
open source cultural practice also means demarcating
an object within the post-medium condition. What
kind of object does this bring about and what makes
it specifc while, at the same time, applicable across
media forms? Although it would not function as its di-
rect methodological background, but rather as a sort
of underlying motivation for this endeavor, we could
recall Walter Benjamins dream of a form of criticism
so tenaciously immanent that it would remain entirely
immersed in its object.
25
As Terry Eagleton concisely
noted, for Benjamin the idea is not what lies behind
the phenomenon as some informing essence, but
the way the object is conceptually confgurated in its
diverse, extreme and contradictory elements.
26
The
starting point here is to afrm the self-contained cat-
egory of the digital source so as to develop a model of
an object that can be employed both to articulate the
open source cultural object, as wells as make visible
the structural relations inherent in an object manifest-
ing a (digital) post-medium condition.
The model I am proposing identifes the categories of
the source and the executant within a cultural object.
To place these two categories in dynamic relation to
one another a third category is necessary the pro-
duction process. In computer-related discourse, the
term source usually refers to the softwares source
code, a textual listing of commands. For a consider-
ation of a cultural object, elements of a higher order
can assume the structuring role that a source code
has for its software (as was the case with the digital
3D models and textures of Elephants Dream). In the
model presented here, the term source signifes
production categories established and employed in
the making of the object. The executant indicates a
conventionalized mode of executing or performing
the source. I have appropriated this term, which most
often stands for a person who performs or executes
something, for instance a musical piece. The word
also captures the .exe fle of a computer program that
2 7
A R T I C L E
2 8
A R T I C L E
2 9
A R T I C L E
executes or runs the source code. A few contempo-
rary examples of the source-executant relation could
include: a digitally printed image as the executant of
the computer fle (its source), a digital scan as the ex-
ecutant of an old photograph (its source), a web page
as an executant of all the digital images, texts, anima-
tions and sounds that function as its source material.
I will here primarily focus on the category of the
digital source because of its relevance to open source
practice, but this account of the object could also be
related to older aesthetic frameworks. The source as
conceived in digital culture has a conceptual resonance
with, for example, the respective functions of Fluxus
score cards, Sol LeWitts instructions for wall drawings,
or even clay models of bronze sculptures, to a limited
degree. However, most historically established artistic
mediums and practices do not materially distinguish
the source and executant categories. In a traditional
cultural object such as a marble sculpture, it is impos-
sible to fully discern on one side the executant and
on the other, the source. They are closely interrelated
even in digital cultural objects, but examples such as
those of open source cultural practice point towards
the possibility of accessing these categories separately.
As a consequence, they open up the feld of post-
medium possibilities of remediation and re-mixing, as
described by Weibel and Manovich, among others. If it
can be accessed, a source can be given an alternative
executant in a diferent medium altogether. The digital
models of Free Universal Construction Kit are em-
ployed when making the accompanying poster as one
of its executants, although they are mainly intended
as sources for 3D printed physical executants. The
diferentiation of the source and executant to a degree
of separation gained momentum within the techni-
cal circumstances of digital reproduction, but this is
more fundamentally conditioned by powerful market
interests to which we will return in the third section.

The post-medium condition can be understood as
increasing the possibility of structural diferentiation
among the source and the executant, bringing about
a fexibility of their medial confgurations. These con-
fgurations escape the scope of historically established
mono-medial defnitions of practices, which also
makes it untenable to assert aesthetic conventions
based solely on the media form of the executant. I
fnd it necessary to consider both the source and the
executant as constitutive of the aesthetic object in the
post-medium condition.
27
In other words, I would ar-
gue that the specifcity of post-medium practices has
materially established foundations within its object,
through the way in which the source and executant
are interrelated in a given practice. By employing this
model to articulate the specifcity of post-medium
practices, I am countering the arguments discussed
above regarding the universal post-media condition
or the notion of collapsed vertical barriers between
practices.
28
For example, the kind of specifcity that
is being articulated through the source-executant
model can clearly diferentiate sculpture made with
digital technologies of 3D printing from a carved
marble sculpture. Their source-executant relation
difers decisively, including diferences in the type of
labor and associated skills, employed materials and
technical supports as well as reproduction possibilities.
Fundamentally, these media categories necessitate a
consideration of the production process in order to be
related. In a corresponding manner, I would propose
to consider open source cultural production as a spe-
cifc practice, which means that the Elephants Dream
is not a manifestation of the same practice that can
be found in conventional digital animation with hidden
production elements and techniques, or that the Free
Universal Construction Kit is not sufciently defned
as a piece of product design. It is their materialized
open source condition, and its economic and aesthetic
consequences that crucially defne them.
Figure 5. Schematic representation of the
source-executant model of a cultural object.
Cultural Object Production Process
Executant
Source
3 0
A R T I C L E
G
e
a
r
s
!
G
e
a
r
s
!
G
e
a
r
s
!
Z
o
o
b
Z
o
m
e
T
o
o
l
T
in
k
e
r
to
y
L
in
c
o
ln
L
o
g
s
K
N
e
x
F
is
c
h
e
r
te
c
h
n
ik
L
e
g
o
D
u
p
lo
K
r
in
k
le
s
K
N
e
x (KNex to KNex)
L
e
g
o
(Lego to Duplo
already supported
by manufacturer)
(Lego to Lego)
L
in
c
o
ln
L
o
g
s
(Lincoln Logs to
Lincoln Logs)
T
in
k
e
r
to
y
(Tinkertoy to
Tinkertoy)
Z
o
m
e
T
o
o
l
(ZomeTool to
ZomeTool)
Z
o
o
b (Zoob to Zoob)
K
r
in
k
le
s
(Krinkles to Krinkles)
D
u
p
lo (Duplo to Duplo)
(Lego to Duplo
already supported
by manufacturer)
F
is
c
h
e
r
te
c
h
n
ik
(Fischertechnik to
Fischertechnik)
Godtfred K. Christiansen
US Pat. 3597875 / Aug. 10, 1971
Artur Fischer
US Pat. 3464147 / Sep. 19, 1966
Joel Glickman & M. Doepner
US Pat. 5061219 / Dec. 11, 1990
Walter Heubl
US Pat. 3603025 / Sep. 30, 1968
Godtfred K. Christiansen
US Pat. 3005282 / Jul. 28, 1958
John Lloyd Wright
US Pat. 1351086 / Jan.8, 1920
Charles H. Pajeau
US Pat. 1113371 / Jul. 8, 1914
Steven Rogers & P. Hildebrandt
US Pat. 6840699 / Nov. 1, 2002*
Michael J. Grey
US Pat. 5897417 / Dec. 11, 1996*
The F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab present the Free Universal Construction Kit, a collection of adapter bricks that enable complete interoperability
between ten* popular childrens construction toys. By allowing any piece to join to any other, the Kit encourages new forms of interplay between
otherwise closed systems enabling the creation of previously impossible designs, and more creative opportunities for kids. The Kit adapters
can be downloaded from Thingiverse.com and other sharing sites as a set of 3D models in .STL format, suitable for reproduction by personal
fabrication systems. >>>For more information, please see: http://fffff.at/free-universal-construction-kit.
The Universal Adapter Brick
of the Free Universal Construction Kit
The Free Universal Construction Kit is licensed under and subject to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the Kit, and to remix and/or adapt the Kit; in doing so, you must attribute the Kit to F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab. Please note
that extensions to the Kit require the same or similar license. You may not use the Kit for commercial purposes. For inquiries, please contact info@adapterz.org.
Lego, Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Gears! Gears!, KNex, Krinkles, Bristle Blocks, Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Zome, ZomeTool and Zoob
are trademarks of their respective owners. The Free Universal Construction Kit is not associated or affiliated with, or endorsed, sponsored, certified or approved by, any of
the foregoing owners or their respective products. The Kit is represented, for legal purposes, by Adapterz, LLC.
*
Two construction playsets nominally supported by the Kit are still
protected (as of March 2012) by active patents: Zoob (patented 1996)
and ZomeTool (patented 2002). For the Zoob and Zome systems,
please note that we have delayed the release of adapter
models until December 2016 and November 2022, respectively.
uck-02f00m uck-02f03m uck-02f04m uck-02f06m uck-02f07m uck-02f08m uck-02f09m uck-02f05m uck-02f01m
uck-03f00m
uck-03f04m uck-03f06m
uck-03f07m
uck-03f05m
uck-03f01m
uck-04f06m
uck-04f07m
uck-04f05m
uck-04f01m
uck-05f03m uck-05f04m uck-05f06m uck-05f07m uck-05f08m uck-05f09m uck-05f01m
uck-06f00m uck-06f03m uck-06f04m uck-06f07m uck-06f08m uck-06f09m uck-06f05m uck-06f01m
uck-07f00m
uck-07f06m
uck-07f08m uck-07f09m uck-07f05m
uck-07f01m
uck-08f00m
uck-08f03m uck-08f04m uck-08f06m uck-08f07m
uck-08f09m
uck-09f00m
uck-09f03m
uck-09f04m
uck-09f05m
uck-09f01m
uck-01f06m
uck-01f07m uck-01f08m uck-01f09m uck-01f05m
uck-00f03m uck-00f04m uck-00f06m uck-00f07m uck-00f08m uck-00f09m uck-00f01m
Figure 6. Free Universal Construction Kit poster, F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab, 2012.Used with permis-
sion via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, F.A.T. Lab and Sy-
Lab, http://www.ff.at/free-universal-construction-kit, 2012.
3 1
A R T I C L E
3. THE POST-MEDIUM OBJECT AND THE
COMMODITY MARKET
The separation of the source and the executant in
software products is embedded in the fnancial inter-
ests of the software industry. The notorious example
of Microsoft hiding the Windows source code is a
clear illustration of this. The purpose of withholding
the source is to secure the profts based on selling
the separated executant. Consequently, these inter-
ests shape the condition of the executant beyond
its separation with the source. Software products
as executants are released in machine language of
the binary code as long strings of ones and zeros
that a computer can read and execute, but a human
cannot productively understand, at least not without
the source code. Political economist Steven Weber
provides an accessible description of the role of the
source code in these circumstances:
The source code is basically the recipe for the
binaries; and if you have the source code, you can
understand what the author was trying to accom-
plish when she wrote the program which means
you can modify it. If you have just the binaries, you
typically cannot either understand or modify them.
Therefore, shipping binary code is a very efective
way for proprietary software companies to con-
trol what you can do with the software you buy.
29
Seen in this light, it is clear why contemporary
struggles against the commodifcation of software
and intellectual property, such as the Free Soft-
ware Movement, placed an emphasis on access to
the source code and its distribution alongside the
software package. However, in order for the acces-
sible source to exert a meaningful challenge to the
corporate mode of developing and distributing pro-
prietary software, the users need sufcient skills in
order to be empowered as producers and to engage
in modifying the software according to their own,
or communal, needs. It goes without saying that a
majority of users lack these skills, although the exact
fgures would depend upon the type and complexity
of the particular source.
This connects the problem of open access to the
source code with a Marxist perspective on social
deskilling.
30
In this view, the development of tech-
nology under capitalism transfers knowledge from
labor to machinery. As a result, direct producers lose
control over the production process since machinery
is owned by capital and managed by its representa-
tives. As Johan Sderberg explains, technology is
specifcally designed into black boxes so that the
laborer/user is left without infuence over the func-
tions that the machinery imposes upon her.
31
In the
software world, the separated executant, severed
from its source code, embodies the black box con-
cept and functions both as a technical guarantee for
the legal protection of intellectual property (necessary
to sustain its commodity form), and also as a mode
of isolating the evermore specialized sets of skills of
software/information labourers.
The situation of the source and the executant in the
software market is somewhat diferent from that in
the feld of cultural production and cannot be directly
translated into it. Instead of primarily securing the
commodity form, the separated executant brought
about a new set of problems for the mass-entertain-
ment businesses, a sector heavily infuenced by digiti-
zation processes. A large quantity of flms and music
is distributed through peer-to-peer networks and
torrents, thus escaping the content fow of big pro-
duction companies, as well as their revenue streams.
32
This raises issues not only for the media business,
but also for our discussion of open source cultural
production. If a Pixar animated movie can be found
online, then what is the point of creating Elephants
Dream as an open animated movie? Granted, there
is certainly the issue of legality as digital executants
of Pixars production are obtained illegally, whereas
3 2
A R T I C L E
Elephants Dream is distributed under a Creative Com-
mons license. But I will not ponder here the overarch-
ing forms taken by the intellectual property regime.
Instead, I focus this investigation on the material
conditions and roles of the source and the executant
of contemporary cultural objects as I believe they hold
importance for aesthetic production.
Media researcher Gran Bolin describes a number of
strategies by which media businesses are trying to
secure profts.
33
For instance, he observes how fc-
tional characters become commodities, which makes
the trademark law increasingly important.
34
But with
the increased difculty of cashing in on the content it-
self, media conglomerates turn to (closed) media plat-
forms, such as mobile phones or game consoles, as an
alternative or supplementary source of profts. These
hardware platforms are commodities themselves, but
also function as means of consumption of media texts
as products. He notes that the audience needs to
buy increasingly more media technologies that can
decode the digital content.
35
I would add to this that
the means of consumption are becoming more and
more specialized for specifc kinds of executants, and
vice versa, especially when we think of devices such
as e-readers, tablets or smart-phones. Finally, the
audience itself becomes an important commodity for
media producers.
36
Economic revenues for media
companies are secured in yet another important way
by selling this commodity to advertisers.
All of these tendencies are associated with the lucra-
tive process of media (market) convergence, in which
the boundaries between diferent media are becom-
ing blurred and content is fowing from platform to
platform, as theorized by writers such as Henry Jen-
kins.
37
This transmedial fow yields consequences
for the source-executant relations, and reveals that
the source, while separated and suppressed, still has a
signifcant structuring power within the cultural object
as a whole. For example, when a short flm featuring
landscape shots is to be repurposed in a music video,
a contract has to be signed. Besides legal rights being
sold, these deals state as standard that raw footage
with extended shots needs to be provided.
38
In other
words, source material is still essential for a produc-
tive re-use of the given flm, even though its executant
is available on distribution channels such as YouTube
or Vimeo. Therefore, providing the source material
in the manner of Free Universal Construction Kit or
Elephants Dream does in itself challenge the black
box of the executant.
In short, on the media market the commodity form
is secured not only by various embodiments of the
intellectual property law, but also by the severed link
to the source of the distributed executant. Tensions
in the media market manifest in many areas, and I
would argue that they are also present on the level
of source-executant relations. The observed pres-
sures on the objects structure are always in some way
associated with the commodity form and its struggle
with contesting (digital) commons. What follows from
this discussion, in which the categories of the source
and the executant have been given some materialist
opacity, is the question of whether these categories
can be instrumental, or at least productive, in order to
conceptualize the political aesthetics for the post-
medium condition?
4. THE POST-MEDIUM OBJECT AND MATERIALIST
AESTHETICS
Open source cultural practices contain the ambitious
promise of free participation and the democratization
of cultural objects. How do these aspirations relate
to the century-old leftist tendencies in modern-
ist aesthetics that focus on enabling access to the
mode of production? One of the recurring themes of
3 3
A R T I C L E
Marxist writers on political aesthetics, such as Walter
Benjamin, is the breaking of the phantasmagoric
efect, the illusionary and magical appearance of com-
modity culture and its material products that serves
the ideological function of concealing their condi-
tions of production.
39
This kind of phantasmagoria
is epitomized in Hollywood productions where magic
is achieved through special efects whose mode of
production is concealed. By contrast, avant-garde
tendencies such as those of 1920s Soviet cinema
aspired to make the apparatus of production visible,
and to relate flm production with material relations
in society in general.
40
Constructivism, Fluxus and
many other twentieth-century practices produced
diverse responses to this aesthetic and political goal.
Furthermore, Benjamin more specifcally argues that it
is not enough to merely transmit the apparatus of pro-
duction (to the recipients); what is also needed is its
transformation.
41
But if the transformed production
process is not merely transmitted, how is it accessed?
The source-executant model of a cultural object struc-
tures a typology of two possible points of access. On
the one hand, the executant of a work can reveal or
materialize its underlying production process. A classic
example of this type of access to the mode of produc-
tion would be Dziga Vertovs montage technique in
his 1929 movie Man with a Movie Camera, where the
director reveals how the fnal shots have been flmed.
For example, apart from showing footage related to
trains and their movement, the director also uncov-
ers the difculties and peculiarities that the camera-
man faces when flming such shots. In this way, the
audience is constantly reminded of the fact that the
movie has been produced for them as a result of a
specifc mode of labor, thus making the production of
a flm relatable to material relations in society, as well
as to other labor forms and economic units.
42
The
audience receives these relationships as visual content
through the executant the fnished movie version
they are watching. Arguably, this type of a response to
the posed political and aesthetic problem is trapped
in a contradiction between achieved ruptures of the
phantasmagoria and the fact that these breaks are
again transmitted to the viewer in a prearranged way:
there is always an of-screen cameraman flming the
one on-screen.
On the other hand, the articulation of a fully separate
source of a digital cultural object ofers the possibil-
ity of an alternative access point into the mode of
production. Elephants Dream is such a case. However,
this is not immediately apparent because its executant
is a closed movie fle, just like any Hollywood DVD
edition. Furthermore, the high technical quality and
visual complexity of its digital animation does not
highlight this flms production process any more so
than viewing Pixar or DreamWorks products.
43
And
yet, its mode of production is made blatantly bare
in the publicly available source material. This kind of
access reveals elements of the cultural object that are
not visible in the executant, thus implying a deliber-
ate intention to promote the accessible source as an
active element of the visual system. With some skill
in navigating a 3D production environment, the recipi-
ents are able to have a look behind the scenes and
reveal how each shot or element of the animation was
produced, as well as to re-use the source material in
diferent executants, as long as it is shared under the
Creative Commons license.
When viewed through the lens of twentieth-century
political aesthetics, the source-based means of
production-access produce twofold results. From the
perspective of its utopian promise of open access,
Elephants Dream highlights a possible transformation
of cultural production with respect to a proprietary
mode of production. Thus, it appears compliant with
Benjamins imperative of working on transforming the
conditions of production while providing access to the
3 4
A R T I C L E
production process itself, though it should be stressed
that, in terms of production, it mainly empowers a
relatively narrow community of 3D modeling enthu-
siasts gathered around specialized forums.
44
Even
if the utopia of democratic and free participation dissi-
pates at the skill threshold which inevitably appears
when the source and executant are reintegrated in
the conditions established by deskilled technology
developed under capitalism there still remains a
considerable degree of resistance to the commodity
form that also afects the unskilled recipients. The at-
tained non-proprietary status of the commons allows
for non-commodifed forms of distribution. Therefore,
while the main political capacity of the digital source
material as it is organized in open source practice
stems from its role in securing the free distribution
of commons, the open source as a politico-aesthetic
strategy is inherently dependent upon skilled special-
ists and contains an implicit retreat from modernist
concerns with the division of labour and a transforma-
tion of the audience into producers at large.
Free Universal Construction Kit perhaps even more
clearly illustrates the position of open source cultural
practice towards the dominant socio-economic
hierarchy of the market. Although its executants the
missing pieces required for construction toy interop-
erability do rework the form of the mass produced
products, they do not aim to subvert that commodity
altogether. Rather, the aim is to augment the existing
commodity systems and intervene into their delimita-
tions by reworking their (digital) source materials. This
is in line with what Josephine Berry Slater states as
the case for the creative commons license (which
both of my examples employ): it understands the
commons as a necessary adjunct to the market, not a
proto-communist phase of development.
45
Follow-
ing the trail of Elephants Dream and its re-use, the
cultural practice supports this evaluation. It leads not
only to fan re-mixes but also to commercial use of
its footage and screenshots.
46
Furthermore, from
this skill-centered perspective, open source cultural
practice can also be evaluated as an efective adver-
tisement for the labor market.
47
Fundamentally, both
Elephants Dream and Free Universal Construction
Kit subscribe to the commons-based utopianism of
the concept of open source without taking it up for
further investigation and thus, do not establish them-
selves as refective, critical practices.
Alongside this interesting formation of utopian
tendencies and its historically conditioned limitations,
there is also an aesthetically negative resonance of the
open source cultural object as compared to modernist
practices and utopian strategies. As illustrated by the
Elephants Dream short flm, the executant does not
necessarily have to reveal its mode of production in
order to achieve the open source goal of transforming
the object into cultural commons, since the produc-
tion process of the object is accessible through its
publicly available source. This kind of reception strat-
egy is essentially non-modernist in terms of aesthetics.
It does not produce a reworking of sensory strata, let
alone the conventions associated with the format of
its executant. In modernist art as defned through
the paradigm of medium specifcity, any accentua-
tion of the source material necessarily had to bring
about consequences for the executants, since those
categories were not separately established or sharply
divided. On the contrary, they were fused within the
confned articulation of the medium or its support. On
this media-categorical level we could state that the
emancipation of the source in digital production forms
breaks the modernist horizon of aesthetic expecta-
tions when it comes to reception of the executant.
This is not to say that the executant necessarily has
to conceal its mode of production, although it does
inherently bring about that tendency through its
function of a stand-alone package: the separated
3 5
A R T I C L E
Figure 7. Free Universal Construciton Kit in use, connecting
four diferent systems together, F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab, 2012.
Photography taken from the the website of F.A.T: Lab, http://
www.ff.at/free-universal-construction-kit website. Used
with permission via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 3.0 Unported license, F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab, 2012.
3 6
A R T I C L E
3 7
A R T I C L E
executant is already at one remove from its conditions
of production and employed source materials. But
there are other levels upon which this link may be re-
established to a limited degree. For example, I would
interpret Elephants Dream narrative as addressing
this objects open source condition. The story of the
flm features two characters, the elderly Proog and the
youthful Emo, jointly inhabiting an undefned environ-
ment of surreal industrial and electronic constructs
they refer to as the Machine. They travel through
it and explore it, which gradually reveals that they do
not perceive the Machine in the same way. Proog is
presenting the environment to his younger compan-
ion and trying to conserve what he makes of it, while
Emo questions this understanding of the machine and
eventually attempts to intervene in it by proclaiming
his visions of what the Machine is or could be. I fnd
that the relation between the narrative content of
the short flm, specifcally the role and the portrayal
of the Machine in the story, and the open condition of
its source material is rather direct, although it is never
made explicit. This relation is important to take note
of as a counterpoint to executant separation, although
it should also be stressed that the leftist wing of mod-
ernism worked on surpassing exactly this metaphori-
cal level of aesthetic relations to production. But the
materialist fundaments of such modernist aesthetics
seem to be put in question by the source-executant
divide. Having discarded modernist techniques and
strategies, what is left in store for (political) aesthet-
ics?
Precisely because of this line of critique, it is important
to understand and conceptualize post-medium prac-
tices in terms of their source as well as the executant.
In my native discipline of art history, the confned focus
on the executant seems particularly acute, which I
believe is one of the reasons why the very object of
art-historical research has become vague and con-
tested.
48
While the executant of the open source cul-
tural object is not necessarily materially distinct from
its corresponding mass cultural form, the condition of
its source establishes a diference in terms of media
and commodity forms, and this diference needs to be
acknowledged. Moreover, an aesthetic mode of self-
refexivity is not inconceivable for the interrelationship
of the source and the executants, as hinted at in the
manner in which Elephants Dream addresses its own
open source condition through the presented narrative.
However, I would suggest that this rift in the object
needs to be explicitly accounted for in such a self-
refexive structure because of the discussed political,
economic and aesthetic functions of the categories
of the source and the executant in contemporary pro-
duction forms. Even if this practice does not directly
commit to modernist political aesthetics, I believe that
at the same time it ofers tools for their refurnishing
in the post-medium condition, especially by proposing
an aesthetic system that includes the category of the
source as an integral component of the cultural object.
CONCLUSION
The open source cultural object brings to our attention
the category of the digital source which I hold to be
crucial in both envisioning and analyzing contempo-
rary materialist strategies and utopian tendencies in
cultural practices. Together with its counterpart cat-
egory of the executant, the digital source has an active
function in contemporary socio-technical systems of
cultural production and distribution, a function I could
only begin to outline in this format through the lenses
of the market, media and aesthetics. In light of its at-
titude to the production category of the digital source
material, open source cultural practice returns some
much-needed materialist substance to the nebulous
feld of digital culture marked by notions such as media
convergence or the post-medium condition.
Moreover, this practice begins to enact an aesthetic
model in which the (skilled) recipient is positioned in
between the categories of the source and executant
a space opened by the ruptured object of the post-
medium condition. The mode of public sharing and dis-
tribution of the open source cultural object constitutes
a part of the necessary conditions of its reception (or
to put this the other way around, if the digital source
3 8
A R T I C L E
material is not freely distributed, then the practice is
not established as open source). Hence, a possibil-
ity arises for the conceptualization of an aesthetic
experience for which it is essential that the aesthetic
object is established as a commons. I would identify
such a strategic positioning of the recipient and the
aesthetic activation of the very conditions for the
works distribution as the main strategies of open
source cultural practice when it envisions how the
political aesthetics of (digital) cultural commons are to
be established. These strategies are still nascent and
largely only implicitly manifested in concrete examples
of contemporary open source cultural practice, but
nevertheless I fnd them to be highly provocative and
productive utopian tendencies of our time that need
to be attended.
What I also tried to pose in this essay is how such
strategies relate to the modernist tradition of leftist
aesthetics, its methods and fundamental objectives.
Rather than emphasizing limited strands of continu-
ity between the two, it seems more accurate and
productive to acknowledge the open source mode
of aesthetic production as a pragmatic reinterpreta-
tion of Benjaminian demands for access to a mode
of production that retreats from aspirations for wider
social transformation. Open source cultural practice
coexists with and within commodity culture, much
like open source software development is incorpo-
rated in corporately driven technology development.
Nevertheless, or precisely because of this, the open
source political aesthetics of cultural commons are
not established as a purely utopian tendency. The
open source cultural practice does empower its main
audience of peer specialists to be participants and
producers, rather than treating them as competitors.
In addition, the example of Free Universal Construc-
tion Kit implies a possible reworking of predetermined
forms of commodity consumption through the circuits
of cultural commons. Future aesthetic articulations of
the political capacity of digital source material should
certainly take these factors into account.
If this exploration of the political aesthetics of the
commons in the post-medium condition has resulted
in presenting utopian prospects, then I trust that the
methodological results of this discussion are, on the
contrary, very concrete. I believe that the presented
mode of object-analysis and research opens a possible
way of locating and engaging practices in a still vague
territory of the contemporary post-medium condition.
The open source cultural object requires a new strat-
egy for examining aesthetic production, and I have
proposed a departure point from which to address the
challenges it poses to the categories and narratives of
art history, as well as to those of media studies. The
question of what this alternative feld of aesthetic
production brings about for conceptual frameworks
of contemporary art and its practices and concerns
remains. In order to engage with this issue, in the fu-
ture this project will have to relate the contemporary
signifcance of digital source material with the history
of comparable production categories employed in
artistic production. However, that discussion will have
to take place within other trajectories of artistic and
cultural practice.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This paper was fnalized in the context of my Research Mas-
ter programme at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where I am
studying with the fnancial support of the VU Fellowship Pro-
gramme. I would like to thank my mentors Eric de Bruyn and
Sven Ltticken for making my Dutch academic adventures
both possible and productive.
3 9
A R T I C L E
1. This paper draws from my masters thesis at Leiden Uni-
versity in the Netherlands titled: Problems of Specifcity
and Production in the Post-medium Condition: The Open
Source Art. It was developed with the generous guidance
of Eric de Bruyn in Spring 2011. Segments of sections one
and two were a part of a short article in the Zagreb-based
journal Frakcija, listed in the references, but they have
been greatly reworked for this paper and are for the frst
time presented internationally here. Sections three and
four have been developed specifcally for the purposes
of this publication and have greatly beneftted from
discussions with Sven Ltticken at the Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam.
2. For more information on the history of the commons
and early documents governing its use rights, see Peter
Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and
Commons for All (Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2009).
3. David Berry, The Commons, Free Software Magazine,
February 21, 2005, http://fsmsh.com/1092 (accessed on
10 October, 2013).
4. Garret Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, Science
162 (1968): 1243-1248.
5. David Harvey, The Future of the Commons, Radical His-
tory Review 109 (Winter 2011): 101-107.
6. The term open source emerged out of internal disputes
within the free software movement and was adopted by
those advocating a more pragmatic approach that does
not antagonize corporations. For more information on the
free software movement and its central fgure, see Sam
Williams, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallmans Crusade
for Free Software (Sebastopol, CA: OReilly, 2002); for a
concise overview of the open source versus free software
debates, see: Julian Stallabrass, Free From Exchange?, in
Internet Art: The Online Clash of Culture and Commerce
(London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 2003), 106-112.
7. Oxford Dictionaries Online, s.v. open-source, accessed
December 15, 2012, http://oxforddictionaries.com.
8. For an overview of the open source concept as a set of
principles that govern a way of organizing production I
would recommend: Steven Weber, The Success of Open
Source (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)
9. Although I am here considering only the software and
cultural objects that are distributed free of charge, which
is not necessarily the case for every product of an open
source project, I have chosen to apply the term open
source throughout this paper, because it is associated
more closely with the very object and its structural condi-
tion. I fnd this term more suitable for my task of concep-
tualizing the source as a category of cultural objects later
in the text.
10. The website of Elephants Dream, http://www.elephants-
dream.org/ (accessed January 10, 2013).
11. Download location of Elephants Dream production fles:
http://orange.blender.org/download (accessed January
10, 2013).
12. An open source digital 3D modeling suite Blender 3D,
http://www.blender.org/ (accessed January 10, 2013).
13. Creative Commons license is one of several public copy-
right licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted
works. A Creative Commons license is used when an
author wants to give people the right to share, use, and
even build upon a work that they have created. Wikipedia,
s.v. Creative Commons license, last modifed January 20,
2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_li-
censes. Also see the website of Creative Commons, http://
creativecommons.org/ (accessed January 10, 2013).
14. The website of Free Universal Construction Kit, http://ff.
at/free-universal-construction-kit/ (accessed October 10,
2013).
15. The Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab, the poster of
Free Universal Construction Kit, the website of F.A.T. Lab,
http://media.ff.at/free-universal-construction-kit/im-
ages/free-universal-construction-kit-poster.pdf (accessed
October 10, 2013). See also the website of F.A.T. Lab,
http://ff.at/about/ (accessed October 10, 2013).
4 0
A R T I C L E
16. The Free Universal Construction Kit poster ofers the best
overview of designs and interoperable links achieved in
this project: http://media.ff.at/free-universal-construc-
tion-kit/images/free-universal-construction-kit-poster.pdf
(accessed October 10, 2013).
17. For example, Free Universal Construction Kit designs can
be downloaded from Thingverse.com, http://www.thingi-
verse.com/uck/designs (accessed October 10, 2013).
18. An example of specialized 3D printing services could be
those provided by Shapeways, a New York based company:
the website of Shapeways, http://www.shapeways.com/
(accessed October 10, 2013).
19. Rosalind Krauss, A Voyage in the North Sea. Art in the
Age of the Post-Medium Condition (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1999).
20. For a very useful outline of various post-media arguments,
including those of Weibel and Manovich, see Domenico
Quaranta, Media, New Media, Postmedia (Milan: Postme-
diabooks, 2010).
21. Peter Weibel, The Post-media Condition, in Post-media
Condition, ed. P. Weibel (Madrid: Centro Cultural Conde
Duque, 2006), 14.
22. Big Buck Bunny open animated movie, http://www.big-
buckbunny.org/ (accessed January 10, 2013); Yo Frankie!
open game, http://www.yofrankie.org/, (accessed January
10, 2013).
23. Lev Manovich, Post-Media Aesthetics, Lev Manovichs
ofcial website, 2000 , www.manovich.net/DOCS/Post_
media_aesthetics1.doc (accessed January 10, 2013).
24. Ibid., 3.
25. Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1990).
26. Ibid., 328.
27. For the sake of clarity, I am focusing on single source-
executant relations. This is sufcient to articulate the basic
condition of open source. However, a variety of practices
in the post-medium condition are characterized by a
whole set of nested source-executant relations. After all,
most of the source materials I have mentioned thus far are
themselves produced commodities and have in a sense
previously functioned as executants. I have addressed
cases of multiple source-executant relations in a shorter
essay on digital image rendering available online: Boris
ukovi, Imagining the Rendered Image: Visuality in
Post-medium Circuits, Visual Arts, Media and Architecture
research master programme blog, http://visualartsmedi-
aarchitecture.wordpress.com/boris/ (accessed October
15, 2013).
28. Domenico Quaranta portrays the post-media condition as
breaking down the barriers that still separate contem-
porary art from flm, architecture and design to arrive at a
new, open vision of the visual realm. Rhizome.org editorial
from January 2011, http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/
jan/12/the-postmedia-perspective/ (accessed January 20,
2013).
29. Steven Weber, The Success of Open Source (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 4.
30. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The
Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1998). Referenced in Johan
Sderberg, Copyleft vs. Copyright: A Marxist Critique,
First Monday 7, no. 3-4 (March 2002), http://frstmonday.
org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view-
Article/938/860.
31. Johan Sderberg, Copyleft vs. Copyright: A Marxist
Critique.
32. Gran Bolin, Media Technologies, Transmedia Storytelling
and Commodifcation, in Ambivalence Towards Conver-
gence: Digitalization and Media Change, ed. T. Storsul and
D. Stuedahl (Gteburg: Nordicom, Gteborgs Universitet,
2007), 240.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 243.
35. Ibid., 240.
36. Ibid., 246.
37. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New
Media Collide (New York and London: New York University
Press, 2006).
4 1
A R T I C L E
38. I would like to thank Giovanni Anthony Silva, an aspiring
movie director, for sharing this insight and his experiences
of media convergence with me.
39. For a more detailed insight into Benjamins use of the term
phantasmagoria see Margaret Cohen, Walter Benjamins
Phantasmagoria, New German Critique 48 (1989): 87-107.
40. For more information on (Soviet) cinema and its approach
to the apparatus of production see Jonathan Beller, The
Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and
the Society of the Spectacle (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth
College Press, 2006).
41. Walter Benjamin, The Author as Producer, New Left
Review 1, no. 62 (July-August 1970): 14.
42. For more information on the Man with a Movie Camera
see Jonathan Beller, Chapter 1: Dziga Vertov and the Film
of Money, in The Cinematic Mode of Production: Atten-
tion Economy and the Society of the Spectacle, 37-87.
43. Elephants Dream was produced roughly at the same time
as DreamWorks studios digital animation movies Mada-
gascar (2005) and Flushed Away (2006), as well as Pixars
Cars (2006) and Ratatouille (2007).
44. The primary audience for the source material of Elephants
Dream seems to be a community organized around its
main production tool, the Blender software suite. They
frequent the associated Blender forum at: http://www.
blender.org/forum/ (accessed October 10, 2013).
45. Cf. Josephine Berry Slater, Chapter 4: Of Commoners
and Criminals, in Proud to be Flesh: A Mute Magazine
Anthology of Cultural Politics after the Net (London: Mute
Publishing Ltd, 2009), 161.
46. Diferent re-uses of Elephants Dream include simple
remixes of the original executant such as the music video
for the band Buried Time and their song The Same
[YouTube video, 3:50, posted by EmanuelsStuf, February
10, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QccukAr2j6s
(accessed October 10, 2013)], as well as the re-used
original source materials for a new trailer with difer-
ent camera angles on objects and characters: Elephants
Dream [YouTube video, 1:16, posted by David Wind-
schefel, September 23, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=qVTjrzWjhxM (accessed October 10, 2013)].
There are not many examples of source-based re-uses of
Elephants Dream mainly because of the steep technical
requirements when it comes to rendering a flm format
(new executant). The flm was also employed for commer-
cial promotion as one of the samples for HD capabilities of
ArcSofts TotalMedia Theater player: http://www.arcsoft.
com/totalmedia-theatre/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_
medium=email&utm_term=banner&utm_
content=banner&utm_campaign=TMT6 (accessed
October 10, 2013).
47. A quick glance at the open project section of Blenders
forums will reveal calls for specialists and enthusiasts in
various commercial and non-commercial projects: http://
www.blender.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=20&sid=a43
3b0959b233b7f1e00f705a49ecd04 (accessed October
10, 2013).
48. Art historian Julian Stallabrass presented this problem
very clearly in the case of Internet Art. For him, the prob-
lem of the singular art object, which implies something
that connects Paleolithic cave paintings with a Czanne
landscape or a shopping trip by Silvie Fleury, makes it
particularly difcult to defne post-medium practices
disconnected from the museum and the market for art. As
the historical experiences of photography and video art
remind us, in order to grasp a new mode of practice the
defnition of the art object as such has to be contested.
See Julian Stallabrass, Can Art History Digest Net Art? in
Netpioneers 1.0 - Archiving, Representing and Contextu-
alising Early Netbased Art, ed. D. Daniels and G. Reisinger
(Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010): 165-179.
4 2
A R T I C L E
4 3
A R T I C L E
INTRODUCTION
In accord with its mission to organize the worlds
information and make it universally accessible and
useful,
1
Google has, over the last several years, digi-
tized millions of books from major research libraries
collections that have been built by the endeavors of
librarians and cultural workers over hundreds of years,
and with much public funding and turned those col-
lections into an online marketplace with the intention
of end-running Amazon to become the worlds largest
bookstore. There was one faw in Googles strategy of
pillaging the worlds print culture: it tried to sidestep
the copyrights claimed by commercial publishers
and authors. However, Google reached a commercial
settlement with the Association of American Publish-
ers in 2012, after which the sole remaining barrier it
faced was its long-running litigation with the Authors
Guild. In November 2013, this obstacle to Googles cul-
tural accumulation strategy also seemed to have been
overcome when the company won a resounding legal
victory. A federal judge dismissed the case, saying that
Googles book scanning project is protected under U.S.
legal provisions for fair use. While the Authors Guild
vowed to appeal, Google got the green light to move
ahead its plan for the worlds books.
POWERED BY
GOOGLE
Widening Access and Tightening Corporate Control
DAN SCHILLER
Graduate School of Library & Information Science &
Department of Communication, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
dschille@illinois.edu
http://danschiller.info/
SHINJOUNG YEO
PhD Candidate
Graduate School of Library & Information Science,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
yeo1@illinois.edu
by
Dan Schi l l er &
Shi nj oung Yeo
4 4
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
The Internet and new media are often seen as constituting open spaces
where cultural empowerment and free-fowing expressive creativity fnd
emancipation from top-down political-economic power. However, this one-
sided perspective is insufcient, if not even invalid: the democratization
of art does not cease to confront structural obstacles in cyberspace, as is
shown by this case-study of Googles overt interventions into art and cul-
ture. Google is working to digitize museum collections at its own expense,
and is making art work widely accessible on the Internet. We show how
this widened access itself, however, functions as a Google market strategy
for turning cultural production into a site of proft-making. Google is quiet-
ly reorganizing cultural spaces on a global scale, to incorporate them into
its more encompassing business of information.
Does the worlds art present equally tempting prey?
Still trying to expand, Google has placed the received
traditions of global art and history in its sights. The
company is moving into these territories, armed with
its seductively powerful digital technologies, seeking
to burrow more deeply into our cultural landscapes.
Its corporate strategy for art and historical archives is
complex and profoundly important.
THE BUSINESS OF SEARCH
Studies show that web searchers overwhelmingly
limit themselves to the frst page of search results in
pursuing their queries; a commanding majority look at
just the frst three listings.
2
Whoever organizes these
search results obtains a chokepoint over the wider
Internet. With an estimated 62% share of the global
search service market,
3
Google has become the gate-
way to the Web for a large part of the world. In South
Korea, China, Japan, and Russia, alternative or home-
grown search engines are dominant. Elsewhere, by
and large, Google rules.
While trumpeting that its intentions are strictly be-
nevolent and that search constitutes one of the great
intellectual challenges of our time,
4
Googles search
business the core of the company actually has
nothing to do with bettering the human condition. Its
purpose is to provide advertisers with access to Web
users, and to proft by charging for that access. In
pursuit of this proft strategy, Google is doing every-
thing it can to dig new channels for advertising to fow
through. This is very lucrative. In its most recent year,
Google harvested over $43 billion in web advertising,
which made up 95% of its revenue.
5
4 5
A R T I C L E
At the center of Googles search engine sits its algo-
rithm the tangle of rules that structure the results
pages it serves up in response to keyword queries.
This algorithm is both intensively cultivated and pro-
prietary.
From the start, Google Executive Chairman Eric
Schmidt underlines, Google has constantly refned its
search algorithm, which now considers over 200 fac-
tors in assessing site quality and relevance.
6
In 2010,
only partly in order to enhance search quality and
end-user experience, Google engineers conducted
13,311 evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm
changes improved the quality of its search results,
and these reviews resulted in 516 alterations more
than one per day.
7
Google repeatedly emphasizes that its algorithm is
unbiased, anchored in scientifc computational meth-
ods, and uniformly aimed at helping its users. A bright
line is said to separate its organic or natural search
results from advertiser-purchased links. All this is dif-
fcult to corroborate, however, because the algorithm
is a closely guarded secret. Googles priorities as a
business, in any case, pivot less on its individual users
than on its patrons: corporate advertisers. It personal-
izes search results, by combining data generated by
tracking individual users travel across the web with
data it acquires from its own in-house sources and
from third-party vendors, in order to grant to its ad-
vertisers targeted real-time access to the particular
users whom they desire to reach. Googles $3.1 billion
acquisition (in 2007) of the Web advertising network
DoubleClick gave it the most sophisticated and far-
fung Internet advertising infrastructure in existence.
As a result, Googles business is to place ads not only
on its own sites but also on thousands of independent
websites which cooperate in this arrangement in
order to gain the resulting advertising revenue. Argu-
ably, Google has rendered its need for supposedly
neutral search results mostly superfuous, because ads
can be so accurately targeted at individuals as they
surf. Googles reliance on the open Web harbors major
implications for the companys strategy and, more im-
portantly, for our system of cultural provision.
Today a $50 billion company by revenue, Google faces
a need to diversify, so as to reduce its dependence
on these two related lines of business search ad-
vertising and ad placement as a proft source. It has
used its near-monopoly on search, accordingly, as a
base from which to extend into adjacent markets
and hedge its risk. Consistently framing its strategy
in terms of developing the open Web, the company
is building up a mountain of content and destination
sites, including video (YouTube), as well as Google
Places, Google Earth, Google News, Google Finance,
Google Books, and Google Play, its app store. It has
moved forcefully into vertical search services for
specialized markets in travel, shopping, and local com-
merce (Maps, Product Search, Flight Search).
8
It is
an active participant in the competition to provide
Internet functionality and business tools, via Android,
its mobile operating system software, Google Docs,
Gmail, and its Chrome browser. And, through its
takeover of Motorolas mobile phone manufacturing
subsidiary, it is ofering an increasing range of hard-
ware products, from Chromebooks to Nexus mobile
handsets and tablets. These often interlocking busi-
nesses provide a context for thinking about its Google
Cultural Institute.
GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE
Google publicly exhibited its interest in the arts and
history when Eric Schmidt attended a ceremony in
November 2009 with then-US Ambassador to Iraq,
Christopher Hill, at the National Museum of Iraq.
Schmidt promised to use Googles time and consider-
4 6
A R T I C L E
able resources to digitize ancient artifacts at the Na-
tional Museum of Iraq and make them available on the
Internet.
9
This was after the much-publicized looting
of Iraqs National Museum of Antiquities in the early
days of the US military occupation, which the United
States did little to prevent despite numerous warn-
ings.
10
Schmidt was actively serving United States
foreign policy even as he presented the company as an
independent and benevolent caretaker of global cul-
ture. In 2011, Google ingested the National Museum of
Iraq into its Google Maps Street View Gallery.
11
Shortly after this, the Google Cultural Institute (GCI)
was established, with a mission to help preserve and
promote culture online to make it accessible to the
world.
12
This not only constituted a bold extension
of Googles mission of providing access to universal
knowledge, but also seemed to signify a full-scale
embrace of cultural preservation in keeping with the
companys artfully designed philanthropic programs.
13

In December 2011, Google inaugurated its Paris head-
quarters and, to much fanfare (then-President Nicolas
Sarkozy attended), placed the months-old GCI as well
as its Research & Development Center there. This was
not a haphazard decision. Google holds more than 90
percent of the search engine market in France, and Sar-
kozy, in this case like many French people, has worried
that Google poses a threat to French cultural heritage.
Jean-Nol Jeanneney, then-director of La Bibliothque
Nationale de France, already had led a major initiative
to establish a European Digital Library expressly as
an alternative to relying on the anglo-centric Google
Books. Uneasiness about, and downright antagonism
to Google resonate widely throughout Europe, where
Google dominates the search market and siphons of
advertising, which might otherwise go to domestic
companies. The search companys decision to establish
its Cultural Institute in Paris, in turn, might be seen as
a move to win the hearts and minds of the European
people or, at least, to enter the citadel of its foes.
Google went on to collect as partners some of the
most illustrious international museums, galleries and
cultural foundations, including the Metropolitan Muse-
um of Art in New York, the Hermitage in St Petersburg,
the Ufzi in Florence, the National Gallery in London,
and Madrids Museo Reina Sofa. Within two years, the
Institute brought several digitization initiatives under
its umbrella Google Art Projects, World Wonders,
the Dead Sea Scrolls, Nelson Mandela Centre of Mem-
ory and readied renowned museum collections, cul-
tural heritage displays, and unseen historical archives
for public consumption. The Cultural Institute now
ofers online exhibitions, from the documentation of
Auschwitz, to Apartheid in South Africa, to access to
tens of thousands of works of art from 151 art institu-
tions, to virtual tours of individual galleries, the White
House in Washington DC, and the Palace of Versailles.
The requisite infrastructure, the technical standards
for describing objects, and the tools and funding re-
quired to digitize additional collections, all constitute
sites of active engineering and development. Under
construction is a Google-powered virtual museum and
archives where art works are exhibited, histories are
told and cultural memories are assembled and reas-
sembled.
Is Googles move to expand access to the worlds art
treasures well-intentioned and benign? When Google
Earth started displaying paintings from the Prado in
Madrid, allowing users to zoom in and see the art as
an up-close digital photo, Ken Auletta writes with
scant trace of skepticism, it was giving many people
access to art they would never see, granting them the
time to study paintings that security guards in the bus-
tling museum would never allow them.
14
Altruism,
however, is at most a mere by-product of the process
that is underway.
The scale of Googles new endeavor is nothing short
of planetary, but its reach is not merely physical or
4 7
A R T I C L E
geographic. The companys collecting impulse, like-
wise, evinces a breath-taking cultural and ideological
range. To be sure, digitizing the treasured storehouses
of art, collections drawn from all over the world, is im-
pressive enough. However, Googles project goes be-
yond this. GCI is showcasing memories of oppression
and, even, of oppositional politics. In GCI, the images
of struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and of
protest against the Vietnam War in the US are digitally
reproduced and reassembled in hyper-realism. Con-
temporary Sao Paolo street art, repressed Brazilian
authorities, has been accessioned by GCI. Such acts
of representation, of bringing to visibility, may appear
to neutralize even to transcend societal injustices
and distortions both past and present. No matter what
else, GCI bespeaks brilliant public relations. Time and
again, Google has demonstrated that it is an adroit
player in this secretive domain for the projection of
corporate self-interest.
Steve Crossan, the director of the Cultural Institute, is
being accurate when downplaying and depoliticizing
the Institute he labels it as just another engineer-
ing group that happens to operate in the cultural
sectors.
15
However, he is not shy to proclaim (for
example, at the 2011 Avignon Forum) that GCIs pur-
pose is to expose hidden archives and to make cultural
resources come alive, so that users may explore and
bring in their own perspectives. In addition, GCI pro-
vides the technical platforms for curators, historians,
and experts to open the world to their knowledge.
Popular engagement and specialized expertise appear
equally welcome. On display will be individual voices
and personal stories, revelatory discoveries, hidden
histories, and a newly universal global culture.
These are potent fantasies of how transnational capi-
tal is being used for the greater good for spiritual
nourishment and democratic uplift. In fact, however,
Googles deployment of digital technology betokens a
world of resurgent welfare capitalism, where people
are referred to corporations rather than states for
such services as they receive; where corporate capital
routinely arrogates to itself the right to broker public
discourse; and where history and art remain saturated
with the preferences and priorities of elite social
classes. GCI would be unlikely, even unthinkable, ab-
sent the chronic and politically induced starvation of
publicly funded cultural institutions even throughout
the wealthy countries. States withdrawal or realloca-
tion of resources to fund and operate the apparatus of
cultural provision is its essential condition of possibility.
Yet if GCI sits at the head of what is now a long list
of corporate incursions into art and culture,
16
GCI is
more than a public relations master-stroke. It is also a
calculated business strategy, as Google seizes a partic-
ular historical and social moment in order to engross
culture into a site of prospective proft-making.
GOOGLES CAPITAL LOGIC (1): DEFENSE AGAINST
COMPETITORS
Though Googles cultural project may seem to defy
capitalist logic, it is not access for its own sake ac-
cess for democratically accountable and public pur-
poses that drives it. The company gives desultory
hints of its rationale. In a New York Times interview,
GCI director Crossan emphasized that Google did not
seek an immediate fnancial return; yet, he portended,
having good content on the Web, in open standards, is
good for the Web, is good for the users. If you invest
in whats good for the Web and the users, that will
bear fruit.
17
With its parent companys stock fy-
ing high and its cofers full, GCI can aford to adopt a
long-range perspective in its proft-projects. This is
hardly unique; in fact, it is a common proclivity among
large and well-established companies. As we write, for
example, there come reports that IBMs decades-long
4 8
A R T I C L E
research into artifcial intelligence technology fnally
may be transforming into something that actually
makes commercial sense.
18
Why, then, might Google
be willing to invest millions of dollars in promoting the
arts and preserving culture around the world?
What Google is chasing after, not just through GCI but
through many of its new business ventures, is content
actual and prospective digital content and the data
that users of that content will generate. The grotesque
but quite serious vision that it shares with other lead-
ing units of Internet capital is, according to one Google
manager, that the entire output of our society all the
books, all the pictures, all the videos, all the people,
be transmuted into data: nothing less than culture as
data.
19
There is no shortage of hubris in this strategic
focus; what is historically new is its realism. Google is
routinely mining unprecedented quantities of data in
order to target advertising, to manage its legions of us-
ers a huge, globally distributed, unpaid labor force
20

and for other, as-yet mostly unpublicized purposes.
As Google gleans fner, more immediate and more
abundant data from everywhere and everyone, the
strategy of all data all the time (more commonly called
Big Data) may permit it to strengthen its existing
businesses and perhaps to establish additional proft-
able lines. Google envisions a business of forecasting
predicated on its data collection and computation
capacity. Googles chief economist Hal Varian refers to
this as predicting the present or nowcasting where
Google Trends data can be used to generate the prob-
ability of auto sales by make,
21
box-ofce success for
a just-released flm
22
or the number of current global
fu cases.
23
While Google itself cannot predict which
data or algorithm may become proftable, the company
is laying a foundation for heightened involvement in a
business that is called data analytics.
In one vital respect, the strategy is defensive: Google
is attempting to ensure that prized resources are not
locked up beforehand by a competing vendor. Such
a result might mean that Googles search engine
would be prohibited or hampered from linking to
rich storehouses of content; or it might impact the
terms of trade so that Google has to pay for the right
to link. Both options are already evident. On the one
hand, Proquest has signed a deal granting it exclusive
access to digitized works held by Frances national
library.
24
And, in a diferent example, Facebook does
not allow Googles search engine to sift through and
re-present postings on its own proprietary network;
Facebook competes with Google by building up
services in-house, in hopes that by keeping its users
on its site regularly and for extended periods it will
draw a greater share of Internet advertising. On the
other hand, following up on media magnate Rupert
Murdochs 2009 claim that Google acts as a content
kleptomaniac,
25
big European newspaper publish-
ing groups have mounted strong lobbying eforts to
compel Googles news aggregation sites to pay them
for linking to their news stories. In February of 2013,
Google defected one such attack, but only by signing
an agreement with French president Franois Hol-
lande in which Google will put forward $82 million to
help French news media to transition to the Internet
in exchange for dropping their demand that Google
pay them for every click to their news stories.
26
In
March, after a ferce political campaign, the search
giant won a second important victory, by warding of
German legislation that, again, would have made news
aggregators pay for the use of snippets of copyrighted
news content.
27
Many Brazilian newspaper publish-
ers continue to take a stronger stand, by opting out of
linking to Googles search engine unless and until the
search giant compensates them.
28

Its clear from all this that both business and political
pressures are impinging on Googles freewheeling
stance toward Web content copyrighted by others.
If Google does not move swiftly to enclose cultural
4 9
A R T I C L E
heritage resources, or to help institute non-exclusive
contracts for digitization and commercial re-use as a
global norm then it may be deprived of the preferred
access that it has enjoyed up to now.
29
For a search engine company, web content is the in-
dispensable resource, as critical to its endeavor as oil
is for Exxon. The existence of Google is built on the
premise that there is searchable content on the web.
Without web content, there is no need for a search en-
gine, so Googles quest is to fnd or make abundant,
coveted content. Thus, as an oil company is incessantly
searching around the world for what that industry calls
easy oil vast reserves of easily drilled and high qual-
ity light oil with little consideration for the environ-
mental or human costs, Google is thirsty for new easy
content a reservoir of easy-to-ingest and widely
desired content. To tap into rich veins of such content,
Google has targeted the worlds cultural institutions
museums, galleries, libraries and cultural foundations.
Unlike Exxon, it is able to present its mission as benign.
However, its strategy is not only defensive.
GOOGLES CAPITAL LOGIC (2): GOING INDOORS AND
TO THE OPEN WEB
Opening up the gates guarding cultural reservoirs is a
frst step, as Google tries to reconfgure cultural spaces
for incorporation into its evolving business of informa-
tion. The next step, also ongoing, is to wrap up these
newly-opened spaces with glittering technologies that
combine convenience, efciency and newness. The
distinctive technical feature of Googles cultural project
is that users are able to zoom in and out on paintings
and sculptures, to see even the fnest brushstrokes and
to virtually stroll through museums. The technology
that powers this new and improved art experience
Street View supplements CIA-based satellite and
geospatial imaging programs that Google acquired in
2004, and which are embedded in its Google Earth
and Google Maps services. Often provoking outcries
from privacy advocates, Street View has been used
to map out almost the entire outdoor world. Its func-
tions are to suggest to users where and how to go,
where to eat, and where to shop. Now it is being ap-
plied indoors.
Google has begun to map the inside spaces of muse-
ums and galleries room-by-room and foor-by-foor.
So far, its engineers have detailed the foor plans of
dozens of museums and libraries in nine countries,
including more than 30 museums in the United States
including all 17 of the Smithsonian Institutions mu-
seums
30
and integrated them into Google Maps.
To guide users through these new layers of digitized
content Google has turned to its Android mobile ap-
plications.
The alluring demographics of museum attendance,
however, allow Google to reach far beyond this pro-
saic service. While they are public spaces, open to all
who can cough up an admission fee, most cultural in-
stitutions have been created by elites for elite classes,
and are visited in disproportionate numbers by the
upper and middle classes.
31
Members of these strata
possess unrivaled discretionary income. Through
GCI, Google is quietly targeting this coveted group
of consumers which marketers call a most-needed
audience and reassembling them for targeted online
delivery to advertisers. Google, that is, is bulking up its
capacity to reach this favored cohort both directly in
person and via the open Web.
Inside museums, the company will send alerts and
revenue-generating features to users, attempting to
drive foot trafc to specifc areas. Users smartphones
will furnish them with turn-by-turn walking directions,
suggestions about which exhibits and works to view,
and tips about where to eat and shop in each museum.
5 0
A R T I C L E
A 2013 conference panel on Museums and the Web
afords us some idea of the intensity of commercial
colonization of museum space, with presentations on
eye-tracking studies of museum-goers, early detec-
tion of museum visitors identities, and tracking on-
site visitor fow.
32
Googles work on facial recogni-
tion technology may play its part here.
Online, Google will collect data on which exhibitions
and works of art are most-viewed, and on how much
time is spent in particular spaces; and the company
will enfold data about users visits to GCI sites into
its profles of their overall web surfng. Presumably,
it will incorporate this feedback into its search algo-
rithm and its Web ad-placement program. Google, in
other words, has embarked upon a long-term process
whose aim is to capture and re-present not only
works of art and cultural spaces but, behind them, its
advertisers most-needed audiences.
Google is only one of most ubiquitous and power-
ful of the participants in todays overarching eforts
to exploit and proft from cultural heritage, archives,
museums, and libraries. This is a full-scale commodif-
cation drive, and it exhibits a modal form: the public-
private partnership. One partner typically possesses
the cultural assets; the other, the capital required
to monetize them. So many instances of this trend
are on ofer as to make it appear banal. The Cervantes
Virtual Library, whose roots stretch back to 1999,
combined nine Spanish public-sector agencies with
eight corporate partners, including Banco Santander,
Telefonica, the media group Prisa, the Spanish pub-
lishers association, and other companies. The British
Library worked with Cengage Gale, a web-based data-
base platform.
33
The John F. Kennedy Library, within
the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
system, partnered with IBM and EMC Corporation.
34

The U.S. Government Accountability Ofce partnered
with Thomson West.
35
Google, crucially, is involving itself in this commodifca-
tion drive partly in order to enter new lines of busi-
ness to diversify, as mentioned earlier, because a
pair of business lines, search advertising and ad place-
ments, still accounts for most of its revenue. Google
is launching a paid subscription service on YouTube, a
mobile payments system, and a fee-based streaming
music service with an ad-supported free option to
rival those run by Deezer and Spotify. The logic be-
hind these ventures is instructive. The company looks
to extract the maximum proft by leveraging its verti-
cally integrated business structure. It could install its
music streaming product on its Nexus range of mobile
handsets and tablets, for example, and/or build its
streaming service into its mobile operating system,
Android.
36
It also could study consumers listening
habits in order to build up a valuable database for
advertisers.
37
No matter which path toward mon-
etizing a given service or content site is selected by
Google executives, however, the cornerstone of the
companys proft strategy overall constitutes nothing
other than the open Web itself. By being free to track
users wherever they go on the extraterritorial Web
inclusive not only of Googles afliated sites but also
the untold other sites that are independently owned
to send advertisements to users across this huge ex-
panse, and to mine and analyze the resulting torrents
of data, Google has staked itself to a universalizing
capital logic.
Under active construction is a new landscape of en-
closure, less palpable, perhaps, than the hedges that
cut into the commons in early modern England, but
comparable. This enclosure, paradoxically unlike
its predecessor actually may widen access. But ac-
cess by itself constitutes an insufcient criterion for
appraising this political-economic project. This, ulti-
mately, is the lesson taught by Googles deployment of
means of digital reproduction to post museum galler-
ies and historical exhibitions online.
51
A R T I C L E
As 2013 opened, the U.S. Executive Branch gave its
blessing to Googles endeavor. Despite surging opposi-
tion by the U.S. citizenry to the wholesale strip-mining
of personal data on which the entire commercial Web
was deliberately predicated as the Web was built out
during the 1990s, U.S. authorities continued to oppose
substantive protections of private rights not only in
the U.S. itself, but also in the European Union.
38
Their
eforts were rewarded when a few of the EUs most
powerful member states the UK, Sweden, Belgium
and, above all, Germany broke ranks with their peers
and insisted that the European Commission water
down its proposals to impose tough data protection
rules on tech companies led by Google and Face-
book.
39
Yet, in the wake of leaks about US National
Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs, it is an
open question whether EU member states will contin-
ue to favor Google. As we write, France, Germany, Italy
and Spain have joined forces and ordered Google to
rewrite its privacy policies in Europe or face legal ac-
tion. Even British regulators who, unlike their peers,
barely punished Google for snooping on personal data
via Street View cars asked Google to delete any data
remaining from its Google Street View mapping ser-
vice. In addition, Britains Information Commissioners
Ofce (ICO) has demanded that Google modify its
current privacy policies by September 2013.
40

Meanwhile, responding to complaints by companies
with which Google competes, from Yelp to Microsoft,
the U.S. Federal Trade Commission concluded a nine-
teen-month formal investigation of Googles search
business, and took no substantive actions to restrict
its often-aggressive market behavior.
41
Commenters
predict that, disencumbered of these threats by gov-
ernment authorities, Google will be emboldened to
further strengthen its already dominant position on
the Internet.
42
The ramifcations span far beyond
the question of anti-competitive discriminatory prac-
tices in the market for Internet search. Not only has
Googles extraterritorial dominance in search services
been validated. Even more important, Google is being
permitted to continue building its business as a corpo-
rate colossus astride the open Web: its commodifca-
tion strategy for culture as data expressly including
but by no means limited to museum and archive and
cultural heritage has been ratifed.
Other obstacles of course exist. The most important
are political and geopolitical. In still-somewhat-eco-
nomically-dynamic China, Google possesses a toehold
at best. European antitrust regulators, meanwhile,
intended to strike a deal with Google to settle the an-
titrust case by accepting the companys proposals, in-
cluding labeling search results; yet, Googles US coun-
terparts, led by Microsoft, vehemently urged the EU to
reject Googles proposals for reforms. EU regulators in
turn sought additional concessions from Google; but
it remained an open question whether and how they
might alter Googles conduct, or add further responsi-
bilities to competitors and users.
43
Withal, Googles
extraterritorial market power remains unrivaled; and
European authorities continue to evidence an impres-
sive willingness to embed with transnational capital
be they the French Ministry of Culture under Socialist
President Hollande, or the German Parliament in the
era of Christian Democrat Angela Merkel.
44
Googles
grasp, thus, seems to be expanding to match its unri-
valed reach.
CONCLUSION
We must not reduce the complex political economy
behind Google Cultural Institute to the idea of mere
access. Google, it is true, will increase and probably
widen in social terms access to art works and archives
in the storehouses of its digital partners. However,
as Jeremy Rifin detailed thirteen years ago, when
Google was still a mere fedgling in the search market,
5 2
A R T I C L E
an emerging age of access actually betokens a new
culture of hypercapitalism.
45
Under whose auspices
and with what preconditions and side-efects is access
being granted? Is this process guided by democratic
principles, in order to forward the needs and interests
of the worlds billions? Or, like the expansion of the
commercial advertiser-based press in 19th and early
20th century England and the United States,
46
is it
unfolding mostly from above as a refex of capital and
class power? These questions may be hard to contem-
plate, but they are urgent.
Actual users will, of course, be free to make what they
will of Google and its partners art works. They may
even put these works to use in turning unfreedom
into an object of analysis and emancipatory action.
Imagine in John Lennons sense of Imagine a
world in which a modernized sales imperative did
not undergird and intertwine with the digitization of
art works. Imagine a world in which search engine
algorithms were open to public inspection and were
democratically accountable, like reference librarians.
No such prospect will be powered by Google.
5 3
A R T I C L E
1. Google Company Overview, Google, http://www.google.
com/about/company/ (accessed March 9, 2013).
2. The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threaten-
ing Competition?: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on
Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights of the
Judiciary Committee, United States Senate, One-hundred-
twelfth congress, First session, on S. 112-143, September 21,
2011 (statement of Thomas O. Barnett, Partner, Covington
& Burling LLP), http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-
112shrg71471/pdf/CHRG-112shrg71471.pdf (accessed
August 11, 2013).
3. Nick Clayton, Yandex Overtakes Bing as Words Fourth
Search Engine, Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2013,
http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/02/11/yandex-
overtakes-bing-as-worlds-fourth-search-engine/ (ac-
cessed February 18, 2013).
4. Eric Schmidt, Television and the Internet: Shared Oppor-
tunity, (MacTaggart Lecture at Media Guardian Interna-
tional Television Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland, August 27,
2011), http://www.geitf.co.uk/GEITF/mactaggart-hall-of-
fame (accessed July 22, 2013).
5. Google Inc. Form 10-K Annual Report Filed 2013-01-
29, SECDatabase.com, 32-33, http://edgar.secdatabase.
com/1404/119312513028362/fling-main.htm (accessed
July 22, 2013).
6. The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threaten-
ing Competition?: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on
Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights of the
Judiciary Committee, United States Senate, One-hundred-
twelfth congress, First session, on S. 112-143,, September
21, 2011 (statement of Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman,
Google Inc.), http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-
112shrg71471/pdf/CHRG-112shrg71471.pdf (accessed
August 11, 2013).
7. Ibid., 234.
8. The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening
Competition?: Hearing (statement of Thomas O. Barnett,
Partner, Covington & Burling LLP).
9. Andrew LaVallee, Google CEO: A New Iraq Means Busi-
ness Opportunities, Wall Street Journal, November 24,
2009, http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/11/24/google-
ceo-a-new-iraq-means-business-opportunities/ (accessed
February 18, 2013).
10. War and Occupation in Iraq Report Section on the De-
struction of Cultural Heritage, Global Policy Forum, June
2007, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/
article/168/37146.html (accessed February 17, 2013).
11. The Journey to Bring Iraqs National Museum to Street
View, Google Maps, http://google-latlong.blogspot.
com/2011/08/journey-to-bring-iraqs-national-museum.html
(accessed February 13, 2013).
12. The Google Cultural Institute helps preserve and promote
culture online, Google Cultural Institute, http://www.
google.com/culturalinstitute/about/ (accessed March 7,
2013).
13. Google had launched its own in-house philanthropy, Google.
org, and had embarked on several high-minded sounding
initiatives improving Internet access in poor countries,
coordinating information to combat foods and other disas-
ters. For an early assessment, see Ken Auletta, Googled: The
End of the World as We Know It (New York: Penguin Press,
2009), 213. However, it would be well to note that Googles
digitized books have not met libraries long-term digital
preservation standards, nor have its proposals to digitize art
works been based on preservation standards.
14. Ken Auletta, Googled: The End of the World as We Know
It, 253.
15. Steve Crossan: OpenCulture 2012, YouTube video, 16:19,
posted by Collections Trust, July 11, 2012, http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=-mz4oC-qJQo (accessed February
11, 2013).
16. I. Schiller Herbert, Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover
of Public Expression (New York: Oxford University Press,
1986); Chin-Tao Wu, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art
Intervention since the 1980s (London: Verso, 2002).
17. Eric Pfanner, Quietly, Google Puts History Online, New
York Times, November 21, 2011, http://www.nytimes.
com/2011/11/21/technology/quietly-google-puts-history-
online.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (accessed February 13,
2013).
5 4
A R T I C L E
18. Steve Lohr, And Now, From I.B.M., Its Chef Watson,
New York Times, February 27, 2013, http://www.nytimes.
com/2013/02/28/technology/ibm-exploring-new-feats-
for-watson.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (accessed March
1, 2013).
19. Jon Orwant, Big Data (lecture, University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign, March 5, 2013).
20. This is a central research focus in ShinJoung Yeo, Behind
the Search Box: the Political Economy of the Global
Search Engine Industry (PhD diss., University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign, 2013).
21. HyunYoung Cho and Hal Varian, Predicting the Present
with Google Trends, Economic Record 88, no. s1 (2012):
2-9. While Cho and Varian ofer ways in which Google
Trends data can be used to predict automobile sales,
home sales, retail sales, and travel behavior, other re-
searchers are predicting weekly fuctuations in stock prices
using Google Trends service. See Tobias Preis, Helen
Susannah Moat, and H. Eugene Stanley, Quantifying Trad-
ing Behavior in Financial Markets Using Google Trends,
Scientifc Reports 3 (2013): 1684, http://www.nature.com/
srep/2013/130425/srep01684/full/srep01684.html (ac-
cessed July 19, 2013).
22. Reggie Panaligan and Andrea Chen, Quantifying Movie
Magic with Google Search, Google Social Research Study,
June 2013, http://ssl.gstatic.com/think/docs/quantifying-
movie-magic_research-studies.pdf (accessed July 19,
2013).
23. Miguel Helft, Google Uses Searches to Track Flus
Spread, New York Times, November 21, 2008, http://
www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/technology/internet/12fu.
html?_r=0 (accessed July 19, 2013).
24. Rogue, Dirty Deeds: French National Library Privatizes
Public Domain, Part 2, Techdirt, http://www.techdirt.
com/articles/20130212/17065121955/dirty-deeds-french-
national-library-privatizes-public-domain-part-2.shtml
(accessed March 1, 2013).
25. Newspapers versus Google: Taxing Times, Economist,
November 11, 2012, http://www.economist.com/news/
international/21565928-newspapers-woes-grow-some-
are-lobbying-politicians-make-google-pay-news-it (ac-
cessed March 1, 2013).
26. Frdric Filloux, Google and the French Press: A New En-
tente? Guardian, February 04, 2013, http://www.guardian.
co.uk/technology/blog/2013/feb/04/google-french-
press-entente (accessed February 15, 2013).
27. Gerrit Wiesmann, Google Wins German Copyright Battle,
Financial Times, March 1, 2013,
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/69d6ac12-8263-11e2-
843e=00144feabdc0.html#axzz2MGIt3Dorm (accessed
February 27, 2013).
28. Mike Masnick, Brazilian Newspapers Apparently Dont
Want Trafc; They All Opt Out of Google News,
Techdirt, October 9, 2012, http://www.techdirt.com/ar-
ticles/20121019/07505220761/brazilian-newspapers-ap-
parently-dont-want-trafc-they-all-opt-out-google-news.
shtml (accessed February 27, 2013).
29. The issues of non-exclusivity and commercial re-use of
public-sector information are hotly contested and com-
plicated in their own right. For two recent surveys of the
European scene, see Bas Savenije and Annemarie Beunen,
Cultural Heritage and the Public Domain, Liber Quarterly
22, no. 2 (2012): 82-97; Daniel Dietrich and Pekel Jorism,
Topic Report: Open Data in Cultural Heritage Institutions,
European Public Sector Information Platform, April 2012,
http://epsiplatform.eu/content/topic-report-open-data-
cultural-heritage-institutions (accessed March 1, 2013).
30. Indoor Maps availability, Google Support, http://support.
google.com/gmm/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1685827
31. Fiona McLean, Marketing the Museum (London: Rout-
ledge, 1997), 24.
32. MW 2013: Museums and the Web 2013, Museums and
the Web, http://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/pro-
gram/ (accessed March 1, 2013).
33. High-Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries, Sub-group
on Public Private Partnerships, i2010 European Digital
Libraries Initiative, Final Report on Public Private Partner-
ships for Digitisation and Online Accessibility of Europes
Cultural Heritage, the European Unions website, May
5 5
A R T I C L E
2008, 7-8, http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activi-
ties/digital_libraries/doc/hleg/reports/ppp/ppp_fnal.pdf
34. Digitization Partnerships, National Archives, http://www.
archives.gov/digitization/partnerships.html (accessed
March 2, 2013).
35. Cory Doctorow reposting of Carl Malamud, Did the US
Govt Sell Exclusive Access to Its Legislative History to
Thomson West?, BoingBoing, March 17, 2008, http://
boingboing.net/2008/03/17/did-the-us-govt-sell.html
36. Robert Budden and Robert Cookson, Google Looks to
Beat Music Rivals, Financial Times, February 22, 2013,
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/48fab814-7d16-11e2-
adb6-00144feabdc0.html (accessed March 2, 2013).
37. Ibid.
38. Matthew Crain, The Revolution Will Be Commercialized:
Finance, Public Policy, and the Construction of Internet
Advertising in the 1990s, (PhD diss., University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign, 2013); Natasha Singer, Data Protec-
tion Laws, an Ocean Apart, New York Times, February 2,
2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/technology/
consumer-data-protection-laws-an-ocean-apart.html (ac-
cessed March 2, 2013).
39. James Fontanella-Khan and Bede McCarthy, Brussels in
Climbdown over Data Protection, Financial Times, March
8, 2013, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/dbf20262-
8685-11e2-b907-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2N6MWLWK1
40. Hayley Tsukayama, European Regulators Step Up Pres-
sure on Google over Privacy Policies, Washington Post,
July 5, 2013, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-
07-05/business/40390096_1_google-street-view-cnil-
privacy-policies (accessed July 19, 2013).
41. Amir Efrati and Brent Kendall, Google Dodges Antitrust
Hit, Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2013, http://online.
wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323874204578219
592520327884.html (accessed March 2, 2013); Rich-
ard Waters and Tim Bradshaw, Googles Core Search
Engine Gets US All-clear, Financial Times, January 4,
2012, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/61124f52-55d4-
11e2-9aa1-00144feab49a.html (accessed March 2, 2013);
Edward Wyatt, Critics of Google Antitrust Ruling Fault
the Focus, New York Times, January 7, 2013, http://www.
nytimes.com/2013/01/07/technology/googles-rivals-say-
ftc-antitrust-ruling-missed-the-point.html?_r=0 (accessed
August 11, 2013).
42. Edward Wyatt, U.S. Ends Inquiry Into Way Google Sets Up
Searches, New York Times, January 4, 2013, http://www.
nytimes.com/2013/01/04/technology/google-agrees-
to-changes-in-search-ending-us-antitrust-inquiry.html
(accessed August 8, 2013).
43. James Kanter and Claire Cain Miller, In European
Antitrust Fight, Google Needs to Appease Competitors,
New York Times, July 17, 2013, http://www.nytimes.
com/2013/07/18/technology/europe-wants-more-
concessions-from-google.html?recp=8 (accessed July 19,
2013).
44. Rogue, Dirty Deeds: French National Library Privatizes
Public Domain, Part 2.
45. Jeremy Rifin, The Age of Access: The New Culture of
Hypercapitalism Where All of Life Is A Paid-For Experience
(New York: Putnam, 2000).
46. James Curran, The Press as an Agency of Social Control,
in Newspaper History: From the Seventeenth Century to
the Present Day, ed. George Boyce, James Curran, and
Pauline Wingate (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1978),
51-75; Dan Schiller, Objectivity and the News: The Public
and the Rise of Commercial Journalism (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981).
5 6
A R T I C L E
5 7
A R T I C L E
A BIO-LAB IN LJUBLJANA
At the end of the stairs leading down to the un-
derground Slovenian hacker space Kiberpipa, in
Kersnikova Street in Ljubljana, there is a light box
displaying the words: All our code are belong to you
[sic]. The slogan is a reference to the well-known
phrase from the badly translated Japanese videogame
Zero Wing, that quickly became a favourite sentence
among the global Internet and hacker fraternity. The
PhD Candidate
University of Zurich, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Institute of Art History
borismagrini@yahoo.fr
by
Bori s Magri ni
Figure 1. Entrance of the
hacker space Kiberpipa,
Kersnikova Street, Ljubljana,
Slovenia, 2012. Photograph
by Boris Magrini. Used with
permission.
Hackteria:
An Example
of Neomodern
Activism
5 8
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
As a platform for knowledge sharing and artistic exploration, Hackteria
constitutes a network of artists and researchers that merges the use of
biotechnologies with hacking and do-it-yourself strategies. Its process-ori-
ented and performative approaches, which oppose the materialistic imper-
atives of the art market, follow the tradition of political art. In this paper, I
argue that Hackteria embodies what could be considered as a neomodern
activism, other recent examples of which are emerging within the new me-
dia art feld. Instead of rejecting controversial new technologies, they pro-
pose a vision of a society that is propelled by a more democratic use and
discussion of these technologies. The activities of Hackteria are examined
through the presentation of a bio-lab created in Ljubljana.
light box at Kiberpipa states exactly the opposite of
the famous meme. However, it conserves the syntactic
errors that generated its appeal, and afrms that, in-
stead of taking possession of a remote machine, they
are sharing their software and knowledge. The idea
of hacking is commonly associated with the image
provided by Hollywood movies and the activities of
Anonymous and their denial-of-service attacks (DoS)
in the name of a free Internet. For this reason, hacker
spaces like Kiberpipa make it clear that they consider
hacking as a service to society, and distance them-
selves from the stereotyped image of the hacker as a
cracker or pirate and align with the tradition and ethic
described, for example, by Steven Levy in his survey
on the history and philosophy of hacking.
1
Invited to set up a temporary hacker space for bio-
technologies, namely a bio-lab, and to coordinate a se-
ries of workshops at Kiberpipa, Marc Dusseiller added
his touch to the light box slogan by writing the word
gene before the word code. Based on the collabora-
tion between Hackteria | Open Source Biological Art,
the Kapelica Gallery and Kiberpipa, in November and
December 2012, the BioTehna lab ofered visitors and
participants the opportunity to experiment with bio-
hacking while also providing an example of laboratory
created on a low budget and using some do-it-yourself
solutions. Between the numerous tools, cables, elec-
tronic devices and PET bottles containing algae, the
book Unscientifc America written by Chris C. Mooney
and Sheril Kirshenbaum lay on a shelf in the lab.
2
At
the time of its publication, the book warned about the
high level of illiteracy in relation to scientifc education
in the United States, an illiteracy that ultimately harms
the population while benefting the private corpora-
tions engaged in scientifc research, which derive
advantages from the general lack of interest in and
understanding of their activities. The authors consider
the government and the media responsible for this
situation to a certain degree. The presence of such a
book in the lab clearly suggests that Hackteria consid-
ers workshops and knowledge-sharing as part of a
broader political agenda.
The activities performed by Hackteria, of which the
BioTehna lab is an illustration, are exemplary of a
recent form of activism in the joint artistic and sci-
entifc environment. Instead of producing artworks
5 9
A R T I C L E
as commodities to be commercialized or consumed,
Hackteria creates workshops for sharing knowledge
and bridging art and science in an alternative and par-
ticipatory way. While the creation of projects relating
to art and science appears to be a current trend, espe-
cially in the artistic feld, the activities of Hackteria dif-
fer from the many art and science exhibitions, confer-
ences and events that often involve larger production
costs and the participation of many celebrities. Rather
than an artist group or a collective, Hackteria is a com-
munity platform that connects artists and researchers
from several diferent felds and countries although,
for practical reasons, it is also ofcially constituted
as an association. The activities are inevitably coordi-
nated through the website, which states its mission as
follows:
As a community platform Hackteria tries to encour-
age the collaboration of scientists, hackers and
artists to combine their expertise, write critical and
theoretical refections, share simple instructions to
work with life science technologies and cooperate
on the organization of workshops, festivals and
meetings.
3
The diversity of the members involved makes it dif-
cult for them to efectively position themselves in one
particular feld, be it as researchers, hackers or artists.
In this sense, Hackteria challenges the concept of
identity and the implicit code of conduct determined
by each specifc feld. Nevertheless, the role of Hack-
teria is pertinent in the existing artistic context and
signifcant in the context of the new media art feld.
Hackteria provides examples of activities that push
the boundaries of artistic practice in the tradition of
performative and process-oriented art; moreover, it
also illustrates a form of activism, or hacktivism, that
difers from the tactical media positions of the late
1990s which strongly characterized and contributed
to the defnition of the new media art scene.
6 0
A R T I C L E
THE ROOTS OF HACKTERIA: FROM PERFORMATIVE
ART TO TACTICAL MEDIA
The events organized by Hackteria are rooted in a
long tradition of media art as well as process-oriented
and performative approaches. Performative art is not
equivalent to process-oriented art; as Andreas Broeck-
mann correctly pointed out, it only makes sense to
speak of process-orientation in cases where the evolv-
ing process itself is a main factor of the aesthetic ex-
perience of the work.
4
Nonetheless, neither perfor-
mative nor process-oriented art focus on the creation
of a fnite product a distinctive trait of the activities
run by Hackteria. Furthermore, the BioTehna project,
for example, combines performative, interactive and
process-oriented qualities as it is not the lab, as such,
that is meaningful to the artistic intent of the group,
but the process involved in building and running it.
From the fourishing years of performative art in the
1950s and 60s to the most socially engaged actions of
the 70s, as exemplifed by Joseph Beuyss work, per-
formative art became established over the decades as
an important artistic practice of the 20th century. New
technologies such as video recorders and computers
were already incorporated into the performative prac-
tices of the early years, most notably by Fluxus. It is in-
teresting to note, however, that performative art was
often driven by a strong rebellious impulse directed
at the art market, the authorities and private corpora-
tions. The use of new technologies was often subor-
dinated to the provocative or dissenting character of
the performances and happenings. Among the factors
that made performative practices the ideal tool for
engaging in political discourse was the fact that the
performing artists did not aim to produce commercial
goods but to engage, quite often, in close interaction
with the audience. Lucy R. Lippard, for whom activist
art is, above all, process-oriented, analyzed the close
relationship between political art and performative
or collaborative practices.
5
Among the most radical
protagonists of performative art with a strong political
agenda, Alexander Brenner and Barbara Schurer were
Figure 2. Workshop
BioHacking Vs. BioPunk at
the IMM_Media lab, Zagreb,
Croatia, December 2012.
Photograph by Deborah
Hustic. Used with permission.
6 1
A R T I C L E
not being rhetorical when they called for the rejection,
subversion and destruction of the works of commer-
cially successful artists and the leading art institutions,
both of which were viewed as symbols of the hege-
mony of a capitalist, globalized culture. In their eyes,
the demolishing of serious culture should be taken
literally.
6
If performative, process-oriented art were
the appropriate political step for opposing the cre-
ation of commercial value, the destruction of physical
works and institutions would be its logical fnal act.
During the 1990s, new media art became the popu-
lar expression for the identifcation of the feld that
emerged from the long tradition of artistic experi-
ments with new technologies. New media art was
certainly shaped in the 1990s by the development of
the Internet on a global scale, however it was also one
of the possible evolutions of the application of media
tools to the documentation of the ephemeral actions
of the performative and process-oriented art of the
previous decades.
7
Together with the process-ori-
ented approach, new media art inherited the militant
peculiarity of performative works. More specifcally,
as asserted by Tilman Baumgrtel, net-art probably
the most signifcant emerging new media art practice
of the 1990s presented similarities with the hacker
ethics and approach.
8
It is not surprising that terms
like tactical media and hacktivism were used to
describe the cluster of works that would characterize
new media art in the late 1990s. The leading art crit-
ics and curators engaged in new media art such as
Christiane Paul, Inke Arns, Geert Lovink, and Joline
Blais and Jon Ippolito, who helped to develop a vo-
cabulary and a theoretical frame stressed the fact
that new media art was more about addressing ques-
tions relating to technology and society rather than
creating works with fascinating new tools. Hence, for
a new generation of artists engaging with technolo-
gies, particularly computers and the Internet, it was
clear that to use them in an artistic context would
mean adopting a subversive strategy and working
against them. In this context, the use of simple tools,
do-it-yourself strategies and low budget productions
were favoured by media artists, coupled with the drive
to oppose the leading companies that governed the
information technologies on a global scale and, more
generally, capitalistic ideology. To infltrate the Internet
search engines (Digital Hijack by etoy), to hack com-
mercial products (The Barbie Liberation Organization
by RTMark), to challenge and alter the codes of soft-
ware applications such as browsers and videogames
(Wrong Browser, Untitled-Game by Jodi): these were
the strategies that brought media artists to the inter-
national attention at the turn of the millennium.
It seems only natural that when biotechnologies be-
came accessible to artists, similar strategies began
to fourish. The Critical Art Ensemble, for example,
approached biotechnologies by developing critical
works and instruments for educating the public. Oron
Catts and Yona Zurr from The Tissue Culture and Art
Projects clearly afrmed their intention to reveal the
hidden faces and real costs of tissue culture.
9
In his
process-oriented work Suspect Inversion Center, Paul
Vanouse recently recreated the Orenthal James Simp-
son gene-code from his own to demonstrate how
easily DNA could be manipulated and suggest that
it should not, therefore, be considered too hastily as
objective proof, particularly in legal actions. Meanwhile,
curators such as Jens Hauser strongly oriented their
curatorial practice towards bio-art while critical theo-
rists like Eugene Thacker and Alessandro Delfanti ana-
lyzed the political challenges of biotechnologies and
the development of related hacking activities, thereby
providing a theoretical vocabulary for the artists.
6 2
A R T I C L E
BIO-HACKING ON A LOCAL SCALE THROUGH A
GLOBAL NETWORK
Hackteria certainly grew out of the new media art
tradition coupled with the recent interest in biotech-
nologies while, at the same time, inheriting the tradi-
tions do-it-yourself approach, critical attitude and
hacking strategies. During the press conference for
the opening of BioTehna, Marc Dusseiller explained
that, having obtained his Doctor of Sciences degree at
the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in 2005, it
took him several years to fnd out what he wanted to
do.
10
Having developed artistic projects alongside his
academic career, he eventually decided to dedicate his
time and energy to art without necessarily abandon-
ing the knowledge and experience he had gained as
a researcher, but bringing it to bear instead in a more
creative context. However, he was quickly dissatisfed
with the artistic production and buzz surrounding
the fourishing art and science milieu; the emerging
bio-art movement, above all, appeared to him as be-
ing overly compromised with the logic of commercial
production which regulated the more traditional con-
temporary art scene.
11
Having co-founded the Swiss
Mechatronic Art Society (SGMK) with Markus Hasel-
bach in 2006 and created a hacker space in Zurich,
together with artists Andy Gracie and Yashas Shetty,
Figure 3. Workshop BioElectronix for Artists and Geeks at
the BioTehna laboratory in Kiberpipa, Ljubljana, Slovenia,
November 2012. A collaboration of Hackteria | Open Source
Biological Art and Kapelica Gallery. Photograph by Boris
Magrini. Used with permission.
6 3
A R T I C L E
he started Hackteria in 2009 during the Interactivos?
workshop at Medialab-Prado in Madrid. The goal was
to develop a rich web resource for people interested
in or developing projects that involve DIY bioart, open
source software and electronic experimentation.
12

Today, Hackteria has become a global network of
people sharing similar ideas and goals around the
application of hacking principles to biotechnologies;
current members and collaborators include Nur Akbar
Arofatullah (artist and student in microbiology and ag-
riculture), Timbil Budiarto (civil engineer), pela Petri
(microbiologist and media artist), researchers Brian
Degger, Urs Gaudenz, Sachiko Hirosue, and Rdiger
Trojok, and the institutions Lifepatch and Kapelica
Gallery.
It is well known that hacking is not solely related to
software: hardware, wetware and even social dynam-
ics are subjected to hacking. However, the prohibitive
prices of tools, gear and products related to biotech-
nology research made it impossible for hackers to
experiment in this feld until very recently. Today, it is
possible to create a bio-lab with just a couple of hun-
dred dollars using cleverly hacked devices and apply-
ing do-it-yourself solutions. This explains, in part, the
growing interest in bio-hacking and the fourishing of
hacker spaces around the world, which are introduc-
ing wetware research along with the more traditional
focus on software and electronics. As already stated,
hacking is often associated with piracy and cracking;
not by the members of Hackteria, however, for whom
hacking predominantly means manipulating a device
so that it can perform a diferent task to that origi-
nally intended: to make a boiler out of a toaster, for
example, or a microscope out of a game console web
cam. To them, hacking is also intended, however, as a
service to a community by creating open source and
do-it-yourself prototypes that are explained, shared
and constructed in workshops organized with local
partners. Working on a local scale is another charac-
teristic of Hackteria; Marc Dusseiller often refers to
the book Small is Beautiful by the economist Ernst
Friedrich Schumacher, who defended the importance
of developing small economies and activities on a
regional level, as an important source of inspiration.
13

This book also provided some interesting prescriptions
for scientists and researchers, considering that only
a technology with a human face will be capable of
countering the consequences of the materialistic ide-
ology. As Schumacher afrms:
What is it that we really require from the scien-
tists and technologists? I should answer: We need
methods and equipment which are cheap enough
so that they are accessible to virtually everyone;
suitable for small-scale application; and compatible
with mans need for creativity.
14
Instead of reacting against a technology that is often
associated with capitalism, alienation or military war-
Figure 4. Detail of the BioTehna laboratory in Kiberpipa, Ljub-
ljana, Slovenia, November and December 2012. Photograph by
Boris Magrini. Used with permission.
6 4
A R T I C L E
fare for example by Herbert Marcuse,
15
Joseph
Weizenbaum,
16
and more recently, Richard Bar-
brook
17
Hackteria appears, instead, to put Schum-
achers recommendations into practice. Through the
creation of workshops and events that involve the
local partners of artists and researchers with a view
to ofering them an opportunity to learn, share and
discuss new technologies, as well as developing cheap
and creative tools suitable for small-scale applications,
Hackteria gives these technologies a human face. If
some tools, such as glass-electrode micropipettes,
web cam microscopes and hacked optical mice, are a
way of approaching serious science, many other tools
are developed in a more creative context, such as a
Lo-Fi synthesizer created in a Tupperware container
or an hybrid electronic-living system projector. As al-
ready observed by Denisa Kera, who afrmed that the
disruptive prototypes have simply a magical and anar-
chistic capacity to accommodate various uses, dreams,
goals and needs and to connect people, contexts and
various materials,
18
all of the prototypes, on the
other hand, share a punky, rebellious and playful note.
A good example is the device Fish to brain interface
circuit conceived by the artist Antony Hall, who was
invited by Hackteria to give a workshop at the BioTeh-
na lab while he presented his solo exhibition at the
nearby Kapelica Gallery.
19
The device is a fsh-shaped
circuit with two light-emitting diodes, which blink at
varying speeds determined by the level of humidity of
the fngers that manipulates the device. It is simply an
amusing gadget to be placed in front of closed eyes so
that one can experience a psychedelic, unpredictable
sequence of lights and colours a way of bridging
technology, mysticism and subculture humorously and
also suggesting that hacking is not necessarily always
about saving the world.
However, the main objective of Hackteria is to demys-
tify the technologies that contribute to shaping our
society and are, nonetheless, still poorly understood
by the majority of the population. Denisa Kera, Assis-
tant Professor at the National University of Singapore,
analyzed the recent development of hacker spaces, in
particular in Asia, pointing out how they fulfl the role
of informing civilians about scientifc research, a role
that the professional research laboratories have long
relinquished due to being ruled by commercial and
security imperatives.
20
Due the lack of knowledge
about them, biotechnologies generate visceral fears in
the population that range from the Promethean night-
mare to the anthrax disaster; in the eyes of Hacketeria,
it is precisely for these reasons that it is necessary to
educate the general public. However, the task of com-
municating the choice of applying hacking to the feld
of biotechnologies and introducing it to local com-
munities is a delicate one. The dangers of biotechnol-
ogy a research feld that encompasses tissue culture,
genetics and many other wetware activities exist,
although they are probably overstated. In this respect,
the members of the Critical Art Ensemble collective
have been very active in throwing light on fears relat-
ing to bio-terrorism, suggesting that its real dangers
are exaggerated by the authorities the artists refers
here to the US government in particular in the inter-
ests of their political agenda.
21
Lack of knowledge
and personal experience on a specifc matter not
only leads to fear and repulsion, it also allows greater
manipulation of the general opinion of the personali-
ties and institutions that have a vested interest on the
matter.
Live science is a highly controversial and misunder-
stood feld of research; by ofering artists, laypersons
and children the opportunity to experiment with a
provisional bio-lab, Hackteria wishes to empower a
larger community with some tools that will enable
people to understand scientifc progress and the cur-
rent political discussion about new technologies. At
the BioTehna lab in Ljubljana, artists, curators and am-
ateur researchers learned to solder circuits, program
6 5
A R T I C L E
the devices through the Arduino platform, and apply
some simple tools to biological research.
22
But above
all, they learned the possibilities ofered by recent
technologies for building a bio-lab on a small budget
and hacking devices to replace otherwise expensive
instruments. During the workshop, and the several
cofee breaks, some of the artists discussed the Soft
Control exhibition, which had opened earlier at Mari-
bor and Slovenj Gradec and presented works by some
of the most prominent artists involved in biotechnolo-
gies.
23
They asked themselves whether they wanted
to belong to the kind of bio-art presented in the show
and they questioned the necessity of such large ex-
hibitions presenting works produced using expensive
resources and complicated technology, but which
were very often shallow in vision and signifcance.
Does media art, and in particular bio-art, have to pro-
duce works that are commercially viable and aestheti-
cally entertaining in order to appeal to a wider public?
Apart from these questions, they also refected more
specifcally on the meaning and utility of organizing
workshops. At Ljudmila, the well-known media art
space in Ljubljana, some institutions that regularly en-
gage in similar activities met during the month of No-
vember 2012 to share their knowledge and experience
on organizing workshops in the feld of new media
and art.
24
Among the variety of topics discussed, the
question of the utility and the necessity of workshops
was hotly debated. The members appeared to agree
that their main goal is to empower people, to move
society forward, a vision strongly supported by the
members of Hackteria. However, apart from this per-
spective, some of the participants highlighted another
important one: workshops ofer the possibility of
bringing people from diferent horizons together, i.e.
not only scientifc ones, but also cultural and ethnical
ones, for example. Bojan Markicevic, a collaborator
at Atelier des Jours Venir, presented the case of a
workshop he organized in a village in which tensions
rooted in the conficts in the former Yugoslavia were
still perceptible. The workshop, which is ofered to
children from diferent ethnic groups, gives them a
rare opportunity to meet and work together and its
signifcance goes beyond the mere aspect of learning
about hacking and do-it-yourself tools.
The BioTehna lab, and the workshops in Ljubljana, is
only one example from a long list of projects and col-
laborations that have been organized by Hackteria
all over the world in its few years of existence. The
platform has participated in some important festivals
related to new media art, such as ISEA and Ars Elec-
tronica. It has organized workshops and activities in
Zurich, Ljubljana, Los Angeles, and Yogyakarta, for
example. Instead of attempting to bridge the gap be-
tween new media art and the wider fne art market, as
several artists evolving in this scene are struggling to
do, Hackteria pursues its philosophy based on open
source and collaborative projects. Marc Dusseiller
admits to considering his activity a political one. As he
states:
My hope is that by enabling more people to do
science in their garages, kitchens and bathrooms,
and by enabling more artist, designers and simply
enthusiasts to work on various scientifc projects,
we will create a scientifcally literate public, which
can democratize decisions on stem cells, embryos,
GMOs, nanotechnologies etc.
25
Elsewhere, he furthers explains that: As a conse-
quence of greater knowledge, people are also less
susceptible to populistic ideas from politicians or emp-
ty marketing promises from the corporate world.
26
Given that Hacketeria cannot fnance its activities
through the production of open source prototypes,
it is strongly reliant on subventions from private and
public institutions. The BioTehna lab and workshops
in Ljubljana were fnanced through private and public
funding with the collaboration of the Kapelica Gal-
lery. The Swiss contribution to the enlargement of the
European Union, a programme of the Swiss Federal
Department of Foreign Afairs, the objective of which
is to help[s] to reduce economic and social disparities
within the enlarged European Union,
27
while at the
same time laying the foundation for solid economic
and political ties with the new EU member states
28

was among the projects key fnancial backers. This is
interesting as it indicates that Hacketerias activities
are recognized by the Swiss administration as eligible
for support from a programme that focuses on social
and economic development in foreign countries while
also aspiring to establish new economic partnerships.
On the other hand, it tells us that Hackteria must look
for fnancial support in contexts outside the traditional
6 6
A R T I C L E
subsidies that are usually solicited for cultural and
scientifc research. Hacketerias previous activities in
Switzerland were fnanced by Sitemapping, the fund-
ing programme of the Federal Ofce of Culture, which
was dedicated to new media art and digital culture
and ran from 2003 to 2011. However, the programme
was recently closed due to a restriction on the budget
allocated to culture by the parliament and the conse-
quent re-assignment of the associated responsibilities
to Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council. Some other
private institutions still fnance new media art projects
in Switzerland, for example Migros, which dedicates
one percent of its income to cultural support with the
Migros-Kulturprozent programme. However, apart
from the activities initiated by the institution itself
in the feld, only CHF 50,000 are allocated to new
media art projects per year. For Migros-Kulturprozent,
supporting Marc Dusseiller and Hackteria was a logi-
cal move because his project is based on the Do-
it-yourself philosophy and he is bringing biological
insights and know-how in many diferent felds, also
to the feld of the arts,
29
as explained by Dominik
Landwehr, Head of the Department of Pop and New
Media, who edited several publications on Do-it-
yourself culture. Hackteria does not always ft in the
category of art, however, since it does not produce
works in the traditional sense, and it does not neces-
sarily always participate in exhibitions. Moreover, its
activities are often overlooked by other institutions
that support cultural projects which do not have an
adequate knowledge of recent media art strategies.
This explains why Hackteria needs to develop other
funding strategies to support its projects, and appeal
to institutions with a mission dedicated to scientifc
research, economical development or social utility. For
these reasons, the autonomy of Hackteria regarding
the commercial fne art market may be challenged by
its dependency on justifying its activities to these pub-
lic and private institutions, particularly in a period of
economic crisis afecting the global cultural policy.
Figure 5. Detail of the BioTehna laboratory in Kiberpipa, Ljubljana, Slovenia, November and December 2012. Photograph by
Boris Magrini. Used with permission.
6 7
A R T I C L E
BIOTECHNOLOGIES AND UTOPIA
Numerous commentators predicted the end of painting
during the 20th century, a prophecy that remains far
from being fulflled. Likewise, after the glorious years
of new media art at the turn of the millennium, many
theorists and historians consider today that strategies
such as tactical media and hacktivism are coming to an
end, while others question the future of media art per
se.
30
If technologies are evolving and replacing each
another at an exponential speed, it seems natural that
a new generation of artists are inclined to appropriate
them. Over the centuries, artists experimented with
new techniques without necessarily discarding the
older ones. There is nothing to suggest that artists will
suddenly stop experimenting with new media in the
future just as there is, equally, nothing to suggest that
they will not draw, paint and photograph anymore, or
even rediscover and appropriate discarded technolo-
gies in a media archaeology fashion. Furthermore,
there is no reason to believe that artists will stop ad-
dressing topics of relevance to society by subverting
and hacking the future communication technologies.
Hackteria is exemplary of a recent form of activism
that uses and appropriates some of the most recently
discussed and controversial technologies to develop
performative and process-oriented activities addressing
societal issues and bridging the gap between artistic
and scientifc research. Due to their multiplicity and
variety of backgrounds, the members of Hackteria
are difcult to classify under a single heading. Most
importantly, Hacketeria resists traditional classifcation
because it refuses to follow the conventional protocols
of scientifc research, on one hand, and artistic produc-
tion, on the other. From a commercial point of view,
it is neither a professional research lab nor an artistic
collective. In spite of this, its participation in important
cultural festivals and symposiums worldwide along with
its success in obtaining public and private funding dem-
onstrate that Hackteria is far from being an irrelevant
underground organization and that it has, on the con-
trary, established a name for itself.
The fact that Hackteria is invited to festivals like Ars
Electronica and ISEA, that it is discussed in cultural
magazines, and actively collaborates with artists and
exhibition spaces clearly situates it in an artistic feld,
more specifcally associated to the clusters of new
media art, art and science, and bio-art. It is not the
frst or last example of a collaborative project
working on a performative and process-oriented basis
in the history of art. However, what mainly character-
izes Hackteria is the ideology that drives its activities.
Hackteria is a cultural and artistic project because
it is driven by the idea that knowledge sharing and
open-source projects and prototypes will create a bet-
ter and more equal society: a better society because
the dialogue and the network facilitated between
researchers and artists will open new creative applica-
tions in the use of technologies that would otherwise
be restricted to commercial uses. However, also a
more equal society because the wide-reaching em-
powerment of citizens with tools for experimenting
with new technologies through cheap do-it-yourself
and hacked solutions will enable them to participate
better in the political debates about such tech-
nologies. It is a rather Utopian vision, yet one that is
coupled with a pragmatic approach involving action
on a local scale. This is in line with the previously dis-
cussed prescriptions by Ernst Friedrich Schumacher
but at the same time involves the development of a
global network of local projects and partners, who
and which inherit the McLuhan vision of a global com-
munity made possible by modern technologies. The
philosophy underlying the activities of Hackteria could
be considered Utopian to some extent; indeed, the
reality concerning the costs and the requirements of
scientifc research makes it difcult to believe that any
do-it-yourself lab will ever provide a successful solu-
tion that an industrial laboratory cannot provide. As
Marc Dusseiller admits: Its improbable that ideas for
developing new drugs or solving the problem of world
hunger will come out of this scene.
31
In fact, the
6 8
A R T I C L E
activism put forward by Hackteria is somehow more
pragmatic then the majority of the tactical media ac-
tivities of the late 1990s, which were strongly reliant
on subversive strategies and confrontation. Despite
providing an alternative to the dominant capitalistic
system, the model of knowledge sharing and empow-
erment that it promotes is not incompatible with the
current laws and economic regulations of our society.
Indeed, even in the age of the Internet and even if
open-source projects and free software are, in reality,
a product of a free-market capitalist society, as lucidly
analyzed by Lawrence Lessig, the consideration of
knowledge and culture as something free is not as
evident today as it might seem.
32
Another important
and distinctive aspect of Hackteria, as opposed to the
vast majority of activist practices of the 1960s and
70s and even some of the tactical media strategies of
the 90s, is the belief that society does not need to re-
fuse technological progress in order to improve. While
technology has been considered by some critical the-
orists in the past as the tool of a capitalist society as
a means of improving productivity and attaining better
control of workers and the consumers Hackteria
embodies a neomodern determination to merge tech-
nological progress and social equality. As Brian Holmes
asserted in his contribution to the one hundred books
of the thirteenth Documenta: A movement without
techn cant convince anyone of its capacity to materi-
ally reorganize society.
33
One of the reasons why, following his involvement
with the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society (SGMK), Marc
Dusseiller decided to dedicate his time and energies
to a project involving biotechnologies is that the tools
for creating a bio-lab were becoming afordable to
a wider public. Another reason could be that bio-art
acquired international recognition during the frst de-
cades of the new millennium and is still considered the
most avant-garde frontier in the new media art scene,
hence the urge felt by younger artists to experiment
with these technologies. Above all, however, Hackteria
was created in the hope of responding to a growing
discrepancy between the researchers developing new
products and tools and the authorities who regulate
the research and the consumers. Biotechnologies con-
tinue to be extremely obscure and controversial and
trigger resistance from the general population which
misunderstands them. To bring them closer to the citi-
zens is a political act, regardless of the feld in which
it is performed, be it artistic or scientifc. This position
is defended by Alessandro Delfanti in his academic
research on the bio hacking emergence. For him open
biology is open circulation of information that has
important political consequences, and the role of new
media as tools for democracy is an important dis-
course underlying the whole development of informa-
tion societies.
34
The success of Hackteria since its
creation, the number of workshops it has organized,
the network it has created, and the conferences and
festivals in which it has participated signal that this pe-
culiar political act undertaken by its members has suc-
ceeded in arousing some curiosity among a growing
network of artists, researchers and a variety of other
participants. And if curiosity ultimately leads to knowl-
edge, the neomodern hacker Utopia may eventually
lead to a better world indeed.
6 9
A R T I C L E
1. Steven Levy, Hackers (Sebastopol, CA: OReilly Media,
2010).
2. Chris C. Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, Unscientifc
America (New York: Basic Books, 2009).
3. About, Hackteria.org, http://hackteria.org/?page_id=2
(accessed January 2, 2013).
4. Andreas Broeckmann, Image, Process, Performance,
Machine. Paradigms of Media Art Theory, in Media Art
Histories, ed. Oliver Grau (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2007), 201.
5. Lucy R. Lippard, Trojan Horses: Activist Art and Power, in
Art after Modernism: Rethinking Representation, ed. Brian
Wallis (New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art and
Boston: D.R. Godine, 1984), 343.
6. Aleksandr Brener and Barbara Schurz, Demolish Serious
Culture!!!, oder, Was Ist Radikal-demokratische Kultur,
und Wem Dient Sie = or, What Is Radical Democratic
Culture and Who Does iI Serve? : ili, Shto tTkoe Radikalno-
Demokraticheskaia Kultura i Komu Ona Cluzhit? (Wien:
Edition Selene, 2000), 100.
7. For an historical analysis of the relation between media
art and process-oriented art, see Rudolf Frieling No
Rehearsal Aspects of Media Art as Process, in Medien
Kunst Interaktion die 60er und 70er Jahre in Deutsch-
land / Media Art Action the 1960s and 1970s in Germany,
ed. Rudolf Frieling and Dieter Daniels (Wien: Springer,
1997), 163-169.
8. Tilman Baumgrtel, Net.art 2.0: Neue Materialien Zur
Netzkunst = New Materials Towards Net Art (Nrnberg:
Verlag fr Moderne Kunst, 2001), 32.
9. Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, The Ethics of Experiential
Engagement with the Manipulation of Life, in Tactical Bio-
politics, ed. Beatriz Da Costa and Kavita Philip (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2008).
10. Marc Dusseiller, presentation at the BioTehna press confer-
ence, Ljubljana, November 21, 2012.
11. Marc Dusseiller, interviewed by the author, October 1,
2012.
12. Hackteria, About.
13. The book is mentioned by Marc Dusseiller during the
aforementioned BioTehna press conference.
14. Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of
Economics as if People Mattered (London: Blond Briggs,
1973), 29-30.
15. Herbert Marcuse, One-dimensional Man: Studies in the
Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1964).
16. Jospeh Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Rea-
son (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1976).
17. Richard Barbrook, Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Ma-
chines to the Global Village (London: Pluto Press, 2007).
18. Denisa Kera, Nanomano Lab in Ljubljana: Disruptive Pro-
totypes and Experimental Governance of Nanotechnolo-
gies in the Hackerspaces, Jcom 11, no. 4 (2012): 4.
19. The exhibition Enki inaugurated on November 22, 2012, at
the Kapelica Gallery in Ljubljana, Slovenja. The artist Anto-
ny Hall presented the work consisting of a device enabling
an interaction between the spectator and an electrogenic
fsh, resulting in a visual and acustic experience.
20. Denisa Kera, Hackerspaces and DIYbio in Asia: Connecting
Science and Community with Open Data, Kits and Proto-
cols, Journal of Peer Production 2 (2012), http://peerpro-
duction.net/issues/issue-2/peer-reviewed-papers/diybio-
in-asia/ (accessed January 2, 2013).
21. Critical Art Ensemble, Bioparanoia and the Culture of
Control, in Tactical Biopolitics.
22. The BioTehna lab ran between November and December
2012 at the Kiberpipa hacker space in Ljubljana. During
the lab, several activities have been organized, such as the
workshops BioElectronix for Artists and Geeks and Brain
Hacking, the symposium Workshopology, the workshop
for kids BioCyberKidzz and the lecture Kapitn Biopunk by
artist Julian Abraham.
23. The SOFT CONTROL: Art, Science and the Technological
Unconscious exhibition curated by Dmitry Bulatov took
place at the Koroka Art Gallery in Slovenj Gradec and at
the Association for Culture and Education KIBLA in Mari-
bor, Slovenija, between November 14 - December 15, 2012.
7 0
A R T I C L E
24. The symposium Workshopology took place at Ljudmila,
in Ljubljana, on November 24, 2012. The participants
were: Bojan Markicevic (Atelier des Jours Venir), Marc
Dusseiller (Hackteria), Deborah Hustic (IMM media Lab),
Kristijan Tkalec (Hia Eksperimentov, Kiberpipa), Miha
Turi (Institute Cultural Centre of European Space Tech-
nologies), Brane Zorman (Radio Cona), Antony Hall (artist),
Borut Savski (artist), Tina Malina, Robertina Sebjanic and
Uros Veber (Ljudmila).
25. Hackteria: Interview with Marc Dusseiller, by Sara Toc-
chetti, MCD - Musiques & Cultures Digitales, no. 68 (2012):
47.
26. Max Celko, The Revolt of the Hand-crafters: Interview
with Marc Dusseiller, W.I.R.E, no. 8 (2012): 88.
27. Swiss Enlargement Contribution, Swiss Agency for
Development and Cooperation, http://www.contribution-
enlargement.admin.ch/en/Home (accessed January 2,
2013).
28. The Swiss Contribution to EU Enlargement towards
the East, Swiss Agency for Development and Coopera-
tion, http://www.contribution-enlargement.admin.ch/
en/Home/The_Swiss_contribution (accessed January 2,
2013).
29. Dominik Landwehr, e-mail message to author, January 7,
2013.
30. See, for example, the warning call by Geert Lovink in his
recent publication concerning the necessity of a renewal
of tactical media strategies: Geert Lovink, Zero Com-
ments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture (New York:
Routledge, 2007).
31. Max Celko, The Revolt of the Hand-crafters: Interview
with Marc Dusseiller.
32. Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Tech-
nology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control
Creativity (New York: Penguin Press, 2004).
33. Brian Holmes, Profanity and the Financial Markets: A
Users Guide to Closing the Casino (Ostfldern: Hatje
Cantz, 2012.) 14.
34. Alessandro Delfanti, Genome Hackers - Rebel Biology,
Open Source and Science Ethic (PhD diss., Universit
degli Studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Matematica, 2009-
2010), 17.
7 1
A R T I C L E
Communism is a hateful thing and a menace
to peace and organized government; but the
communism of combined wealth and capital, the
outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfsh-
ness, which insidiously undermines the justice and
integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous
than the communism of oppressed poverty and
toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent,
attacks with wild disorder the citadel of rule.
United States President Grover Cleveland,
State of the Union 1888 address.
1
COMMUNISM
OF CAPITAL AND
CANNIBALISM OF
THE COMMON
Notes on the Art of Over-Identifcation
mail@matteopasquinelli.org
www.matteopasquinelli.org
by
Matteo Pasqui nel l i
Socialism and capitalism, however, even though
they have at times been mingled together and at
others occasioned bitter conficts, are both regimes
of property that exclude the common.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,
Commonwealth.
2
A paradox that conceals its paradoxical nature
becomes a commodity.
Boris Groys, The Communist Postscript
3

7 2
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
Over-identifcation is a politico-aesthetic strategy famously developed by
the music band Laibach and the art collective Neue Slowenische Kunst
since the 1980s and conceptualised, among others, also by Slavoj iek.
This essay argues that the strategy of over-identifcation understands
capitalism mainly as an ideological construct and so it fails to understand
its real obscene core, that is living labour. In particular this essay argues
that capitalism employs itself a strategy of over-identifcation with social
struggles and it has absorbed many of the features that we historically at-
tribute to social movements. Following Italian Operaism and the work of
Paolo Virno and Christian Marazzi, such a capitalist tendency is defned as
the communism of capital.
1. THERE IS NO LONGER AN OUTSIDE
There is no longer an outside repeats a topologi-
cal and existential motto since 1989, that is since
the Berlin wall felt and a world system appeared
to close upon itself (at least for Eurocentric eyes)
there is no longer an outside to capitalism, globaliza-
tion and the Empire, it is remarked.
4
This new spa-
tial condition has not afected just politics but more
generally the whole collective imaginary including
spy novels, for instance, as the Iron Curtain was pro-
viding at least reassuring roles and linear plots.
Indeed, how to be a double agent in the age of one-
dimensional thought? This question is addressing
directly any activist or artist. The clash of civilization
with the Islam world cynically designed by Huntington
attempted to resolved such a geopolitical disorienta-
tion, before being reabsorbed by China and its new
socialist market economy around the stable vortex
of a gigantic accumulation of capitals.
5
Still, keeping
on imploding, this feeling of political claustrophobia is
pushing the creation of new intensive and post-utopi-
an paradigms abreast of the topology of the Empire.
One of the most controversial solutions suggested in
order to escape this postmodern impasse is the so-
called over-identifcation, that is an aesthetic strategy
initiated frst by the band Laibach and art collective
Neue Slowenische Kunst in the Ljubljana of the late
80s within the peculiar ideological curtain of socialist
Yugoslavia.
6
Basically, Laibach were imitating totali-
tarian aesthetics in such a punctual and orthodox way
to reverse it into kitsch. To the usual question whether
7 3
A R T I C L E
they were really fascist or not, they were used to reply
in a sibylline way: We are fascists as much as Hitler
was a painter. This strategy was already defended
by Slavoj iek in 1994 as the ability to show the
obscene fantasmatic kernel of an ideological edifce
against the dominant cynical reason.
What if, on the contrary, the dominant attitude
of the contemporary postideological universe is
precisely the cynical distance toward public values?
What if this distance, far from posing any threat to
the system, designates the supreme form of con-
formism, since the normal function of the system
requires cynical distance? In this sense the strategy
of Laibach appears in a new light: it frustrates
the system (the ruling ideology) precisely insofar as
it is not its ironic imitation, but over-identifcation
with it by bringing to light the obscene superego
underside of the system, over-identifcation sus-
pends its efciency.
7
Laibach were just pointing to the obscene nightly
law that necessarily redoubles and accompanies, as
its shadow, the public Law, iek wrote in the same
essay. As a matter of fact, Laibachs retro-avantgarde
was dictated also by the restrictions of the socialist
regime to free expression. As the typical punk trans-
gression of the Code was not possible, their strategy
turned into the identifcation with the Code itself in a
way that was of course too-paranoid-to-be-true. Lai-
bach initiated the genre of state punk.
Yet when this over-identifcation strategy, which was
born under a state ideology, is applied to neoliberal
market ideology, it performs diferently. This text will
try to show how the strategies of over-identifcation
too often simply deal with the very surface of ideology
and, contrary to the Lacanian credo, never touch its
obscene subtext that is the economic infrastructure
and the very obscenity of labour. On the contrary, it is
capital itself that has been always playing an elegant
art of over-identifcation with the heart of labour and
production. By the communism of capital it will be
defned the continuous and subterranean cannibal-
ism of the common operated by capitalism a very
material process running underneath any ideological
spectacle and any Symbolic Code dear to the Laca-
nian Youth.
There is no longer an outside is an ambivalent state-
ment: indeed it points to a claustrophobic ideological
condition, but it suggests nevertheless very material
lines of confict. If there is no more a utopian space
outside capitalism, exodus must be established in an
intensive and paradoxical way. Resistance must set
itself inside and against the structure of capitalism,
as Mario Tronti was suggesting already in the 60s
(and not just inside and against its ideological code,
as a Lacanian new-wave is back to suggest today).
8

Post-utopianism is to be replaced by endo-utopianism.
Where to fnd an intensive yet practical line of fight
behind the ideological spectacle of capitalism? Far
from psychoanalysis, looking to the mundane chroni-
cles close to us, it is in the very fnancial crisis of 2009
that we can fnd an example of an intrinsic breach af-
fecting the system. The political diagram of endo-uto-
pianism should be found along that systemic risk of
capitalism that has been only recently acknowledged
by fnancial institutions.
Today a weird process of over-identifcation is occur-
ring between the archetypes of capitalism and com-
munism at diferent scales, expanding the feeling of
political impasse but at the same time suggesting new
spaces of confict. First, for the irony of fate, a com-
munist state formally ruled by a communist party
China has become the leading capitalist superpower.
Thanks to an enormous accumulation of capitals
China managed to buy and control more than 25% of
United States public debt (quota in 2010). Second, ex-
74
A R T I C L E
actly 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a global
credit crunch have forced western governments to
nationalize de facto many private banks openly in-
fringing one of the basic commandments of neoliberal
monotheism. Eventually mainstream economists were
forced to acknowledge a systemic risk that, as David
Harvey noticed, was already defned and named by
Marx a long ago as the internal contradiction of capi-
talist accumulation.
9
Third, the new libertarian busi-
ness models that are born out of digital networks cel-
ebrate and locate the common at the center of their
mode of production. The new wealth of networks
is to be based on the creative commons and peer
production of online multitudes, Yoachai Benkler is
suggesting to ICT giants like IBM,
10
whereas Wired
editor Kevin Kelly confrms that a new socialism and
a global collectivist society [!] is materializing thanks
to the internet.
11
These three examples, however, refers just to the
surface of economic chronicles: the communism
of capital has its roots in a more general process
of fnancialization of the whole life that has to be
unpacked properly. This text suggests to look at the
deep processes of fnancialization in order to under-
stand the new diagrams of confict and the art of over-
identifcation itself.
2. THE FINANCIAL SOVIETS OF THE NEW YORK
STOCK EXCHANGE
As Christian Marazzi reminds, it was frst Peter Druck-
er to identify the rise of a peculiar socialism of capital
in the very fnancial heart of United States.
12
In his
book The Unseen Revolution Drucker described the
process of fnancialization of pension funds that start-
ed in the state of New York in the 70s.
13
The unseen
revolution was referring to the accumulation of 35%
of United States corporate stocks by workers pension
funds. Drucker predicted that this ownership interest
would increase to 70% by 1985, allowing employees,
trough their pension funds, to become hypothetically
the true owners of the countrys means of production.
For the frst time in history, workers pensions became
a crucial variable of stock markets. It was a revolution-
ary event also because wage and capital established
so a very promiscuous relation, blurring then the es-
sential antagonism between workers and capitalists.
The troubles of the current credit system are rooted in
that process of socialization of capital that started to
fuel volatile and unstable fnancial games.
More recently, this fnancial regime happened to
be in need of a strong intervention and protection
by the state, reinforcing even more the intuition of
a communism of capital. In fact, in order to resolve
the fnancial crisis of 2007, the gigantic debt of the
private sector has been moved to the public sector. In
October 2008 the British government announced a
rescue package of 500 billion to stabilize banks af-
fected by the credit crunch. In the same year Northern
Rock was nationalized, frst of a long series of bailouts
and partial nationalization in the western world, most
notably the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of
America. In this awkward communism of capital the
state fulflls the needs of the fnancial soviets of
banks, insurance companies and investments funds by
using to the money of all the taxpayers and de facto
imposing the dictatorship of fnancial market over
society, Marazzi argues.
14
At the end of its parable
the supposed socialization of means of production
via the stock exchange has been reversed into a less
democratic socialization of private debt via the state.
In technical terms, the expression communism of cap-
ital refers to a process of colonization of any aspect of
human life that can be transformed into a credit line.
The fnancialization of the bios has been cannibalizing
everything: from health insurance to house mortgage,
7 5
A R T I C L E
from credit cards to student debt. Also the precariza-
tion of the labour market into the fgures of temp
worker and freelancer and the virtualization of com-
panies into networks of outsourcing point to a deep
fnancialization of economy. According to Marazzi, this
wild fnancialization of the whole human life is specu-
lar to the crisis of the traditional forms of political
representation, i.e. specular to the resurfacing of the
political subject of the multitude.
Financial capital, as social capital listed on the
stock exchange, appears as a collective represen-
tative of the multitude of subjects that populate
civil society. [] Financialization defnes the public
sphere of capital. [] It is specular to the missing
attempt to constitute a separated public sphere
autonomous from capital. Under this aspect, the
fnancialization of capital is the sign of the political
crisis of the form of representation of the multi-
tude.
15
Here the political question at stake is how to overturn
the hegemony of fnancialization and how to conceive
a new political subject at the very center of the com-
munism of capital.
This attempt has been discussed more deeply by
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their recent book
Commonwealth, where they put the production of
the common and its expropriation at the core of
contemporary capitalism. Capitalism is not just about
exploiting labour time like in the classic Marxist theory,
but about a much larger expropriation of the whole
life of the metropolis, Hardt and Negri argue. The
common of the bios is made of material production
and material resources, but also of languages and life-
styles, social relations and collective knowledge.
By the common we mean, frst of all, the com-
mon wealth of the material worldthe air, the
water, the fruits of the soil, and all natures
bountywhich in classic European political texts
is often claimed to be the inheritance of human-
ity as a whole, to be shared together. We consider
the common also and more signifcantly those
results of social production that are necessary for
social interaction and further production, such as
knowledges, languages, codes, information, afects,
and so forth. This notion of the common does not
position humanity separate from nature, as either
its exploiter or its custodian, but focuses rather on
the practices of interaction, care, and cohabitation
in a common world, promoting the benefcial and
limiting the detrimental forms of the common.
16
Within the forms of expropriation of the common
we should include also the new forms of business
running on digital networks, whose strategy of over-
identifcation is precisely to use the rhetoric of digital
collectivism (network cooperation, peer production,
free culture, creative commons, etc.) to hide the ac-
cumulation of value. Here there is no better example
of sneaky socialism than Kevin Kellys article titled The
New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming
Online published in Wired magazine in 2009.
17
The project of the common by Hardt and Negri helps
to move beyond the 20th century propaganda and the
opposition between public and private specifc to mo-
dernity. Hardt and Negri provide also a good ground to
archive defnitely the opposition between capitalism
and state socialism, as they both represent regimes
of property that exclude the common.
The seemingly exclusive alternative between the
private and the public corresponds to an equally
pernicious political alternative between capitalism
and socialism. It is often assumed that the only
cure for the ills of capitalist society is public regula-
tion and Keynesian and/or socialist economic
7 6
A R T I C L E
management; and, conversely, socialist maladies
are presumed to be treatable only by private prop-
erty and capitalist control. Socialism and capitalism,
however, even though they have at times been
mingled together and at others occasioned bitter
conficts, are both regimes of property that exclude
the common.
18
3. LANGUAGE AS PRODUCTION VS. LANGUAGE AS
IDEOLOGY
The promiscuity between the archetypes of capital-
ism and communism is also connected to a molecular
implosion of the categories of art, education, politics
and labour. We are familiar with Walter Benjamins
famous essay about the work of art in the age of
mechanical reproduction and with the creativity-for-
all manifestoes of the last century. What was just an
intuition of the art avantgardes mass intellectuality
has become a central pillar of post-Fordism up to the
so-called Creative Industries and creative cities. One
of the crucial intuitions advanced by Paolo Virno in A
Grammar of the Multitude is about the over-lapping
and indeed over-identifcation of intellectual and ar-
tistic production with labour and politics.
The boundaries between pure intellectual activ-
ity, political action, and labor have dissolved. I will
maintain, in particular, that the world of so called
post-Fordist labor has absorbed into itself many
of the typical characteristics of political action;
and that this fusion between Politics and Labor
constitutes a decisive physiognomic trait of the
contemporary multitude.
19
Paraphrasing Virno, we might say that new forms of
production based on knowledge and communication
(variously termed knowledge economy, cognitive
capitalism, media culture, network society, etc.) have
hybridized and integrated Labour, Politics and Art into
a single unifed gesture of production.
Here labour and politics did not eventually as a dicta-
torship of the proletariat, but on the contrary into the
fgure of the manager as opposed to the apparatchik
of parliamentary democracy. Managers have become
today the models of political leadership. Similarly the
society of the spectacle has collapsed onto politics,
as exemplifed by the institutional roles acquired by
Ronald Regan and Arnold Schwarzenegger after their
cinema careers. In order to be a leader, you have to be
a good performer too. These are basic examples of
phenomena of reversed over-identifcation occurring
within the realm of capitalism itself which make any
attempt of counter-over-identifcation more difcult
to accomplish.
This implosion of roles and categories is responsible
of the same aforementioned feeling of claustrophobia
afecting contemporary passions. Virno notices how
the feeling of living in an age of radical depoliticization
is related to the absorption of the political skills (that
were specifc to the generation of 68) into the very
production of value.
In fact, political action now seems, in a disastrous
way, like some superfuous duplication of the expe-
rience of labor, since the latter experience, even if
in a deformed and despotic manner, has subsumed
into itself certain structural characteristics of politi-
cal action. [...] The inclusion of certain structural
features of political praxis in contemporary pro-
duction helps us to understand why the post-Ford
multitude might be seen, today, as a de-politicized
multitude. There is already too much politics in
the world of wage labor (in as much as it is wage
labor) in order for politics as such to continue to
enjoy an autonomous dignity.
20
7 7
A R T I C L E
There is less passion in politics as political skills have
been absorbed by creative industries, marketing cam-
paign and the art system itself. Looking at the implo-
sion of the political categories and their absorption
within the realm of economy along the evolution of
Fordism into post-Fordism, Virno can say in the fnal
line of the fnal thesis of A Grammar of the Multitude
that post-Fordism but incarnates the communism of
capital.
The metamorphosis of social systems in the West,
during the 1980s and 1990s, can be synthesized in
a more pertinent manner with the expression: com-
munism of capital. [] If we can say that Fordism
incorporated, and rewrote in its own way, some
aspects of the socialist experience, then post-Ford-
ism has fundamentally dismissed both Keynesian-
ism and socialism. Post-Fordism, hinging as it does
upon the general intellect and the multitude, puts
forth, in its own way, typical demands of commu-
nism (abolition of work, dissolution of the State,
etc.). Post-Fordism is the communism of capital.
21
Compared to other authors of Marxist lineage, Virno
has always put a big emphasis on the political role of
language. Since his work on the Marxian general intel-
lect, Virno has been emphasizing how post-Fordism
has placed language into the workplace.
22
If once
the sign Silence, men at work was hanging in many
factories, today in certain workshops one could put a
new one declaring Men at work, talk!, he suggests.
23

In addition, in more recent works, Virno has under-
lined the very ambivalent nature of language at the
same time, basis of political institutions and source of
social conficts and wars. Language is an ambivalent
and dangerous political force by nature, Virno says.
The ground of language allows comparing the plane
of the communism of capital with other schools of
thought and the strategy of over-identifcation itself.
It is interesting, for instance, to notice a similarity be-
tween Virnos notion of language as production and
the understanding of language as institution by Boris
Groys. Interestingly, in his book The Communist Post-
script, Groys defnes communism as the linguistifca-
tion of society, while post-Fordism is intended as the
total commodifcation of language.
I will understand communism to be the project of
subordinating the economy to politics in order to
allow politics to act freely and sovereignly. The
economy functions in the medium of money. It
operates with numbers. Politics functions in the
medium of language. It operates with words with
arguments, programmes and petitions, but also
with commands, prohibitions, resolutions and
decrees. The communist revolution is the transcrip-
tion of society from the medium of money to the
medium of language.
24
Opposite to Virno and Groys understanding of lan-
guage as a political institution and productive force,
we fnd iek and his static idea of language as ideol-
ogy that is at the basis of many interpretation of the
strategy of over-identifcation. For Lacan and iek,
language and not material forces represents the
very nature and structure of ideology. If ideology is
structured as an unconscious grammar and it is not
a product of material forces, any form of political
resistance that does not question that very grammar
is caught in a trap iek remarks in a very self-cas-
trating logic. iek always repeats that ideology does
not teach what to desire but how to desire. In books
such as The Plague of Phantasy, imagination is never
an expression of desire and production, but it is mostly
considered a perverted phantasma.
25
7 8
A R T I C L E
4. THE BELATED STRATEGY OF OVER-
IDENTIFICATION
Language as production, language as institution, lan-
guage as ideology. These three defnitions condense
the positions of three contemporary authors such
as Virno, Groys, and iek, and provide a common
ground to critique the artistic and political strategy of
over-identifcation. Indeed the notion of communism
of capital has been introduced along this essay in or-
der to show (1) that the actual engine of capitalism is
running detached from any ideological spectacle and
(2) that capitalism is playing the over-identifcation
game with the obscenity of labour and value produc-
tion since ever. As the strategy of over-identifcation
is often transplanted from the context of state ide-
ology of socialist Yugoslavia to the liquid spaces of
post-Fordism, it is important to follow this migration
in detail.
A good example of this cultural translation is given
by the book Cultural Activism Today by the Dutch
research collective BAVO.
26
Questioning artistic
resistance after the end of history, BAVO tries to
contextualize and extend the strategy of over-identif-
cation outside the peculiar ideological context of the
former East Bloc. The problem from which they move
is the usual problem of the relation between art and
politics and the subversive value of art in a society of
spectacle capable to recuperate any radical gesture.
Essentially, following a typical postmodern logic, they
claim that politically engaged art is the victim of a
double bind: it is asked to be critical without directly
questioning the dominant system, but as soon as criti-
cal art becomes engaged, it is accused of not being
critical at all.
On one side, BAVO measures the boundaries of con-
temporary engaged art and frame it in the efective
defnition of NGO art, that is a form of art that aes-
theticizes social injustice and sanitize any real political
confict in a fetish for victimization. No politics please,
victims only says NGO art: These art practices share
the idea that, considering the many urgent needs at
hand, there is no call for high art statements, big politi-
cal manifestoes or sublime expressions of moral indig-
nation. Instead what are needed are direct, concrete,
artistic interventions that help disadvantaged popula-
tion and communities to deal with the problems they
are facing.
On the other side, celebrated fgures such as Santiago
Sierra are, according to BAVO, the personifcation of
the cynical artist, whose provocations are just instru-
mental to the neoliberal consensus. Santiago Sierra
is known for his provocative performances, which
have included: paying refugees from Chechnya to re-
main inside cardboard boxes, giving money to young
Cubans for the privilege of tattooing their backs, dy-
ing the hair of Africans blonde to make them look
European, and spraying ten Iraqis immigrant workers
with insulating foam. In the art catalogues Sierra is
celebrated for highlighting socio-economic inequal-
ity through performances and installations, but like
a true capitalist, Sierra simply sat down, did nothing,
took some photographs and consumed the surplus
value that was generated at the expense of the day
labourers, BAVO notes.
Between the twin poles of politically-correct NGO art
and the politically-incorrect art of provocation, BAVO
advances the strategy of over-identifcation as the
ultimate escape, assuming then that the neoliberal
ideology functions exactly like the state ideology that
was providing a stage for NSK and Laibach. The main
example of over-identifcation practices abreast of the
age of globalization is the work of The Yes Men, a cul-
ture jamming duo that is famous for infltrating busi-
ness conferences and re-enacting perfectly the whole
anthropology and imaginary of global corporations.
27

For instance, on 3 December 2004, the twentieth an-
niversary of the Bhopal disaster, BBC news reported
an interview with a (fake) Dow Chemical spokesper-
7 9
A R T I C L E
son (staged by one member of The Yes Men) who was
promising an investment of 12 billion dollars in medical
care for the region. In just a few hours Dow Chemical
reported stock losses of $2 billion on the Frankfurt
stock exchange.
Despite rare successful examples, the attempt to up-
grade the over-identifcation strategy to the neoliberal
ideology appears to re-enter a cul de sac and to be
stack in a vicious circle. The diagram ofered by BAVO
may paradoxically reinforce the dominant language
and feature no real exploit at all. The overarching sus-
picion here is that Lacan and iek make the disease
worst, trapping frustration in an even more claustro-
phobic space. If the obscene subtext of ideology is
undeerstood according to the matrix of language, any
gesture that is expressed according to that language
just reinforces its hegemony. The feeling is that over-
identifcation is often missing the target, as it incar-
nate the ideological grammar without ever touching
the ground of material production.
5. CANNIBALISM, OR THE INGESTION OF THE ENEMY
The strategy of over-identifcation appears often to be
described and to be trapped in categories that still be-
long to the previous century and specifcally to the re-
gime of Fordism. When Virno was observing that Intel-
lect and Labour, Art and Politics are blurring into each
other, he was also pointing to the implosion of any
ideological discourse in the western world. However,
the residual force of Fordist categories is still alive
today and re-emerges precisely in those paradigms
of art and politics that consider language as ideology
and not as a material means of production. Whereas
over-identifcation claims to enter the obscene kernel
of capitalism, in fact it just remains on its ideological
surface, while beneath the communism of capital
keeps on cannibalizing the common undisturbed. The
central diference between over-identifcation and
endo-utopianism approaches (both claiming to be
inside and against) lays precisely in this conception of
language that is understood respectively as ideology
or production.
In order to eventually escape the neuroses of western
dialectics, other latitudes should be explored. Aside
from the arts of identifcation with the enemy, inciden-
tally we could also consider those strategies that con-
template the ingestion of the enemy himself. In the
Manifesto Antropfago (1928) the Brazilian poet Os-
wald de Andrade, in polemic with Freud and the whole
colonial patriarchy, was suggesting the cannibalism of
the (European) taboos in order to transfgure them
back into totems, i.e. in material and pagan fgures.
28

Like Andrade with the Freudian idea of interiorized
Super-ego, we should follow this ancestral invitation
and fnally ingest the neurotic angels of ideology to
transform them into the demons of living labour.
8 0
A R T I C L E
1. See Grover Clevelands Fourth State of the Union Ad-
dress, Wikisource, last modifed February 21, 2014, http://
en.wikisource.org/wiki/Grover_Clevelands_Fourth_State_
of_the_Union_Address.
2. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Cam-
bridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009), vii.
3. Boris Groys, The Communist Postscript (London: Verso,
2010), 4.
4. See Michael Hard and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 186.
5. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1996).
6. Inke Arns, Avantgarde in the Rearview Mirror: On the
Paradigm Shifts of Reception of the Avantgarde in (ex)
Yugoslavia and Russia from the 80s to the Present
(Ljubljana: Maska, 2006). See also D. Djuric and M. Suva-
kovic, eds., Impossible Histories: Historical Avant-gardes,
Neo-avant-gardes, and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia,
1918-1991 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).
7. Slavoj iek, Why Are Laibach and NSK not Fascists?,
MARS (Magazine of the Modern Gallery Ljubljana) 5, nos.
3-4 (1993): 3-4.
8. Since Mario Trontis essay on the so-called social factory
[La fabbrica e la societ, Quaderni Rossi, no. 2 (1962)]
and across the whole tradition of Italian Operaism, the
expression within and against capital means that class
struggle operates within the contradictions of capitalist
development, that it generates. The working class is not
outside capital, as class struggle is the very engine that
pushes capitalist development.
9. David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis This
Time, (paper presented at meeting of the American
Sociological Association, Atlanta, August 16, 2010), http://
davidharvey.org/2010/08/the-enigma-of-capital-and-the-
crisis-this-time (accessed March 1, 2014).
10. Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Pro-
duction Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2006).
11. Kevin Kelly, The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society
Is Coming Online, Wired, May 22, 2009.
12. Christian Marazzi, Il Comunismo del Capitale (Verona:
Ombre Corte, 2010), 60.
13. Peter Drucker, The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund
Socialism Came to America (New York: Harper & Row,
1976).
14. Christian Marazzi, Il Comunismo del Capitale, 17.
15. Ibid., 58. (Translation is mine.)
bridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009), vii.
17. Kevin Kelly, The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society
Is Coming Online, Wired, May 22, 2009.
18. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, viii.
19. Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude (Los Angeles:
Semiotext(e), 2004), 50.
20. Ibid., 51.
21. Ibid., 111.
22. Ibid., 91.
23. Ibid.
24. Boris Groys, The Communist Postscript (London: Verso,
2010), xv.
25. Slavoj iek, The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso,
1997).
26. BAVO, ed., Cultural Activism Today. The Art of Over-identi-
fcation (Rotterdam: Episode Publishers, 2007).
27. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, The Yes Men: The
True Story of the End of the World Trade Organization
(New York: Disinfo, 2004).
28. Oswald de Andrade, Manifesto Antropfago, 1928;
translated by Stephen Berg as The Cannibalist Manifesto,
Third Text: Third World Perspectives on Contemporary Art
& Culture, no. 46 (Spring 1999): 92-96.
8 1
A R T I C L E
NEW MEDIA ART AS NEW MEDIA CREATIVITY?
New Media Art is today a very extended and com-
plex notion that includes those art practices that
make use of emergent technologies that explore
the cultural and aesthetic possibilities of such tech-
nologies.
6
More specifcally, Mark Tribe and Reena
Jana situate these practices at the intersection of the
notions of Art and Technology (which refers to elec-
tronic art, robotics or genetics) and Media Art (which
includes media which was not new in the 90s such as
video or TV).
7
In this regard, new media art practices
evolved from individual curiosity and avant-garde ex-
perimentation to overcome established conceptions
of visual arts and markets in every moment.
8
A well-known example of this is net.art, which
emerged two decades ago as an autonomous space
for art, challenging the very conditions of contem-
porary art and its pervading institutionalization. This
position, reinforced by the natural features of the
works and their technological base, was claimed in the
diferent manifestos written by artists
9
and largely
discussed within the communities during the second
half of the nineties. New Media Art and net.art were
then conceived as a democratic, fully accessible art,
Material Conditions of
Production and Hidden
Romantic Discourses in
New Media Artistic and
Creative Practices
RUTH PAGS
PhD Candidate
Information and Communication Sciences Studies
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
https://uoc.academia.edu/RuthPags
GEMMA SAN CORNELIO
Associate Professor
Information and Communication Sciences Studies
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
gsan_cornelio@uoc.edu
http://newmediapractices.org/
by
Ruth Pags &
Gemma San Cornel i o
8 2
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
Despite todays ruling of neoliberal capitalism, New Media Art could be re-
garded as a place of resistance, where radical ideologies such as commu-
nist utopias and other social discourses are able to proliferate and spread
through social connectivity.
1
By looking into this apparent contradiction,
we fnd that whereas New Media Art-work discourses are full of passion,
self-realization, freedom, creativity, anti-capitalist values, etc., their mate-
rial conditions of production are remarkably complex and operate on self-
disciplinarity, fexibility, precarity,
2

3
and lottery economy work.
4
Moreover,
the neoliberal regulation of mainstream and acceptable art as well as
the creative aesthetic processes as potential economic sources of income
has also extended these conditions to most new media creative practices,
which exist as separated from the mainstream art world.
5
This paper endeavors to capture a detailed view of the previous as-
sumption, based on the analysis of some examples and posing these mate-
rial conditions side by side with the discourses of creative work, which rely
almost solely on old romantic notions of creativity evoking the rewards
of such work and yet, the relinquishments -in terms of stable work condi-
tions- to be also made as a counterpart of creative grace. The research we
present focuses on initiatives which mediate between creators and indus-
try, specifcally comparing the cases of the Talent Factory and Disonancias,
both based in the Spanish territory.
which also was usually devised as activist and went
against neo-liberal discourses surrounding mainstream
contemporary art.
The fact is that despite these fghts against the institu-
tion,
10
New Media Art is still currently resisting in the
margins, but with limited impact and resonance when
compared to traditional art.
11
In this regard, although
New Media Art has contributed to the transformation
of the mainstream Art World
12
(and consequently
the defnition of art work and contents) its modest
acceptance has carried with it a whole array of obliga-
tions and relinquishments that New Media Art had to
comply with in order to achieve the institutionalization
of previously antagonistic aesthetic models. Amongst
New Media Art voices who highlighted the risks of
8 3
A R T I C L E
legitimation, some members of the early net.art move-
ment clearly identifed such recognition from the art
system as a peril pointing to cooption, decay or as
Sara Cook and Vuk Cosic coined- museumifcation.
13
The contradictions regarding the institutional position
of New Media Art are also present in the theoretical
formulations of it, which have been sometimes artif-
cially- made apart from the contemporary art forums.
In this regard, despite that there is a clear connection
between Contemporary and Digital Art, few scholars
have explored the points of intersection between them
as Edward Shanken and other authors assert.
14

Nevertheless, New Media Art can also be analyzed from
the standpoint of theoretical new media discourses,
which were moving in the same direction as artistic
practices: New Media were thought of as media able to
liberate audiences from traditional media companies
and allow the possibility for media creative production
and self-expression. . In this regard, we fnd some nu-
ances of the utopias projected in technologies, particu-
larly Internet and social media, as something that could
unshackle us from the mass media evoked by big com-
panies and institutions that dominated the previous me-
dia paradigm. According to some authors
15
new media
facilitate users and non- professionals access to cultural
production, allowing for self-produced and collabora-
tive projects, such as wikipedia. This liberating poten-
tial has allowed for theorization of empowered users,
alternatively named as prosumers, viewsers, and more
frequently co-creators. All these defnitions suggest
and open up a line of collaboration and participation
(explicitly or implicitly) between users and industries,
which sometimes becomes an easy way for companies
to appropriate of user generated content.
16
Finally, both digital art and new media discourses could
be analyzed from the perspective of creative industries.
John Hartley defnes the idea of creative industries
as The conceptual and practical convergence of the
creative arts (individual talent) with the cultural indus-
tries (mass scale).
17
Thus, according to Hartley, the
main feature of the creative industries will be to join
two originally separate worlds, that is to say, the Fine
Arts (traditionally based on individual talent) and the
cultural industries (characterized by the mode of in-
dustrial production and mass scale). In this framework
the consideration of the artist as someone exclusively
related to art production in the traditional sense re-
lated to galleries and art institutions- is increasingly be-
coming more unusual, especially because the working
conditions of artists bring about the need to undertake
diferent jobs, including both their own art production
and commercial assignments or teaching jobs. This
condition, which is not absolutely new, is related to
the number of graduates in art and design programs
(and therefore potential artists) and facilitates the con-
ceptual dissolution of the notion of art into the more
generic idea of creativity, which in turn has substantial
ideological implications, as the creative industries poli-
cies demonstrate.
THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES CONCEPT
The origin of the creative industries concept is usually
related to the UK policies of the 90s and its Depart-
ment of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Its frst
mapping document on the creative industries stated
that they should be treated like any other industry
ruled by a business model. While recognizing that
some institutions and people would still need public
support to produce their work, this was regarded as
an investment with its corresponding monetary return
rather than as an altruistic subsidy given to some de-
pendent artists.
18
The strategy was to end with the
something for nothing policy. If money was to be in-
vested in the arts, then they ought to do something in
return, even if it was a function of social cohesiveness.
8 4
A R T I C L E
Another well-known concept is that of the Creative
Class. For Richard Florida, the centrality of creativity
in the economy has resulted in a change of the class
system -enabling the emergence of the new so-called
creative class, which represents 30% of the power
of American labor, and which includes scientists, en-
gineers, architects, academics, artists, musicians and
also of a business and fnance professional elite.
19

For Florida, all these professionals are conceived as a
whole (a class), and depicted as wealthy and infuen-
tial. But in contrast to Floridas blissful picture, some
other authors have pointed to existing less pleasurable
conditions.
20

21

22
According to them, workers are
becoming integrated in an increasing temporary labor
order characterized by fexibility, mobility, freelance
work or multiple jobs and in many cases, precarity.
This is a risk-tolerant style that rewards the initiative in
a kind of lottery format, where the seduction of pos-
sible astronomical profts puts security aside.
23
The International Labour Organizations (ILO) defni-
tion of precarious employment, as quoted by Linda
McDowell and Susan Christopherson, is a work rela-
tion where employment security, which is considered
one of the principal elements of the labor contract, is
lacking.
24
We should bear in mind here that what is
sometimes referred to as fexibility -which may have a
rosier and well regarded purport- implies at the same
time a greater lack of security. Close to precarious
employment, the notion of precarity is specifcally
used by the Marxist autonomist intellectuals as Anto-
nio Negri, Michael Hardt, Paolo Virno, Franco Beradi
and Maurizio Lazzarato. As Rosalind Gill and Andy
Pratt explain, the notion of precarity used by the au-
tonomists has a double signifcation: it points not only
to its oppressive characteristics but also to its possibly
liberating potentials showing the capacity to develop
new subjectivities, new socialities and new kinds of
politics.
25

From the perspective of creative industries and the
creative class, many similarities can be found between
the working conditions of new media artists and
other jobs in the digital economy. Moreover, there is a
contradiction between the conceptualization of such
jobs and their actual working conditions, the former
being promising and the latter precarious. Flexibility
is valued as part of a postmodern work ethic having
both an individualized and a collective acceptance of
risk.
26
For Gina Nef et al, this individualism seems to
point to a general shift, and not merely a refection of
work in rapidly changing industries or libertarian val-
ues of the cyber-culture. Despite their aura of hipness,
the labor relations within cultural production provide
global capital with a model for destabilizing work and
denigrating workers quality of life.
27
Finally, these conceptualizations have opened the
space for a line of collaboration between artists and
industries developing new roles for the artist in the
society, which will be analyzed in greater depth in the
next pages.
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION, EVOKING ROMANTIC
NOTIONS
As far as Romanticism may come across from New
Media art, we hope to show here how old romantic
concepts specially related to creativity are still operat-
ing in present-day discourses. We will see this in detail
in our case studies, but frst let us point to the perti-
nence of drawing on Romanticism when talking about
Marxism in art: As contradictory as it may initially
seem, Romanticism had its own ideal of revolution,
which Abrams summarized in six characteristics: 1)
cleansing explosion of destruction that would recon-
stitute the then existing political, social, and moral
order; 2) a shift from the present era of sufering to an
era of peace and justice; 3) it will be led by a militant
8 5
A R T I C L E
elite; 4) it will spread everywhere to all mankind; 5) it
is inevitable, which makes for the ineluctable triumph
of total justice, community, and happiness on earth.
28

Within these characteristics, we can easily pinpoint
two interesting assumptions: on the one hand, that
of an expected future utopia, and, on the other and
even more important for our explanations, the role of
a leading elite for liberation. Keeping this revolutionary
concept in mind, we now turn to the implications of
the concepts of creativity and innovation, which also
have their ties to Romantic ideals.
Mark Runco defnes creativity as involving originality
(novelty, uniqueness) and at the same time, efective-
ness and it is also associated with the non-convention-
al or open-minded personality.
29
But, since it involves
originality, the very concept of creativity means build-
ing or producing something from nothing. According
to Margaret Boden, this reinforces the mystery often
surrounding creativity and it is not surprising then that
the paradox of creation is explained in terms of divine
inspiration or romantic intuition.
30
However, the
ideal of the romantic genius -brilliant yet mysterious-
is usually tied to the suggestion that creativity implies
a high price to be paid, sometimes even leading to
self-destruction. The so-called Faustic pact would
reinforce the common belief that creativity involves
risk and resignations,
31
as Robert J. Sternberg, Linda
A. OHara and Todd I. Lubart point out.
32
Not surprisingly, if we leave behind these old romantic
concepts of creativity and turn to concepts of innova-
tion within the economic arena, we can see how ideas
of destruction and risk also surface. On the one hand,
Joseph Schumpeter in 1950 described the process
of innovation taking place in a market economy by
means of new businesses and products destroying
older ones. His theory of this process of creative de-
struction is well known and is thought to be an essen-
tial part of capitalism. On the other hand, Sternberg,
OHara and Lubart propose their theory of creativity
as an investment where creative people would act as
good investors do, that is to say; buying low and sell-
ing high, yet these activities would occur in the realm
of ideas and not in the stock market. So the process
would be to generate ideas, which, like shares, are rel-
atively cheap, unpopular or even openly scorned in the
beginning. Then the creative investor would attempt
to convince others of the value of those ideas, thus
being able to fnally sell them high. Yet, as it is evident,
this also implies a high risk of failure. The creative per-
son is then acting under the dangerous conditions of a
broker or an entrepreneur.
33
Again, these ideas of the inevitable paying of fees, pos-
sible destruction and risky investments are worth not-
ing, since they will again resurface when we talk about
the working conditions of such creative endeavors.
NEW RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ARTISTS AND
INDUSTRIES
Resulting from the complex panorama of creative
industries, creativity and innovation, there is a real at-
tempt to introduce artists in the context of industries,
whether they are creative industries, or other ones.
This is not completely new since there are some exist-
ing models of collaboration, of which the Experiments
of Art and Technology in 1966 was a pioneer for pro-
moting contacts between artists and engineers. In
short, we could say that there is the Media Lab model,
where artists are selected for a residence program
with the aim of developing a media research project.
This is a well-established system, and such programs
are characterized by a short-term approach, and are
generally funded by cultural institutions. Then there is
another model of collaboration which takes place in
scientifc institutes and University laboratories and is
materialized in research projects funded by scientifc
8 6
A R T I C L E
and research institutions. In this framework, artists
are considered as researchers and consequently the
period of collaboration is conditioned by the duration
of the project. And fnally, there is an emerging model
that is characterized by the mediation between com-
panies and independent creators, most notably artists.
The diference between this model and the previous
two is that this one emerges at the crossroads of
the policies of innovation and creative industries and
consequently has been conceptualized in such a way
that the role of artists is to execute an intervention
in a particular project or company. These mediation
projects then try to connect two apparently distant
worlds, that of the artists and creators in general-
world and the industrial world. That distance between
both worlds is the reason why such a mediation role
is justifed.
After an initial observation amongst the diferent pro-
grams mediating between industries and creators, we
distinguished an emergent model with diferent varia-
tions: collaboration could take place in a laboratory or
a company, and it could be oriented to a product or to
a creative process. In some cases, the strategy was to
select artists to work in a particular industrial project
as part of a team in a specifc company where the
artist was expected to add innovation and creativity
to the process. In other cases, the aim was to select
talented creators to work in a companys laboratories
on a project provided by the creator, whose product
a demo would be preferably sold to the companies
that collaborated with the program in order for it to
be produced. Within this model, we followed in recent
years two concrete initiatives in the Spanish context,
Digitalent (with its Talent Factory) and Disonancias.
Both are similar projects and self-defned as media-
tors between artists and industries that have had dif-
ferent trajectories that illustrate quite well the ideas
of creativity and innovation and their consequences in
terms of labor and working conditions.
On the one hand, Fundaci Digitalent
34
is a founda-
tion which was created in 2007 with the purpose of
bringing creators and industries closer and at the
same time fostering innovation and reinforcing the lo-
calization of production. In their own words, their aim
is: to detect latent and incipient talent and to encour-
age the digital culture by bringing this digital talent to
the industry and the circuits of cultural dissemination.
This is done through fomenting the exhaustive use of
information technology and new media.
35
Within
the diferent projects that this foundation embraces,
the Talent Factory initiative materializes and shapes
the previously defned objective in this current col-
laboration between creators or talents, as they have
labeled them- and (media) industries.
On the other hand, Disonancias
36
is a program
promoted by the private company Grupo Xavide in
association with some partners, which are usually lo-
cal governments. Disonancias aims to connect artists
(in the broad sense of the term) and units of R&D in
corporations or technology centers, with the aim of
promoting innovation. The frst edition of Disonancias
took place in 2005, under the name Divergentes and
consisted of international artists residences in busi-
ness and technology centers. Thus, this frst version
had a highly artistic profle that was eliminated in
the subsequent editions, and now artists are clearly
advised not to develop an autonomous project of art
creation, but to work around the industrys particular
demands. In 2010, the project fnalized with this title
and evolved to the current project Conexiones im-
probables fostered by some of the people involved in
the previous one, in a form of a consultancy company.
8 7
A R T I C L E
THE CONDITIONS FOR COLLABORATION
Although both projects work in a similar way as far as
the conditions of collaboration are concerned, each
one has its own peculiarities. In the case of the Tal-
ent Factory, there was a call for projects addressed
to creators in the frst editions so that projects and
talents could be chosen and collaboration could begin.
The period of collaboration was three months initially,
but it was further extended. The talents selected
were expected to work regularly in Digitalent facilities
and attend several meetings during the process in an
unsystematized way. Regarding Disonancias, and cur-
rently Conexiones improbables, there is a call for com-
panies, expressing their needs and then there is call
for artists (proposing solutions/projects for the com-
panies). Regarding the duration, this is a nine-month
alliance at the beginning of which there are some joint
meetings where all projects, artists and companies
come together with the intention to get to know each
other and to learn useful methodologies.
In terms of contracts and exploitation rights, every
contractual relationship for the Talent Factory is
unique and the Factory owns the exclusive right to
sell the project on behalf of the talent for a period of
a year after a model/demo has been produced. The
prospective buyer of the idea/project takes on board
any further expenses of the project. After the frst
year deal, the talent gets his/her right back to com-
mercialize the project. In any case, the Foundation
would obtain 5% of the revenues of the Project for an
unlimited time. The artists will be paid 12,000 (fees
for their work). As far as economic conditions are con-
cerned, in the case of Disonancias, each artist or artist
group selected will receive a sum of 10,000 - 12,000
euros to cover the fees for the work carried out, travel
expenses, lodging and subsistence allowance, and
some economic compensation for the exploitation
rights granted. The exploitation rights foresee four op-
tions, among which the companies can choose before
the collaboration begins.
37
THE CONCEPTS BEHIND THE COLLABORATION
Regarding the conceptual aspects of the collabora-
tion, talent is envisaged by Fundaci Digitalent as a
feature which can be attached to people that in some
cases can be defned as outsiders or, at the very least,
bohemians or nerds. This is also clearly related to the
traditional role of the artist and, in fact, the foundation
is seeking preferably artists as their talents. In their
view, talent is not a synonym of knowledge, but a syn-
onym of skills and abilities to shape ideas. Therefore, it
is not necessarily related to curriculum or education
but rather to innate capabilities or gifts. It may come
from diferent areas so it must be molded in order to
meet the interests of digital industries. Furthermore,
creativity in the Factory is seen as a changing process,
not just an attitude. On the one hand, they search
creators beyond artistic purposes; however, artists are
one of their main targets. In the same way, they do not
look for free creativity, but for a participatory open
environment where they can monitor the creative
process: according to their directives, ideas should
have the potential to be enriched. Thus, they do not
look for an artistic project which is too personally or
individualistically defned by the artists strict requi-
sites or agenda. Rather, they seek a kind of broader
and vaguer creativity which accepts being turned
upside down, being contested and changed. The pre-
vious ideas ft with their conception of creativity as
a changing and evolutionary process, not just an at-
titude. Consequently, the initial ideas of an artist could
supposedly be out-of-the-box and non-proftable in
the beginning but then could be converted into some-
thing proftable through the process. With this kind of
initiatives, Digitalent implicitly assume the segregation
of creation and production in a project, thus investing
in funds for the creation (or pre-production process)
in this case.
In the case of Disonancias, their discourse revolves
around the notions of creativity and innovation. Within
Disonancias, the artist is envisioned as a researcher. As
8 8
A R T I C L E
the director of Disonancias stated: The artist today
is not the mythical bohemian of art literature. Today,
many of the artists who participate in Disonancias are
a good example of this.. This description is indeed so
distant from the idea of the romantic genius or the
eccentric artist that we have seen before. Yet, on the
other hand, if we take into account the opinions of
some of the participating companies, they see the cre-
ator as the person who thinks out-of-the-box, comes
with an unconventional idea, or breaks our frame
of mind. And, after all, the name of the program is
Disonancias, which means disonance or discord.
This ambivalent conception of the artist can also be
found in the case of Digitalent. As we can see, there
prevailed the stereotypes of the artist as unstructured,
uncommercial or not able to materialize ideas. This
reinforces their fear that talent would be lost if it was
not integrated into an industrial logic which could ef-
fectively extract the proftable project from the initial
out-of-the-box idea.
A clear connection might be traced between ideas ex-
posed by Fundaci Digitalent regarding creativity and
the dimensions of creativity listed by Richard Florida
in his work The Rise of the Creative Class,
38
known
to have exercised a deep infuence both on the indus-
try and government sectors. Florida mentions break-
ing accepted rules as a key element: Creative work
in fact is often downright subversive, since it disrupts
existing patterns of thought and life.
39
This sense of
disruption and diference could be compared to the
image of Fundaci Digitalents banner in its webpage:
a bunch of golf balls painted in black and humanized
with eyes, cover the whole visual space, except for the
discrepancy of a single red ball which really makes the
diference amid all the other black ones. The banner
text goes Do you think youre diferent? clearly point-
ing to that creative soul which so distinctly separates
itself from the rest in the most romantic way, we
ought to add. On the other hand, Florida states, al-
though creativity is often viewed as an individual
phenomenon, it is an inescapably social process. It is
frequently exercised in creative teams.
40
Once more,
this is a feature that both Digitalent and Disonancias
want to exert by inserting the single creator within
teams in their organizations.
Finally, both projects accept the idea that creativ-
ity implies hard work; Stimulating and glamorous
as it may sometimes seem to be, creativity is in fact
work.
41
This idea permeates the whole ethic of cre-
ative work, as for instance, new media workers build
personal websites to advertise their skills; or, invest in
entrepreneurial projects in their own time that were
useful in demonstrating their business and technical
acumen.
42
This work (or that 90% of perspiration
vs. 10% of inspiration, as the saying goes) relates to
an ever present theme with Digitalent which is their
already mentioned work of redirecting the creator,
making him or her redefne themselves, and change
and again reshape the project. Similarly, for Disonan-
cias, one of the key points in the mediators role is
that of ofering a useful methodology to convert their
creativity in innovation. In this sense, there is an array
of actions (like methodology audits by external consul-
tants), which eventually demonstrate the importance
of methodology in order to convert the non-useful
to the proftable. Again, this sounds familiar when we
reconsider the original UK policies regarding creative
industries which we have mentioned earlier.
CONCLUSIONS
Summarizing, we can see that the previous examples
respond to the need for transformation of some
Spanish industry sectors, and therefore, the perceived
need for added value based on innovation. This cor-
responds to the starting point of most cases: the de-
tection of a lack in the industry which starts with the
8 9
A R T I C L E
problem-solving process through bringing together
creators and industries by means of a mediator agent.
The idea behind this is to capture creativity and ideas
so as to put them to work within an industrial logic.
This somehow reinforces two divergent concepts:
on the one hand, talented individuals or creators are
romantically seen as outsiders. In some way it could
be said that they are seen as having the seed of the
solution for the problem of the industries. Yet, on the
other hand, this is only the seed. So for this seed to
evolve into a real problem-solver, it must be closely
nurtured by a strongly directed process through which
ideas are enriched by the Factory and monitored in
the case of Disonancias. This clearly brings to light a
latent distrust regarding the inertia of the creative
process, which could go astray if left to itself. This
correlates with short periods, non permanent kind of
collaboration and a clear diferentiation of the creator
and the producer in the case of the Talent Factory. In
this regard, it is worth noting that project-based work
was previously limited to specifc milieux (such as
advertising, flm production and operating rooms), but
the development of the new media industry has made
it more visible and elevated it as a general model that
is also present in the mediation initiatives.
43
From a conceptual point of view, it could be stated
that the Disonancias case, and more generally the
projects of mediation and collaboration between art-
ists and industries, present ambivalent and contradic-
tory concepts of creativity. This is not a trivial point,
mainly for two reasons: the frst one is that the way
these concepts are defned is very much related with
the role that artists can play in our societies nowadays
as crucial actors in innovation, something which is al-
ready happening in Europe with initiatives such as Cre-
ative Clash
44
and the second one is that these con-
ceptions infuence the structural or labor conditions
of the artistic or creative professions, and as many
authors point out, not necessarily for their own good.
These contradictory discourses seem to be far from
being solved in the short-term, since the initiatives of
mediation are quite new, but at the same time they
have been very attractive as well as other co-creation
initiatives for governments and policy makers in a con-
text of an economic crisis. We have only delved into
the more conceptual aspects in this paper but it is to
be seen how the results of such initiatives have a real
impact on the economy, and more importantly if these
experiences provide equal benefts for both parties
involved; artists and industries.
For now, at least, it seems that such experiences re-
inforce a model of artist/creator that is also seen in
other areas of New Media Art or creative industries:
someone who due to their specifc characteristics
and training can ofer a novel and diferent point of
view free from the predictable industrial logic and yet
someone who, by the same token, is only commit-
ted to a short, partial and fragile job. As Kate Oakley
and Brooke Sperry conclude, this is someone who
possesses high degrees of critical thinking, as well
as communication skills and aesthetic understanding.
And at the same time, someone who shows fexibility,
adaptability, entrepreneurship, self-exploitation and
tolerance of risk,
45
all of which are hallmark quali-
ties of precarious labor and the same for the artistic
career. This has been called an artistic mode of pro-
duction,
46
and it can be seen as the consequence of
using the cultural attributes of cool in the service of
increasing profts in postindustrial capitalism. In other
words, this industrialization of bohemia, is reinforced
by the positive self-image of workers in the new me-
dia and other creative sectors,
47
maybe unconscious-
ly fuelled by the romantic features of creativity, which
are deep-seated in our culture.
Should we therefore conclude that such a model of
creative worker, albeit its disregard for industrial logic
and its opposing position is, in the end, the perfect
9 0
A R T I C L E
exploited worker under the capitalist conditions of
nowadays?
Marx posited alienation from the process and prod-
ucts of labor could be jokingly eluded by converting
labor into art. This is eventually what Florida and other
creative industries proponents seem to imply. As Imre
Szeman says: At its core, what is expressed in Flor-
idas book is a fantasy of labor under capitalism: the
possibility within capitalism of work without exploita-
tion, of work as equivalent to play.
48
If art takes the
place of work, then this model of creator and artist
could indeed take the place of the future worker.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This paper is part of the research Project Creative practices
and participation in new media, funded by the Spanish Minis-
try of Science and Innovation HAR2010-18982.
9 1
A R T I C L E
1. Some examples could be found in the early years of net.
art (as in the cases of TM Mark or Technologies to the
People) and also currently in the social networks such as
Wikipedia.
2. M. Lazzarato, Immaterial Labour, in Radical Thought in
Italy: A Potential Politics (Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, 1996) 133-147.
3. A. McRobbie, Making a Living in Londons Small-scale Cre-
ative Sector, in Cultural Industries and the Production of
Culture, ed. Dominic Power and Allen John Scott (London
and New York: Routledge, 2004), 130-146.
4. A. Ross, Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life and Labor in
Precarious Times (New York: New York University Press,
2009).
5. R. Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How Its
Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday
Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
6. M. Tribe and R. Jana, New Media Art (Cologne: Taschen,
2006), 6.
7. Ibid., 7.
8. L. Kimbell, New Media Art (Manchester: Cornerhouse
Publications, 2004), 14.
9. N. Bookchin, and A. Shulgin, Introduction to net.art
(1994-1999), EasyLife.org, March-April 1999, http://www.
easylife.org/netart/ (accessed February 23, 2014).
10. A. Danto, The Artworld, Journal of Philosophy 61, no. 19
(1964): 571-584.
11. This is very visible in the contemporary art fairs, such as
ARCO in the Spanish territory , where new media art-
works are just a small and specifc part of the exhibition.
12. Dickie defnes an art work as an artifact which has had
conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation
by some person or persons acting in behalf of a certain
social institution (the artworld). G. Dickie, The Art Circle
(New York: Haven Publications, 1984), 43.
13. S. Cook, On Vuk at Venice: An Introduction to an Ongoing
Discourse, in Net.art per me, ed. Vuk Cosic (Ljubljana:
MGLC, 2001), 53.
14. See E. Shanken, Art in the Information Age: Technology
and Conceptual Art, Leonardo 35, no. 4 (2002): 433-438;
and E. A. Shanken, Contemporary Art and New Media: To-
wards a Hybrid Discourse (draft), Artexetra, 2011, http://
hybridge.fles.wordpress.com/2011/02/hybrid-discour-
ses-overview-4.pdf (accessed February 23, 2011). See also
G. San Cornelio, Objects and Traces in Space: Connecting
Locative Media with Contemporary Art, International
Journal of Arts and Technologies 6, no. 2 (2013): 181-195.
15. See H. Rheingold, Howard, Smart Mobs: The Next Social
Revolution (Basic Books, 2002) and H. Jenkins, Conver-
gence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New
York, NY: New York University Press, 2006).
16. See A. Roig, G. San Cornelio, J. Snchez-Navarro, and E.
Ardvol, The Fruits of My Own Labour: A Case Study on
Clashing Models of Co-creativity in the New Media Lands-
cape, International Journal of Cultural Studies, published
online before print, November 15, 2013.
17. J. Hartley, ed., Creative Industries (Malden, MA and Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), 5.
Precarious Times (New York: New York University Press,
2009), 25.
19. R. Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class.
20. M. Lazzarato, Immaterial Labour.
21. A. McRobbie and K. Forkert, Artists & Art Schools: For
or Against Innovation? A Reply to NESTA, in Variant 43
(Spring 2009): 22-24, http://www.variant.org.uk/34texts/
NESTA34.html (accessed February 23, 2011).
Precarious Times.
23. Ibid., 45.
24. L. McDowell and S. Christopherson, Transforming Work:
New Forms of Employment and Their Regulation, in
Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 2,
no. 3 (2009): 335-342.
25. R. Gill and A. Pratt In the Social Factory? Immaterial La-
bour, Precariousness and Cultural Work, Theory, Culture
& Society 25, no. 7-8 (2008): 1-30.
26. D. Cannon, The Post-modern Work Ethic, Demos Quar-
terly 5 (1995): 31-32.
9 2
A R T I C L E
27. G. Nef, E. Wissinger, and S. Zukin, Entrepreneurial Labor
among Cultural Producers: Cool Jobs in Hot Industries,
Social Semiotics 15, no. 3 (2005): 307-334.
28. M. Doorman, Art in Progress: A Philosophical Response
to the End of the Avant-Garde (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2003).
29. M. A. Runco, Creativity, Defnition, in Encyclopedia of
Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent, ed. Barbara A. Kerr
(Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2007): 200-202.
30. M. Boden, The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms
(New York: Routledge, 2003) .
31. H. Gardner, Creative Minds (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
32. R. J. Sternberg, L. A. OHara, and T. I. Lubart, Creativity
as Investment, California Management Review 40, no. 1
(1997): 8-21.
33. Ibid., 9.
34. The website of Fundaci Digitalent, http://www.digitalent.
cat/index.html (accessed February 23, 2011).
35. Ibid.
36. The website of Disonancias, http://www.disonancias.com/
en (accessed February 23, 2011).
37. a) Non-commercial, share alike: CC, b) Exclusive granting
to company - remuneration to artist at a fxed rate, c)
Exclusive granting to company - remuneration to artist
proportional to exploitation income d) Exclusive granting
to company - except for transformation rights. No remu-
neration to the artist.
38. R. Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class.
39. Ibid., 31.
40. Ibid., 34.
41. Ibid., 33.
among Cultural Producers: Cool Jobs in Hot Industries.
43. Ibid., 311.
44. The website of Creative Clash, http://www.creativeclash.
eu/ (accessed February 23, 2011).
45. K. Oakley, B. Sperry, and A. C. Pratt,The art of Innovation:
How Fine Arts Graduates Contribute to Innovation (Lon-
don: NESTA, 2008).
46. S. Zukin, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).
among Cultural Producers: Cool jobs in Hot Industries.
48. I. Szeman, Neoliberals Dressed in Black; or, the Trafc in
Creativity, ESC: English Studies in Canada 36, no. 1 (2011):
15-36.
9 3
A R T W O R K
From the series Dances of Dagestan Nations, N. A. Lakov,
1958-1962. Sketch for a panel picture, sheet no. 2, paper,
gouache, 74 100.3 cm. Courtesy of Dagestan Museum of
Fine Arts named after P.S. Gamzatova. Used with permission.
9 4
A R T W O R K
The viewer observes a man performing what seems to
be a ritual dance among the ruins of the abandoned
Avar village of Gamsutl, situated in the Caucasian
mountains. In the past, this village has been famous
for its skilful jewellers and armourers. Since the seven-
ties, however, Soviet agricultural and industrialisation
policy has led to its rapid decay. The dance symboli-
cally re-enacts poses and gestures from 19th century
battle paintings, from Soviet socialist propaganda
imagery of collective farm brigades, and also from
the everyday life of the villagers. The human body
attempts to physically merge with its surrounding,
acting as an agent of re-connection with the then
and now.
Ilina Koralova
by
Taus Makhacheva
9 5
A R T W O R K
From the series Dances of Dagestan Nations, N. A. Lakov, 1958-1962. Sketch for a panel picture, sheet no. 1, paper, gouache,
74 100.2 cm. Courtesy of Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts named after P. S. Gamzatova. Used with permission.
From the series Dances of Dagestan Nations, N. A. Lakov, 1958-1962. Sketch for a panel picture, sheet no. 4, 1958-1962, paper,
gouache, 74 99.8 cm. Courtesy of Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts named after P. S. Gamzatova. Used with permission.
9 6
A R T W O R K
From the series Dances of
Dagestan Nations, N. A. La-
kov, 1958-1962. Sketch for
a panel picture, sheet no. 3,
paper, gouache, 74 99.8
cm. Courtesy of Dagestan
Museum of Fine Arts named
after P. S. Gamzatova. Used
with permission.
Screenshot from White Gold of Our Country, directed by V.
Belyaev. Central Documentary Film Studios, 1958. Courtesy
of The Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive at
Krasnogorsk (RGAKFD). Used with permission.
9 7
A R T W O R K
Screenshots from Path Leading Downhill, directed by P.
Finkelberg. North Caucasian Film Studio, 1962. Courtesy of
The Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive at
9 8
A R T W O R K
9 9
A R T W O R K
1 0 0
A R T W O R K
1 0 1
A R T W O R K
1 0 2
A R T W O R K
1 0 3
A R T W O R K
Military Assault of the aul Ahulgo 22 August 1839, F. A.
Roubaud, 1988. Oil on canvas, 245 730 cm. Courtesy of
Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts named after P. S. Gamzatova.
Used with permission.
1 0 4
A R T W O R K
Dagestan fght for freedom
against Iranian occupation.
Information display outlining
the defeat of Nadir Shah in
1741 near Gamsutl. Courtesy
of Dagestan State Museum
of History and Architecture.
1 0 5
A R T W O R K
Military Assault of the aul Salty 14 October 1847, F. A.
Roubaud, 1986. Oil on canvas, 125 195 cm. Courtesy of
Dagestan State Museum of History and Architecture. Used
with permission.
1 0 6
A R T W O R K
1 0 7
A R T W O R K
Screenshots from Gamsutl, T. O. Makhacheva, 2012. Video,
16.01 min., colour, sound, Dagestan. T. O. Makhacheva, 2012.
1 0 8
A R T W O R K
1 0 9
A R T W O R K
1 1 0
A R T W O R K
Screenshots from Gamsutl, T. O. Makhacheva, 2012. Video, 16.01 min., colour, sound, Dagestan.
T. O. Makhacheva, 2012. Used with permission.
1 1 1
A R T W O R K
Building High-altitude Channel in Dagestan in the 1940s, N. A.
Lakov, 1940s. Paper, pastel, 79 99,5 cm. Courtesy of Dages-
tan Museum of Fine Arts named after P.S. Gamzatova. Used
with permission.
1 1 2
A R T W O R K
Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making
of the Soviet Union, Francine Hirsch, 2005. Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 2005. Used with permission.
Cropped from Soviet Folk Art, Moscow, 1939.
1 1 3
A R T W O R K
Gamsutl was abandoned in 1960s, as a result of a Soviet pro-
gram of relocating highlanders to collective farms.
1 1 4
A R T W O R K
1 1 5
A R T W O R K
Screenshot from Gamsutl, T. O. Makhacheva, 2012. Video, 16.01
min., colour, sound, Dagestan. Archival photo shot from the spot.
50 years ago. T. O. Makhacheva, 2012. Used with permission.
1 1 6
A R T W O R K
1 17
A R T W O R K
Antique postcard, Karachai, Kislovodsk area. Bermamit, Southern steep: 2607 meter above the sea level, with the view of Elbrus
(h. 5633 m.), MKOI Kislovodsk. Collection of the artist. Used with permission.
1 1 8
A R T W O R K
Antique postcard, Mushrooms by the exit from New Park, Kislovodsk, Tvo. F. Aleksandrovich and Co. Kislovodsk. Collection of
the artist. Used with permission.
1 1 9
A R T W O R K
1 2 0
A R T W O R K
1 2 1
A R T W O R K
1 2 2
A R T W O R K
1 2 3
A R T I C L E
In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the
outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of
human contempt fnd that without changing their
address they eventually live in the metropolis.
Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant
As the early days of the Internet become a distant
memory it can now seem pass or nave to speak
of the Internet revolution, but it should not.
1
The
art and activist movements that have arisen in the
wake of the internet, have come closer than any of
the avant-garde groups of the last two centuries to
realizing the modernist utopian dream of universal
collective participation in cultural production and the
rise of a mass intelligentsia, attaining what romantic
modernists from Novalis to Joseph Beuys aspired to
when they declared every one an artist.
The proposition that electronic media could facilitate
such a transformation of both culture and democracy
precedes the net by several generations. As far back
1932 Brechts lecture on the The Radio as an Appara-
tus of Communication, famously proposed a participa-
tory model in which he described radio as the fnest
From Tactical
Media to the
Neo-pragmatists
of the Web
d.garcia@arts.ac.uk
by
Davi d Garci a
1 2 4
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
In this essay I argue that despite the powerful forces seeking to domesti-
cate the internet, transforming it from the bio-diversity of a creative com-
mons into a network of carefully managed walled gardens, the drive to
expand and intensify the ideal of democracy remains the true north of the
internet revolution.
I further argue that an expansion of the ideal of democracy based
on widening the circle of participation and collaborative expression is
linked to the emergence of the user as the lead player and primary agent
for change replacing both the worker and the more static concept of the
consumer. I suggest that the emergence of a user language is best under-
stood through the theories developed by the cultural theorist de Certeau
whose work became infuential in the cultural studies milieu of the 1980s.
I show how a decade later a media orientated interpretation of de Cer-
teaus ideas inspired the tactical media movement; a distinctive combina-
tion of art, technological experimentation, and political activism that arose
in the early 1990s and successfully exploited the cracks already appearing
in the edifce of traditional broadcast media as the internet began to take
hold.
Finally I examine the possibility that unlike the failure of utopian ide-
als associated with 20th century broadcast media the equivalent ideals
associated with the Internet are proving far more resilient. I conclude by
suggesting reasons for the persistence of these emancipatory narratives
and examine various experimental platforms suggesting that the utopian
avant-garde perspective of the early Internet, though continually under
threat, remains a potent force whose energies are far from exhausted.
1 2 5
A R T I C L E
possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast
network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew
how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the
listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a
relationship instead of isolating him.
2
Although this drive for mass participation has been at
the core of utopian avant-garde art for generations
it was generally believed that this possibility of mass
dis-alienation existed only as potential, a potential that
the masses simply did not have the power to actualize.
However an alternative view emerged with the pub-
lication in 1980 of The Practice of Everyday Life, in
which the Jesuit Scholar Michel de Certeau proposed
that an invisible world of mass cultural participation
far from being a distant utopia already existed albeit
surreptitiously in a twilight realm of what he called
the tactical.
Although computer technology was not a primary
concern to de Certeau, it was he who substituted the
term user for the less active consumer describ-
ing the purpose his work as bringing to light ... the
models of action characteristic of users whose status
as the dominated element in society (a status that
does not mean they are either passive or docile) is
concealed by the euphemistic term consumers.
3

This substitution was infuential in creating an alterna-
tive to academic cultural studies based on the politics
of representation shifting the emphasis towards a
more active practice orientated user language. This
prescient emphasis on user participation contributed
to the emergence of a new perspective in which the
consumer was recognized as equally important as the
worker and in which the key power relations were
analyzed in terms of the dichotomy he introduced be-
tween strategies and tactics.
THE USER LANGUAGE OF EVERY DAY LIFE
Every day life invents itself by poaching in countless
ways on the property of others.
4
So wrote de Cer-
teau in The Practice of Everyday Life, a book which
arrived at a much richer and more supple picture of
the realities of cultural politics than were available as
the staple diet of the Cultural Studies movement of
the period. In place of an identity politics based on
critiques of media representations, de Certeau intro-
duced a less deterministic emphasis on the uses to
which audiences put media representations, the mul-
tiple ways in which these forms are tactically appropri-
ated and repurposed by consumers.
For de Certeau cultural production could only be fully
understood as multiple acts of co-creation in which
the consumer was never passive recipient but rather
an active though unequal, participant in the creation
of meaning. Above all he saw the act of consumption
as a form of production. To a rationalized, expansion-
ist and at the same time centralized, clamorous, and
spectacular production corresponds another produc-
tion, called consumption.
5
de Certeau provide a
language appropriate to profound changes in social,
economic, and power relations taking place where
the fgure of the consumer takes center stage along-
side (or even instead of) the worker, or better where
these two fgures are merged. Hardt and Negri thus
speak of afective labor.
6
At the core of The Practice of Every Day Life is the
distinction between tactics and strategies. Although
consumers are full participants in the creation of
meaning it is nevertheless a highly unequal relation-
ship. He defnes strategy as a calculus of force
relationships when a subject of will and power (a
proprietor, an enterprise, a city, a scientifc institution)
can be isolated from an environment.
7
a place
where it can capitalize on its advantages, prepare its
expansions, and secure independence with respect to
circumstances.
8
In contrast he describes the tactical
1 2 6
A R T I C L E
in more labile, and poetic terms that suggest a distinc-
tive style in which the weak are seeking to turn the
tables on the strong.
Tactics must depend on:
clever tricks, knowing how to get away with things,
hunters cunning, maneuvers, polymorphic simula-
tions, joyful discoveries poetic as well as warlike
they go back to the immemorial [...] intelligence
displayed in the tricks and imitations of plants and
fshes. From the depths of the ocean to the streets
of the modern megalopolises, there is a continuity
and permanence of these tactics.
9
When de Certeau began to write of tactics in the late
1970s he was describing a largely speculative and
barely visible twilight realm. Invisibility and subterfuge
was part of the point, to a degree he was making a
virtue out of a necessity. As he put it:
The making in question is a production, a poesis
but a hidden one, because it is scattered over areas
defned and occupied by systems of production
(television, urban development, commerce, etc)...
...it is dispersed, but it insinuates itself everywhere,
silently and almost invisibly, because it does not
manifest itself through its own products, but rather
through its ways of using the products imposed by
a dominant economic order.
10
FROM INVISIBLE TACTICS TO TACTICAL MEDIA
Although de Certeaus ideas became infuential among
cultural studies theorists of the 1980s it was not until
the early 1990s that mass access to cheap and easy
to use media put these powerful expressive tools in
the hands of users. It was this fact that propelled de
Certeaus twilight world of barely visible tactics into
the light of day. With visibility came the refexivity that
enabled a new and increasingly self-conscious form of
cultural practice to emerge. A constellation of distinc-
tive but overlapping practices: artists, hackers, political
activists, independent media makers coalesced into a
previously un-named movement which a network of
artists and activists associated with the Amsterdam
based festival The Next 5 Minutes, dubbed tactical
media.
11
The name stuck and (for better and for
worse) the brand stubbornly persists.
Tactical media gave a temporary home to a growing
number of artists who whilst repudiating the poli-
tics of the contemporary art world were unwilling
to relinquish the utopian legacy of the avant-garde
which (in contrast to the disciplinary regimes of party
politics) placed a high value on the liberating power of
expression in politics. This Expressivism can be traced
back to the eighteenth century Romantic rebellion
against the rationalist utilitarianism of the Enlighten-
ment and was the frst major social movement in
which artists played a central role. In part this was be-
cause of the inspiration drawn from the movements
founding philosophers particularly Herder and Novalis
whose writings gave a new signifcance to the power
of language (or expression), proposing that in a world
of contingent horizons, our sense of meaning depends,
critically, on our powers of expression and that dis-
covering a framework of meaning is interwoven with
invention.
12
The centrality of the expressive dimen-
sion in Romanticism accounts for the important role
played by artists, but with the important caveat that
the spiritual freedoms and possibilities of self-creation
enjoyed by artists were also the rightful legacy of all
human subjects. Connecting these deeply rooted his-
torical aspirations of universal expressive participation
to new media is a key factor in understanding how the
ideal of democracy has been transformed ever since
its fate became linked to the internet.
1 2 7
A R T I C L E
In an essay written in 2006 I described how in the
early phase of tactical media. The power some of us
attributed to this new media politics appeared to be
borne out by the role that all forms of media seemed
to have played in the collapse of the Soviet Empire. At
the time it seemed as though old style armed insur-
rection had been superseded by digital dissent and
media revolutions. It was as if the Samizdat spirit,
extended and intensifed by the proliferation of Do-it-
yourself media, had rendered the centralized statist
tyrannies of the Soviet Union untenable. Some of us
allowed ourselves to believe that it would only be a
matter of time before the same forces would chal-
lenge our own tired and tarnished oligarchies.
As late as 1999 in his Reith lecture, Anthony Giddens
could still confdently assert that [t]he information
monopoly, upon which the Soviet system was based,
had no future in an intrinsically open framework of
global communications.
13
Since then it is not only
the advent of the Chinese frewall that might make
him less certain of his case, it is also that the corpo-
rations which efectively mediate the access to the
internet (Google and FaceBook) have themselves ex-
hibited monopolistic tendencies.
The principal point I was making in 2006 when the
social media were still embryonic, was to plea for this
generation of media activists to relinquish the cult
of ephemerality one of the shibboleths of both
contemporary art and tactical media. I argued that the
time had come to replace hit and run guerrilla activism
with longer-term commitments and deeper engage-
ments with the people and organisations networked
around contested issues.
Subsequent manifestations of the spirit of Tactical
Media have indeed succeeded in both consolidating
their platforms and scaling up their ambitions. Large
scale platforms such as Indymedia, WikiLeaks, Moveon.
org and Avaaz have in a various ways succeeded in
challenging the status quo and leveraging world public
opinion in ways unimagined by previous generations
and transcending the culture of small scale homeo-
pathic interventions that were the signature of the
early period of tactical media.
RECUPERATING THE UTOPIAN MOMENT
Tactical Media had succeeded in re-igniting the im-
pulse behind successive generations of avant-garde
utopian art movements in which the role of artists was
envisioned as being to liberate a potential for art mak-
ing (or the creative principal) in everyone. A potential
whose feld was aesthetic but whose horizon was
political.
14
And perhaps most surprising of all, in the second
decade of the new millennium it is this most radical
interpretation of the cyber-prophets which has suc-
ceeded in capturing, under the general rubric of, user
generated content, mainstream public enthusiasm
and even commercial success. Clay Shirkey is not
untypical of the many scholarly cheer leaders (includ-
ing Manuel Castells, Yochai Benklar) when he claims
that we are witnessing the greatest enhancement of
communicative expression since the invention of the
printing press.
15
In stark contrast to these euphoric narratives how-
ever we see an increasing number of skeptical voices
emerging. Commentators such as Evgeny Morozov
have suggested that those of us attributing revolu-
tionary potential to these media are living through
a net delusion. An even more cogent critic is media
theorist Jodie Dean, who has characterized the narra-
tives of tactical media as communicative capitalisms
perfect lure in which subjects feel themselves to be
active, even as their every action reinforces the status
1 2 8
A R T I C L E
quo. Revelation can be allowed even celebrated and
furthered because its results remain inefectual.
16

Providing these critiques with an important histori-
cal perspective is the book The Master Switch: The
Rise and Fall of Information Empires, by scholar and
policy advocate, Tim Wu, in which he described what
he called the long cycle a process whereby open
information systems become consolidated and closed
over time. In this process whenever a new and radical
media technology arises (print, flm, radio, television,
internet) it is inevitably accompanied by utopian vi-
sions of social and political transformation (as we saw
with Brecht and radio) only to move inexorably to a
closed and controlled industry, a typical progression
from somebodys hobby to somebodys industry to
somebodys empire.
17

NEW RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
It is possible to imagine that de Certeau would have
been initially gratifed by the degree to which the tac-
tical user he championed has emerged as the prime
mover of the web 2.0 era. He would however have
noted that not only is his dichotomy between the
tactical and the strategic positions still intact, it also
continues to be accompanied by the asymmetrical
balance of power. Closer analysis would however have
revealed that the Internets distributed architecture
means that the rules of engagement have changed,
creating new spaces for both user agency and their
control in equal measure.
Unlike the settled domesticated parklands of the
broadcast media world, the Internet has been com-
pared to the raucous bio-diversity of a rainforest. This
can sometimes lead to suggestions of chaos or lack
of structure, and have lead to metaphors suggest-
ing a landscape that is out of control. But nothing
could be further from the truth. The Internet works
because of not despite structure. Like any language,
its technological grammar simultaneously constrains
and enables. Media theorist, Alex Galloway has named
this enabling and constraining structure of the inter-
net a Protocol, in his illuminating book of the same
name. Eschewing narratives of the virtual Galloways
staunchly materialist description demonstrates how
the Internets historically unique features are founded
on a set of technical and behavioral arrangements:
Standards governing the implementation of specifc
technologies. Like their diplomatic predecessors, com-
puter protocols establish specifc points necessary to
enact an agreed upon standard of action.
18
Adding a new layer of technical understanding and
analysis to Manuel Castellss concept of the network
society, Galloway distinguishes diferent kinds of net-
work identifying the specifc form of the distributed
network as the basis for the protocol behind the
Internet. According to Galloway, [b]y design protocols
such as Internet protocols cannot be centralized.
19

In part III of Protocol, Galloway proposes what he
calls Protocol Futures resistance not to reject the
technologies but to direct these protocological tech-
nologies, whose distributed structure is empowering
indeed, toward what Hans Magnus Enzensberger calls
an emancipated media created by active social ac-
tors rather than passive users.
20
Those who control the infrastructure and confgure
the protocols of the social web may preach open
standards but they are in reality far from transparent.
Drawing on the work of media scholar Felix Stalder,
we could locate the tactical and the strategic domains
of the web.2.0 era in what Stalder calls the front-end
and the back-end. The front-end where the actions
may be decentralized, ad-hoc, cheap, easy-to-use,
community-oriented, and transparent and the back-
end, which are centralized, based on long-term plan-
ning, very expensive, difcult-to-run, corporate, and
1 2 9
A R T I C L E
opaque. If the personal blog symbolizes one side, the
data-center represents the other. there is a grow-
ing tension between the dynamics on the front-end
(where users interact) and on the back-end (to which
the owners have access).
21
An example of how the contradictions between back
end and front end are playing out in practice could
be observed in a skirmish, which took place during
the media coverage of the London Olympics. In this
incident the Los Angeles based journalist Guy Adams,
reporting for the Independent, an important UK na-
tional daily, tweeted about the poor coverage given
to the opening ceremony by NBC. Adams concluded
his tweet by transmitting the corporate address of
the boss of NBC urging people to send tweets and
e-mails. Twitter immediately suspended his account. It
later emerged that Twitter had alerted NBC in order
to trigger a complaint and so legitimize the suspen-
sion. Behind this apparently trivial confict was the fact
that Twitter and NBC had established a commercial
partnership to transmit the Olympics. It was the frst
content partnership Twitter had ever established with
a broadcaster of this size. The kinds of tensions on
display are clear enough, the avowed commitment of
Twitter to being an open platform committed to free
speech trumped by the need to keep an important
commercial partner happy. The immediate conse-
quence of the suspended account was an uprising
from the Twitter user community with hash tag, NBC
fail or fail NBC. As a result three weeks later the
account was reinstated along with an apology in a
Twitter blog post saying we apologize we did alert
NBC ofcial and that was wrong. The same kind of
tensions between stated ideology and the realities of
strategic power relationships could be seen on a much
larger stage when state power is threatened by the
new power of apparently weaker players.
At the beginning of 2010 Hilary Clinton gave a speech
lauding the internet revolution along with the role of
the web 2.0 platforms in the uprisings in the Middle
East, in terms that would have been recognized by
both the father of media theory Marshal McLuhan as
well as later tactical media theorists, when she de-
scribed the net not only as the nervous system of the
planet but also as the samizdat of our day.
If nothing else, her direct appeals to global public
opinion demonstrated the degree to which the Inter-
net has transformed mainstream ideas about what
constitutes a modern democracy. However, the con-
tradictions at the heart of the current landscape were
revealed within a matter of months when Clinton was
to be found addressing a hastily convened state de-
partment press conference to condemn the WikiLeaks
Iraqi expos as not just an attack on Americas for-
eign policy interests it was an attack on the interna-
tional community. Clearly the Samizdat culture she
had been celebrating just a few months earlier was to
be celebrated until it impinged upon American power.
PEOPLE DONT WANT MASTERS
In a much quoted piece of research carried out in
2003 the renowned sociologist of networks Manuel
Castells identifed an example of how behavior and
attitudes of Catalonian computer users were being
mirrored in behavior away from computers:
The more an individual has a project of autonomy
(personal, professional, socio/political, communica-
tive) the more she uses the Internet. And in a time
space sequence the more he/she uses the Internet,
the more autonomous she becomes vis--vis soci-
etal rules and institutions.
22
1 3 0
A R T I C L E
Increasingly this horizontal networking and increased
autonomy also expresses itself as a deepening distrust
of traditional models of governance and leadership.
One of the primary observable characteristics of the
new social movements such as Occupy, is that they
are largely movements without leaders. It would be
inconceivable for any of them to say, as the British
Labour party said on winning the election in 1945 we
are the masters now. It just happens that people
dont want more masters. And that is both very com-
plicated but is very interesting. (Manuel Castells in
conversation with journalist Paul Mason at the LSE.)
23
In 2012 at a public discussion Paul Mason touched the
nub of the issue when he put the following partly rhe-
torical question to Castells: Mandela did, Martin Lu-
ther King did [working with] hierarchical movements,
working with a goal, a program and a leadership. Why
do we worship the spontaneity of the network pro-
test? Because replies Castells people dont trust
leaders anymore.. It took 20-30 years from the ar-
rival of mass industrialization to the point when the
union power and the labor movement became part of
political institutions [] It is a long journey from the
minds of people to the institutions of society. Castells
is arguing that the transformation he believes to be
underway is occurring not through organized politics
in the same way. Because networks are diferent, net-
works dont need hierarchical organizations.
24
People may not want masters or hierarchies but for
now the established concentrations of wealth and
power remain impervious to change. For those whom
the true north of the internet revolution remains the
pursuit of expanded forms of democracy, this lack of
progress leads us to continuously return to the same
question: how do we organize democratic governance
diferently in a digital age? There is no teleogical guar-
antee of progressive outcomes. Neither will progress
be the outcome of neatly implemented strategies.
It will be hit and miss, trial and error. Install, update,
crash, restart, de-install, a digital version of Beckets
dictum Fail, fail again, fail better.
THE NEO-PRAGMATISTS AND THEIR DISCONTENTS
In order to bring about radical change in the world
you dont need to be controversial. You can stand
squarely with the vast majority of people and still
have a revolutionary agenda for change.
Ricken Patel, Co-founder and Director of
Avaaz (interview, BBCs HARDtalk, 2007)
Communication tools dont get socially interesting
until they get technologically boring.
Clay Shirkey, Here Comes Everybody
So where are the organizational experiments, the trial
and error stories?
In an ambitious extended essay, Digital Solidarity, Felix
Stalder has recently set out to link the newly emerg-
ing forms of agency and subjectivity associated with
the digital realm to the collective arrival of major new
forms of solidarity. He goes on to draw up what he
calls an inventory of forms, reduced to four basic
types: commons, assemblies, swarms and weak net-
works.
25
Alongside this inventory I would add the well es-
tablished genre of the succs de scandale such as
WikiLeaks and Anonymous, a genre whose stock in
trade is provocation. This is a well established ritual
that has been the signature tune of modernism since
the riot that attended the premier of Stravinskys Rite
of Spring guaranteed subsequent packed houses. Ever
since to be radical has become indistinguishable from
being controversial. We also see how the disruptive
impact that the internet has wrought on the retail
1 3 1
A R T I C L E
sector is now beginning to be felt in the mainstream
political sphere as insurgents and upstarts such as the
Italian maverick anti-politician Beppe Grillos Five Star
Movement (M5S) has undercut the Italian political
establishment by deploying the web (initially through
his blog which efectively bypassed Berlusconis domi-
nation of traditional broadcast media) to aggregate
opinion and votes without recourse to a conventional
party political structures.
At the other end of the spectrum we have what I
argue are best described as the Neo-pragmatists of
the web. This is a tendency, which began in 1998 with
the launch of MoveOn.org. This project was founded
by two successful silicon valley entrepreneurs, Joan
Blades and Wes Boyd, who after selling their software
company, Berkeley Systems for a close to $14 million,
went on to found the web based campaigning and ad-
vocacy network MoveOn.org. MoveOn developed the
techniques later adopted and adapted by numerous
imitators that represent a key development in nature
of how to do political activism and enact democracy
through the Internet.
By successfully mobilizing millions of users around
issues rather than party afliations or afnity groups,
MoveOn and their ilk highlight the way in which it is
the objects of politics (the issues) that call the sub-
jects of politics (the public) into being.
Knowingly or unknowingly this approach refects and
extends some of the key conclusions the American
Pragmatist philosopher, John Dewey drew from his
extended published dialogue with Walter Lipmann in
the 1920s. The Dutch theorist, Noortje Maares has
written extensively and illuminatingly on how con-
cepts drawn from the Dewey - Lipmann debates can
help us to re-think the nature and role of the public in
the democracies of the internet age. Maares describes
Dewey as arguing that you cannot separate out the
content, the issues from the subjects the only way a
public gets pulled into politics, is through content. The
indirect consequences of action that people are af-
fected by, is what calls a public into being.
26
This is a position that fies in the face of those who be-
lieve that to give weight to issues is to instrumentalize
the political passions at the heart of democracy. But
for Dewey it was absurd to assume that the politi-
cal passions that are so revered by democrats can be
isolated from the issues at stake in politics. Political
passions, Dewey argued, are evoked by virtue of being
implicated in an issue
27
From the outset MoveOn refected these principles.
It began as a single-issue electronic mailing list based
on outrage at the paralysis of American politics due
to the Monica Lewinski scandal. It began as simply
passing around an e-mail petition to censure Presi-
dent Clinton and move on as an alternative to the
impeachment. As they refned and developed their
methods MoveOn evolved into an ongoing political
experiment campaigning on a range of issues from
policy on Iraq through to FaceBooks approach to user
privacy. The key to MoveOns success and continuing
infuence has been its capacity to use crowd sourcing
to raise millions of dollars to support its campaigns.
Their capacity to use the web to aggregate mass
public opinion through petitions, polls and fund raising
combined with more traditional forms of grass roots
organizing has implications that shift the emphasis of
politics from party politics to moving particular issues
forward.
The background of Blade and Boyd brought a par-
ticular set of technical and organizational attitudes
to the table, which helped to defne the character
of this movement. Their experience as new media
developers with a strong business background meant
that from the outset their activism was founded on a
1 3 2
A R T I C L E
pragmatic understanding of the dynamics required for
this technology to engage with and broaden the circle
of participants.
This professionalization or (as some would claim)
corporatization of activism has spawned numerous
imitators including 38Degrees and Change.org and
most signifcantly, the MoveOn spin of Avaaz, which
means voice in a number of languages, founded in
2007. Avaaz began with the ambition of taking the
philosophy and web savvy formulas pioneered by
MoveOn to develop an international constituency to
address global issues.
At the time of writing Avaaz has passed the threshold
of 20 million members, making it the worlds largest
activist network, giving it a global reach and scale that
has taken the concept of web-based activism to the
next level. However the decision to situate Avaaz on
the international stage is not only a question of scale,
it also follows extends an important aspect of neo-
pragmatist logic which is that appealing to a global
constituency aspires to short circuit the power games
that bedevil national politics.
The key characteristic of all of these groups is the
low threshold of commitment required for member-
ship. This policy was present at the outset at 1998
with MoveOn where to be a member requires no
subscription, in fact nothing other than a single action,
which could be as little as signing an on-line petition
or joining a forum discussion. It is this ease of entry
that is in part responsible for enabling these organiza-
tions to accumulate such vast memberships. Their
critics point to this fact as being their greatest weak-
ness. But on the contrary it is their understanding of
how the web enables the aggregation of millions of
small contributions into large efects that represents
their greatest innovation. In an interview with BBCs
HARDtalk just a year after it was founded, Avaazs
co-founder and director Ricken Patel described his
core demographic as the Mum with not a lot of time
to spare [who] appreciates a service where she can
use the small amount of money or time that she has
to give
28
When challenged on the blandness of his
corporate image Patel is unapologetic and made what
I would argue is the core claim of the neo-pragmatists
of the web, In order to bring about radical change in
the world you dont need to be controversial. You can
stand squarely with the vast majority of people and
still have a revolutionary agenda for change.
29
This
statement captures the essence of this eras trans-
formation from the heroic pioneering days of the net
when only radicals and geeks participated to the era
of the social web. As Clay Shirkey put it in his aptly
named book, Here Comes Everybody: Communica-
tion tools dont get socially interesting until they get
technologically boring.
30
It is precisely this ease of participation that radical
commentators fnd so problematic. Traditionally the
essence of radical politics has been personal sacri-
fce, solidarity and above all, commitment. For those
who take their politics seriously the web pragmatists
represent the junk food of politics, to be dismissed as
Slacktivism the Clicktivists or as iek dubbed the
process, interpassivity.
As a result they have become a fashionable target of
radical critics and artists such as Les Liens Invisibles
who have generated a number of high profle works
parodying these platforms, which they characterise as
armchair activism. In one such work they developed
an online petition service 31Repetitionr, commissioned
by the Arnolfni Gallery, Bristol. They developed an
app to broaden your armchair activism horizons to
which they added the slogan Tweet for Action, Aug-
ment your Reaction encouraging people to create
their own insurrection using the communications and
image strategies of an advertising campaign. Parody-
1 3 3
A R T I C L E
ing what they believe to be the illusion that corporate
social networks can capture the democratic spirit that
characterized the utopias of the early phase of the
Internet.
31
Witty, thought provoking as these projects are it is in
fact the artists and the critical commentariat who are
the real conservatives, clinging to their avant-garde
rituals and tribal afliations every bit as much as the
mainstream Italian political parties who were put on
the back foot by Beppe Grillos M5S. If the disrup-
tive technologies of the Internet have transformed
every other sector from commerce to journalism
why should avant-garde radical art and politics be the
exception? Far from representing a philosophical con-
tradiction the corporate look and feel of these groups
is wholly consistent with the neo-pragmatist creed In
order to bring about radical change in the world you
dont need to be controversial.
32
At the beginning of 2013 Avaaz continued their com-
mitment to re-imaging democracy in ways that Dewey
might recognize through the enactment of their an-
nual consultation process, a large-scale experiment
in democratic consultation. It combined a detailed
polling exercise involving millions of its members, in
14 languages and in excess of a hundred countries,
combined with intense online discussions covering
numerous issues. The poll and accompanying on-line
discussions covered questions of detail involving the
identifcation of which specifc campaigns to support.
But it also looked at meta questions relating to the
governance of Avaaz. For example it looked at how
the permanent staf should respond to the results of
the poll itself, asking whether it should be seen as a
guide or a binding mandate. A large majority came
out in favor of using the data as a guide rather than a
binding mandate. The fact that the organization is en-
tirely fnanced by contributions from members leads
Avaaz to claim that its members are the bosses and it
has compared the role of Patel and his staf as that of
the president or prime minister being briefed by in-
formed civil servants. The question of how campaigns
are selected and promoted is part of the key issue of
governance and the balance between how nudges
from the Avaaz staf in one direction or another is
tricky and can all to easily lead to charges of bias.
As with Grillo and web guru Casaleggios role with
M5S, and Assanges role with WikiLeaks, Patels char-
ismatic presence with Avaaz is far from unproblem-
atic, particularly where Avaaz appeared to be making
excessive claims for its role in helping journalists to
escape from Syria in 2012. Patel has recently put this
error down to the fog of war. But mistakes are the
inevitable price of genuine engagement and should
not lead to the default position of knowing cynicism.
All of these groups including Avaaz have had the vision
to step out of the established conception of how to
do democratic politics and into the new hybrid spaces
that combine the virtual and the street, which inevi-
tably entails risk and contradiction. It is only from this
actual practice including a willingness to fail and fail
again that the vital renewal of democratic politics im-
manent to the age of networks will emerge.
1 3 4
A R T I C L E
1. Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2006), 28.
2. Bertold Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of
an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. Jon Willett (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1964), 24.
3. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Every Day Life (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1984), xii. Originally
published in French as Linvention du quotidian: Arts de
faire in 1980 it was perhaps not until its translation by
Steven Rendall in 1984 that his ideas started to gain wider
infuence.
4. Ibid., xii.
5. Ibid.
6. Steven Shavero, A McLuhanite Marxism?, The Pinnochio
Theory (blog), April 17, 2005, http://www.shaviro.com/
Blog/?p=490 (accessed December 1, 2013).
7. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Every Day Life, xii.
8. Ibid., xi.
9. Ibid., xii.
10. Ibid.
11. See the websites of Next 5 Minutes, http://www.next-
5minutes.org/ (accessed December 1, 2013), and Tacticle
Media Files, http://www.tacticalmediafles.net/ (accessed
December 1, 2013).
12. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self, The Making of the
Modern Identity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989), 22.
13. Anthony Giddens, Democracy, in Runaway World: How
Globalisation Is Reshaping Our Lives (New York: Rout-
ledge, 2000), 90-91.
14. Thierry de Duve, Kant After Duchamp (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1996), 143.
15. Clay Shirkey, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Orgar-
nising without Organizations (New York: Penguin Press,
2008), 105.
16. Jodie Dean, Credibility and Certainty, (paper presented
at a seminar in conjunction with the exhibition Faith in
Exposure, Netherlands Media Art Institute, February 24,
2007).
17. Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Informa-
tion Empires (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 6.
18. Alexander R. Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists after
Decentralization (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 7.
19. Ibid, 11.
20. Ibid, 16.
21. Felix Stalder, Between Democracy and Spectacle: Front-
End and the Back-End of the Social Web, in The Social
Media Reader, ed. Michael Mandiberg (New York: New
York University Press, 2012), 248.
22. Manuel Castells, Communication, Power and Counter-
power in the Network Society, International Journal of
Communication 1 (2007), 249.
23. Manuel Castells in discussion with Paul Mason at LSE in
Analysis, BBC Radio 4, 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/pro-
grammes/b01n9yg1 (accessed December 1, 2013).
24. Ibid.
25. Felix Stalder, Digital Solidarity (London: Mute Books and
PML Books, 2013), 14.
26. Noortje Marres, Issues Spark a Public into Being: A Key
but Often Forgotten Point of the Lippmann-Dewey De-
bate, in Making Things Public, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter
Weibel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 217
27. Ibid.
28. Interview with Avaaz Director, Ricken Patel, by Stephen
Sackur, HARDtalk, BBC News, 2007, http://news.bbc.
co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/7070878.stm (accessed
December 1, 2013).
29. Ibid.
30. Clay Shirkey, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Orgar-
nising without Organizations, 115.
31. Simona Lodi, Illegal Art and Other Stories About Social
Media, Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and
Their Alternatives, ed. Geert Lovink and Miriam Rasch
(Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2013), 247.
32. Interview with Avaaz Director, Ricken Patel.
1 3 5
A R T I C L E
INTRO: REVOLUTIONARIES, CANNIBALS, HYBRIDS
AND AVANT-GARDE
The proliferation and spread of new information
technologies have redefned the way society orga-
nizes its political and cultural discourses. While the
speed at which commercial corporations control and
manipulate media and technology is unstoppable, a
simultaneous response arises from the artistic feld,
from media spaces and from various technological
and scientifc projects, all of which articulate their
proposals from a perspective of dissent and criticism
of the system. This counter-proliferation which has
become global through market means, just like the
technology itself acquires specifc characteristics in
developing countries at the periphery of centers of
industrial development.
The ways in which new media and scientifc-techno-
logical explorations have been incorporated in Latin
America are, like everywhere else, uneven. It is pos-
sible, nonetheless, to classify a number of practices
where the convergence of art, science and technology
has been enriched and densifed by its bond with po-
litical and social issues.
Dissent and
Utopia: Rethinking
Art and Technology
in Latin America
VALENTINA MONTERO PEA
Independent Researcher and Curator
Santiago, Chile and Barcelona, Spain
hola@valentinamontero.net
PEDRO DONOSO
Reader, Universidad Adolfo Ibanez
Vina del Mar, Chile
pedro.donoso@uai.cl
by
Val enti na Montero Pea
& Pedro Donoso
1 3 6
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
This paper explores the various ways in which art and new technologies
converge in Latin America from a political and social perspective. Through
the analysis of a number of art works and projects produced in the last de-
cade in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru we observe diferent ways
of responding to the dilemmas posed by recent history, poverty, exclusion,
gender, migration and ecological problems. The paper will propose a sys-
tematization of these art works following three main lines: a) practices
that denounce, b) practices that dismantle, and c) practices that propose
alternatives. These categories help us to understand the transformations
stemming from the interaction of art, science and technology, revealing
the new role adopted by the artists within a post-autonomous practice in
the feld of art. Ultimately, this systematization will help us to identify new
patterns or trends among the dissident voices in Latin America under the
conditions imposed by the Neoliberal logic.
While the concept of Latin America is complex and
continues to ofer fertile ground for epistemological
and geo-historical discussion, and such a nomen-
clature seemingly overlooks the vast idiosyncratic,
economic and ethnic diferences within this sub-
continental area, it is also undeniable that we share
a number of cultural and historical elements. The
traumatic encounter between Europeans and Indians,
characterized by the genocide of indigenous people,
and the way rationalist modernity lies at the founda-
tion of Latin American societies largely determine the
complex history of our nations and their subsequent
evolution.
Despite the widespread contempt for indigenous
peoples during the nineteenth century, a certain circle
of European intellectuals confgured an idealized
image of the American Indian. Technology through
photography, as well as visual arts and literature, all
contributed to the construction of the stereotype of
the noble savage Rousseau had dreamt of. However,
this romantic mythological fgure was replaced during
the twentieth century and early twenty-frst by the im-
age of the good revolutionary.
1
From Pancho Villa, to
Frida Kahlo and Che Guevara, from the farmers of the
Landless Movement in Brazil to the fgure of Salvador
Allende in Chile or the Subcomandante Marcos in Chi-
apas, the Western standpoint conferred upon each of
these characters, and upon their struggles, a halo of
seduction and lyricism as powerful as the victimized
self-image of Latin American people subject to the
Yankee or the European.
2
1 3 7
A R T I C L E
Beyond this kind of dichotomy, the Latin American
ethos can be looked at under the lens of hybridity, a
concept largely developed by sociologist Nestor Garcia
Canclini in his book Culturas Hbridas.
3
Canclinis notion
underlines the mestizo and syncretic character of Latin
American societies. In modern terms we could compare
it to the fgure of a transgenic or, more precisely, a di-
vergenic product inasmuch as it implies the inclusion
of foreign genes into an organism; new combinations,
modifcations and genomic and genetic mutations. May-
be that is why, as the artist Marta Minujn ironically puts
it, the only option for artistic practices in Latin America
is to join the avant-garde. Our reality may not be cut-
ting edge because we are Latin American and live a frag-
mented reality. We have presidents who are surpassed
by reality, ministers that change every week, currencies
devalued overnight, fctional employments, and so on.
More than anywhere else in the world, we live a fuctuat-
ing and multidirectional reality. So, then, Latin Americans
are doomed to be avant-garde.
4
In this respect, the originality of our Latin American
identity seems to lie in this very awareness of our lack
of any fxed, circumscribed defnition; our origins are
promiscuous and unclear and so too is our fate. In this
sense Latin America can still be seen as a place where
one can test all kind of models and theories Socialism,
Keynesianism, Neoliberalism as part of a tireless Sehn-
sucht under persistent conditions of insecurity, rebel-
liousness, and chaos that dominate our societies.
Moreover, for a long time the artistic and cultural devel-
opment of Latin America was interpreted as a blurred
copy of Europe and the United States. Until recently,
the theory of the cultural gap was an established sub-
ject in our classrooms. Now, if we adjust the rearview
mirror we can see to what extent many of the avant-
garde currents since the 1960s were actually motivated
by specifc, local conditions which cannot be analyzed
from a diachronic perspective.
For example, in the 1960s and 1970s the conceptual-
ist movements in Latin America despite being nur-
tured by the American and European legacy (Fluxus,
happenings, the Situationist International) in many
cases produced a body of work in response to specifc
experiences at local level, refecting social exclusion,
military repression and other factors. A considerable
part of this production attempted to circumvent the
mechanisms of control and censorship imposed by
the dictatorial apparatus, thus developing highly subtle
conceptual strategies. Good examples of this type of
production are CADA in Chile, Cildo Meireles in Brazil
and Felipe Ehrenberg in Mexico. The message was, in
all these cases, encrypted in order to facilitate its sur-
vival. The artistic work then became a complex strat-
egy of camoufage and simulation designed to seep
into the public sphere before being kidnapped or cen-
sored. The conjunction of politics and art in the 1960s
and 1970s thus demonstrates specifc characteristics
that require consideration of the political not merely
from a concrete or partisan standpoint: the political,
in this case, reveals an attempt to break out from the
hegemonic patterns of discourse inherited from the
modernist European rationalism that conferred sym-
bolic legitimacy to a capitalist model rooted in a rigidly
segmented class society.
From the local perspective, the adoption of foreign
discourses in Latin America could also be seen as
an act of cannibalism. The concept of antropofagia
coined in 1928 by the Brazilian poet and philosopher
Oswald de Andrade in his Manifesto Antropfago
5

established a somatic metaphor connecting the prac-
tice of cannibalism of native tribes and the invaders
in the social and artistic felds. The European cultural
heritage has been undeniably incorporated to the
symbolic DNA of cultural practices in Latin America,
but only once metabolized by changing local contexts.
For the subordinate, peripheral culture can be con-
ceived as a platform of continuous reinterpretations
1 3 8
A R T I C L E
which, as a result of its devouring impulse, gobbles up
the other and, at that very moment, incorporates a
particular legacy, not through imitation or tribute, but
as a specifc concoction of hybrid nature and dynamics.
TOWARDS A SYSTEMATIZATION
Given this fragmentary condition and the slippage
towards bastard modes of operation in regard to the
hegemonic spaces, how can we read the variety of
artistic practices in Latin America? And more impor-
tantly, how can we carry out this analysis assuming
technological lag as a key element? No doubt, the
entanglement of art and technology can yield an illumi-
nating perspective where the local Latin ethos is both
refected and potentiated.
We have established three possible categories in order
to address a set of works despite the diversity in their
format, thematic and aesthetic. All of them are, none-
theless, permeated by a critical perspective and an
explicit intention of promoting participation in political
and social issues. We have organized three distinct cat-
egories: (1) practices that denounce, (2) practices that
dismantle, (3) practices that propose alternatives.
While these three divisions are not mutually exclusive
one can easily fnd works that can be placed in these
three categories indistinctly or that, at times, intersect
one each other we consider them useful to analyze
the strategies employed by Latin American artists to
update a political discourse related to the old left and
that today is voicing dissent from, and criticism of, the
neoliberal system.
1. Practices that Denounce: Scopic Perturbation
A frst group of works operate to provide visibility to
events, situations, state of afairs that are supposed
to remain obscured, misrepresented or omitted by
several factors: PTB, hegemonic discourses, economic
interests, and social alienation. Within this category
we distinguish between those works that attempt to
expose, denounce or raise public awareness about
issues of social and economic order from an ethical
perspective, and another group of works that attempt
to underline practices, traditions, events or situations
that have been excluded from the public enunciation
of the ofcial accounts of history and removed from
traditional art circuits.
The frst category relates to those works that follow
a didactic regime to alert or to denounce sensitive
issues at social or political level. This kind of resource
is assuredly the most widely used in the history of ar-
tistic representation. True, much ink has been used to
criticize or to question its persuasive strategy which,
as Jacques Rancire notes, could be understood as
a political efcacy art based on mediation.
6
This
model could be comprehensively reviewed in genre
painting from the seventeenth century to the halls of
photojournalism of the World Press Award, with its
baroque rhetoric evidencing the excesses of war, the
poverty of famine-aficted countries or the impact
of natural disasters. Hence, a certain exhaustion can
be discerned both in the repetitive representation of
those aesthetics, and in the actual reception of the
works, which eventually seem to play against their
stated intentions (true or not), numbing our sensibili-
ties instead of awakening them, pleasing our moral or
masochists instincts without really moving us. In Ran-
cires words, it seems that the problem is not in the
moral and political validity of the message transmitted
by the representative device. It lies rather in the de-
vice itself.
7
Video art emerged in Latin American in the 1970s
and 1980s, seeking to question the unilateral relation-
ship that turned viewers into submissive recipients
of moving images already encoded by the dominant
1 3 9
A R T I C L E
aesthetics of flms and television. At the same time,
video art ofered an opportunity to approach critically
many of the problems that mass media omitted. Thus,
employing dislocated, parodic, or lyrical aesthetics,
experimental flmmakers and video artists addressed
the realities of marginalized sectors of society as well
as the complex social and political problems of the
region, refecting on recent history, gender conficts,
censorship and control mechanisms.
8
With a high
sense of self-criticism, works like Agarrando pueblo.
Los vampiros de la miseria (Colombia, 1978), by Luis
Ospina and Carlos Mayolo, became a parody of the
manipulation of poverty and misery by artists wanting
to gain access to the exhibition circuits of Europe and
North America.
The use of media technology operates not just as a re-
placement of a manual, mechanical or analog resource
by a digital or electronic resource. Instead it generates
a new arrangement in which technology triggers or
creates an immediacy to certain realities (whether
painful, unfair, or humiliating) not only at visual level,
but also understanding the media structures underly-
ing social conditions. The scopic drive and its conse-
quent cathartic emotion, either in its pious, altruistic
or morbid expression, is enriched or altered by a chal-
lenge to the viewer to reveal its complicity with what
the work or art project hints at in thematic terms. The
project Exposiciones transitorias (Transitory Exhibi-
tions) by the Chilean artist Mximo Corvaln is a good
example. As part of the V Biennial of Young Art en-
titled Utopas de bolsillo (Pocket Utopias),
9
Corvaln
placed a cubicle in the public space, right next to the
entrance of the Fine Arts Museum in Santiago. Inside
he located a diorama that emulated the traditional
didactic museographic display, representing a land-
scape from the Atacama desert. Also inside the cabin
he placed a mattress, bedding, and personal items
belonging to a homeless couple Hugo and Carmen
who were invited by the artist to occupy the space to
sleep at night. At the same time, inside the museum,
a monitor set up as a hole in the wall allowed visitors
to see what was happening inside the diorama in real
time. A second monitor showed the viewers watching.
According to the artist, this work surpassed what he
had anticipated as media attention grew out of con-
trol. In the end Hugo and Carmen were so pleased to
be observed that the original idea that they would
sleep in the diorama at night and only their meager
belongings were to be observed by the viewers dur-
ing the day was amended. The couple would spend
the whole day in the cubicle. In this sense, Hugo and
Carmen appropriated the artists proposal, creating
a social phenomenon that transcended into televi-
sion and public discussion. Therefore, the critics, the
neighbors, the diorama, museum visitors, viewers, the
museum, the press and the artist who was required
to give permanent testimony on television became
part of a rolling device that appeared as a critical ap-
paratus in itself. If Corvalns intentions initially aimed
at making visible what is kept invisible in the face of
society precisely due to the social analgesia inocu-
lated through the media the actual implementation
exposed the seams that hold together social subjectiv-
ity as an articulating spectacle.
Working on a similar theme, but with diferent re-
sources, Alfredo Jaar organized Lights in the City
(Montreal, 1999). Inside four homeless shelters, Jaar
installed devices that were activated every time a
guest entered the premises, switching a red light
at the top of a landmark building in the city. Unlike
Corvaln, Jaar installed a data visualization display.
In semiotic terms, the lights that switched on at the
tower of Montreal, referring also to the various fres
sufered by the building throughout the years, were
both metaphor and index of each homeless person
who, for a moment, ceased to be a statistical fgure, a
spectral glow in the anonymity of their social exclu-
sion and opacity.
1 4 0
A R T I C L E
Also under the category of denunciation of, and chal-
lenge to, the historical, in search of social justice and
reparation an endemic claim in post-dictatorial
societies we could highlight one of the many works
that have called upon online interactivity. Bsqueda
en Proceso (Search in Progress) by Fabian Taranto
was conducted in 2006 to commemorate the military
dictatorship in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. A
video loop shows a few seconds of the frst mani-
festation of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The
screen then begins to fll with green and blue pixels.
When the user clicks on any green dot, the screen dis-
play a text with data about a political repressor, while
each blue dot contains data from a fle of a person
missing or murdered by the military dictatorship. On
March 24, each click on a dot generated a request to
diferent email addresses from the State Departments
(Ministry of Defense, Supreme Court, Army, Navy, Air
Force, Allegations of corruption in the security forces
and General Secretariat of the Presidency). The emails
were sent under the name of the missing person con-
sulted in the database, including his/her fle and claim-
ing memory and justice. The result: 906 queries sent
to 12 diferent inboxes a total of 10872 emails.
2. Practices that Dismantle: The Secret of
Machines
A second group of works and practices deploys a
deconstructive perspective, seeking to dismantle
technological artifacts seen as a semiotic-cultural ap-
paratus, that is, devices whose ideology is inherent to
their existence, design and function. In 2009, as part
of the Biennale of Video & Media Art in Santiago de
Chile, the Brazilian artist Fernando Rabelo presented
Contacto Qwerty. Rabelo hacked a keyboard and
connected each of its keys to cable extensions hang-
ing in the room. At the end of each cable he placed
a metal dish-scrub (which are commonly used to
amplify electrical signals in the favelas where Rabelo
had participated in childrens workshops). When visi-
tors took two sponges with their hands, their own
bodies worked as conductors, thus activating the
keys. This resulted in a projection display under the
model of basic operations on / of, open / closed
allowing a simple understanding of the foundations
of computing.
Figure 1. Exposiciones Transitorias (Transitory Exhibitions),
Mximo Corvaln, 2006. Hugo and Carmen in the diorama.
Photograph by the artist. Mximo Corvaln Pincheira, 2006.
1 4 1
A R T I C L E
Dismantling a technological device involves simultane-
ous operations that can be read from a political and
critical perspective.
10
On one hand, we face the pos-
sibility of understanding the secret of the machines
gaining access to the program which operates in
the black box (following the concept used by Vilem
Flusser.
11
This possibility of overcoming the inher-
ent fetishistic logic of production technology that the
market has naturalized is in open contrast with ieks
warning of technology as increasingly opaque and
incomprehensible: modernist technology is transpar-
ent in the sense of retaining the illusion of the insight
into how the machine works () the price for this
illusion of the continuity with our everyday environs
is that the user becomes accustomed to opaque
technology the digital machinery behind the screen
retreats into total impenetrability, even invisibility.
12

A wide range of current media studies such as media-
archeology and neomaterialism not only insist in
analyzing the content of the works, but also tackling
how the machine is built in itself.
13
In this sense, the
appropriation of technology, disobeying the factory
settings, allows the production of new meanings at
local, personal, arbitrary and poetic level. Dismantling
a technological device grants the user an opportunity
to subvert economic determinations implicit in the
design of technological devices, such as their rapid
obsolescence.
Latin America displays an extended tradition of re-
cycling consumer objects. More than a statement of
ecologist politics, or fashionable trend, precarious
economic conditions have forced its implementation
as a standard practice: re-using technology, fxing bro-
ken appliances and DIY is a means of subsistence. The
invention of witty solutions to repair or to respond to
a technical problem is widely practiced in Latin Ameri-
can countries, especially in low-income groups. Gam-
biarra in Brazil, chamullo in Chile, chapuza in Spain:
all these practices fnd their resonance within the pop-
ular folklore. A number of artists have recycled them
to fnd alternative sources of knowledge through
practices such as DIY, circuit bending, hackmeetings.
14

Moreover, the ways in which this knowledge is gener-
ated or updated involves diferent ways of horizontal
and collaborative learning already latent in alternative
educational currents which emerged in the sixties.
Popular education, promoted by educators like Paulo
Freire, advocated a horizontal method of teaching in
which knowledge was shared by a community and
where the educator facilitated the processes of self-
empowerment, instead of delivering knowledge unilat-
erally, as in the classical educational model. Teaching
1 4 2
A R T I C L E
is not to transfer knowledge but to create possibilities
for production or construction.
15
In this respect, we
can mention the project B & S, a sexual DIY experi-
ence lead by Carla Peirano and Orit Kruglansky. The
project consisted of conducting a series of workshops
for women from diferent socio-economic strata, who
were taught how to hack domestic appliances (blend-
ers, electric toothbrushes, etc.) and various skills such
as welding, wiring and electronic manufacturing, in
order to make sex toys. The latter were personalized
through the use of natural and synthetic fbers and
techniques such as sewing, pottery and embroidery.
The project addressed several aspects of the relation-
ship between art, gender and technology, trying to
overcome prejudice, gender and digital divides as well
as the stereotypes relating to sexual pleasure and
the collective imaginary.
16
Participants shared their
knowledge of basic electronics and circuitry while
they tried to rescue various crafts (sewing, knitting,
embroidery, casting) displaced by industrial produc-
tion. Although undervalued, these skills have survived
linked to the feminine or to the subordinate (indig-
enous crafts, therapeutic work with physically or men-
tally disabled, prisoners remedial work) and within the
social micro space (family, friends) are negatively as-
sociated with the female historical role that reiterates
the image of women unable to achieve emancipation.
This created the possibility to reactivate socially con-
structed knowledge in community practice to set a
new knowledge.
17
3. New Alternatives: Close Utopias and New
Weapons
A third line of work involves processes rather than fn-
ished works or specifc actions. These processes want
to produce research and test practical solutions that
modify the environment or, at least, contribute to the
installation of new imaginaries and forms of subjectiv-
ity [it is worth pointing out that we assume the idea of
subjectivity as a sociological rather than psychological
concept; we talk about ways of perceiving the social
world and shaping consensus].
In accordance with Nicholas Bourriauds enuncia-
tion art was intended to prepare and announce
a future world: today it is modelling possible uni-
verses
18
we have observed a trend in artistic-sci-
entifc-technological production that reanimates the
spirit of the avant-garde of the twentieth century, but
in the absence of a unifying and totalizing narrative.
Paraphrasing Borges, to the efect that the aesthetic
would be the imminence of a revelation which does
not occur,
19
Nstor Garca Canclini states that ...art
is the place of imminence. Its appeal stems partly from
announcing something that can happen, as it promises
or modifes meaning with innuendo. It does not fatally
compromise with hard facts. It leaves what it says on
hold.
20
Taking into account Canclinis words, we can see
that the projects and practices that are currently
Figures 2 & 3. Contacto
Qwerty, Fernando Rabelo,
2009. Photographs by the
artist. Fernando Rabelo,
2009. Used with permission.
1 4 3
A R T I C L E
emerging from the convergence of art, science, tech-
nology, design, and new media all point towards a
micro-social level, not necessarily responding to any
specifc aesthetic or poetic. Instead they present the
technological-artistic work as a ground of exception
characterized by inter-disciplinarity, experimentation
and collaboration. From this perspective we can also
identify a moment that Canclini has called post-au-
tonomy. This concept refers to the increased displace-
ment of object-based art practices to practices based
on contexts and the inclusion of works and artists in
the media, urban spaces, digital networks. For Can-
clini, the power of these new practices lies in the fact
that these new locations are removing what we call
art from its paradoxical condition of encapsulation-
transgression.
21
When we assume this post-auton-
omy it is possible to see the projects that link social
movements, scientifc research and technological
subversion as heterotopic exercises. Foucault coined
the term heterotopia in 1966 in an efort to describe
an instance that sought to juxtapose in a single real
place several spaces, several sites that are in them-
selves incompatible.
22
Diferent layers of meaning
alter usual relationships between form and function.
From this post-autonomous heterotopia, the opportu-
nity of modeling possible worlds emerges from difer-
ent felds of social and political action.
Under this category, environmental concerns have
taken an unprecedented leading role. In Colombia, an
interdisciplinary group led by Hamilton Mestizo per-
forms a series of actions in which scientifc research
Figure 4. Proyecto Emi-
sora (Radio Station Project),
Chimbalab (Claudia Gonzlez
y Constanza Pia), 2010.
Photograph by the artists.
Chimbalab, 2010. Used with
permission.
1 4 4
A R T I C L E
methods are collectively assumed to development
projects that aim to empower people through science
and technology, trying to achieve new ways of think-
ing about sustainable living.
23
One of his projects
in process Algas verdes (Green Algae) looks for
alternative and clean, self-sustaining energy sources.
Similarly in Chile, the collective Chimbalab (Constanza
Pia y Claudia Gonzlez) uses potatoes to generate
energy for a portable radio station that broadcasts at
the Vega Central: the central market of fruits and veg-
etables.
24
The project was conceived right after the
earthquake that struck Chile in 2010, and showed the
fragility of the new communication systems (standard
telephonic and cellular systems) and the force of radio
as a more stable and accessible media of communica-
tion.
In a similar connexion, Gilberto Esparza (Mexico) has
developed a series of quasi-robotic artifacts, built
from technological waste (industrial and domestic
appliances and communication devices). His Parsi-
tos urbanos (Urban Parasites) (2008)
25
are able
to feed of from the surrounding energy (electrical
sources, sunlight) and act upon the environment
through sound alerts or through physical actions, like,
for instance, removing the garbage. A more poetic,
and practical, venture was developed through the
project Plantas nmadas (Nomadic Plants)
26
which
consisted in creating bio-technological robots that can
intervene in polluted eco-systems, reversing the ef-
fects of contamination.
PLACES IN BETWEEN
Artistic activism or artivism has entailed the devel-
opment of a number of practices that, through the
re-appropriation of everyday technological appliances,
create conditions for civil rebellion.
With the popularization of communication technolo-
gies and the resulting low cost, increasing numbers of
artists have adopted the enormous potential of mobile
devices to strengthen local identities, creating or rec-
reating alternative narratives in the medial space. Con-
trary to many technophobic apocalyptic visions that
predicted an incurable disconnection with material re-
ality, digital media have allowed interaction and citizen
participation, from the digital space to the territorial
space, the real neighborhood. Beiguelman has called
this phenomenon cybridism; a way of living between
networks on and of line.
27
This perspective was
widely substantiated in 2011 in the movements of the
Arab Spring or at the mobilizations of Chilean students
in the same year. These mass demonstrations in public
spaces (rallies, fashmobs, performances) were orga-
nized and escalated in cyberspace via social networks
(YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter). Although information
and communication technologies are controlled by
economic and political interests, it is still possible to
produce, share and distribute content with relative
freedom, thus encouraging transversal citizen partici-
pation in virtual and physical space.
The extension of the perceptual feld in the artistic and
cultural world alongside the sensation of ubiquity,
portability and horizontal transfer of information at
collective level allowed by portable digital technologies
and GPS has encouraged the development of proj-
ects that engage social realities. Numerous initiatives
are now building alternative cartographies through
locative media such as AirCity: Arte#Ocupa SM held
in Vila Belga (Brazil) or ID Barrio (ID Neighborhood)
organized by artists and researchers from Mexico, Bra-
zil, and Spain. Through geolocated audio and audiovi-
sual register produced by the local community, these
projects try to account for imaginary territories and
heritage in constant mutation, or encourage citizen
participation in urban design for initiatives such as the
Combi Project carried out in Lima, Peru, in 2008.
1 4 5
A R T I C L E
In 2009 the Mexican artist Marcela Armas produced
an installation consisting of a metal incandescent fla-
ment that drew the border separating Mexico and
the United States. The title of the work, Resistencia,
was a reference to the device that dissipates electric
power as heat. The work was presented in a gallery
environment, generating a real limit, an insurmount-
able barrier, incandescent and therefore dangerous; a
hot metaphor of the socio-political tension that exists
in the geographical border. Similarly, Ricardo Domin-
guez,
28
together with the B.A.N.G. Lab, headed the
project Transborder Immigrant Tool which consisted
of the implementation of a geo-location system to as-
sist (illegal) migrants from Mexico to the United States
to cross the Mexico-US border.
29
The system used a
low-cost cellphone with a free GPS applet, which was
cracked to ofer a simple navigation system that in-
corporated surveillance applications predicting move-
ment patterns, and was able to deliver information
about where to fnd drinking water, healthcare centers
and legal guidance. Furthermore, the Transborder Im-
migrant Tool could send out poems and messages of
encouragement to migrants to help them through the
hardest moments of their trip. The project was not
only harshly criticized by many U.S. media, but actually
resulted in Dominguez becoming the subject of a fed-
eral investigation and the temporary suspension of his
professorship at the University of San Diego.
Similarly drawing on mobile telephony, the work of
Eugenio Tiselli Ojo Voz (Eye Voice) consists of an
application for Android 2.2 + phones based on open
source tools, which allows interaction, participation
and empowerment of the population. From this work
emerged the project Ojos de la Milpa (Milpas Eyes) in
Tlahuitoltepec, Oaxaca, Mexico (2012), and in Tanzania
(2011). Both projects consist of a software implemen-
tation of a mobile network built on open source tools
that simplify the handling of the smartphone for its
use in local communities. The software is designed
with specifc functions that allow local farmers to
document their farming practices and problems as-
sociated with climate change and industrial agriculture.
Farmers, mostly indigenous, interview others, make
videos, thus nurturing mutual knowledge rooted in
their reality.
30
CONCLUSION
The variety of assemblages where science, technology
and art converge enable the development of future
imaginaries that are realized in the present. Many of
the developments described here can be understood
as science fction heterotopic exercises seeking to
provoke changes at local level in actual time and space.
These projects and practices have been conceived
within the feld of art, but cannot be ratifed through
the traditional categories of the artistic world, since
they do not follow the traditional rules of the market.
Rather, they are set up as examples of experimental
art that escape the collectible order of objects. The
exhibition circuit where they can be found is not nec-
essarily the galleries and museums. Moreover, they are
often based on research processes in direct connec-
tion with society and its problems.
From this perspective, utopia is no longer drawn from
a unifying and hegemonic narrative, but from the
changing conditions of life in the hands of collective
groups that operate at micro-social level. As such, the
borders between art, science and technology are inev-
itably blurred, as are the boundaries between aesthet-
ics, creativity, politics and society. Perhaps because, in
the most basic sense, they have never been separated
realities. On the contrary, the great illusion has been
to believe that these were separate felds, that the
arts operated under the autonomy inherent to the
hyper-specialized logic of human activities promoted
by a modern capitalist defnition.
The characteristics of Latin America as a region, the
outstanding disparities in wealth distribution, and in
access to culture and education, as well as the histori-
cal resistance exercised by the most violated strata of
society (farmers, workers, indigenous, and low-income
sectors today a growing middle class vulnerable) of-
fers a favorable scenario for this type of crossover be-
tween disciplines: the rising fux between art, science
and technology begets a new vanguard.
1 4 6
A R T I C L E
1. Expression used throughout a conservative book pub-
lished as a rebuttal to the Left wing ideology in Latin
American literature: Carlos Rangel, Del buen salvaje al
buen revolucionario, 9th ed. (Caracas: Monte Avila Edi-
tores, 1977).
2. Yankee go home, but take me with you read a street
grafti in a poor suburb of Santiago city; a self-fagellating
ironic caricature of love-hate relationship against the
American hegemony.
3. Nstor Garca Canclini, Culturas hbridas: Estrategias para
entrar y salir de la modernidad (Mexico, D. F.: Grijalbo,
1990).
4. Eli Neira, Arte Marta arte!!, El Ciudadano, February 1,
2010, http://www.elciudadano.cl/2010/02/01/17985/arte-
marta-art/ (accessed March 5, 2012).
5. Oswald de Andrade, Manifesto Antropfago, Antropofa-
gia Magazine, no. 1 (May 1928). This concept was adopted
in the 24th Biennale of Sao Paulo, 1998.
6. Jacques Rancire, The Emancipated Spectator, trans.
Gregory Elliot (London: Verso, 2009), 61.
7. Ibid., 59.
8. An exhaustive review of diferent works and documenta-
tion is available at the ofcial website of Videoarde, http://
eng.videoarde.net (accessed May 2, 2012).
9. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA), Santiago, Chile
(January 18 - March 12, 2006).
10. Valentina Montero, Resistencia, in 9th catlogo bienal
de video y artes mediales (Santiago de Chile: Bienal Artes
Mediales, 2009), 23.
11. Vilem Flusser, Hacia una flosofa de la fotografa (Mexico:
Sigma Trillas, 1990), 19.
12. Slavoj iek, Cyberspace, or the Virtuality of the Real,
in Endless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Parallel
Histories, ed. Janet Bergstrom (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999), 102.
13. Jussi Parikka, What is Media Archeology (Cambridge: Pol-
ity Press, 2012), 79-89.
14. Among the most signifcant examples is LabsurLab, a
metanetwork made up of hacklabs, hackerspaces, media
labs and diferent collectives.
15. Paulo Freire, Pedagoga de la autonoma, (Buenos Aires:
Siglo XXI Editores, 2002), 24. (Authors translation.)
16. Interview with Carla Peirano, Mquina o Maravilloso (blog),
http://maquinaomaravilloso.net/index.php/2010/01/car-
la-peirano/ (accessed May 2, 2012).
17. Paulo Freire, Pedagoga de la autonoma (Buenos Aires:
Siglo XXI Editores, 2002), 35. Our translation.
18. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon
Pleasanoe and Fronza Wood (Dijon: Les Presses du rel,
2002), 13.
19. Luis Borges, La muralla y los libros, in Obras completas
(Buenos Aires: Emece, 1974), 635. Our translation.
20. Nstor Garca Canclini, La sociedad sin relato: Antropolo-
ga y esttica de la inminencia (Buenos Aires: Katz, 2010),
12. (Authors translation.)
21. Ibid., 17.
22. Michel Foucault, Des espaces autres, Architecture, Mou-
vement, Continuit, no. 5, trans. Jay Miskowiec (October
1984), http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf
23. The ofcial website of Librepensante, http://www.libre-
pensante.org (accessed May 2, 2012).
24. The ofcial website of Chimba Lab: Lab Project for Art
and Technology Research, http://www.chimbalab.cl (ac-
cessed May 2, 2012).
25. The ofcial website of Parsitos Urbanos, http://www.
parasitosurbanos.com (accessed May 2, 2012).
26. Ibid.
27. Guiselle Beiguelman, Admirvel mundo cbrido, the of-
fcial website of Artes Visuais, http://www.utp.br/artes-
visuais/docs/bibliografas/cibridismo.pdf, 2-13 (accessed
June 12, 2012).
28. Member of Critical Art Ensemble and Co-founder of The
Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) a group that
developed a series of virtual Sit-In technologies in 1998
in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas,
Mexico.
29. Alex Dunbar Follow, The Gps, the Transborder Immigrant
Tool Helps Mexicans Cross OverSafely, Vice Magazine,
November 2, 2009, http://www.vice.com/read/follow-the-
gps-225-v16n11 (accessed June 10, 2012).
30. See both projects at http://ojosdelamilpa.net and http://
sautiyawakulima.net (accessed June 10, 2012).
1 4 7
A R T I C L E
INTRODUCTION
THE THING Hamburg was an independent Internet
publishing platform for art and criticism that was
in operation between 2006 and 2009. Within the
larger framework of the Internet as a laboratory for
social innovation, it was a local artistic experiment
that aimed at using networked technology for the
democratization of the art feld. To anticipate the end:
the project only lasted for three years. We decided to
cancel the experiment at the point when public fund-
ing ended and the initiatives status as art project was
revoked by the citys tax authorities.
In this paper we will trace the circumstances that
led to the emergence of the project in the frst place,
describe how it was organized, and discuss various
historical precursors as well as the core questions and
contradictions that are inherent in art projects that
claim socio-political impact: is it possible that an art
identifable as such has any efect? Or to put it difer-
ently: how can art operate as art and still work on the
expansion of what is accepted as art? We also look at
the role new technologies can play within that context
as a means to build new spaces and break new ground
that allows for a discussion and practice, which takes
THE THING Hamburg
A Temporary Democratization
of the Local Art Field
CORNELIA SOLLFRANK
Lecturer, Art & Media
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design
University of Dundee, UK
c.sollfrank@dundee.ac.uk
http://artwarez.org
RAHEL PUFFERT
Lecturer, Cultural Studies
Carl von Ossietzky Universitt Oldenburg, Germany
rahel.pufert@uni-oldenburg.de
http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/kunst/lehrende/mitarbeiterin-
nen-und-lehrkraefte/pufert-rahel/
MICHEL CHEVALIER
targetautonopop@jpberlin.de
http://www.targetautonopop.org/
by
Cornel i a Sol l frank,
Rahel Puffert &
Mi chel Cheval i er
1 4 8
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
THE THING Hamburg was an experimental Internet platform whose voca-
tion was to contribute to the democratization of the art feld, to negoti-
ate new forms of art in practice, and to be a site for political learning and
engagement. We, the authors, were actively involved in the project on
various levels. In this paper, we trace the (local) circumstances that led to
the emergence of the project and take a look at its historical precursor, we
refect on the organizational form of this collectively-run and participatory
platform, and we investigate the role locality can play in the development
of political agency. As a non-proft Internet platform built with free soft-
ware, the project also invites a refection of the role technology can play
for the creation of independent experimental spaces for social innovation
and how they make a diference against the backdrop of corporate social
media. Relating the project to both the conceptual innovations of the Rus-
sian avant-garde as well as media-utopian projections shows that THE
THING Hamburg stands in the tradition of an art that expands its own feld
by invoking a self-issued social assignment. Challenging the norms and in-
stitutions of the art feld does not remain an exercise in self-referentiality;
it rather redefnes the role of art as an agent for political learning and how
the use of technology in society at large can be emancipatory. And just as
small projects like the THE THING Hamburg draw on old utopias for their
contemporary negotiations of art, they equally produce more questions
than they provide answers.
place and only can take place beyond traditional
categorizations.
In its aim to democratize the local art feld, THE
THING Hamburg had concrete efects; it had an im-
pact on the city of Hamburg, the (local) art feld, and
on the numerous people involved. We refect on this
impact and our experiences and would like to share
them in order to engage in a broader discussion of
what still has to be done. We, the authors of this
1 4 9
A R T I C L E
text, were actively involved in the project on various
levels: Cornelia Sollfrank initiated the project and later
became chairwoman of the association that operated
the project; Rahel Pufert was a founding member of
the association and later succeeded as chairwoman;
Michel Chevalier was an active user and contributor to
the platform.
A CONCURRENCE OF LOCAL CONDITIONS AND A
TESTED ARTISTIC CONCEPT
The principal idea of THE THING Hamburg was to
build a technology-based and non-exclusive environ-
ment, which would emphasize a critical discussion of
local conditions while, at the same time, tracking con-
temporary theory and the general upheavals taking
place in the cultural realm. On a structural level, the
platform was the expansion of two smaller projects of
local artistic self-organization: the calendar of events
kunstecho-hamburg.de and [echo] the mailing list
for art, criticism and cultural policy.
1
On a conceptual
level, THE THING Hamburg grounded itself in the idea
of that artist-driven communication network founded
by German artist Wolfgang Staehle in New York City
in 1991: The Thing.
In the Run-up to THE THING Hamburg
The idea of initiating a platform for art and criticism
in Hamburg emerged in 2005, after a number of
interventions and direct actions within the art feld
in Hamburg had mobilized hundreds of artists and
cultural producers; this laid the grounds for further
organization.
The preceding years had indeed been marked by lo-
cal developments that were strongly contradictory in
nature. The mid-to-late 1990s were a period in which
it had become almost obligatory for art students and
recent graduates to start their own exhibition spaces,
which were removed from both commercial galleries
and institutions. Pre-existing artist-run initiatives such
as Knstlerhaus Hamburg (founded 1977), Westwerk
(founded in 1985) and KX (founded in 1987) could not
do justice to the many new approaches. These newer
projects were motivated by interests as diverse and
contradictory as being a launching-pad for the gallery
scene, refning approaches that could be exported
Figure 1. THE THING Ham-
burg Program, poster for the
exhibition Shanghai-Ham-
burg (urban public) Space
[SHupS], 2010, Cornelia
Sollfrank, Kathrin Wildner,
and Rahel Pufert. Used with
permission via the Creative
Commons, Attribution-Share
Alike 3.0 Unported license.
1 5 0
A R T I C L E
to institutions, creating hybrid spaces between party
clubs and art spaces, developing alternatives to the
white cube, making political art, working collectively,
avoiding the formatting of the art market.
2
Long
shadows were cast on these activities by two theory
fashions since discredited, but all the rage then: rela-
tional art and postmodern institutional critique.
3

The optimism underlying this fractious experimenta-
tion hit a brick wall in 2001, after the events of 9/11
spilled into the Hamburg mayoral election, unseating
the Social Democrats after over 40 years in power.
The new government was a coalition of the Christian
Democrats and the xenophobic Partei Rechtsstaat-
licher Ofensive (Law and Order Ofensive Party).
Within a year, the city drastically switched its cultural
funding priorities, favoring beacon projects, real-
estate development, and public-private partnerships.
No twenty-year anniversary celebration of the citys
once-famed art-in-public-space program was held in
2002. Instead, that year the University of Fine Arts
(HfK) was subjected to a new city law and restruc-
tured by its newly appointed director, who weakened
the control that students and staf could exercise on
his power.
A tipping point came in 2005, on three separate fronts.
The frst was funding: twenty artist-run spaces formed
the lobby Wir Sind Woanders (We are somewhere
else) in order to stave of cuts from the city that would
have threatened their existence.
4
The second, cul-
tural policy: at the initiative of Cornelia Sollfrank, 121
artists each adopted one of the 121 members of the
Hamburg City Council to express their protest against
the newly planned International Maritime Museum.
5

The third: patronage (and its hidden strings). This was
the so-called clat at the city-funded Kunstverein in
Hamburg (Hamburg Contemporary Art Center). That
year, many critical artists were newly elected in the
Kunstvereins nine-member Board of Directors. For
collectors, gallerists, and the market-oriented direc-
tor of the Center, however, this was a stinging defeat,
slandered thereafter as a putsch. A court decision
ultimately allowed the election to be held again, as
sought by former chairman and well-known collector
Harald Falckenberg; control by the art-business frac-
tion was reestablished.
The-coming-into-being of THE THING Hamburg
The two projects that already had a networking func-
tion within Hamburgs self-organized art scene were
[echo] the mailing list for art, criticism and cultural
policy, founded in 2003 by Cornelia Sollfrank, with
about 400 subscribers at that time, and the self-
organized calendar of events kunstecho-hamburg.de,
run by Ulrich Mattes since early 2005. The mailing
list in particular had already proven successful as a
tactical medium for the dissemination of critical infor-
mation and the organization of actions. In the loosely
organized feld, it functioned as a fexible, easy-to-use
and easily accessible means of organization. Although
mailing lists are mainly described as translocal net-
works,
6
the combination of a local, urban feld of
reference and virtual communication has, still to this
day, yielded lasting synergies.
Sollfrank and Mattes struck up a strategic alliance to
facilitate a new, web-based Internet platform, which
would expand the scope of participation and intensify
a substantive discussion of local conditions. They con-
ceived an initial frst concept and put it up for discus-
sion at a public meeting. During a discussion process
that lasted several months, a group of nine people
eventually volunteered to take responsibility for the
platform. It was a diverse group of cultural producers
with diferent backgrounds and skill sets who were
all enthusiastic about the idea of a platform, although
there were and remained disagreements regard-
ing the art status of the project. Eventually, the group
founded the legal entity THE THING Hamburg e.V. for
1 51
A R T I C L E
the advancement of art and criticism, a non-proft
organization (gemeinntziger Verein) whose purpose
was to establish and run THE THING Hamburg.
7
This
legal status entitled the group to apply for public
funding that would back up the personal investment
involved. During earlier negotiations, the Hamburg
Cultural Ofce ofered funding from a special budget
(Sondermittel), complemented by funding for public
art (15%). For its three years of existence, the project
had an overall budget of about 170,000 EUR of which
41% was fnanced through public funding and the rest
through the personal investment of the members of
the association.
History and Historicization of The Thing
In its frst incarnation The Thing, founded by German
artist Wolfgang Staehle in New York in 1991, was an
experiment in exploring the potential of new infor-
mation technologies for various artistic purposes.
Equipped with a modem and a computer, the artists
involved went online to discuss with others, break
new grounds for aesthetic expression, or build infra-
structures for others to communicate. Departing from
the notion of institutional critique, a main driving force
for Staehle was to go beyond the making of critical art
works within the art institutional context, embodying
a stance critical of institutions by building an indepen-
dent structure.
8
Others joined to help building the
infrastructure, to populate it and fll it with life and
content.
In the initial phase of The Thing, from 1991-1995, the
project consisted of a number of small international
nodes engaging in text-based exchange. They were
connected through a bulletin board system, which
ofered boards for various themes.
9
In the midst of
the technological and also conceptual developments
of the mid 1990s, the formerly small nodes largely
disappeared; some of them were transformed into
discrete Internet platforms and new ones were initi-
ated. The focus of The Thing activities shifted from
enabling exchange and creating discourse to building
more complex, mainly locally-oriented information in-
frastructures to foster media art and activism and sup-
port media artists. The Thing New York, for instance,
became an Internet provider and also hosted artists
websites and mailing lists. The mainly experimental
discourse-enabling function made way for context and
community building via technical services.
10
Since 1991 a total of twelve independent branches
emerged (and vanished) in seven diferent countries,
with THE THING Hamburg being the most recent
one.
11
All The Thing platforms have given credit to
the frst The Thing in New York as inspiration, while
operating completely independently and implementing
highly diferent versions of the basic idea: to create an
artistically organized information and communication
infrastructure. Having said that, all local The Thing plat-
forms have considered themselves as equal parts of
the international The Thing network, which served as a
kind of conceptual meta-structure.
Despite the institution-critical spirit from which the
early The Thing had emerged, the project slowly con-
verged with the art world. The Thing International was
exhibited as an art project,
12
numerous interviews
were conducted with its founder in the art context,
13
it had friendly relations with art institutions and
received major art grants.
14
Eventually, The Thing
was categorized as Internet art and included in a
number of art historical overviews investigating this
genre.
15
Interestingly, at the same time that the early
The Thing became the subject of a major art-historical
research project ffteen years after its frst launch it
yielded its latest ofspring: THE THING Hamburg. A
fact that could have very well served the investigation
and better understanding of its aesthetic and politi-
cal complexity, which was largely neglected by these
researchers.
1 5 2
A R T I C L E
THE THING HAMBURG
THE THING Hamburg was a collective media experi-
ment. It rested on the vision of artists empowered to
speak and write about their own work as well as its
framing policies and theories. Exploring the potential
of an Internet-based Content Management System to
open up public discussions,
16
it was, in many respects,
a reaction and an alternative to the distribution and
mediation approaches preponderant in the art feld.
The concept was based on the premise that critical
contemporary art can only arise from an intensive
awareness and active refection of its conditions and,
in that sense, that critique is productive. For the ini-
tiators of THE THING Hamburg, this premise was a
conviction. The disinclination of institutions in the city
to serve as such a forum motivated the invention of a
structure that made the above possible, while remain-
ing, at the same time, subject to permanent change.
Insofar as writing is seen as an obvious component
of artistic practice something not delegated to ex-
perts such as critics or curators the project could be
viewed in the tradition of Conceptual art. This is also
true for another reason: THE THING Hamburg ofered
a frame conducive to in-depth discussions about art,
critically addressing the pressure to commodify and
draw profts from artistic work. The approach taken
was uncommon in the sense that it included the us-
ers by ofering access, easy and free of charge, to an
ongoing discourse. It allowed the users to intervene
in and infuence the course of the discussions, thus
fostering a political learning process that aimed at
practicing democracy.
Social and Technological Forms of Participation
Assuming public discussion was the common goal of
all those making contributions, there was, neverthe-
less, a hierarchy in the degree of participation. Initially,
a non-proft institution was founded whose defned
purpose was the support of art and criticism by run-
ning an Internet platform. The non-proft institution
administered funds and was the point of contact for
Hamburg City ofcials. The founding group decided
to establish an editorial team, especially responsible
for the direction of the websites content as well as
its structure and interface modalities. The frst group
of editors was recruited from the founding members,
but later underwent constant transformations. The
editors were anchored in diferent cultural scenes, al-
lowing for the highest possible diversity of themes to
be covered, while their diferent backgrounds in jour-
nalistic, artistic, or academic professions could ensure
the lively co-existence of a variety of working styles
and methods.
THE THING Hamburg also made the point of encour-
aging people with little or no journalistic experience to
publish contributions, thereby ofering technical and
editorial assistance. In this case, the Internet provided
advantages over print journalism: there were no limits
to text length; unusual writing styles were explicitly
called for and not subsequently standardized. The goal
was to foster a plurality of voices and ofer publication
for those authors and projects that fall through the
cracks in other outlets. In its three years of existence,
THE THING Hamburg published the contributions of
120 authors. A so-called unedited forum was set up
parallel to the other sections. It ofered to any and all
the chance to post visual and/or textual contributions
without having to undergo any editorial screening.
The authors of unedited contributions were, needless
to say, not paid the 100 EUR that other contributors
were. However, topics addressed in edited articles
were picked up in the unedited forum, and vice versa.
Both realms were of equal importance for the whole
project. Each published contribution was coupled
to a comment function allowing readers to address
authors with their feedback. This opportunity was
used with gusto: some discussions stretched out over
months. The echo mailing-list was the perfect tool to
announce every new article.
1 5 3
A R T I C L E
The design of the platform required close collabora-
tion between the editors and the web designers. The
fact that the desired social and political potential of
such a platform could only unfold on the basis of a
well thought-out technological infrastructure was an
important insight gained after two failed attempts to
delegate the design to professionals. At the same time,
discussing the technically available options and their
particular implications resulted in a steep learning
curve for the technically rather inexperienced editors.
At the suggestion of one of the web-designers, the
decision was made to use TYPO3, a free and open
source web content management framework based
on PHP. Being one of the most popular CMSes on
the web, it turned out to fully meet the needs of the
project: supported by a large number of international
programmers, it made available a variety of functions
and extensions, which then only needed to be built to-
gether to form one integrative system that combines
stability and fexibility. It stores content and layout fles
separately, and the elaborate rights-managing func-
tion guarantees a secure but open and transparent
system. The web designers acted as administrators
of the site and initiated the editors to the extent that
they were, then, each able to independently work with
the system.
Content Structure
Over time there was a crystallization of sections un-
der which the various contributions could be classifed
(current events, special subjects of focus, thing-on-
the-road, images, cultural policy). Special subjects in-
cluded: changes in and reorientation of art education,
forms of self-organization in the political and cultural
realms, art in public space, culture-political condi-
tions of artistic production including funding policy,
juries, and the marketing of cultural production. This
was complemented by regular updates and tips about
relevant events and funding opportunities, job ofers,
open calls, etc. Insofar as THE THING Hamburg recom-
mended specifc exhibitions, workshops, or lectures in
town, it took up the chance to distinguish itself from
other (ofcial) institutions and mass media. By deliber-
ately neglecting some exhibitions and announcing and
reviewing others, the platform sharpened its profle as
a corrective to ofcial institutions politics of informa-
tion and representation.
The thematic orientation of the sections also followed
an approach one could identify with the notion of a
counter public sphere.
17
The platform empowered
the activities of self-organized groups in the art scene,
seized on confict-ridden topics, and in this way initi-
ated and moderated discussions spurring controversy
in the city. Protest activities, for example at the Ham-
burg University of Fine Arts (HfK), were registered
and discursively extended. Concrete arguments were
injected into debates via critical interviews (e.g. with
the Director of the HfK), or culture-historical analysis
(e.g. of the highly controversial and publicly-funded
private collection of Peter Tamm, or the extravagantly
over-budget Elbe-Philharmonic project). The issue of
gentrifcation and the role of artists doing commis-
sioned work for the International Building Exhibition
(IBA) Hamburg held in a traditionally working class
district with a high migrant population drew ex-
changes of marked intensity on THE THING Hamburg,
whereby eforts were made to ofer space to voices
not heard in the ofcial media. The existence of THE
THING Hamburg thereby added a critical impulse af-
fecting public perceptions, one that could not be ig-
nored by city and cultural administrators.
The Benefts of Locality
From the very start, THE THING Hamburg consciously
adopted a local scope. This did not mean that na-
tional or international issues and developments were
neglected. On the contrary, the local anchoring of-
fered many theoretical or refective extrapolations of
1 5 4
A R T I C L E
a general bearing on art discourse or cultural policy.
Conversely, theoretical positions and critical thought
gained traction with the examples of local circum-
stances, citing names when called for, and so avoiding
a drift into abstract self-referentiality, or other man-
neristic pitfalls. The political meaning of this medium
of communication lay precisely in this dialectic.
Hamburg, an unusually wealthy city of merchants, a
former bastion of the Hanseatic League, in which
social polarization cannot go unnoticed: it lends itself
as both symptom and example for broader social
debates. It is large enough to be abreast of global
developments, while small enough to allow for an
easy overview and monitoring of changes and de-
velopments, and the ongoing communication of this
information to those various groups and scenes that
are afected.
The local character of THE THING Hamburg also
proved to be an advantage in other respects. Discus-
sions did not have to remain virtual. On a sporadic ba-
sis, THE THING Hamburg set up public presentations
or discussions in the city, touching on aforementioned
themes and allowing for personal exchange with vari-
ous authors and contributors, as well as the chance to
clear up misunderstandings or just to get to know one
another. Last but not least, such events were, also, an
opportunity to get in touch with the editorial group
and express criticism or discuss possible ways of col-
laboration on a personal level.
THE ART OF SPAWNING EFFECTS
Claiming THE THING Hamburg to be an Internet art
project that attempted the democratization of the
local art feld suggests its location within specifc his-
Figure 2. THE THING Hamburg Frontpage, 2008. Used with permission via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
Unported license.
1 5 5
A R T I C L E
torical contexts, as well as everyday social media. This
leads to the elaboration of the implied conception of
art and the discussion of the role that new technolo-
gies play for its realization.
Avant-garde Relations
The Russian October Revolution and its immediate
aftermath gave artists and art-theorists seeking a
revolution in their own feld unprecedented opportu-
nities. On the one hand the caesura of the revolution
allowed them to analyze all that was wrong with the
art that had accompanied class domination. On the
other, they could draw up new cultural programs, set
up or take part in bodies of the new Soviet govern-
ment, and theorize, produce, and exhibit new forms of
art. The Russian avant-gardes project of fusing art and
life is to this day a much used and abused point of
reference. It is therefore worth bearing in mind that
not just any integration of art into life was sought in
those post-revolution years, but a very specifc one:
The use of an artists work has no value per se, no
purpose of its own, no beauty of its own; it receives
all this solely from its relation to the community.
In the creation of every great work the architects
part is visible and the communitys part is latent.
The artist, the creator, invents nothing that falls
into his lap from the sky.
18
What fnds expression in this quote is a new under-
standing of the social function of art as well as a
criticism of the bourgeois conception of the artist. Ac-
cording to this new understanding, an artist is no lon-
ger an individual expressing him-/herself, but rather
invokes a self-issued social assignment. Consequently,
the aimed-at work of art is considered to be a com-
mon product. Art steps out of its aesthetic constraints
and contributes to the experiment of reorganizing
society, of which arts own institutional structures, in-
cluding art education and funding policies, are a part.
In fact, only working on new forms of organization
and new structures of production and dissemination
would enable the creation of new forms of art. This
led to basic problems of liberated work, linked in the
closest way to the problems of the transformation
of production culture on the one hand, and with the
transformation of everyday on the other.
19
The elaborations of such claims in theory and practice,
however, varied regarding the degree to which art
would remain an independent feld. Certain Productiv-
ists, for instance, wished for the outright integration of
art into industrial production and proclaimed that art
would become obsolete in a future, free society. Al-
exander Rodchenko temporarily advocated an experi-
mental space for artists, a laboratory, in which artists
would work on the development of a new vocabulary
of forms and products that would invite their users to
creatively engage with their environment, and whose
purpose would be the empowerment of their users.
20
Indeed, just as Engels favored scientifc socialism
over those utopian socialisms, which in his view
turned away from modernity, so did the Constructiv-
ists and Productivists push for an art that was in and
of its time.
21
Looking back at its reception, Hal Foster
diagnosed that the scandal of the Russian avant-garde
was that it not only posed analogies, but actually
forged connections between artistic and industrial
production, cultural and political revolution: And this
scandal (which remains its mystique) could not be
entirely ignored; it had to be managed averted and
absorbed.
22
Media Utopian Projections
The conceptual innovations yielded by the Russian
avant-garde have served as a point of reference
throughout the 20th century, especially for art that
harbors socio-political ambitions. And it had been in
particular those forms of art that embrace new tech-
1 5 6
A R T I C L E
nologies in artistic and experimental ways in order to
achieve a socio-political agency that drew on avant-
garde ideas.
The basis of Gene Youngbloods conception of Meta-
Design (1986) is a liaison of artists and designers who
collaborate on the integration of technological and
social systems. They would create virtual spaces in
which people could experiment with technology for
the purpose of self-organization, the acquisition of
democratic skills and techniques of self-confguration
(Selbstgestaltung). These autonomous social worlds,
laboratories of resocialisation, which bear an obvious
reference to Rodchenkos experimental spaces, are to
empower users in an environment in which they may
cultivate creative conversations and take control of
the context of their cultural and aesthetic production.
Controlling the context implies controlling of meaning,
and controlling meaning is identical with controlling
reality.
23
For Youngblood, the revolutionary quality of the new
decentralized communication environments, however,
is directly related to certain conditions; all users would
need to have free access to the means of production:
what he calls personal meta media, as well as full
control over distribution networks and infrastructures,
the public meta media.
24
Youngblood makes an important transfer in his pro-
spective model: just as industrial production played
a central role for the post-revolutionary Russian
avant-garde, so does immaterial production become
central to his conception of the avant-garde of what
he considers to be a post-industrial revolution. The
fact of users controlling the production and distribu-
tion media, in fact, amounts to a telecommunications
revolution, which not only implies a new role for art in
building a new society, but also comes very close to
the completion of the project of the historical avant-
garde. However, what has to be questioned regarding
this model is that it ignores the continuing existence
of industrial production.
Many years prior to Youngblood, German writer and
publisher Hans Magnus Enzensberger had already
pointed out the emancipatory potential of digital
media networks in his essay Constituents of a theory
of the media.
25
Decentralized media production in
which receivers/consumers would be able to turn
into senders/producers would mobilize the masses
and, thus, instigate political learning, collective produc-
tion and social control through self-organization. For
Enzensberger, however, one of the core issues of his
model is that only collective media production can
achieve social and political progress:
For the prospect that in the future, with the aid of
the media, anyone can become a producer, would
remain apolitical and limited were this productive
efort to fnd an outlet in individual tinkering. Work
on the media is possible for an individual only in so
far as it remains socially and therefore aestheti-
cally irrelevant. The collection of transparencies
from the last holiday trip provides a model. []
Any socialist strategy for the media must, on the
contrary, strive to end the isolation of the indi-
vidual participants from the social learning and
production process. This is impossible unless those
concerned organize themselves. This is the political
core of the question of the media.
26
He insists on collectivity as a necessary precondition
for an emancipatory use of media the former bring-
ing with it social relevance, which for him automati-
cally implies aesthetic relevance. As a result, preoc-
cupation with new media may be seen as a threat for
bourgeois art and culture:
1 5 7
A R T I C L E
It often seems as if it were precisely because of
their progressive potential that the media are felt
to be an immense threatening power; because
for the frst time they present a basic challenge to
bourgeois culture and thereby to the privileges of
the bourgeois intelligentsia a challenge far more
radical than any self-doubt this social group can
display.
27
Youngblood and Enzensberger both address some
of the core issues that until today pertain to an
emancipatory use of new technologies and may give
some indication of the persistent reservations of the
traditional art world against new media.
The Reality of Art World Media
While the utopian models introduced above refer
to the implications digital media could have on the
conception of art within a networked culture, Andrew
Menard and Ron White, contemporaries of Enzens-
berger, call for attention to the increasing interlocking
of media coverage and art production. They insist that
media have completely penetrated to the level of art
production and the form and content of art is in fact
determined by the modes of distribution (media),
28

warning that the emerging glossy art magazines of
the 1970s demonstrate that art media have simply
reifed distribution by developing as an independent
mode of production, a business.
29
Menard and
White fault the art trade journals of their day for serv-
ing less distribution than a hierarchical redistribution
(of information) that benefts their own platforms and
those who fnance them (advertisers/investors). The
authors conclude with a call that prefgures the trial-
and-error eforts of THE THING Hamburg:
If we really dont want to capitulate to the
consciousness industry we have to use media dif-
ferently. Using media diferently means organizing
diferently. Like technology in general, media arent
inherently good or bad; they merely happen to be
used oppressively whenever they are embedded in
capitalism.
30
Arguing from the perspective of such an investor- and
gallery-fnanced trade journal targeted by Menard
and White, Isabelle Graw ofers her perspective on
the emancipatory potential of Internet art, the avant-
garde and the art market in an essay published in
1998. Expressing apprehension at a milieu that is
both hyped and its own world, distinct from and
even dismissive of commercial gallery art, she sets to
deconstruct the phenomenon of artists aesthetic ex-
periments with self-organization on the Net. The con-
cepts of Internet art are, to her, nothing but a revival
of artistic concepts of the seventies and eighties.
31

She expresses little enthusiasm for the historical ref-
erences that defenders of Internet art may make to
the Russian futurists, Dada, Fluxus, or more modestly,
to Mail Art, for these strike her as hasty and not
thought-out.
32
Skeptically, she asks: can it not be
that working with software limits artists more than, for
example, in-stock paint or standardized brush sizes
do?
33
Desperately trying to fnd arguments that
support her dismissal of Internet art, she is not even
reluctant to contradict herself by surprisingly conclud-
ing that the program of Internet art would realize the
long-sought demand of the classic avant-garde, the
demand for an overcoming of the contradiction be-
tween art and what Peter Brger called Lebenspraxis
(praxis of life). The problem is that this achievement
draws up short from a cost-beneft analysis: On the
basis of Internet art it becomes apparent that this
overcoming yields less than does a maintenance of a
notion of art as a specifc area.
34
Of course, Internet art is not scarce and materially
unique, and it also has the same habitat, i.e. the In-
ternet, as production and distribution environment
as all other websites; it might not immediately be
1 5 8
A R T I C L E
identifable as art, but what is worse is that it is out of
control of the traditional value-ascribing mechanisms
of the art world. No wonder that many art critics have
come up with attempts to dismiss the art status of
such projects: they render these critics obsolete. Graw
abuses the historical avant-garde(s) only for the pur-
pose of discrediting that new art form which, as it
turned out, hardly deserved such a comparison in the
frst place. Indeed, many Internet artists were all too
keen to attract art-historical judgment quite the op-
posite of fundamentally challenging the art world.
Everyday Life of (Capitalist) Social Media
The substantial degree to which social media currently
infuence everyday communication is obvious. The
analog sender/receiver model is about to be replaced
by a large-scale model of distributed creation and
dissemination of information one of the central uto-
pias related to digital networked media. A closer look,
however, reveals that this media shift is far from a ful-
fllment of the socio-political utopias of equal creation
and dissemination of information as imagined by early
media theorists. While social networked knowledge
and agency, interaction and exchange, are central to
networked society, they are concurrently the basis of
a new economy, which is based on the appropriation
of this collectively yielded work. Aggressive privati-
zation destroys the preconditions of knowledge and
culture,
35
as Felix Stalder puts it, who considers the
Internet to have been a laboratory for social innova-
tion during the last 20 years, but also points out that
the initial openness of the Internet is currently at risk.
Early Internet art projects such as The Thing may
have anticipated contemporary forms of exchange
and community-building. However, their main purpose
was not to generate proft, but rather to think up and
experiment with new forms of technology-based
anti-institutional and emancipatory organization on
a small scale, of course. In that sense, the everyday so-
cio-technical living conditions we are all experiencing
today are not to be mistaken as the fulfllment of any
avant-garde aspirations, a vision that Dieter Daniels
and Gunther Reisinger put forward: The strands of
utopian thinking of the 1920s and the 1960s held that
art anticipates the future and that art transforms, or is
transformed, into life; the history of Internet-based art
would seem to indicate that it fulflled both of these
utopias.
36
Speculating about the fact that Internet
art resisted commodifcation and, to its credit in their
view, did not (just) become another art genre defned
by its technology, their notion of a fulfllment that
has expanded from a small, specialized art feld into
everyday life is, nonetheless, just as exaggerated as
Graws speculations. It is worth asking, however, what
are the dynamics between THE THING Hamburgs
symbolic status as an art project which were not
immediately obvious to anybody and the real-life ef-
fects it spawned.
Art without Identity
In a recently published essay refecting the art and
gentrifcation that has occurred under the auspice of
IBA Hamburg, historian Peter Birke dwells on a con-
fession made by the artist collective Ligna: that they
were incapable of providing efective tools for critique
within the IBA project they accepted a commission
from. Birke echoes their conclusion that the opera-
tion within a context of institutional funding made
any critique inoperative, a hypothesis confrmed by
his conclusion that no single art project succeeded
in gaining critical traction on IBA.
37
Implicitly, Birke
hereby shares Peter Brgers conception of the neo-
avantgarde (art after the historical avant-garde) be-
ing bound in bourgeois society and having no efect
on it at all. He concludes, sweepingly: that which is
striking in all the projects mentioned is that there are
hardly any works that directly thematize the process
of gentrifcation. That applies both to the IBA-spon-
sored projects as it does to all other projects.
38
In
1 5 9
A R T I C L E
the course of this very study, however, Birke quotes
the THE THING Hamburg four times, citing various
debates and statements made on the platform. Birke
has, interestingly, proved the relevance of THE THING
Hamburg as a tool of critique, while leaving uncon-
sidered the possibility that this platform is itself to be
considered as art (one that was even fnanced institu-
tionally). An artwork that fostered debate on and still
serves as an archive for the topic that Birke himself is
writing about three years later.
39
More than an anecdote, this example is an indicator
that THE THING Hamburg was less an incarnation of
neo-avant-garde art practice than it is an embodiment
of what Jean-Claude Moineau has called art without
identity. For Moineau, it is an art (without an oeuvre)
that, in the manner of so-called activist practices,
seeks to be active, to act for real even if modestly
on and within the world instead of obstinately seek-
ing to prettify it or wanting to re-enchant it.
40
Just
as the challenges of the 1920s deeply modifed art-
reception, so too does art without identity. It solicits
a non-artistic reception, in the ignorance of its artistic
identity, including its identity of art without identity.
41
It seems that art is often inefective precisely because
its identifcation as art prevents people from taking
the tools it ofers seriously or from adapting them
to everyday life. One could, thus, claim that it is not
necessarily important to present art in an identifable
form although, in principle, it should be possible to
fnd out about the roots of a practice. On the other
hand, it seems immensely important to defne and
legitimize this art without identity as an extension of
artistic practice, or even as a possible vector of where
art could go.
CONCLUSION
THE THING Hamburg set out to build an independent
space, in which artists could experiment with new
forms of organization and dissemination of their work,
refect on their working conditions and the pecking
order of the art world, expand the notion of what
they wanted art to be, and test how they could criti-
cally relate to their environment and collaborate with
people from other felds. This space was virtual, but as
it related to a specifc local environment, it also func-
tioned as a laboratory whose experiments reached out
into the real life of the city and afected it and vice
versa. It was based on collective production, aiming at
involving as many people as possible including non-art
publics and, thus, it was a site for political learning.
Collectivity, however, did not mean increasing ones
number of friends. The platform was rather guided
by the conviction that to quote Hamburg artist Be-
ate Katz good art cannot be produced when every-
one has to always stay friends.
42
THE THING Ham-
burg steered towards controversy, arguments, and
dispute and on more than a few occasions even
making enemies. In this sense, the project contrib-
uted to a culture of contention, which is the basis of
any democratization process; something that is hard
to fnd in the art world. From this perspective, it is
perhaps THE THING Hamburgs greatest success that
in a relatively short period of time it consolidated the
various critical currents in the city and rendered them
visible.
Running the project on public funding was a condition
that allowed us not only to be in control of our own
infrastructure, but also to pay and get paid for work
and content related to the platform. While this put us
in a permanent confict (and contradiction) with the
authorities who assigned the funding, we considered
the ongoing negotiations as part of our aim to expand
the notion of what is accepted as art.
1 6 0
A R T I C L E
The wide range of practices that are not compatible
with the business-as-usual of exhibitions, the gallery-
driven exchange of communication and money, and
the discursive power of art theorists and museum ex-
perts can only operate outside or in confict with the
system; there are no spaces within the traditional art
world in which timely applications of art can be nego-
tiated. Therefore, it is even more important to look for
and create spaces in which this can happen.
Although THE THING Hamburg was an experiment
based on networked technologies, its focus was not
on the development of technology as it was for the
early The Thing, for example. We rather used the
tools available to enable new social relations ones
that foster critical speech and thus renewing art by
bringing together technology, art and politics. Howev-
er, there were limits set to our experiment of building
infrastructure as art; it seems that it had to cease ex-
actly because it was successful, because it started to
have a social impact, with this leading to the eventual
revocation of its art status.
1. Both projects remained intact during the existence of the
THE THING Hamburg and are fully functional until today.
In April 2013 the mailing list [echo] counts over 1,500
subscribers. Since its establishment, in 2003, by Cornelia
Sollfrank, the list has played an important role in dissemi-
nating independent information regarding art and cultural
policy, thus, establishing a context for sharing information
and fostering critical discussion.
2. In 2000, the local magazine Szene Hamburg ran profles of
nine of these new projects.
3. In 2007, Jean-Claude Moineau provided dismissive epi-
taphs for both: see J.-C. Moineau, Contre lart global, pour
un art sans identit (Alfortville: ere, 2007), 14-16. This sec-
tion is also available in English translation at the website of
THE THING Hamburg, Excerpts from Contre lart global
pour un art sans identit, November 13, 2008, http://
www.thing-hamburg.de/index.php?id=919 (accessed:
September 24, 2013).
4. See Jrn Mller and Nora Sdun, eds., Wir Sind Woanders:
Reader (Hamburg: Textem, 2007); and Anabela Ange-
lovska, Michel Chevalier, and Nora Sdun, eds., Wir Sind
Woanders #2: Reader (Hamburg: Textem, 2009).
5. The museum was a public-private partnership with right-
wing publisher Peter Tamm, whose maritime collection
indicated less any historic or scientifc method than a
desire to exhibit Nazi devotionalia. The city contributed 30
million EUR and a historic building to the deal.
6. Inke Arns, Netzkulturen (Hamburg: Europische Verlag-
sanstalt, 2002), 76.
7. Founding date was August 2006; founding members
included Cornelia Sollfrank, Ulrich Mattes, Herbert Hoss-
mann, Rahel Pufert, Malte Steiner, Hans-Christian Dany,
Ulrike Bergermann, Ole Frahm and Barbara Thoens. The
club rules are available in German only at the website of
THE THING Hamburg: http://www.thing-hamburg.de/
fleadmin/redaktion/Zusammen/Satzung-TheThingHam-
burg.pdf (accessed September 24, 2013).
8. Wolfgang Staehle in an interview with Dieter Daniels, Net
Pioneers 1.0, video, 10:26, http://www.netzpioniere.at/
(accessed September 24, 2013).
1 6 1
A R T I C L E
New York: Sternberg, 2010); Christiane Paul, Digital Art
(London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2008), 111; Edward A.
Shanken, Art and Electronic Media (London: Phaidon,
2009), 50; Mark Tribe and Reena Jana, eds., New Media
Art (Cologne: Taschen, 2006), 22-23.
16. The operators of the platform were very aware of the fact
that people with no Internet access were excluded from
that discussion and, in that sense, the notion of public was
limited.
17. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Public Sphere and Expe-
rience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletar-
ian Public Sphere (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1993), 91.
18. El Lissitzky, Ideological Superstructure, in Programs
and Manifestoes of 20th-Century Architecture, ed. Ulrich
Conrads, trans. Michael Bullock (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1971), 121.
19. Editors of Iskusstvo v proizvodstve (1920), quoted by
Christina Lodder, Constructivism and Productivism in the
1920s, in Richard Andrews and Milena Kalinovska, Art into
Life: Russian Contructivism 1914-1932 (New York: Rizzoli,
1990), 100.
20. Rahel Pufert, Die Kunst und ihre Folgen. Zur Genealogie
der Kunstvermittlung (Bielefeld: transcript, 2013), 90.
21. Marx and Engels repeatedly took the utopian socialists to
task, seeing them as too willing to bracket the necessity
of a revolutionary proletarian struggle, and instead all
too often appeal to the purses and the feelings of the
bourgeois [Karl Marx and Frederick Engels The Commu-
nist Manifesto, in Karl Marx Selected Writings, ed. David
McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 269].
Instead of taking dreams for reality, opponents of capital-
ist society were urged to fnd ways to turn its dynamics
against itself and thereby accelerate its collapse. Engels
later developed the term scientifc socialism, an approach
founded on fully comprehending historical conditions for
the cause of proletarian revolution.
22. Hal Foster, Some Uses and Abuses of Russian Construc-
tivism, in Art Into Life: Russian Constructivism 1914-1932
(New York: Rizzoli, 1990), 244.
9. For a more detailed history of The Thing also see the
article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_
Thing_(art_project) (accessed May 9, 2013).
10. The thesis that The Thing underwent a transformation
from the production of pure sociality to product- or com-
modity like substitutes surrendering the stage to a more
technologically attention-seeking work concept, is also
held by Marc Ries, Rendez-vous: the Disscovery of pure
Sociality in early net art, in Net Pioneers 1.0: Contextual-
izing Early Net-Based Art, ed. Dieter Daniels and Gunther
Reisinger (Berlin and New York: Sternberg, 2010), 78.
11. The Thing (art project), Wikipedia, last modifed Febru-
ary 20, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_
(art_project).
12. For example in 1995 at the festival ars electronica, see
Karl Gerbel and Peter Weibel, eds., Mythos Information:
Welcome to the Wired World (Wien/New York: Springer,
1995), 313-317.
13. Selection of interviews mit Wolfgang Staehle: Jan Avgikos,
Lacan Dot Com, http://www.lacan.com/frameVIII15.htm
(accessed June 3, 2013); Dike Blair,His Thingness, the
website of The Thing, http://www.thing.net/~lilyvac/writ-
ing34.html (accessed September 24, 2013); Dieter Daniels,
netpioneers.info, http://www.netzpioniere.at/ (accessed
September 24, 2013); Tilman Baumgaertel, Telepolis web-
site, Website-Auktion: The Thing unter dem Hammer,
May 12, 1999, http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/3/3372/1.
html (accessed September 24, 2013); Klaus Ottmann, the
website of Journal of Contemporary Art website, http://
www.jca-online.com/staehle.html (accessed September
24, 2013); Baumgrtel, Tilman: net.art Materialien zur
Kunst im Internet (Nrnberg: Verlag fr moderne Kunst,
1999), 56-63.
14. The Thing has been generously supported by the Nathan
Cummings Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the
National Endowment for the Arts. The website of The
Thing, http://post.thing.net/about (accessed September
24, 2013).
15. Dieter Daniels and Gunther Reisinger, eds., Net Pioneers
1.0: Contextualizing Early Net-Based Art (Berlin and
1 6 2
A R T I C L E
23. Ibid., 80.
24. Gene Youngblood, Metadesign, Kunstforum International
98 (1989): 79.
25. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Constituents of a Theory of
the Media, New Left Review 64 (1970): 13-26.
26. Ibid., 22-23.
27. Ibid., 18.
28. Andrew Menard and Ron White, Media Madness, The Fox
2, (1975): 105.
29. Ibid., 108.
30. Ibid., 114.
31. Isabelle Graw, Man sieht, was man sieht. Anmerkungen
zur Netzkunst, Texte zur Kunst 32 (1998): 18. (Authors
translation.)
32. Ibid., 23.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 31. Much like Isabelle Graw, Nicolas Bourriaud holds
that the institutional space of galleries or contemporary
art centers is a prerequisite for art and its afliated notion
of the formal construction of time-spaces. N. Bourriaud,
Esthetique relationelle (Dijon: Les Presses du Rel, 1998),
86-87. (Authors translation.) He is even more dismissive
than Graw of what he terms those pseudo artists who
smack on their hard-drives the schemes of thought of the
past, judging that IT tools have hardly made any contribu-
tion to actual art. N. Bourriaud, Formes de Vie (Paris:
Denoel, 1999), 184. (Authors translation.)
35. Felix Stalder, Digitale Solidaritt Keynote, the website
of Netz Fr Alle, September 15, 2012, http://netzfueralle.
blog.rosalux.de/2012/09/15/felix-stalder-digitale-solidari-
tat-keynote/ (accessed June 2, 2013).
36. Dieter Daniels and Gunther Reisinger, net pioneers 1.0
(Berlin and New York: Sternberg Press, 2009), 6.
37. Peter Birke, Himmelfahrtskommando Kunst und Gentri-
fzierung auf den Elbinseln, in Arbeitskreis Umstruktu-
rierung Wilhelmsburg, ed. Unternehmen Wilhelmsburg,
Stadtentwicklung im Zeichen von IBA und igs (Berlin:
assoziation A, 2013), 75-76.
38. Ibid., 82. (Authors translation.)
39. THE THING Hamburg had even solicited a statement
form Birke about art and gentrifcation in 2009. See
Peter Birke, Ein Muster, ein Monster und drei Illusionen
Knstlerische Arbeit in der lokalen Klassengesellschaft,
the website of THE THING Hamburg, n.d., http://www.
thing-hamburg.de/index.php?id=938#c1328 (accessed
June 3, 2013).
40. Jean-Claude Moineau, Contre lart global pour un art sans
identit (Alfort: Ere, 2007), 132.
41. Ibid., 134. (Authors translation.)
42. The quote stems from a sticker produced by Beate Katz
that has been reproduced and referred to in Rahel Pufert,
Die Kunst der vielen Unbekannten/The Art of the Many
Unknown, in Art in Public Space Styra: Projects 2010, ed.
Werner Fenz, Evelyn Kraus and Birgit Kulturer (Vienna and
New York: Springer, 2012), 52-61.
1 6 3
A R T I C L E
INTRODUCTION
According to Paolo Virno post-fordism is the era
of the communism of the capital.
1
This notion,
which may sound as a political (pseudo-) paradox of
our times, describing a capital based on communality,
is not a new form of utopia however; it rather implies
a new kind of accumulation and creation of value
based on the expropriation, or even cannibalism as
Matteo Pasquinelli would put it, of the common.
2
It
refers to the enclosure and capitalization of knowl-
edge, information, afects, codes and social relations
that constitute todays artifcial common wealth.
3

Produced by the multitude and formed in the con-
temporary metropoleis as well as in the networked
spaces of an interconnected world, the common is
multitudes strength and its Achilles heel at the same
time. Being abundant, dynamic and difused, it can
only be understood as a derivative of a life in excess,
a life open to appropriation and control. The com-
munism of the capital can, therefore, be read as an
Artists as the
New Producers
of the
Common (?)
PhD Candidate
Department of Communication & Media Studies
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
daphne.dragona@gmail.com
by
Daphne Dragona
1 6 4
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
This paper examines a new form of creativity based on the commons, us-
ing as a starting point two projects commissioned by the National Museum
of Contemporary Art of Athens in 2010. It aims to defne the features of
this emerging creativity, to locate the challenges it brings to the art world
and to discuss its potentiality to infuence change in a wider sociopolitical
scale. It introduces artists as a new generation of commoners and it exam-
ines the role they can play not only by producing the new artifcial common
which can be based on knowledge, information and afects but, also, by
introducing new ethics and values.
oxymoron expressing certain controversies and ques-
tionings arising in relation to todays common wealth.
Can multitudes capacities to think, to produce and
exchange information and knowledge escape capital-
ization? How can this potentiality be reclaimed and by
whom? How can a change based on this potentiality
derive from within?
In the networked era, and especially in the last decade,
a great number of artists in collaboration with theo-
rists, programmers and cultural workers have started
developing their work and research on the basis of the
common. Providing tools, platforms and modes of col-
laboration, artists today are contributing to the forma-
tion of a contemporary common wealth, which points
towards a new defnition of the notion. The commons
today are not only what we inherit from the previous
generations and safeguard for the next ones to come,
but also what we produce together and share; for this
reason, this emerging creativity lies at the very heart
of the commons. Taking into consideration the grow-
ing examples of artistic initiatives and projects being
currently developed, a double-sided observation will
be attempted in this paper: the focus will be not only
on how forms of art encourage a shift of mentality
towards the commons, but also on how the art world
itself changes through this process.
The starting point for this positioning will be two proj-
ects initiated and curated by myself and organized by
the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Athens
in 2010, the year when Greece started losing its f-
nancial independence. Seeking for alternatives in the
impasse of late capitalism, Esse, Nosse, Posse: Com-
mon Wealth for Common People and Mapping the
Commons, Athens aimed to examine and locate the
commons in their two main reservoirs, the internet
and the city.
1 6 5
A R T I C L E
ESSE, NOSSE, POSSE: COMMON WEALTH FOR
COMMON PEOPLE
Esse, Nosse, Posse: Common Wealth for Common
People is an online platform that was launched in April
2010, as an open comment to the growing common
wealth of the connected society.
4
The title is a ref-
erence to the Latin triad I am, I know, I can, which
having constituted the core of Renaissances human-
ism, today interestingly reappears in order to describe
the features of the contemporary multitude;
5
what
is important is not only the knowledge itself but also
the potentiality for its production and the formation of
ones subjectivity through it, at the same time. Taking
this into account, the online platform aimed to refer,
through a rich variety of artistic creation, to the mo-
tivations and capacities that form the new common
wealth and to discuss the controversies and risks lying
behind it. To achieve this, Esse, Nosse, Posse: Com-
mon Wealth for Common People hosted: (a) projects
critically commenting on the new forms of networked
wealth and (b) initiatives and open platforms based on
free and open software, which encourage exchange
and collaboration. Selected texts were also uploaded
as resources to provide a context for further discus-
sion.
The issues that were particularly discussed through
the projects were the following: the passage from the
fordist to the post-fordist society and the transforma-
tion of labor (First of May by Marcelo Exposito), the
immeasurability of the immaterial work conducted in
the networks (User Labor by Burak Arikan and Engin
Erdogan, the new forms of online labor based on vir-
tual sweatshops (Invisible Threads by Jef Crouse and
Stephanie Rothenberg, Gold Farmers by Ge Jin aka
Jingle), or on crowdsourcing (Bicycle Built for 2,000
by Aaron Koblin and Daniel Massey, re_potemkin by
.-_-.), the necessity for a free exchange of knowledge
(Free Culture Game by Molleindustria, and Perpetual
Wall by Dimitris Papadatos), the interweaved charac-
Figure 1. Esse, Nosse, Posse, Common Wealth for Common
People, 2010, screenshot from the online platform www.emst.
gr/commonwealth/. National Museum of Contemporary
Art, Athens, 2010. Used with permission.
1 6 6
A R T I C L E
ter of the networked economy (All over by Samuel Bi-
anchini), the imbalance of the information society (In-
ternet art for poor people by Carlos Katastrofsky, and
MAICgregator by Nicholas Knouf), and the value of
attention economy (Falling Times by Michael Bielicky
and Kamila B. Richter).
While the above works were discussing the capitalist
character of the networked condition, the initiatives
and platforms that were introduced invited users to
join eforts of collaboration, co-production and shar-
ing of knowledge. Diferent collectives with signifcant
work towards this direction were listed with repre-
sentative projects. Such cases were: the Zero Dollar
Laptop by Furtherfeld, which encourages people
to recycle their old laptops by ofering them to the
homeless; the Bank of Common Knowledge by Plato-
niq, which proposes a platform of exchanging services;
and Mediasheds Gearbox, which invites people to
communicate their low cost products through their
database. At the same time, projects with a more spe-
cifc orientation and goal were also included. Such ini-
tiatives were the P2P art platform of Anders Weberg,
which invites people to participate in the creation of
an ephemeral common artwork based on a peer-to-
peer logic, or Brett Gaylor s Open Source cinema that
invites users to upload and remix their videos online.
The Artzilla team has also been included for its web
browsers modifcations and subversions that support
freedom and openness, along with the Shiftspace
group who, in a similar approach, propose the place-
ment of open source layers above any website. Ad-
ditionally, the Feral Trade network by Kate Rich was
also presented as well as the platform of the Telekom-
munisten network, which ofers tools and services that
can be owned by the workers themselves.
A new utopia or a breakthrough in the networked
world? This body of projects is only part of an emerg-
ing creativity found on the web, which is based on the
idea of the commons and is driven by the will to re-
orientate users capabilities and disposal towards open,
liberated environments. The selected works were
presented as distinctive examples of a new stance
that creators today take. Escaping capitalization, con-
trol and appropriation, such eforts propose to users a
diferent mode of engagement and production in the
networks. What lies behind them is a call, an urge for
a new system of values that can empower the grow-
ing common wealth and can be found not only on the
Internet, but also within life itself and, especially, in its
most lively terrain: the contemporary metropolis.
MAPPING THE COMMONS, ATHENS
Mapping the Commons, Athens was a cartography
project that followed Esse, Nosse, Posse: Common
Wealth for Common People and aimed to trace the
commons in the urban environment, examining their
role in times of crisis.
6
Conceptualized by the Span-
ish collective Hackitectura and commissioned by the
National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, the
project studied the Athenian metropolis at a particular
historical conjuncture. At the end of 2010, when the
project took place, six months had passed following
the agreement of the frst memorandum with the IMF
and the EU and the implementation of the frst auster-
ity measures; it was the period that the Greek capital,
confronted as the beta city of crisis, seemed vulner-
able and dynamic at the same time.
Formulated by Hackitectura and myself as a workshop,
Mapping the Commons, Athens was based on the
collaboration among post-graduate students and re-
searchers from the School of Architecture of the Na-
tional Technical University of Athens, the Department
of Communication and Media Studies of the National
and Kapodistrian University of Athens and from the
feld of Social and Political Sciences of Panteion Uni-
1 6 7
A R T I C L E
versity. Theorists, activists and artists with a special in-
terest in the feld of the commons were also involved.
The scope of the workshop for this interdisciplinary
team was infuenced by the Italian school of thought
and, especially, by the analysis of Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri about the relationship of the commons
with the contemporary metropolis. Considering the
city as the source of the common and the recectable
into which it fows, a cartography of the commons for
the city of Athens was attempted in order to highlight
the citys living dynamic and its possibility for change.
7

Participants were therefore invited to turn to multi-
tudes afects, languages, social relationships, knowl-
edge and interests in order to understand, locate and
emphasize commons, which to a great extent were
immaterial and abundant, fuid and unstable.
During a period of eight days, the team succeeded in
producing a documentation of the urban commons, as
part of a research online map, and a number of short
video case studies, as part of a video based cartogra-
phy depicting representative commons found in the
city. Under the four categories of natural commons,
public spaces as commons, cultural commons and dig-
ital commons, diferent initiatives were mapped, based
on the notions of collectivity, sociability, collaboration
and sharing. The documentation presented online
is rich and, to a great extent, refects the emerg-
ing and vivid potentiality of the period. Some of the
most characteristic examples have been entries for
self-managed parks, digital platforms for exchange of
services and independent free wireless network pro-
viders while others focused on the fundamental com-
mons of language and memory or turned to distinctive
elements of the Athenian cityscape, such as the stray
animals and the grafti.
The maps produced are still on view online and remain
open to further contributions to anyone interested.
Seen by their creators as databases of exchange, the
aim was and still is to inform the inhabitants about
spaces where communities of commoners are formed
and to empower the citys ground for social encoun-
ters and experiences. The outcomes of the workshop
as well as the progress of the work were documented
on a blog and were also presented in the form of an
installation at the National Museum of Contemporary
Art. The most important outcome of the project how-
ever, as identifed by the participants themselves, was
the realization that a new common was produced
during the days of the workshop. And this was the
knowledge which was collectively produced by the
community of creators, students, artists and theorists,
while also building a common experience and vision.
Figure 2. Mapping the Commons, Athens, Hackitectura, 2010. Snapshots from the workshop at the National Museum of Con-
temporary Art, Athens. Photographer: Demitri Delinikolas. Used with permission via the Creative Commons Attribution Non-
Commercial-Sharealine 4.0 International license.
1 6 8
A R T I C L E
LOCATING THE FEATURES OF A COMMONS-BASED
ART
Taking the works referenced above as examples, one
can interestingly locate similarities that assist in rec-
ognizing the features of a new form of creativity that
emerges on the basis of the commons. Although the
works are diverse and might be categorized as net art,
game art, software art or as documentaries, interven-
tions, databases and maps, at the same time, they all
share a kind of openness and collectiveness that op-
poses previous ways of perception and evaluation in
the contemporary art or new media art scene.
In an attempt to locate and summarize some of the
main features of this creativity, the following points
could be mentioned as a start:
The works, in their wide variety, do not constitute
art objects or art installations; they present no
certain aura and claim no art market value.
They, accordingly, do not aim for the awe of the
spectator; they do not impress with their aesthet-
ics, techniques or complexity.
They claim no authorship and no uniqueness; their
power is in their distribution and difusion.
They aim to be direct, understandable and reach-
able.
They address the citizens and users of the cities
and the networks and not specifcally the art audi-
ence, the art institutions or the art collectors.
They develop, use and share tools of an open and
free culture.
They are works that, as Ruth Catlow and Marc
Garrett have put it, are led by artistic sensibilities
that might incorporate utilitarian or theoretical
concerns, but are not governed by them.
8
The aim of this growing entity of works ultimately
seems to be no other than to socialize knowledge.
They are works that, as Pasquinelli expressed it,
belong to the age of social reproducibility,
9
which
follows Benjamins age of mechanical reproduc-
tion, but goes beyond the unlimited reproduction
of artistic objects and the loss of the aura of the
prototype. Therefore, the challenge for the works of
art now seems to be a new one: it is the challenge for
a unicity without aura, as Virno put it, a non-original
unicity, that is, which originates in the anonymous
and impersonal character of the technical reproduc-
tion. Arts new aim, as he explains, is no other but to
fnd the relation between the highest possible degree
of communality or generality and the highest possible
degree of singularity, the balance between the most
general and the most particular.
10
Works such as
the ones mentioned seem to take a step towards this
direction as they refer to the common wealth pro-
duced by the general intellect of the many, on the one
hand, and underline the importance of the contribu-
tion of each singularity, on the other. They are works
that overcome arts artness, uniqueness and non-
utility, while opening up to spaces of communication,
exchange and critical autonomy, in an attempt to fnd
a new balance between collectivity and individuality.
This realization, however, leads to the need for a sec-
ond defnition: who are the creators that seek this new
balance expressed as a unicity without aura for their
works and why?
IDENTIFYING THE CREATORS OF COMMONS-BASED
ART AS THE NEW COMMONERS
When discussing works based on collectivity, open-
ness and lack of authorship, it readily becomes clear
that we mostly refer to creators who are leaving
the role of the artist and move towards the one of
the initiator, the collaborator, the afective worker,
the networked creator, or the hacktivist. Often, the
creators might not even be artists. They are program-
mers, architects, lawyers, social scientists or generally
people from diferent felds who see creativity as an
1 6 9
A R T I C L E
invaluable tool of expression, communication and
resistance. This is a new generation of creators that
wishes to merge with the audience, blurring preexist-
ing boundaries and hierarchies. Their knowledge
might have been gained through collaboration and
information exchange in hackerspaces or on online
platforms and what they have in common is a form of
virtuosity based on social competences and afective
potentialities which shapes their virtual and urban
interactions. But this virtuosity is an element standing
far from notions related to arts unique and excep-
tional character. For Virno, who assigns to virtuosity a
central role within the post-fordist way of being, each
and every individual is, at the same time, the artist
performing the action and the audience: he performs
individually while he assists the others performanc-
es.
11
This is an element that can be easily recog-
nized in the richness of communication found on the
Internet today as well as in multiplicity and polyphony
of independent initiatives happening in todays
metropoleis. Creators working on the commons are
not the focal point of interest; they do not wish to be.
But what does such a realization mean? Do artists still
have a role to play, or do they step back in the name
of a new form of creativity, which by being based on
the commons needs to be rhizomatic and radical?
At this point, it is important to recall some of the
fundamental ideas of common wealth, on the one
hand, and analyze the actions of the creators being
discussed, on the other. There is no commons with-
out commoning Peter Linebaugh wrote, highlighting
the fact that besides the common goods, the social
practices of a community are also needed.
12
There
is no commons without the commoners; these are
the individuals who not only produce and share the
commons, but also establish relationships of solidarity
between them and fght in order to reclaim the com-
mons that have been enclosed.
13
While Linebaugh
refers to the Magna Carta, the commoners of the
medieval England and the land enclosures, one could,
interestingly, juxtapose this sequence to the inhabit-
ants of todays cities and networks with the enclosure
of the common wealth produced. This point is also
highlighted by Hardt and Negri in their Declaration,
where they specifcally discuss the notion of the com-
moner in the past and the present:
The commoner is thus an ordinary person who
accomplishes an extraordinary task: opening
private property to the access and enjoyment
of all; transforming public property controlled
by state authority into the common; and in each
case discovering mechanisms to manage, develop,
and sustain common wealth through democratic
participation.
14
And if the task of the commoner in the past was to
provide access to the natural resources for all, then
today as they explain, this task is being transformed
to creating a means for the free exchange of ideas,
images, codes, music and information.
15

The making of the common is, therefore, a process
with an afective character and, as it will be argued in
this last part of the paper, it is exactly what lies behind
the aforementioned works and connects them. In
this respect, artists may be considered as the new
commoners who, through their actions and initiatives,
turn to users and citizens potentialities in order to
empower them and shape new forms of communities
based on the ideas of understanding, collaborating
and sharing.
The following acts of commoning could be men-
tioned in support of this argument:
a. The formation of new common spaces.
Either online or in the urban environment, the ter-
ritories that the artists create are new spaces of social
17 0
A R T I C L E
encounters. The online collaborative platforms, the
databases of exchange as well as the workshops
and the events being organized aim at ofering to
users and inhabitants spaces beyond exploitation and
control. In an era of an increasing capitalization for
both the public and the online space, they constitute
counter-proposals for spaces where initiatives can be
freely taken and actions can be collectively planned
following solely the participants needs and desires
b. The provision and empowerment of tools.
Creators assist users and citizens today by encourag-
ing the use of the tools that they already have in their
possession. These tools respond to the need to learn
to work with language, codes, ideas and afects, while
escaping the appropriation of these elements by third
parties on the web and in the city environment. As
Holmes notes, artists, writers, actors, painters, audio-
visual producers, designers, musicians, philosophers,
architects, all have had to fnd ways to refuse to let
their subjectivity become the mere medium of capital
fows, a stepping-stone between money and more
money.
16
This afectivism of art, as Holmes names
it, connects art to activism and afection and is needed
to empower multitudes creativity and resistance.
17
c. The emergence of a new ethos.
For the production of the common, a leap is required
from the individual to the collective, as Hardt and
Negri mention. Being with is no longer enough; a
doing with is necessary, which can spread and teach
people how to make decisions.
18
This doing with
lies behind most initiatives taken by creators working
on the commons today, with projects that are based
on open processes of collaboration and sharing. Cat-
low and Garrett have specifcally called this new logic
as the new ethos of DIWO (Do it with others), which
follows the DIY culture of the early net art period. This
ethos does not only resist the elitist values and infra-
structures of the mainstream art world by developing
a new art context; it also deals critically with issues
of monitoring and control of the networked world.
19

Especially for the creators working with free and open
software, the fact that the work is complemented by
a set of pedagogical approaches associated with the
enabling of production by others is an integral part of
their philosophy.
20
d. The creation of a new system of values.
Finally and hopefully, through such a process, a new
system and a new theory of value can emerge, which
may express the desire of the networked multitude
for a connectivity liberated from the exclusions of
neoliberal capitalism. As life is in excess today, as work
and life have become one, creativity is called to bring
a new balance based on the ideas of sharing and co-
producing. This is clearly stated in the Telekommunist
Manifesto of Dmytri Kleiner, where he specifcally
refers to the goal of a free society without economic
classes, where people produce and share as equals, a
society with no property and no state, that produces
not for proft, but for social value.
21

Utopian while they might seem, the aforementioned
actions that are based on the commons do aim
to build the ground for radical social and political
changes. New tactics and strategies can be found
through users and citizens participation in these
creative and technical processes. Possibly, in this way,
and as Bauwens claims, a new transnational culture
can be born with communities based on a diferent set
of values and on a discourse, which starting from the
commons will respond to the urge for sustainability
and solidarity.
22
RECLAIMING A NEW FORM OF EXODUS
Open, participatory and rhizomatic, the new form of
art emerging based on the commons seems to have
17 1
A R T I C L E
some of the features that media art had not reached
before. Facilitating communication, collaboration and
sharing and making primary the potentiality that users
and citizens themselves have, it encourages a socio-
economic transformation that is possible really only
when the many are involved.
Although this new form of creation could be related to
earlier movements in the history of art such as Dada
for its negation towards artists authorship, Situation-
ism for its refusal to copyrights, and the movements of
institutional critique for challenging museums and the
art markets role, the creativity based on the commons
still presents an interesting diferentiation. Commons-
based art is not necessarily anti-art or anti-institution-
al. On the contrary, it introduces a new stance for the
art world. Museums structures and hierarchies are not
rejected or ignored; they rather are addressed with
proposals for new forms of collaboration that need to
stay beyond their control. A new condition of creativ-
ity is thus proposed, which based on openness and
the difusion of information, it surpasses constraints of
ownership and authorship, something that for institu-
tions might have been considered impossible before.
Facing the impasse of late capitalism, artists as com-
moners seem to ultimately aim for a new form of
exodus. This exodus, however, can only come from
within and by expressing a collective will for a change.
As Negri puts it, the artistic paradox consists today
exactly in the wish to produce the world (bodies,
movements) diferently and yet from within a world
which admits of no other world than the one which
actually exists, and which knows that the outside to be
constructed can only be the other within an absolute
insidedness.
23
The idea is, therefore, to pursue a
line of fight while staying right here, by transform-
ing the relations of production and mode of social
organization under which we live.
24
For this reason,
the eforts of the creators to reach out and commu-
nicate ideas and to overcome arts artness assist
in the development of a multitude of commoners
that can achieve direct experiences of cooperation.
This is a value that is worth not only noting but also
fghting for.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research has been co-fnanced by the European
Union (European Social Fund ESF) and Greek national
funds through the Operational Program Education and
Lifelong Learning of the National Strategic Reference
Framework (NSRF) - Research Funding Program: Hera-
cleitus II. Investing in knowledge society through the Euro-
pean Social Fund.
17 2
A R T I C L E
1. Paolo Virno, The Grammar of the Multitude (Los Angeles
and New York: Semiotext(e), 2004), 110.
2. Matteo Pasquinelli, Communism of Capital and Cannibal-
ism of the Common: Notes on the Art of Over-Identif-
cation, Matteo Pasquinellis website, commissioned by
Abandon Normal Devices festival Manchester, October
2010, http://matteopasquinelli.com/pod2/ (accessed July
1, 2011).
bridge, MA: Belknap Harvard, 2009), 250.
4. The website of EMST, http://www.emst.gr/common-
wealth/ (accessed February 10, 2012).
5. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2000), 407.
6. Realized in the framework of EMST Commissions 2010,
with the support of Bombay Sapphire. Workshop between
December 1-8, exhibition between December 9, 2010 -
January 23, 2011. See the website of EMST, http://www.
emst.gr/mappingthecommons/index.html and the website
of Mapping the Commons, http://mappingthecommons.
net/ (accessed July 1, 2011). Pablo de Soto continued the
work with workshops in other cities. Information can be
found at http://mappingthecommons.net.
7. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, 154.
8. Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, DIWO Do it with others
No ecology without social ecology, in Remediating the
Social, ed. Simon Biggs (Bergen: ELMCIP, 2012), 71.
9. Matteo Pasquinelli, Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Com-
mons (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008), 20.
10. Paolo Virno, The Dismeasure of Art, Open 17, http://
www.skor.nl/article-4178-nl.html?lang=en (accessed July
10, 2011).
11. Paolo Virno, The Soviets of the Multitude: On Collectivity
and Collective Work, interview by Alexei Penzin, Media-
tions 25, no. 1 (Fall 2010), http://www.mediationsjournal.
org/articles/the-soviets-of-the-multitude (accessed
September 5, 2011).
12. Louis Wolscher, The Meaning of the Commons, An
Architektur 23 (2010): 4-5.
13. Ibid.
14. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Next: Event of the
Commoner, in Declaration (New York: Melanie Jackson
Agency, 2012), kindle edition.
15. Ibid.
16. Brian Holmes, Recapturing Subversion: Twenty Twisted
Rules of the Culture Game, Brian Holmes website titled
as Deriva Continental (Continental Drift), May 18, 2008,
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/recaptur-
ing-subversion/ (accessed January 1, 2012).
17. Brian Holmes, The Afectivist Manifesto, Artistic Critique
in the 21st Century, Brian Holmes website, http://brian-
holmes.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/the-afectivist-mani-
festo/ (accessed January 1, 2012).
18. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Declaration.
19. Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, DIWO Do It with Oth-
ers No Ecology without Social Ecology, in Simon Biggs,
Remediating the Social, 73.
20. Paula Roush, Towards a Free/ Libre/ Open/ Source/
University: Shifts in Contemporary Models of Art
and Education, the website of P2P Foundation, last
modifed September 21, 2011, http://p2pfoundation.net/
Towards_a_free/_libre/_open/_source/_university (ac-
cessed January 1, 2012).
21. Dmytri Kleiner, Telekommunist Manifesto (Amsterdam:
Institute of Network Cultures, 2010), 5.
22. An interview with Michel Bauwens founder of Founda-
tion for P2P Alternatives, by Lawrence Bird, Furtherfelds
website, December 17, 2010, http://www.furtherfeld.org/
interviews/interview-michel-bauwens-founder-founda-
tion-p2p-alternatives (accessed January 1, 2012).
23. Antonio Negri, Art and Multitude (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2011), 108.
24. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, 308.
17 3
A R T I C L E
I live in Los Angeles. And this city is flled with mil-
lionaires. You know whats funny, half this city is rich
and the other half is poor! You live in this place where
theres billionaires right down the street from you, and
yet youre struggling just to get insurance, and strug-
gling to pay this [and that], and theres a billionaire
right down the street! Its so funny, but its true. And
everybodys like the city of Angels, oh I cant wait to
go to Los Angeles. If they could see that there is a
whole other side that is so poor in poverty! really
bad! like little hut houses! I dont know why that is,
but Ive seen it. And then you go to this beautiful side
of Hollywood and its gorgeous, makes you want to cry
their bathroom is bigger than my house! And its like
holy crap, how do you get there?
Im going to put it to you like this: I was born in chains
because of my social institutions. My mother and fa-
ther they was on drugs. They sold drugs. So this is the
type of environment that I grew up in, and I seen this
all my life, so I thought it was normal growing up. And
as I grew older, I became a product of my environment
and started getting involved in the streets myself. [...]
Photography and Media Faculty
Integrated Media Faculty
California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, USA
bookchin@calarts.edu
http://bookchin.net & http://longstory.us
by
Natal i e Bookchi n
Long Story Short
Figure 1. Doray Atkins. Screen-
shot from Long Story Short.
Natalie Bookchin, 2013. Used
with permission.
174
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
Long Story Short is a composite group interview that takes form vari-
ously as a flm, an installation, and an online interactive web documentary
drawn from and linked to an archive of video diaries made by 75 interview-
ees who refect on poverty in America causes, challenges, mispercep-
tions, and solutions. Multiple frames of videos sit side by side creating a
new form of social cinema. Voices are woven together to align and inter-
sect, suggesting that for every speaker there could be numerous others,
and that many of povertys narratives are fundamentally shared, as are the
psychological states it can produce.
Video diaries were made using webcams and laptops the tools
of amateur online video and some of the same technologies high tech
and digital that ushered in hardships for low-skilled workers and their
families in the frst place, leading to a shrinking demand and lower wages
for unskilled labor. The video diaries inserted within the vernacular of so-
cial media bare the markings of that genre: its direct address, intimacy,
informality, and faces illuminated by the screen. The potential to travel
across digital networks and platforms is written on their surface. While
one of the potentially productive efects of networked culture has been a
shift away from a focus on one voice to many, it has also produced a class
of overvisible and a class of unseen those whose data is not worth much.
Long Story Short creates a missing archive, jarring expectations and mak-
ing visible the limits of who we typically fnd speaking to us on our screens.
It responds to our current moment of increasing and dramatic economic
inequality, and explores how depictions of poverty might beneft from, as
well as refect on, current modes of digital and image mobility, dissemina-
tion, and display. It explores lives mostly not seen, and not often repre-
sented in public, especially not in digital form, and not on our screens. It
proposes a more social media.
17 5
A R T I C L E
I call the American ghetto a prison and I even call it
baby Iraq, because in our communities we got little
kids running around with AK-47s they are ffteen
killing each other. But you know I really believe that
them are tears thats coming out of them barrels.
Them are tears of neglection.
You know things are not okay. Children are running
around crazy because they dont have an outlet,
theyre not given an outlet; people refuse to give
them an outlet. Certain things the media needs to say
theyre not saying. Theres people out here struggling
and theyre doing the right thing. Theres people out
here that are homeless and their fathers on drugs
and theyre trying to go to school but they cant and it
needs to be known. I believe the young adults who are
trapped in these low-income communities theyre in
hell and they dont have a way out.
I agreed to do this video because it was very impor-
tant to me to bring awareness to the new face of
homelessness. Ladies like myself, people like myself
living in wayward standards, its not necessarily safe
out here for us. There is very little housing. I wanted
to bring awareness to the fact that theres a crisis here
on our frontier, here in our country, that we need to
be addressing with and dealing with right here in
our home front. Theres a new face of homelessness
that is going unseen, that is not being presented. What
happened to equality? Where is all of that? I dont see
it. What happened to the American dream?
Figure 2. Joshua L. Morris III. Screenshot from Long Story
Short. Natalie Bookchin, 2013. Used with permission.
Figure 3. Michael Carter. Screenshot from Long Story Short.
Natalie Bookchin, 2013. Used with permission.
Figure 4. Suzette Shaw. Screenshot from Long Story Short.
17 6
A R T I C L E
To be here and in this country and be of color, its still
difcult. You got to remember we wasnt brought here
to be free, we wasnt brought here to be able to sit in
front of this camera and interview like this. Put that
on top of everything else being a black man some
days it feels good just to be able to walk in the house
and not be shot and not be harassed by the police.
We trying to hustle as hard as the person that got
twenty thousand, twenty million dollars. Its just that
we dont have all the opportunities, the education.
A lot of stuf we dont know until somebody tell us,
and then its like, oh, we didnt even know it was that
simple. A lot of government programs that a lot of the
upper class communities or even middle class com-
munities are taking advantage of we dont even know
about until somebody tell us about it, and then its a
hassle just to even get a grant cause we dont under-
stand how to even write a grant aint been taught
to us. Hows somebody gonna to know how to do
something or be something if it hasnt been taught to
him? How a rich man gonna be rich unless he learned
how to be rich? But if a poor man all he know how to
do is be poor than hes gonna be poor. If all he know
how to do is struggle, than hes gonna struggle. Its like
if all I know how to do is be a laborer, than Im gonna
do what I know how to do and thats be a laborer Aint
gonna sit here and try to better myself to be a boss,
cause I only know how to work paycheck to paycheck.
Every story has a diferent side. So if youre outside of
this box of smoke, you cant say, Oh, well turn the fan
on from the north and itll blow it all out. You actu-
ally got to get in there with the smoke and see whats
causing the smoke. [...] A lot of the people who know
the neighborhoods, and do know how to fx whats
going on in the neighborhoods, their voices do not
get heard. [...] Like my mom, when she had her house,
she would just sit out on the porch all day after she
retired her daycare, and she knew all the people walk-
ing by. She had a garden in her backyard, so she would
Figure 5. Tito McMillian. Screenshot from Long Story Short.
Figure 6. Leslie Williams. Screenshot from Long Story Short.
Figure 7. Lolita Brinston. Screenshot from Long Story Short.
17 7
A R T I C L E
pass out fruits and vegetables to the women at the
bus stop with the kids that were coming out of the
elementary school right across the street. She would
speak to every wino that walked by, every drug dealer,
every prostitute, every person from every walk of life
thats in that neighborhood she knew on a name-to-
name basis. So its those type of people that you need
to talk to that can ofer you an opinion about whats
going on in the neighborhood and how to fx it.
I would love for someone in political power whos
watching this to imagine being in this chair where Im
sitting right now. Imagine you have been let go from
your job. You have lost your car, your family, and your
house, and youre living under the roof of a non-proft
who depends on federal funding and depends on
private funding. Just put yourself, like I said before, in
someone elses shoes. Put yourself in this chair where
Im sitting, and imagine how you would exist and
would you survive. And without the government, with-
out private funding, the answer for me is no.
When Occupy came to Oakland, I went downtown
Broadway, and Im not bragging but Im telling
you I went down there and I said Occupy, before
you came these young black people were hanging out
downtown looking for a safe place to be without be-
ing harassed by the police. They were here! I asked
Occupy to go to East Oakland and show some interest
in these neighborhoods. Dont just go making a nice
environment for you, [I] explained to the people. This
is our neighborhood. Dont go gentrifying. This is our
neighborhood. Were a part of this. Lets make this
beautiful together!
Figure 8. Michael Leninger. Screenshot from Long Story
Short. Natalie Bookchin, 2013. Used with permission.
Figure 9. Lorine (Angel) Johnson. Screenshot from Long
Story Short. Natalie Bookchin, 2013. Used with permission.
17 8
A R T I C L E
CONTRIBUTORS BIOGRAPHIES

Doray Atkins is from San Francisco, and was raised by her
aunt and her grandmother. She was born with cerebral palsy.
She is currently raising her daughter and living in transitional
housing in Pasadena, trying to save money. She hopes to fnd
an afordable place to live in a safe neighborhood with decent
schools, and to go back to school.
Lolita Charee Brinston is from Oakland California. She re-
ceived her high school diploma in 2004 and worked as a mail
handler at the Richmond, CA post ofce. She left the job after
a very close friend and co-worker and shortly thereafter, her
boyfriend, were murdered. She recently completed an intern-
ship at The Bread Project, an organization that trains and as-
sists low income individuals for careers in the food industry.
Michael Carter, from Louisiana, moved to Northern California
at a young age, where he was abandoned by his parents. He
grew up homeless on the streets of Oakland. He is currently
an intern a technology company in San Francisco. He is also
a member of turfng 24/7, a dance group that makes music
and dance videos in areas of Oakland where friends and col-
leagues have been murdered. Their videos are available on
YouTube.
Michael Leninger, from Long Beach, lived in Silver Lake, Los
Angeles until he lost his apartment. He had been working as
a facilities manager at the Pasadena Play House, but because
of bad health he is HIV positive he began missing work
and was eventually laid of. His disability payments werent
enough to cover his rent, and now, after nearly a year of being
homeless, hes qualifed for Section 8 housing, and is moving
into his own apartment.
Tito McMillian is from Oakland California. He drove a tow
truck for AAA for fourteen years, but work was inconsistent,
so he briefy moved to Texas for a refnery job that never
panned out. Hes been mostly unemployed ever since. His
dream job would be to council young men in similar situations.
He recently received his GED and is looking for work.
Joshua L. Morris III is from Oakland California. Hes been in
and out of prison most of his life. He is a deacon-in-training
at his church, and is studying to get his GED at the mentoring
program at Next Step Learning Center in Oakland.
Lorine (Angel) Johnson is from Trenton New Jersey and
lives in Oakland. She has six grown children, is a grandmother,
and fnally has some time for herself. She loves learning, and is
back in school.
Suzette Shaw is from Yuma Arizona, a small town on the
Mexican border. She worked as a human resources manager
for a business processing plant, and was laid of three years
ago when the company downsized. Subsequently, she lost her
home and moved to Los Angeles in search for fnd better op-
portunities. She currently resides at the Downtown Womens
Center in Los Angeles.
Leslie Williams is 31 years old and a former gang member
from Inglewood Los Angeles. He moved to Pasadena to get
away from his previous life and turn over a new leaf. However,
since leaving his lucrative lifestyle, he has become homeless.
He is taking workshops and receiving some support from the
Union Station Homeless Services in Pasadena.
Natalie Bookchin is from New York, and lives in Los Angeles.
She is at work on Long Story Short, an experimental docu-
mentary and online archive made up of hundreds of video
diaries about the experience of poverty in America, narrated,
defned, and analyzed from within.
http://longstory.us
17 9
A R T I C L E
Figure 10. Screenshot from Long Story Short (in-progress). Natalie Bookchin, 2013. Used with permission.
1 8 0
A R T I C L E
1 8 1
A R T I C L E
1. INTRODUCTION
The capitalist system Marx described when formu-
lating his theories was based on nineteenth-century
industrial capitalist society. New methods of com-
munication have since changed the conditions for
capitalism. Parts of todays network-based creative
economy are characterized by the humanistic values
some writers claim Marx was looking for when he for-
mulated the theory of alienation.
1
For instance, Hardt
and Negri argue that the new economy of afective
labour and networked relations amounted to a kind
of spontaneous and elementary communism.
2
This
stateless network economy operates in a relational
space where the consumer is also the producer, and
self-fulfllment, as much as fnancial gain, is the goal.
In this article, I describe how to alter the functionality
of the creative sector and develop institutions allow-
ing for a union of the private and public sector. In
doing this, we may approach something resembling
Marxs vision of an ideal society as he describes in,
for example, Comments on James Mill.
3
Here, un-
like in his other texts where the communist society is
described only as the antithesis of capitalism, he de-
scribes his vision more directly, as production as hu-
THE DESIRES OF
THE CROWD
Scenario for a Future Social System
Artist and PhD Candidate
Computer & Systems Sciences with specialization in Fine Arts
in Digital Media
DSV Stockholm University & Royal Institute of Fine Arts
Karin.hansson@kkh.se
http://people.dsv.su.se/~khansson/
http://temporaryart.org/karin
by
Kari n Hansson
1 8 2
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
The micro-fnancing of artists ofers new possibilities for people outside the
economic and cultural elite to become patrons of the arts. One might term
it a more democratic base for the artistic activity and its varied discursive
practices. However, it is not just the economy of art that focuses on people
with the particular skills to make things that get called art. Promoting a
personal brand in the form of taste, education and social relations is also
central to every career in an insecure and fexible labor market, and not
only in the creative sector. Accordingly, the crowd funding of humanity,
rather than of production of commodities, is a possible and reasonable
scenario for a future social system, where people are deeply interconnect-
ed in collaborative networks.
In order to examine what such a system might look like in practice, I
have in my project The Afect Machine formulated a market place for so-
cial relations. Here I show how the principles for a capitalist institution like
a corporation can be combined with those of a digital social network, and
thus point to a form of merger between the private and public sector. In
this scenario for a future social system, we may approach something re-
sembling Marxs vision of a communist society.
man beings, in which the products of work would re-
fect human nature, and would be made for reciprocal
beneft as a free manifestation and enjoyment of life.
By combining an institution from the public sphere
with the private, I show how we can create a scenario
for a future social system. In the next part, I give a
brief description of Marxs theory of alienation. In
part 3, I describe how the art world can be seen as
an exception to the mainstream market economy. In
part 4, I describe how changing the production condi-
tions for art creates new opportunities to deepen the
relationship between producer and consumer. In part
5, I argue for a broad defnition of the artist. In part 6,
I discuss how to create institutions that unite the pri-
vate with the public, by combining a system of online
trading with an online social network. In part 7, I draw
the conclusion that today we can see the embryo of a
communist society.
1 8 3
A R T I C L E
2. ALIENATION ACCORDING TO MARX
The theory of alienation is central to Marxs analysis
of capitalism. During the fnancial and political condi-
tions of the Western industrial revolution, a division of
labour on an unprecedented scale was made possible,
which drastically reduced the individuals ability to
monitor and control the results of her own work. Marx
argued that this created alienation in society that op-
erates on several levels:
4
1. Alienation between the producer and the con-
sumer. Instead of producing something for another
person, the worker produces for a wage.
2. Alienation between the producer and the product
of the work. As the production is split into smaller
parts and the worker becomes an instrument that
makes a limited part of the whole, the pride and
satisfaction of work is lost.
3. Alienation of workers from themselves, since they
are denied their identity. By losing control over the
product of work and thus pride in labor, the worker
is deprived of the right to be a subject with agency.
4. Alienation of the worker from other workers,
through the competition for wages, instead of
working together for a common purpose.
A capitalist society, divided into classes of bourgeoisie
and proletariat, stands in contrast to the ideal of com-
munist society where there is no need for the state
and class diferentiation; instead everyone owns the
means of production, and the principle of distribution
is famously: From each according to his ability, to
each according to his need!
5
This has often been interpreted to mean that every-
thing should be shared equally, but Marx says nothing
about equality, rather he emphasizes the relationships
between people.
6
A communist society is a society
where everyone is linked in a mutual interdependency
with others and nature, and self-actualization is the
driving force:
Let us suppose that we had carried out production
as human beings. Each of us would have, in two
ways, afrmed himself, and the other person. (1) In
my production I would have objectifed my individu-
ality, its specifc character, and, therefore, enjoyed
not only an individual manifestation of my life dur-
ing the activity, but also, when looking at the object,
I would have the individual pleasure of knowing
my personality to be objective, visible to the senses,
and, hence, a power beyond all doubt. (2) In your
enjoyment, or use, of my product I would have the
direct enjoyment both of being conscious of hav-
ing satisfed a human need by my work, that is, of
having objectifed mans essential nature, and of
having thus created an object corresponding to the
need of another mans essential nature...
7
In this perspective, production is a mutual exchange
that strengthens individuals. The producers are
strengthened by expressing themselves through their
work, where the product is an expression of their
subject and position in the world, and thus expands
their power and range. As this expression of their
identity is put into use, and used by other individuals,
the producers also get the satisfaction of seeing their
products in use, as a response to other peoples hu-
man needs.
Exactly how this state is achieved is, however, contro-
versial, and the self-proclaimed precursors of Commu-
nist society, the socialist states of the twentieth cen-
tury, fell far short of these high ideals. Yet the problem
of alienation has not dissipated, and may indeed have
got worse as capitalism lost its socialist other. How-
ever, in a description of the alienation in American so-
ciety, social scientist Fritz Pappenheim points out the
strategy that many feminist theorists have focused on:
1 8 4
A R T I C L E
If our goal is to overcome alienation by foster-
ing bonds between man and man, then we must
build up institutions which enable man to identify
his ends with those of others, with the direction
in which his society is moving. In other words, we
must try to reduce the gulf between the realms of
the private and the public.
8
Thus, that the diferentiation between people should
be avoided, and that the gap between what is seen as
private and what is seen as public should be reduced.
3. AN EXCEPTION TO THE MARKET ECONOMY
Today, Marxist scholars claim that we are living in a hy-
percapitalist era where more and more relationships
with other people are converted into commodities
without contact with the specifc needs and expres-
sions of the people who produce or consume them.
9

But a small creative class of people has resisted the
temptation of capitalism, and refuses to participate in
the regular market. This creative class consists of an
art avant-garde that plays in another arena, what the
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls the feld of restricted
production.
10
Here the game is not to sell as many
products as possible to a broad mass, but a few to a
limited audience of other cultural producers and col-
leagues. Your access to this market depends on your
social relationships more than your fnancial capital.
The products are an expression of the producers
individuality and the result of a desire to participate
in the arts collective. They are a refection of other
individuals need to understand themselves and their
contemporaries, and to be acknowledged as unique
human beings.
It may be argued that the global art world can be seen
as a market like any other though with the peculiar-
ity that it has a small and afuent clientele who use
art as a way to launder their economic capital with
cultural capital.
11
But even though this market exists,
economic capital is not usually the main motive of the
art worlds participants. What is most pursued by the
producers in this feld is not proft, but self-realization
and peer recognition.
12

Others argue that since modernism and the break-
through of industrial capitalism, it is peer recognition
that is most important for artists, more important
than recognition from gallery owners, collectors and
a wider audience.
13
To sell their art commercially is
seen as a necessary evil, as a way to get money for
studio rent and the necessities of the life as an art-
ist. This has similarities with the work ethic of todays
so-called open source communities, where the driving
force is primarily to achieve fame and acknowledg-
ment from peers.
14

4. NEW PRODUCTION CONDITIONS FOR ART
Yet even artists adapt to new conditions of production,
and must somehow fnance their fulfllment, which, af-
ter all, takes place within the framework of capitalism.
For instance, the British artist Tracy Emin sold options
on her future work for 10 in the early 1990s.
15
In
recent decades, fnancial crises, digital technology and
a new form of network economy have stimulated a
search for alternative forms for fnancing the visual
arts. Crowd funding is one of these forms. Internet
sites like Kickstarter and Crowdfunder make it pos-
sible to gain small, but potentially numerous, contri-
butions from large groups of people.
16
Some sites
provide the sponsors with an opportunity to ask ques-
tions and propose a change or development of the
project. The investors / consumers can therefore be
in direct communication with the artist, which might
develop into a more sustained relationship. This crowd
1 8 5
A R T I C L E
can also function as a loyal audience and PR-support
for realized projects; if you have invested in something,
you probably also want it to be successful.
Coming up with a good idea for an artwork is not too
difcult, and arguably the the art lies in carrying it out.
This demands skill, experience, contacts, and legitima-
cy. For this reason, the artist as a person is often more
important for the artwork than the idea. Following the
logic of the dominating western modernist concept of
art, one cannot alienate the work of art (the commod-
ity) from the artist (the human being).
Art is also about much more than producing artworks.
Art sociologist Nathalie Heinich shows in her study
of Van Gogh how art in modernism is a belief in the
special, the uniquely human, and in this belief system
the artist is an embodiment of this idea of the singular
and special person, and indirectly of all people.
17
The
artwork can be viewed as a way of mediating this
singularity, a proof that we are not interchangeable
cogs in a machine without signifcance, but that our
particular experience of the world is important and
unique. The art world is therefore more about belief
in the singular artist rather than in the artworks. Some
sites, for example, SonicAngel and ArtistShare have
concentrated on this aspect of the arts.
18
In this
context it is no longer only the artwork that is central,
but the existence of the artist. The micro-fnancing of
artists rather than works of art also ofers new pos-
sibilities for people other than the economic elite to
become patrons of the arts. One might term it a more
liberal democratic base for the artistic priesthood and
its varied discursive practices, as it makes the patron-
age of art more easily accessible to people without
large fnancial means.
For the founder of ArtistShare, Brian Camelio, crowd
funding is a way to create deeper and more direct
links between those who produce art and those who
consume art.
19
Camelio argues that digital technolo-
gies are gradually destroying capitalist production
conditions, especially in the music industry, as it be-
comes increasingly difcult to sell music as a commod-
ity when it is too easy to copy in its commodity form.
Therefore, the focus on the crowd-funding site is on
the process and the technology to enable consum-
ers to be with the artist and participate in the artistic
process, rather than merely buying some end product
of the process. By donating money on the site to the
artists you like, you get special privileges to be in the
vicinity of the artist, for instance, as a participant in
pre-concert activities, and to meet others who share
the same passion.
Perhaps it is mainly the music industry that fts into
the concept of crowd funding, since it is already built
on relationships with big fan groups. But even more
traditionally oriented artists can use technology to es-
tablish a contact with potential customers on a deeper
level. Painter Laura Greengold used an online crowd-
funding service to ask people to sponsor a project
that was about sharing dreams and stories.
20
The
contributors not only sent money but descriptions of
their dreams, and Greengold used these as the start-
ing point for a series of paintings. For the artist, this
was not just a way to fnance a project, but also a way
to create a relational space for her art that she lacks in
the traditional gallery setting. It thus worked as a way
to establish a deeper discussion about the content of
the artistic process, rather than focusing only on the
end product. Art that emphasizes the relation to the
audience, and art as a platform for a wider discussion
do not necessarily have to be restricted to digitally
mediated art. The participatory aspects of art were
emphasized by Fluxus and the Situationists, to take
just a couple of examples, and so-called relational art
has been a marked trend in contemporary art from
the 1990s onwards.
1 8 6
A R T I C L E
Is it possible then to widen this relational functionality
of the art world to other parts of society? To answer
this question, we frst have to examine the concept of
the artist.
5. THE CONCEPT OF THE ARTIST
In an institutional view of the defnition of art, what
gets called art and who gets called an artist is defned
by the powers within the art world. But even with this
approach, important participants in the art world are
left out: namely, those who themselves do not think
the term artist is interesting, but who the art world
still categorizes as an artist.
You can also broaden the concept of the artist to in-
clude all members of the creative class, that is, often
highly educated people working with creative indus-
tries and problem solving. Needless to say, even this
is far too limited, and I would propose a diferent and
broader way of looking at who the artist is by looking
at how such a person is placed on a map of production
conditions. Here the individual can be seen as either
placed in a structure that she cannot overview or af-
fect, or as someone who has agency and manipulates,
navigates and changes to realize herself. In the frst
position, social relationships are not important, and
the individual is alienated from herself and her work.
In the other position, relationships are central, and
the individual is the one who creates the production
conditions. The artist is someone who is in the more
active position, where maintaining relations and com-
munication is central to the work.
According to Chris Mathieu, the editor of an anthology
of research on creative industries, particular features
of the art feld make for distinct conditions for artistic
production.
21
First, there are no real permanent jobs,
but a life-long competition in which the rules are con-
stantly changed. Moreover, it is not a competition on
an open market; instead, participation is determined by
the relationships you have, and how close or far there
are work opportunities in the production network of
relationships. The judges of the competition are col-
leagues, not some faceless market. The competition
is not only individual, but can be seen as a team sport
where there is uncertainty about who your partners
are. Here, everyone gains if someone in the network
is successful, and everyone is pulled down if someone
does not succeed. A great deal of time is thus spent
not only on making artistic things, but on behaving as
an artist and being in places artists are, to be present
when there is a new market opportunity.
However, it is not only artists of various types who op-
erate in an uncertain and ever-changing labor market,
or who are constantly forced to transform and express
their identity to be recognized. Having a lifelong per-
manent job is increasingly scarce, and social skills are in
demand in all areas.
22
Promoting a personal brand in
the form of taste, education and social relations is thus
central to every career in an insecure and fexible labor
market, not just in the creative sector. Here you can
see the popularity of networks like LinkedIn and Face-
book as a general expression of the need to maintain a
personal brand and many social relationships.
23

These networks are not only central to the individuals
ability to act as producer and to navigate an uncertain
job market. They are also important channels for the
individual as consumer when the abundance of infor-
mation increasingly makes us rely on recommenda-
tions from people we have a personal relationship with.
Social networks in combination with crowd funding
create a situation where we are linking our social being
to economic investment, thus creating direct personal
relationships between producer and consumer, in
which the consumer is also co-producer.
1 8 7
A R T I C L E
6. THE AFFECT MACHINE
When this networked social being is paired with eco-
nomic investment the division between the private
and the public sphere is disrupted. The private sphere
usually consists of members of a legal statutory family,
which for the family members means mutual rights
and obligations enshrined in law but also in norms.
The public sphere is typically composed of adults that
compete within a market, where the production of
goods and services is performed on a commercial ba-
sis. This market is maintained and governed by collec-
tive institutions that dictate the rules of participation.
Here, a collective of individuals can come together in
companies in which the market temporarily does not
apply, but where everyone instead collaborates for the
collective good. There is also a capital market, where
companies profts for surplus production can be used
for investments in new businesses.
Naturally, there is a fuzzy border between the private
and the public sector, which is in constant negotiation.
But must activity be either private or public? What if,
as Pappenheim proposes above, we unite the private
with the public? In order to examine what such a
system might look like in practice, I have in the proj-
ect The Afect Machine formulated a marketplace for
social relations by combining the principles for trad-
ing shares with those of a digital social network (see
fgure 1-X). Here you can develop your social capital by
acquiring shares in interesting subjects. Instead of be-
ing dependent on infexible and unreliable bourgeois
constructions like the family, The Afect Machine is a
dynamic and much safer way of creating a family that
is built on micro-desire rather than a sense of duty
and routine. With a carefully composed Afect Family,
you spread your risks and create surplus value, thanks
to synergies between diferent shares in the network.
If I am a corporation and want new capital, I can divide
the company with a share issue, and sell ownership
on to those who are interested. If I want to invest in
a corporation, I must wait until the shares are for sale
on the open stock market. If, as a corporation, I need
more capital, I can issue new shares; that is, splitting
the company into even smaller parts in the hope that
more people will want to invest.
On the other hand, a digital social network is about
collecting and developing social relationships in a
workable way. At best, this network formalizes con-
tacts with a group of people I like and trust in one way
or another. This digital platform can facilitate my com-
munication with this group, and be used as a way to
develop and deepen the relationship by exchanging in-
formation. In this way, you can, for example, easily get
hold of someone who can help out with something, or
knows where to fnd a certain type of information.
There are interesting similarities in the structuring of
a corporation with the structuring of a digital social
network. But while one is based on legally viable con-
tracts between people that do not need to know each
other, the second is built on relationships between
people who know each other and which have no legal
validity. If we combine the idea of a corporation with
a digital social network, this would open up a legal op-
portunity for people to act as a corporation on a social
market.
Suppose that each player initially has 100 shares. They
may exchange these shares for shares of other people,
provided that both parties are interested. In this way
social networks are established that are legally valid
and cannot be waived without compensation. Unlike
in a social network, the relationship does not need
to be exactly reciprocal; you can exchange shares
with people who have not exactly reciprocal shares
in you, so the value of diferent peoples shares will
shift. The sum of your network is your total capital,
and this capital increases or decreases depending on
how well the individuals in your network perform. If
I do not feel good about a relationship with someone
in my network, I can either try to exchange my shares
if possible, without too much loss of value, or work
on improving the relationship, thus strengthening my
social capital. Likewise, it is in my interest to promote
my social network and help my relationships with
their needs. Just like in a family, you simply help each
other, without thinking about exactly what you get out
of it all, but safe in the knowledge that a long-lived
loyalty is being inculcated, in part through a binding
legal contract. Unlike a family, which usually is not very
large, and in practice can be quite unreliable, here risk
is spread across a larger number of people. In practice,
this legal institution can replace and merge institutions
1 8 8
A R T I C L E
Figures 1, 2 & 3. The Afect Machine, Karin Hansson, 2012. Web page, http://afectmachine.
org/. Karin Hansson, 2012. Used with permission.
1 8 9
A R T I C L E
that are now divided between a private and a public
sphere, and thus create a legal support for the devel-
opment of a communist society. Here, maintaining and
developing relations are central to the work, and the
individual navigates and changes the structure to real-
ize herself.
This model shows how, by joining the functions in a
capitalist institution with the functions in a digital so-
cial network, we can sketch a form of how the private
and public sectors can approach each other.
7. CONCLUSION: AN EMBRYO OF A COMMUNIST
SOCIETY
In practice, a lot of institutions, laws and norms need
to be recompiled in order to legally and socially re-
place the current system of norms and laws with ones
that better refects the dynamic organization of the
network society. But it is possible to see phenomena
such as digital social networks and crowd funding as
an embryo of a communist society in which all are
bound together in mutual economic and social rela-
tions. Here we cannot, of course, ignore all those with-
out the possibility of operating on digital networks,
and those who produce the wealth that makes this
sector possible. But the examples in this article show
how other people besides artists can set personal ful-
fllment as their objective before economic proft, and
how crowd funding and digital social networks can
support peoples active role as producers and consum-
ers.
Here technology may be a way to allow for the exten-
sion of the social network to more than the biological
family and closest friends, and the means that bring
the social/private and economic/public sectors closer
together. Communications technology brings about
the possibility of reducing the alienation between
producer and consumer by establishing direct links
without any tangible intermediary. The product can
be seen as an expression of the talent of the producer
and the needs of the consumer, but also as an act of
recognition between humans, that is, a social relation-
ship. Information and communication technology here
may reduce the need for the mediation of commodi-
ties as symbolic capital like fashion or other status
symbols as a way of signaling group afliation and hi-
erarchy will become less important, thus reducing the
need for commodities and the exploitation of natural
resources.
To translate this into Marxs terminology, instead of
alienation, stronger relationships are created:
The relationships between the producer and the
consumer. Instead of producing work for a wage, a
direct relation is produced to another person.
The relationship between the producer and the
product of the work. As the product and the
producer is one, the artist/artwork is one, and the
producer has total control over her own self-image
and can feel proud of the image created.
The relationship with herself. When production is
mainly about realizing oneself and creating ones
own market, the worker is no longer a stranger to
herself.
Relationships between workers. By not competing
for the salary, but working together for the com-
mon network that everyone depends on, relation-
ships are strengthened.
In this perspective no one can own anyone elses work,
or even their own work, as their own subject is de-
pendent on all the others, and cannot therefore exist
outside of this relationship:
Our products would be so many mirrors in which
we saw refected our essential nature. This
relationship would moreover be reciprocal; what
occurs on my side has also to occur on yours.
24

1 9 0
A R T I C L E
1. Many see Marx as an anti-humanist thinker in particular
because the idea that relations of production determine
consciousness suggests that humans are highly malleable.
There are those who contest this reading, and associate
Marx and humanism, notably Norman Geras: see especially
his book Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend
(New York: Verso, 1983).
2. Michael Hardt/ Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2000), 294.
3. Karl Marx, Comments on James Mill (1844), Marxist.org,
frst published in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Gesa-
mtausgabe, Erste Abteilung, Band 3 (Berlin, 1932), trans.
Clemens Palme Dutt, http://www.marxists.org/archive/
marx/works/1844/james-mill/ (accessed July 8, 2012).
4. Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marxist.
org, used Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume Three
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970) as a source, frst
published/abridged in Die Neue Zeit 1, no. 18 (1890-1891),
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/go-
tha/ (accessed July 8, 2012).
5. Ibid.
6. Jonathan Wolf, Karl Marx, The Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, last modifed June 14, 2010, http://plato.
stanford.edu/entries/marx/ (accessed July 8, 2012).
7. Karl Marx, Comments on James Mill.
8. Fritz Pappenheim, Alienation in American Society,
Monthly Review, 52, no. 2 (2000),http://monthlyreview.
org/2000/06/01/alienationin-american-society (accessed
January 10, 2014).
9. Marina Vujnovic, Hypercapitalism, in The Wiley-Blackwell
Encyclopedia of Globalization, ed. George Ritzer (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 2012).
10. Pierre Bourdieu, The Market of Symbolic Goods, Poetics
14, no. 1-2 (1985): 13-44.
11. See the discussion in Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the
Art World, (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008); Donald N.
Thompson, The $12 Million Stufed Shark: The Curious
Economics of Contemporary Art and Auction Houses
(London: Aurum, 2008).
12. Natalie Heinich, The Sociology of Vocational Prizes:
Recognition as Esteem, Theory, Culture & Society 26, no.
5 (August 2009): 85107.
13. Alan Bowness, The Conditions of Success: How the Mod-
ern Artist Rises to Fame (London: Thames and Hudson,
1989).
14. See, for example: C. M. Kelty, Two Bits: The Cultural Sig-
nifcance of Free Software (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2008); Joseph Lampel and Ajay Bhalla, The Role
of Status Seeking in Online Communities: Giving the Gift
of Experience, Journal of Computer-Mediated Commu-
nication 12, no. 2 (2007), http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/
issue2/lampel.html (accessed July 8, 2012).
15. Lynn Barber, Lynn Barber Meets Tracey Emin, The
Observer, April 22, 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/
theobserver/2001/apr/22/features.magazine27 (accessed
July 8, 2012).
16. The ofcial website of Kickstarter, http://www.kickstarter.
com/; the ofcial website of Crowdfunder, http://www.
crowdfunder.co.uk/ (accessed July 8, 2012).
17. Natalie Heinich, The Glory of Van Gogh: An Anthropology
of Admiration (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1997).
18. The ofcial website of SonicAngel, http://www.sonicangel.
com/; the ofcial website of ArtistShare, http://www.
artistshare.net/v4/ (accessed July, 2012).
19. ArtistShare, Founder Brian Camelio Explains the Artist-
Share Model, YouTube video, 6:37, posted by artist-
ShareTV, April 5, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=ThDAzFHsjZ0&feature=player_embedded#! (accessed
July 8, 2012).
20. Laura Greengold, For You and Yours, Kickstarter, 2012,
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1686183373/for-
you-and-yours (accessed July 8, 2012).
21. Chris Mathieu, Careers in Creative Industries (New York:
Routledge, 2012).
22. Angela McRobbie, Clubs To Companies: Notes on the De-
cline of Political Culture in Speeded Up Creative Worlds,
Cultural Studies 16, no. 4 (July 2002): 516531.
23. Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/; LinkedIn Corpora-
tion, https://www.linkedin.com/ (accessed July 8, 2012).
24. Karl Marx, Comments on James Mill.
1 9 1
A R T I C L E
INTRODUCTION
When a term has diferent meanings, both lit-
eral and metaphorical, there is usually a common
ground where all connotations intersect. Interest-
ingly enough, the afnities between diferent mean-
ings can go beyond the obvious, revealing historical
interconnections and dialectical patterns.
Indeed, the term utopia [outopia] in its literal sense,
refers to the absence [ou] of place [topos]. In its
metaphorical sense, in which it is used today, utopia is
a term that originates from Thomas Mores inaugural
text
1
and it seeks to describe the authors imaginary
island country. According to Fredric Jamesons analy-
sis, the notion of utopia basically refers to the system-
ic, revolutionary political practice, aiming at founding a
whole new society.
2
When it comes to new media, their literal lack of to-
pos is intrinsically related to their profoundly utopian
nature. In other words, the metaphorical is essentially
linked to the literal on many levels. This paper at-
tempts to explore how the literal u-topian
3
structure
of new media is used to create artworks that convey
utopian ideologies. The analysis of two major new
FROM LITERAL TO
METAPHORICAL UTOPIA
Interconnections Between the Inner Structure of
the New Media Art and the Utopian Thought
Paris Sorbonne Paris IV
Lecturer, History of New Media Art
Universit Paris-Est Marne-la-Valle, France
christinavatsella@gmail.com
by
Chri sti na Vatsel l a
1 9 2
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
In its original meaning u-topia means the lack of topos. This condition is
inherent in the new media artwork. Due to its immaterial quality and non-
object status, the new media art is not physically tied to a specifc space
unless displayed.
This literally u-topian condition results from the utopian (in the
sense of revolutionary) nature of the new media art that rises above ques-
tions of unique prototype, controlled reproducibility and object ownership.
To speak in Marxist terms, its the a priori negation of the commodity fetish-
ism that imposes the literal, as well as the metaphorical, utopia. Thus, the
new media, the pillar of the late capitalism public sphere, become the new
feld of revolutionary cultural practices. I will describe this paradoxical or
rather coherent, according to Frederic Jameson condition by analyzing
two major art forms of new media art, namely video art and internet art.
media art forms, namely video art and Internet art, re-
veals recurring patterns that lead to broader historical
interconnections.
LITERAL U-TOPIAS
One of the most fundamental characteristics of the
new media image a term that embraces digital or
analogical moving image in all its imaginable forms is
its lack of topos. The moving image is a latent im-
material entity stocked in a device (digital or analogi-
cal) and thus deprived of actually occupying physical
space. This absence of space or, more specifcally, the
lack of actual material volume derives from the lack
of objects. Of course, going beyond the object is not
an exclusively new media characteristic. Conceptual
art has been practically based on that principle. And,
even before that, the objet dart per se had already
been through an important demystifcation since the
ready-made.
Abolishing the material entity of the work of art has
clear political connotations. Lucy Lippard introduced
the term dematerialization of art
4
in order to de-
scribe the urge of going beyond the ofcial art by
spreading it in all social layers. Art would, thus, be-
come a common activity and consequently notions of
property and reproduction of the work would be elim-
inated. Dematerialized art would, therefore, actively
1 9 3
A R T I C L E
participate in the transformation of the society. Art
would, then, disappear in the sense that it would be
generalized throughout society as the very aesthetiza-
tion of daily life.
5
The fusion of art with life, in a Marx-
ist approach, would be the negation of the division of
mental and manual labor, which is a prior condition for
the separation of mankind in classes.
Even if the fusion of life and art is a highly utopian, and
thus an unattainable desire,
6
the detachment from
the object of art is a fact. And non-object art a priori
cannot be distributed, sold and collected. To speak in
Marxist terms, non-object art materializes the nega-
tion of commodity fetishism.
The new media image per se does not have a mate-
rial entity. Nevertheless, art objects do exist in new
media art even if their status is peculiar. Focusing
on the example of video art a major historical new
media art form it is easy to realize that the material
part of the work consists of the tools used to pres-
ent the image (monitor or projector) as well as the
physical container of the image such as the videotape
(replaced nowadays with DVD, USB, etc). If the pro-
jecting or broadcasting apparatus is an auxiliary part,
in the sense that it is not connected to the work, the
videotape is intrinsically linked to the image itself: it
is the medium containing the message that is con-
served in a latent form. The question that is naturally
raised is whether this storage apparatus is capable of
counterbalancing the objects absence, thus, rendering
the work susceptible to being integrated into the art
distribution circuit.
This specifc status of the object is intrinsically related
to the fundamental characteristic of the new media
artwork: its reproducibility. Every tangible format of
conserved moving image is in fact a copy that can
be further reproduced without any limit. In everyday
life, for every work there are several exhibition copies,
screening copies, not to mention conservation copies
in diferent media following the evolution of the tech-
nology. Hence, there is not such thing as authentic or
unique videotape, or DVD, or even worse, as authentic
computer fle. All these simulacra prove that the new
media artwork naturally resists commercialization
since we can happily (and legally) reproduce any work
without any consequences to its nature or status.
However, if new media art cannot be easily integrated
into the commercial art circuit unless it is transformed
into installations or other concrete plastic forms, it
can be transmitted through the mass media networks.
Since the beginning of the video art, the possibility
of reaching larger audiences has opened up a wide
range of opportunities to communicate and share
art. The new media image distribution through both
mainstream and alternative mass media soon became
a synonym of political engagement.
NEW MEDIA AS THE NEW UTOPIA: TWO MAJOR
HISTORICAL ART FORMS
Video Art and the Utopia of an Alternative
Television
Driven by genuine fascination for new media tech-
nologies, Nam June Paik, the neo-romantic artist, who
wore Wellington boots in his studio for fear of be-
ing electrocuted, visualized a whole new world; new
media technology would create a new visual culture
resulting from the fusion of electronic music, perform-
ing arts and video images. In a state of totally utopian
delirium, Paik went far enough to foresee medical
implementations of the new media image. He believed
that in the near future the new media image would
cure blindness or that it would be used as an electro-
visual tranquilizer [sic].
7
It is from this very same
spirit that emerges his legendary video Global Groove
(1973), the manifesto of the new video culture willing
1 9 4
A R T I C L E
to become the melting pot of all diferent cultures and
beliefs. Video was perceived by Paik as the new Es-
peranto. In his most famous installations Moon is the
Oldest TV (1965), where he recreates the moon phas-
es onto monitors and TV Cross (1966), where nine
monitors form a cross, Paik translates major icons and
symbols of humanity into electronic images, thereby
creating a new universal visual vocabulary.
Along with Paiks vision of a new world transformed
by the power of the new media image, other video
artists decided to question, confront and subvert the
dominant mass medium, namely television. Sharing a
common political engagement, several groups of art-
ists both in the United States (Videofreex, Raindance,
Ant Farm or Global Village, to name just a few) and in
Europe (the French collectives Video Out and Vido
00, or the groups formed by well known flmmakers
like Jean Luc Godard and Chris Marker)
8
aimed at
creating an alternative television that would eventually
awaken, rather than manipulate, the masses. Blurring
the boundaries between political activism, perfor-
mance and visual arts, such video artists often defend-
ed specifc social causes like the anti-war movement
or feminism. Their deeply utopian aim has been to
create an alternative fow of information through real-
ist video documentaries, which could encompass a po-
litical analysis of subjective experiences and support
a position of political advocacy that the mass media
would never allow.
9

Sharing their video recording know-how, these in-
dependent collectives created content and tried to
transmit it in various ways. Early collectives strategies
for distribution include tape libraries, tape exchanges,
interactive screenings as well as transmission via cable
television, public broadcast television or low power
pirate TV stations. Yet, artists often invented more
subversive methods. In December 1973, Chris Burden
bought TV commercial time slots during prime time
on a television channel in California to broadcast his
performance video documentation.
If the clash with mainstream television is eloquently
depicted in Ant Farms Media Burn (1975), a video
evoking an explosive collusion of two basic symbols of
the American culture (the car and the television), oth-
er artists confront television using less violent means.
On the last eight evenings of December 1969, WDR 3
television ended its daily transmission by broadcasting
Jan Dibbets TV as a Fireplace. The image of a burning
fre transformed the television into a freplace evoking
the archetypical gathering of people around the fre. In
1983, WGBH (Boston) broadcasted Bill Violas Reverse
Television: Portraits of Viewers during commercial
time slots. The image evokes a television viewer sat
on his sofa. Television is, thus, transformed into a
mirror. Along with the critical point of view towards
the television culture, these works of art share the
desire to create and distribute art for the masses by
transforming domestic space into the space of a video
installation.
Internet: The New Media, the New Utopia
A few decades later, the fascination towards the ca-
pacity of broadcasting new media content in a large
audience switched medium, from television to the
Internet. The Internet is the new utopia par excel-
lence. The ability of crossing the borders of time and
space reinforced the development of a strong political
framework. The contemporary rhetoric based on the
perception of the Internet as an immense collectivity
is evocative of that political context; digital revolution
or virtual community has become everyday language,
whereas the famous McLuhian term global village
has been literally concretized in the Internet era.
The socio-political background of television and the
explosion of the mass media in the 1960s and the
1970s have been refected in video art. Likewise, the
1 9 5
A R T I C L E
political aspect of the (virtual) new land of promise
has been crystallized in Internet art. The guerrilla tele-
vision and the video works related to political activism
that have marked the highly utopian era of video art,
have been reproduced online three decades later.
Tactical media, various forms of activism and openly
political works denouncing the commercial use of the
Internet have been at the core of Internet art creation
(at least at the beginning). The collective TMark
used the structure of a company in order to promote
the sabotage of corporate products and fund cultural
projects. On the other hand, etoys, a Swiss group that
parodied dotcom brands, organized a search engine
hack that redirected thousands of users to their web-
page. Their artistic status is quite ambiguous since,
as Julian Stallabrass points out, on the internet the
border between political activism and cultural creation
has been particularly porous.
10
The artists of the
early days of Internet art have aimed at subverting the
Web, criticizing its commercial logic and proposing a
diferent economic and political model.
CONCLUSION
Utopia turns out to be the leit-motif of new media art.
This historical analysis proves that the more ou-topian
a medium is, the more utopian its content can get. In
the 1960s and the 1970s television has provided the
means for the counter culture to fourish. In the era of
the cloud technology, which epitomizes the absolute
lack of space, internet concretizes the utopian ideol-
ogy by setting of social unrest and globalizing its
impact. At the same time, however, new media consti-
tute the key for the expansion of late capitalism. That
profound endemic antinomy is embedded in global-
ization itself, which can indeed pass efortlessly from
a dystopian vision of world control to the celebration
of world multiculturalism with the mere changing of a
valence.
11
Seen from another perspective, this ma-
jor contradiction embodies the new media prophecy
that has been poetically illustrated by Nam June Paik.
In efect, new media has formed a huge melting pot
where everything is possible, where antithetical pat-
terns can evolve side-by-side creating a multi-layered
universe. While Paik celebrated the bright side of this
new world, other video artists and the net artists have
mostly criticized its darker side. The common ground
of all the new media artworks discussed in this pa-
per is that the artistic application of mass media can
subvert their mainstream use. In other words, artists
strongly believed that art can change the world.
1 9 6
A R T I C L E
1. Thomas Mores extremely infuential novel Utopia was
written in 1516.
2. Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire
Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London and
New York: Verso, 2005), 3. The author adds a second line
of descent, more obscure, which refers to the omnipresent
utopian impulse related to the deceptive yet tempting
swindles of here and now, where Utopia serves as the
mere lure and bait for ideology. This paper focuses on the
frst, purely political notion of utopia.
3. In order to make that distinction clear, a diferent spelling
has been applied: utopia refers to the current metaphori-
cal use of the term whereas the neologism u-topia refers
to its primary literal sense. By separating the two compo-
nents of the word, its etymology becomes more obvious.
4. The term was introduced in the article Lucy Lippard and
John Chandlers article, The Dematerialization of Art, Art
International 12, no. 2 (February 1968): 31-36; and further
developed in Lucy Lippard, Six Years (London: Studio
Vista, 1973).
5. Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire
Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions,184.
6. Lucy Lippard and John Chandler, The Dematerializa-
tion of Art, 32. The phrase one day maybe in Lippards
article, concerning the dematerialization of art, evokes her
lucidity towards the utopian character of her approach.
7. Untitled text by Nam June Paik with the following descrip-
tion: The following essay was written in winter and copies
were sent to Max Mathews, Mike Noll, James Tenney and
Lejaren Hiller Jr. It was printed in the Flykingen Bulletin
(Stockholm) in 1967. Published in Nam June Paik,Video
n Videology, exhibition catalogue (New York: Everson
Museum of Art, 1974), n.p.
8. See Franoise Parfait, Vido un Art Contemporain (Paris:
Editions du Regard, 2001), 39-41.
9. Martha Gever, The Feminism Factor: Video and Its Rela-
tion to Feminism, in Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide
to Video Art, ed. Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer (New York:
Aperture/BAVC, 1990), 233.
10. Julian Stallabrass, Internet Art: The Online Clash of Culture
and Commerce (London: Tate Publishing, 2003), 90.
11. Frederic Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire
Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, 215.
1 9 7
A R T I C L E
The Point
Source:
Blindness,
Speech
and Public
Space
Curriculum Manager, Media and Humanities
Working Mens College, London
PhD candidate in New Media Arts and Education
School of Creative Arts, James Cook University Townsville,
Australia
adam.brown1@jcu.edu.au
adamb@wmcollege.ac.uk
by
Adam Brown
Figure 1. The word KAE4TEZ (thieves) projected on the
wall of the Greek Parliament building, Syntagma Square, July
22, 2011. MindTheGap Citizens Media / Real Democracy GR
Multimedia Team. Used with permission via the Creative Com-
mons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
License (pixilation intentional).
1 9 8
A R T I C L E
A B S T R A C T
One moving image, a video of events in Syntagma Square in 2011, shows
a swarm of points of green light, created by laser pointers directed at the
architecture surrounding the square from within the crowd, and a second
still image with the word thieves, constructed from an array of red dots, is
again projected onto the wall of Parliament, the location of speech. The
laser pointer, a device intended to trace the progress of speech, and rein-
force the agency of the individual speaker in a static visual presentation, is
repurposed in the context of civil disturbance to both blind the agents of
dominance and stigmatize the architects of crisis. In doing so, an imple-
ment of visibility and authority, a straight line emanating from the space of
the logos, becomes implicated in the delineation and representation of the
space of the public.
This paper represents an attempt to explore and create continuities
and discontinuities between the binding-together of individual lasers/pixels
in an assemblage, the chaotic movement of the individual laser/pixel, and
the concerted activity of people acting in solidarity or chaotic revolt. The
paper is constructed in order to implicate the carrier signal the page, the
screen in the network which founds and funds both order and its oppo-
sites, as itself an active agent and producer of its own collectivities.
PROLOGUE
In the early hours of June 22nd 2011, in Syntagma
Square, Athens, during a demonstration to ac-
company a vote of no confdence in Prime Minister
George Papandreous government, photographers
captured images and video of the word
thieves projected onto the exterior wall of the
parliament building from within the crowd. From
amongst the restless swarm of green laser dots, im-
ages of which had been broadcast round the world
as representative of the Greek protests, emerged a
word in red light: an accusation, the projection of an
identity. The thieves identifed were, of course, days
away from signing into law a package of austerity
measures which would include the forced privatization
of large parts of Greeces public sector the transfer
to private ownership of assets held in common and
cuts in benefts and tax rises. Previously, on May 5th,
the taunt had been verbally slung against politicians in
an abortive attempt to storm the building: here it was
projected turning the building into a curious kind of
1 9 9
A R T I C L E
placard.
1
Inside the building, people were speaking:
parliament is of course the place of parole. On the
walls, someone wrote. Suddenly a device which had
previously been used in the context of protest to blind
the forces of law and order was used for the opposite
purpose: to render visible a word. According to the
website redteamjournal.com, which represents an
organization which encourage(s) decision makers to
consider alternative perspectives to national security
issues, the frst recorded use of lasers as a counter
optical device by protestors was during the Battle for
Seattle in 1999.
2
As ever inventive and responsive,
the protestors seemed to have chosen to reverse the
direction of this original act of dtournement, in which
a visual aid was converted to a counter-visual weapon.
The protests on the streets of Athens took place in
the context of Europe-wide demonstrations against
the paradoxical entrenchment of neoliberal economic
structures following the crash of 2008. The online
exchanges which took place between Spanish Indigna-
dos and Greek anti-austerity protestors were accom-
panied by the exchange of messages on placards: the
famous be quiet, the Greeks are sleeping was issued
from a distance as a provocation. Placards, posters
and other protest materials were produced with a bi-
nary function: to crystallize and express the concerns
or ideas of protestors in the moment, in the place of
protest, but also in anticipation of their appropriation
by global media produced in order to be photo-
graphed. The audience for these placards was twofold:
they were intended to be received by both non-
participant and participant spectators. In the latter
case, media channels were themselves appropriated
to transmit a message which was received diferently
depending on the position of the reader.
BINDING & BLINDING
Notions of vision and visuality are deeply embedded
in the practice of contemporary protest. Debords
Society of the Spectacle would seem to have been
required reading for the movement as a whole but
academic commentators have widely deployed the
tools of visual critique to analyze recent events. An
example of the efectiveness of this approach can be
seen in Marinos Pourgouris
3
rich and deep analysis
of the agency of the hood in the 2008 protests which
marked the beginning of the Greek unrest: masks
and hoods served, in the context of the spectacle of
protest, as a sign of apocalyptic violence, just as they
served to conceal the identity of both protestors and
cops any counter-optical device is itself a visual
signifer.
Pourgouris act of writing represents an attempt to
re-unite the intellectual and material activity, closing
the gap between aesthetics and praxis identifed by
Marx in his formulation of the division of labor.
4
Her
paper begins with an apology for the incursion of liter-
ary criticism upon the political or sociological realm,
yet the productive tension between visibility and in-
visibility which this critique engages requires the tools
of visual or aesthetic criticism in order to pick apart
the role of a specifc politics of visuality in the context
of civil disorder. Porgouris explores the links between
the blinding efects of tear gas, the concealing efect
of the hoods, masks and bandanas worn by the pro-
tagonists, and the spectacle of the riot as a broadcast
event:
...those who were watching the protesters (police-
men, journalists, the public) were always seeing
them through a lens or a flter: television screens,
camera lenses, or helmets. The protesters were be-
ing watched from a distance, as it were, and they
came face to face, not with peoples faces, but
with the always already objectifed State Law or
technological apparatuses.
5
2 0 0
A R T I C L E
In this paper, which is itself the product of certain
apparatuses, I intend to centre an object-oriented
critique and I use the word in full acknowledgement
of the heretical nature of such a formulation for Ac-
tor Network Theory (ANT) and its various Object
Oriented Ofspring on an object which sits in an
indeterminate space similar to the one Pourgouris
describes.
6
Deployed diferently in parliament, board-
room or on the street, the laser pointer both reveals
and conceals. One can imagine such a device in the
context of a stock market deal, as much as a protest.
Investigation of the difering roles of this object opens
up a paradoxical space between society, locality and
representation by performing the simple operation
of drawing a line and making a point it is a double
agent, both productive and spectacular: the origin of a
rogue pixel.
PRACTICAL MECHANICS
I can only imagine the body of the device that made
the word, but I have worked through several versions
of what this machine the formally bound, materially
delimited, part of this assemblage must look like. On
frst seeing images of this projection, the machine was
of less importance than the act. As an enthusiastic
collector of such things I related it to early projection
work by Krzystof Wodiczko, who in 1985 famously
projected a swastika onto the entablature of another
neoclassical building South Africa House, on the
West side of Trafalgar Square.
7
Both events repre-
sented the re-labeling of a classical architectural con-
tainer. Projection rendered the building transparent,
revealing the identity of its contents by cancelling out
the architectural sign of state power this building
contains Nazis, this one contains thieves applying
a stamp, a unifed identity to the buildings contents.
The purchaser of a given commodity imagines that the
named contents are singular, monadic, even though
they may be, as the small print says, the produce of
more than one country. Homogeneity, collectivity,
becomes an accusation though you appear to be
diferent, you are all the same in opposition to which
a key strand of contemporary protest energetically
resists appropriation by conventional political collec-
tivities.
If the machine was not important to me at frst, it was
because I was engaged by the swarm of laser point-
ers trained on the architecture. The dots seemed an
analogue of the crowd: stochastic, energetic, entropic.
Figure 2. Screengrab from the video Laser Dance, Real Democracy Group, Athens (2009), MindTheGap Citizens Media / Real
Democracy GR Multimedia Team. Used with permission via the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0
Unported License.
2 0 1
A R T I C L E
They seemed to be an autonomous, self-generated
representation of fractured, chaotic commonality, and
representative of a truly public space. Viewed as spec-
tacle, such function amplifed by the organizing func-
tion of my laptop screen, the dots were both ordered
and chaotic: they activated the framed pixels, like a
restless, accelerated screensaver though rather than
the usual spinning Mandelbrots they appeared to tes-
tify to either a disrupted, absent or indescribably com-
plex geometrical order: as such, this stochastic activity
served as a sign of human subjectivities as yet unde-
scribed by algorithms or modeling. Yet as they arrived
in front of me, it was as if they were expected the
screen traced them, welcomed them, ordered them.
Later, in the context of a seminar dealing with the
history of public art and new media, I projected the
word KAE4TEZ from my desktop. Ad libbing, it
struck me as I spoke that the dots that made up the
word could have been projected by individual mem-
bers of the crowd: look, I said to my 25 students
(who in this text are now reproduced as a collectivity),
in this instance, the projection is produced by a group
of individuals standing together and training their laser
pointers onto the building. In the absence of sophis-
ticated technology, the simple collective action of a
number of heterogeneous individuals has produced
a word. Energized by the poetic potential of this
conceit, I repeated it a couple more times in diferent
contexts, then realized that, as I often do, I was making
things up. It was me, not the members of the crowd,
who was binding together disparities, in this case
ideas that of the collective, the word and production.
Led by a desire to dwell on the phenomena of collec-
tive action, encouraged by the signs projected by the
machine, spontaneous social improvisation seemed
the most obvious explanation for the message I was
tuned in to the idea of a rig or assemblage did not
ft so well. There is a world of diference between a
large group of individuals coming together in public
space to spontaneously associate and invent, and an
individual or smaller group hacking together cheap
apparatus in a space away from the crowd.
What proved the existence of a rig was the trace of
mechanical reproduction. Across multiple images of
the same event, the pattern of the word was replicat-
ed, almost identically, pixel mapped onto pixel almost
perfectly, the only interruption being the irregularity of
the projection surface.
Figure 3. Thirteen points, and an interloper: the E in
THIEVES, enlargement of fgure 1. MindTheGap Citizens Me-
dia / Real Democracy GR Multimedia Team. Used with permis-
sion via the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (pixilation intentional).
2 0 2
A R T I C L E
From the perspective of current philosophical and
critical trends, who cares anyway whether people
stood together in solidarity as a human projector, or
whether the image was the product of a machinic as-
semblage? We who write and read should be used by
now to the agency of objects. After ANT, the conver-
sion of human agency into machine function is a mere
act of translation. The black box can be both an as-
semblage of technical and non-technical components
or a mixture of both.
The more that compromises on wider fronts have
to be made, the more human and non-human ele-
ments have to be stitched together and the more
obscure the mechanisms become. It is not because
it escapes society that technology has become
complex. The complexity of the sociotechnical
mixture is proportionate to the number of new ties,
bonds and knots, it is designed to hold together.
8
So, truly, my romantic conceit may still hold frm. But
seeking a way of articulating this, back in the seminar,
in front of my PowerPoint, my re-projection of a pro-
jection, it would seem impossible to explain without
doubling back on myself. I would have to begin this
line of thought with an explanation of an error. And
that would seem to be the most productive way to
proceed.
READING, RIOTING AND ARITHMETIC
A laser pointer projects light. But to project a word
is, amongst other things, to send it forth into space.
An actor, (in the theatrical sense) can be said to proj-
ect their voice. One imagines the words flling space,
emanating from the presence, the body. A projection
would appear to require a projector, but is a singular
machine a necessary precondition for the produc-
tion of a projected text? In a conventional projection
mechanism, a lens array gathers the rays of light emit-
ted by a bulb and funnels them through a nodal point
I have hacked many but in the case of the rig under
interrogation here, each individual laser represents
a point source: light emanating from an absolutely
precise, identifable spatial origin. The rig under in-
vestigation seems to have been produced by binding
together over 100 lasers: to make a word, it seems
necessary to bind, to adhere, to assemble. Just as the
text you are reading now if you are reading the elec-
tronic version is composed of an assemblage of dots,
each with its individual x and y value, luminosity, hue
and saturation.
The point of the pointer is to follow the voice. It has
its origins in technologies which assist commercial
and bureaucratic operations. The presenter accompa-
nies the text, the diagram, the chart, with the pointer,
which indicates the focus of attention. Compared to
the apparently linear and sequential process of read-
ing which recent empirical studies have revealed to
be discontinuous, non-linear, the association of frag-
ments
9
the laser pointer / projection / speaker as-
semblage resembles a form of conceptual and rhetori-
cal Karaoke, to which the audience must sing along.
The information design critic Edward Tufte considers
the role of the projection specifcally Microsofts
PowerPoint as more to render the audience mute
and receive the message of the speaker than to en-
courage a thoughtful exchange of information, a mu-
tual interplay between speaker and audience.
10

In this light, the laser pointer in the context of the
business presentation or lecture is almost like a baton
to the head: as the speaker navigates his or her linear
sequence of bullet points, the pointer parses the text
to signify and communicate a presence: this is my
point, here I am in this text, now. Drawing members
of the audience to synchronously follow the speakers
content, the intention to clarify a line of thought also
2 0 3
A R T I C L E
serves to close down tangents, diversions, asides and
interjections. The random, dispersed, chaotic act of in-
formation exchange itself is with the aid of multiple
presentation technologies redrawn as a linear pro-
cess. For Tufte, the cognitive style of such technolo-
gies represents a huge, fashing sign that insists on the
primacy of one-directional information fow over and
above all others. What is elided in the current insis-
tence on presentation tech is the spatial and interac-
tive context of knowledge exchange considerations
of how people associate in space, or how the event
may fow in time. The ordering of events on screen is
prioritized over creating space for audience feedback
or contributions, or more open forms of exchange.
The ideal presentation would, for Tufte, include both
printed matter in the form of handouts, which would
allow participants a degree of ownership over the ma-
terial delivered, accompanied by a visual presentation
serving to support the sharing of knowledge, rather
than its banking, to use Frieres famous formula-
tion.
11
The use of handouts returns the information
to the crowd in the form of a material substrate. Tufte
hereby opposes the projected to the printed in a for-
mulation which insists on the qualities of the material
object to return autonomy to the bearer.
READING, WRITING AND POLICE FUTURISM
12
It is possible to question whether the unifcation of
many separate individual light sources indicates the
production of a voice of one or many. Interestingly,
the above image foregrounds both the trace of the
movement of individual actors, in the stochastic dance
of moving points of green light, and the formation of
sense the word produced by binding. The restless
points could seem far more indicative of the collective
than the single instance of the projected word, which
can be assumed to be the product of individual action.
Furthermore, the rig produces the crowd as a com-
munity of readers. However, it does so in full aware-
ness of how such reading takes place in a distributed
context such a reading is self-consciously part of the
same continuum which bounces placards back and
forth across Europe, appropriating media networks as
a host for a distributed conversation. But then all writ-
ing is like this the written word is the site of a double
infection. Writing is, as the poet David Jones claimed,
trying to make a shape out of the very things of which
one is oneself made.
13
Such a position is describable
from the position of the poet, the producer or the as-
tute critic. It requires embodied knowledge of how the
act of writing is, even at its very origin the author a
binding together of fragments.
Considering violence, Laclau writes using metaphors
that recall the geometry of projections:
The existence of violence and antagonisms is the
very condition of a free society. The reason for this
is that antagonism results from the fact that the
social is not a plurality of efects radiating from a
pre-given centre, but is pragmatically constructed
from many starting points.
14
The social, for Laclau as much as for Latour, is gener-
ated by the formation of local bonds, in the context
of politicized situations. These many starting points
converge in the form of allegiances which develop be-
tween heterogeneous individuals, in this instance in a
multifarious crowd. The notion of the social emerging
from the local is echoed by the protestors themselves:
in the context of the crowds, bonds were formed, su-
pervening those imposed by the separated identities
and roles imposed on them by capitalist society they
met not as workers, university or school students or
immigrants but as rebels.
15
In this context,
The rebellious experience, the material community
of struggle against normalization when one
2 0 4
A R T I C L E
deviant individual became the mediator of another
deviant individual, a real social being mediated
emotions and thought and created a proletarian
public sphere.
16
Laclaus formulation, which opposes radiation from
a centre to a dispersed and diverse feld of starting
points, is visible in the spectacle of the lasered-up
masses, but it is again possible to question whether
the binding-together of pointers does not to some ex-
tent start on the path towards the kind of centraliza-
tion to which Laclau opposes his notion of antagonis-
tic politics, especially given the issue of reproducibility.
The above is an echo of Latours conceptualization
of the how the social bond is produced by stabilizing
the links between bodies by acting on other bod-
ies.
17
I do not wish to attack the agency or inten-
tions of the individual maker of the rig here merely
to oppose two types of political sign one which is
spontaneously generated, and another which appears
comprehensible, sensible the naming of Parliament,
the house of speakers, as the house of thieves: this
particular formulation a reduction of a complexity
to a simple identity is productive of both reaction-
ary and revolutionary extremes. In the light of this
act of writing, the other signs seem chaotic: writing
produces them as non-signs. This diference may well
be a function of representation: it is emerges from
the gap between spectacle and street. Pourgouris
makes a similar point in her cautious treatment of the
transposition of the Act to Logos
18
represented by
the appropriation of the voice of the protestors by
academia: a reduction of the immediate experience of
the protest to a construction of language.
However, what this paper attempts to open up is the
potential for the immediate experience of the objects
of representation to be the site of action or protest.
With regard to images, convention dictates that their
collective production is the site of action, and their
reception the site of passive reception on the part of
an individual. Latour himself remarks that the distilla-
tion of spatio-temporal experience into the space of
the diagram, lab report or photograph is an immensely
powerful act:
By working on papers alone, on fragile inscriptions
which are immensely less than the things from
which they are extracted, it is still possible to domi-
nate all things and all people.
19
However, if the site of reading is re-imagined as a
space in which collectivities act on objects, it is ma-
terially no diferent from the street. It could therefore
be misguided to think that those reading in seclusion
occupy a diferent kind of space than those in the mo-
ment of protest. As capital territorializes public space,
the space of the private can, by an act of imagination,
be turned back into public space. Returning to the
context of my lecture, I can claim to have experienced
an event of reading, in which the reception of a text,
on screen, in a social context, was changed by the in-
tervention of objects. What material events locate or
disrupt the reception of this text?
There is a diference between the binary oppositions
of on/of or blind/possessed of sight. The former is a
function of the projector (human or non-human) and
the latter is a quality of the reader, the receiver. For
this to become an opposition, a line has to be drawn
and crossed. This critical operation one of the most
signifcant gains of the critical practices Latour dis-
avows locates the origin of meaning in the space of
the reader, not the author.
20
The laser pointer which
is targeted to blind does not transmit its function
from one to the other side of the chasm separating
an event from its representation. The mass of points
which for the crowd indicate a sign of their collectiv-
ity and the extent of their threat they pose do not
physically threaten the viewer of the photograph.
2 0 5
A R T I C L E
However the word thieves will be reproduced on
the page as it is on the square, ironically via the func-
tion of photography to trace what is in front of the
lens. But just because the visual data is transmitted
through the nodal point of the lens, funneled through
the camera of one individual, the photographer, the
message it carries need not be rendered indivisible,
monovocal the reader does not have to become
complicit with the construction of the technological
assemblage of the screen. Though the textual device
covers far vaster distances than the laser, it is crucial
to bear in mind the power of writing and reading to
articulate the multiple, the heterogeneous, and to be
appropriated diferently by diferent collectivities. In
which case, contesting the operation and location of
reading retains a potent political charge. And that is a
critical operation.
Following the protests of 2008, a book was produced
by Kastaniotis Editions entitled Avqougid (disquiet),
collating visuals, street art and texts produced in the
heat of protest. On publication, copies were stolen
in bulk by groups of anarchists, who claimed that
the book appropriated intellectual property which
belonged in the street.
21
In response, the publish-
ers made the contents available online making the
content free for those who can aford a computer.
22

What they chose not to do was to make the physical
product available gratis this would have been pro-
hibitively expensive. The only way in which the same,
identical visual material could be broadly experienced
for free, for those either in possession of a computer
or not, would have been on the walls of Athens, at that
point in time dispersed, stochastic, public. However,
this would have limited readership to those with the
physical access to the space at that point in time. The
diference between catching a glimpse of a poster out
of the corner of ones eye as one runs for shelter and
encountering it online would appear to be reading in
the context of action. However, by locating reading
in a space apparently distant from sites of action, an
opposition is generated between those kinds of space
where action is productive (the agora) and where ac-
tion is not happening or does not happen (the library,
the bookshop, in front of the screen.) Pourgouris
refers to ieks opposition of objective to subjective
violence objective violence representing a kind of
inaudible background noise which habit accustoms
us not to hear.
23
Maybe reframing the object as
Figure 4. Enlargement of screen grab from Dance of the
Lasers, laser light, stone, JPEG artefacts (from Laser Dance,
Real Democracy Group, Athens.) Crop and enlargement by
the author. Image by MindTheGap Citizens Media / Real De-
mocracy GR Multimedia Team. Used with permission via the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0
Unported License (artefacts and pixilation intentional).
2 0 6
A R T I C L E
political makes it possible to become attuned to the
level of objective violence in the act of reading. Here
is your screen, on which you read this it is made of
the same things pixels which make deals and blind
cops.
PRODUCING A MESS WITH METHOD
24
The location of production is multiple. There are key
aspects of this paper which will be most signifcant
if you read them on a screen, as opposed to on pa-
per it is entirely my intention to place in front of you
something which will be read diferently for two dif-
ferently equipped readers. With regard to the relation-
ship between printing and the electronic page, Derrida
admits that the digitally reproduced text always car-
ries within itself the desire to become paper
25
but
then it would not glow, it would not shine. It may be
that the text in front of you is an assemblage of points
of light. These particles, bound by the machine in a
fxed array, are illuminated from behind by a sheet of
electroluminescent flm, overlaid on which is a shifting
transparency. Maybe you will be reading on a tech-
nology yet unimagined, in which case my argument
evolves upgrades? On the Guardian website this
morning, a day after revisiting Derridas Paper Ma-
chines, I read about the revelation of a prototype de-
vice which behaves like a tablet, but resembles a sheet
of paper the PaperTab.
26
Coincidence or chaos?
The question of production is paramount: what is
produced here on the streets and on the screen is
manifold, as is its base (support, substratum, matter,
virtuality, power.
27
There are many relationships of
base to inscription in this text: the writing on the wall,
words on a screen, architecture as the location of
speech, the street as the location of political energy.
Considering the notion of social space and its pro-
duction, Lefebvre fnds it necessary to problematize
the notion of production and its organizing, rational
principles:
[] frst of all, it organizes a sequence of actions
with a certain objective (i.e. the object to be pro-
duced) in view. It imposes a temporal and spatial
order upon related operations whose results are
co-extensive. From the start of an activity so ori-
ented towards an objective, spatial elements the
body, limbs, eyes are mobilized, including both
materials (stone, wood, bone, leather etc.) and ma-
teriel (tools, arms, language, instructions and agen-
das) Relations based on an order to be followed
that is to say on simultaneity and synchronicity
are thus set up, by means of intellectual activity,
between the component elements of the action
undertaken on the physical plane. [] the formal
relationships which allow separate actions to form
a coherent whole cannot be detached from the
material preconditions of individual and collective
activity; and this holds true whether the aim is to
move a rock, to hunt game, or to make a simple or
complex object.
28
The page is a physical plane as much as is the street
as long as it retains its physicality, its body.
Focusing on Lefebvres opposition between moving
a rock and making a complex object we return to the
space of Syntagma Square. In the context of protests,
rocks become projectiles. Neni Panourgias fascinating
analysis of the agency of stones in the events of De-
cember 2008 explores how
[] the making and self-making of political subjects
is a process that presupposes an engagement
with both intellectual and tactile materials. One of
these intellectual materials is ideology, which stains
tactile objects, such as stones and paper, with the
heft of its own meanings.
29
2 0 7
A R T I C L E
In a wide-ranging and poetic exploration of the agen-
cy of stone, Panourgia draws a critical thread through
the use of stone in the concentration camps of the
Greek Civil War in which prisoners of conscience
were required to build analogues of Greek architec-
ture, as part of a process of humanization which
would secure their release to Syntagma Square, and
the rock-throwing high-school students. Stones can
be thrown in a way that frustrates the neat arrays and
rehearsed tactics of the forces of order much as
lasers can be projected from the randomly dispersed
positions of members of a shifting crowd. The move-
ment of stones through the air, the debris of stones
on the street an index of disorder can be com-
pared to an entropic process by which the very fabric
of architecture becomes a target not the fabric of
the building, (we are not considering anything like an
updated version of the trebuchet it is vital for the
efect of these weapons that they are small, dispersed
and fast) but the ideas which hold the architecture
together the consensus, the power which architec-
ture reifes. Words, paper, stones, speech and power
engage in a dance which is only visible to those with
the critical acuity or lens to be able to make imagi-
native associations between what remains in place.
Panourgia opposes stones to paper, the paper of
university degrees, state decrees, newspapers, all of
which are rendered valueless by global neoliberalism.
However, if stone thrown or piled retains its power
to produce and activate the public, then so does paper.
Looking at images of the event, two signifcant cat-
egories of objects litter the street: stones and paper
in the form of fyers, and receipts.
The thrown stone is a coincidence of object and
efect: when it strikes, it makes its point. The laser
pointer, however, possesses both an immateriality and
a materiality, from its object status in opposition to
the text, which for Panourgia is closer to something
immaterial. It has a binary nature, in more ways than
one: as an object in and of itself a commodity sold
on the streets of the capital, by itinerant street sellers
(who do not give receipts, strictly a cash transaction),
and a dot, a mere point of illumination. Its operation is
inseparably optical and spatial. From within the crowd,
light is thrown from a distance onto stone, producing
a coincidence of efect and sign. Though Panourgia, in
her text, produces the stone-as-sign through her deft
interrogation of its historical trajectory, the laser, as
tool, is already productive of both violence and signif-
cation. Lasers en masse are performative in a way that
singular lasers are not, in Austins sense of a speech
act which also performs an action such as I hereby
declare allegiance, or I decree.
30
When, from within
the chaos of the crowd, disunited / heterogeneous
protestors aim their shifting points of light at a build-
ing, producing a spectacular, energetic, restless feld, a
collectivity is announced regardless of organization or
structure.
A poster displayed on the streets of Athens in 2008
collected in Avqougid
31
shows a cartoon of a riot
policeman dispersing a crowd of random stick-fgure
protestors, in contrast to a body composed of red
individuals, which looms over the cop, causing him to
fee. Such a Leviathan is conventional this is how
solidarity is conventionally represented, and yet it is
the upper picture which is more representative of
the actual, chaotic spatial dispersion of a strong body
politic.
DATA IN THE PLAZA
It is possible to view the display on the Hotel as a
form of data visualization, in the sense intended by
Dave Colangelo & Patricio Davila in a previous edition
of LEA.
32
However, the mechanism here is not pro-
duced, but autonomously generated. Yes, the buzzing
lights truly represent a fuid, digital layer that perme-
2 0 8
A R T I C L E
Figure 5 Protest posters, Athens, 2008. Collected in Avqougid,
Kastaniotis Editions, Athens, 2009. Photograph by Efthimios
Gourgouris. Efthimious Gorgouris. Used with permission.
2 0 9
A R T I C L E
ates the city and a mix of technology and urban space
which creates an increasingly confated real and virtual
space,
33
but as to whether these, in Lefebvres terms,
are unifed by a human productive rationality, is a moot
point. The assemblage almost makes itself, it comes
together via the presentation of attitudes, objects and
opportunities like reading.
Colangelo and Davila write:
Tradition ally, visualizations have been treated as
surfaces for a sole user to view. With architectural
projections, these visualizations can be viewed
simultaneously by a group of users. Shared experi-
ences within large visu alization environments can
harness the cognitive and communicative capacity
in a group of viewers.
34
The recruitment of the bureaucratic function of the
machine in the service of artistic production is not
necessarily benign the diference between Syn-
tagma and the projections described above is that the
spectacle represents the creation of a social event and
its simultaneous representation: the funneling through
a surface for a sole user to view happens after the
representation is generated (before it hits the plane
of the spectacle the screen). The spectacle of the
lights of Syntagma spontaneously and autonomously
achieves such sharing of experience and cognitive /
communicative bonding (in a sense it is already that, it
is a sign of itself), but avoiding the channeling through
a nodal point of power which would render such col-
lectivity comprehensible, controllable, manageable.
Of course, this was another key message which I was
attempting to get across to my students: do not as-
sume that the best solution to a problem is to increase
the complexity of the mechanical assemblage: elec-
tronic art is almost always a hybrid of human and non-
human elements. One of the most valuable insights
ANT has contributed to thinking through human in-
teraction is that the division between passive objects
and active humans is constructed and conventional.
35

In acts of communication the relationship between
human and non-human is complex if technological
artefacts give rise to the power to communicate at a
distance, acknowledgement of this agency should not
give rise to a binary opposition between a material,
violent, participatory public space on the one hand
(the space where the spectacle is produced), and a
passive, immaterial, abstracted realm of reception.
Both are potential sites of action. By focusing on the
laser pointer in my lecture, I stumbled across an ob-
ject which could directly communicate between both
spaces as a door communicates between rooms.
Suddenly the lecture became the street: the dtour-
nement of projection equipment for the purposes of
protest meant that the very technology of my pre-
sentation became a potential agent of the fows or
movements I was attempting to describe. This distant
action had the efect of ensuring that no-one par-
ticipating in the lecture could consider their role and
as passive and presentation technologies as merely
conductive. Something entered the room through the
open door.
DRAWING TO A CONCLUSION
Focusing on the agency of objects is fast becoming a
key trope of contemporary discourse, but the rewrit-
ing of Syntagma Square as the site of the play of ob-
jects, as opposed to people, is deployed by myself and
the others I have chosen to recruit in support of my
argument because by doing so, it is possible to draw
together, on the same plane, a series of apparently
disparate events, actors and ideas. In all such contest-
ed spaces, the agency of non-humans intersects with
that of humans in a way that requires that politics be
factored into the equation no matter whether one
2 1 0
A R T I C L E
believes that politics itself is produced, in the case of
Latour,
36
or is productive, in the case of Marx. How-
ever, in the site of action represented by Syntagma
Square, Latours notion that critique can never be pro-
ductive can be challenged by his own formulations. In
claiming that it is no more possible to compose with
the paraphernalia of critique than it is to cook with a
seesaw Latour
37
opposes production to critique,
and yet in a strange move which contradicts his earlier
statement regarding the power of inscriptions, he
delimits the paraphernalia of critique to specifcally
discursive tools words, speech, concepts neglect-
ing non-human paraphernalia entirely, and entirely
glossing over the role(s) of the carrier medium, which
fgures large in Derridas thinking. Furthermore, in
attacking the critical, Latour conjures up an imagi-
nary beast similar to capitalism and society which,
of course for ANT, do not exist. As Larval Subjects
writes: the ANT worry is that we treat concepts
like society or capitalism as themselves, being enti-
ties that do things, thereby becoming blind to how
societies and modes of production like capitalism are
put together.
38
But critique is as able to come to-
gether at the level of the local, the intersubjective and
the placed, as any of the intersubjective, local, micro-
level networks which Latour pits against construc-
tions of the macro.
Evidently, critical activity can also be extended into
the realm of the material, a point which Kafa under-
stood when describing a mechanism of punishment
which inscribes a legal sentence, letter by letter, on
the body of the accused.
39
With a more powerful
device than the rig described here, the word thieves
could have been permanently inscribed on the wall of
parliament.
Indeed, it could be Derrida who seems more open to
the compositional potential of critique by his recogni-
tion of the productive agency of the material of lan-
guage: much of his output represents a specifc call to
creativity, to poetic action, to the re-binding of labor
with imagination and pleasure which the division of
labor itself divorces.
40
Writing is also a form of hack-
ing. And there is, of course, the notion of play, of jouis-
sance. Strapping lasers together and projecting them
on public buildings is fun. We must never lose sight of
the power of fun.
2 1 1
A R T I C L E
1. Malcom Brabant, Three Dead as Greece Protest Turns
Violent, BBC News, May 5, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/
hi/8661385.stm (accessed January 14, 2013).
2. Robert J. Bunker, Counter-Optical Laser Use Against
Law Enforcement in Athens, Red Team Journal, February
23, 2009, http://redteamjournal.com/2009/02/counter-
optical-laser-use-against-law-enforcement-in-athens/
3. Marinos Pourgouris, The Phenomenology of Hoods:
Some Refections on the 2008 Violence in Greece, Jour-
nal of Modern Greek Studies 28, no. 2 (October 2010):
225-245.
4. Ibid., 226.
5. Ibid.
6. See the school of Speculative Realism, spearheaded by
Graham Harman, which seizes on Latours notions of the
agency of objects in order to propose an object-oriented
ontology. G. Harman,Towards Speculative Realism: Essays
and Lectures (London: Zero Books, 2010); and Larval Sub-
jects (blog), www.larvalsubjects.wordpress.com (accessed
January 14, 2013).
7. L. Deutsche, L. Saltzman, and A. Turowski, Krzysztof Wod-
iczko (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2011).
8. Bruno Latour, How to Write The Prince for Machines
as well as for Machinations, in Technology and Social
Change, ed. B. Elliott (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1988), 475.
9. Franck Ramus, The Neural Basis of Reading Acquisition,
in The Cognitive Neurosciences, ed. M. S. Gazzaniga, 3rd
ed. (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2004), 815-824.
10. Edward Tufte, The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: How
Pitching Out Corrupts Within, 2nd ed. (Cheshire, CT:
Graphics Press, 2011).
11. Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York:
Continuum, 2007).
12. The evocative phrase Police Futurists is found in R. Bun-
ker Counter-Optical Laser Use Against Law Enforcement
in Athens. I am sure there is no reference intended to
Marinetti et al.
13. David Jones, preface to The Anathemata (London: Faber
& Faber, 1952). For those unfamiliar with Jones, the pref-
ace is an astonishingly insightful and prescient meditation
on the act of writing as the assembly of fragments in the
context of linguistic and cultural tradition, personal history
and spirituality.
14. Ernesto Laclau, Community and Its Paradoxes: Richard
Rortys Liberal Utopia, in Emancipation(s) (London:
Verso, 1996), 115.
15. TPTG, The Rebellious Passage of a Proletarian Minority
through a Brief Period of Time, in A Day When Nothing
is Certain: Writings on the Greek Insurrection, collected
by anonymous editors, 2009, available online for free
download at http://blog.occupiedlondon.org/wp-content/
uploads/2009/11/a-day-when-nothing-is-certain.pdf (ac-
cessed November 23, 2013).
16. Ibid.
17. Bruno Latour and Michel Callon, Unscrewing the Big
Leviathan: How Actors Macro-structure Reality and How
Sociologists Help Them To Do So, in Advances in Social
Theory and Methodology: Towards an Integration af
Micro- and Macro-Sociologies, ed. A. V Cicourel and K.
Knorr-Cetina (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981),
283.
18. Marinos Pourgouris, The Phenomenology of Hoods, 227.
19. Bruno Latour, Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing
Things Together, in Knowledge and Society: Studies in the
Sociology of Culture Past and Present, ed. H. Kuklick, vol. 6
(Greenwich, CT: Jai Press, 1986), 30.
20. See Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, in Image,
Music, Text, trans. S. Heath (New York: Hill and Wang,
1977), and Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday
Life, trans. Steven Rendall (London: University of California
Press, 1984).
21. Gourgouris, Stathis, Avqouid. Mid kddypdq ou
du0pqou ov Askpio ou 2008, and: We Are an Im-
age of the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008
(review), Journal of Modern Greek Studies 28, no. 2
(October 2010): 366-371.
2 1 2
A R T I C L E
22. Accessible online at http://issuu.com/kastaniotis_editions/
docs/anisixia (accessed November 23, 2013).
23. Marinos Pourgouris, The Phenomenology of Hoods, 227.
24. A reference to J. Law, Making a Mess with Method, in
The Sage Handbook of Social Science Methodology, ed.
W. Outhwaite and S. P. Turner (Beverly Hills and London:
Sage, 2007), 595-606. Law explores the adoption of fgu-
rative writing in social scientifc methodologies as a way of
productively translating chaotic situations.
25. Jacques Derrida, Paper Machine, trans. Rachel Bowlby
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).
26. Rory Carroll, Tablet Enthralls CES 2013 by Treading Thin
Line Between Computers and Paper, The Guardian, Janu-
ary 7, 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/
jan/07/ces-2013-tablet-computers-paper (accessed 14
January 2013).
27. Jacques Derrida, Paper Machine, 54.
28. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. D. Nichol-
son Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
29. Neni Panourgia, Stones (Papers, Humans), The Journal
of Modern Greek Studies 28, no. 2 (October 2010): 199-
224.
30. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1962).
31. A. Kyriakopoulos and E. Gourgouris, eds., Avqouid. Mid
kddypdq ou du0pqou ov Askpio ou 2008. (Ath-
ens: Kastaniotis Editions, 2009): 289.
32. Dave Colangelo and Patricio Davila, Light, Data and Public
Participation, in Leonardo Electronic Almanac 18, no. 3
(August 2012): 154-163.
33. Ibid., 155.
34. Ibid., 157.
35. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
36. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to
Actor Network Theory (Oxford: OUP, 2005), 253.
37. Bruno Latour, An Attempt at a Compositionist Manifes-
to, New Literary History 41, no. 3 (2010): 471490.
38. Levi R. Bryant, Marxism, Actor Network Theory and the
Rise of the Eukaryotes, Larval Subjects (blog), August 6,
2009, http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/
marxism-actor-network-theory-and-the-rise-of-the-
eukaryotes/ (accessed January 14, 2013).
39. Franz Kafa, In the Penal Colony, in The Penal Colony:
Stories and Short Pieces, trans. W. Muir and E. Muir (New
York: Schocken, 1948).
40. For a deft unpacking of Derridas aesthetics (pre 1987),
see David Carroll, Paraesthetics: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida
(New York: Methuen, 1987).
2 1 3
C O N V E R S A T I O N
INTRODUCTION
E: My art making and research follows on from a
need to revisit my own history. Living through and
partaking in the period of revolutionary openness
between October 1989 and March 1990 in East Ger-
many, at the age of 15, was the politically formative
experience of my life. I experienced the subsequent
accession of East Germany to the Federal Republic
of Germany as the end of a unique collective experi-
ence lasting only a few months. It is in relation to the
utopian horizon of this experience that my work has
unfolded over the past years.
Initially, my research was driven by the sheer invisibility
of these utopian aspects of 1989 in historiography.
Neither the happy story of national re-unifcation, nor
that of the vindication of true freedom in the form
of West German representative democracy ring true
with how I perceived this period. I knew that I was not
alone in feeling this way; when talking to others who
lived through these events, I saw their faces light up
and their bodies tingle with excitement at the memory.
But this excitement almost always came with an im-
mediate apology, a disclaimer, saying that we were
nave and that it could have never worked out. This it
INVISIBLE HISTORIES,
THE GRIEVING WORK OF
COMMUNISM, AND THE
BODY AS DISRUPTION
A Talk about Art and Politics
Junior Researcher, PhD-in-Practice
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
elskerosenfeld@gmail.com
www.elskerosenfeld.net
http://blogs.akbild.ac.at/phdinpractice/
by
El ske Rosenfel d
2 1 4
A B S T R A C T
This text is based on a conversation between myself and sa Sonjasdotter,
visual artist and professor at Troms Academy of Fine Arts. In this text we
will discuss my artistic research into the history of the revolutions of 1989
and of state-socialism in general which is driven by my biographical in-
vestment in these histories in relation to broader questions regarding the
relationship between art and politics, and will consider what the notion of
political struggle might mean in a post-communist world. Finally, we will
analyze the role of the body, of physical experience, in remembering past
political events and in opening them to the present day through diferent
artistic strategies.
only ever got expressed as what it was not and how it
could not have become, because of reality or political
circumstances. So, I became very interested in what
this shared it is, that people refer to, but can never
quite put into words. There was this parallel motion of
trying to fnd something, and almost prove something
that is not present in ofcial history in a sense, to
create a counter-history and at the same time real-
izing, in talking to people, but also in looking at difer-
ent types of documentation, that this it is never quite
there, cannot be communicated and may, in fact, not
be communicable within the languages available to us.
A: To revisit this it is to revisit a moment where things
were open and possible, and I wonder if this is a strat-
egy, to revisit this moment and to insist on it, to open
up these questions again, to not accept that they are
now closed forever? This is how I understand what
you have said.
E: For sure, this was my intention with this work from
the start, to re-open an experience and go against the
claims that this revolution is closed, that its demands
were redeemed. To insist instead, that there were a lot
of things that happened at this moment and that were
foreclosed by history, but that are, at the same time,
not fully contained in historiography, but persists as a
hope or desire or potentiality. And you get a sense of
these things, when you look at how people respond to
certain materials that I have shown from this period.
The frst work I did on this theme was based on archi-
val footage from the Robert-Havemann-Archiv in Ber-
lin, where they have full documentation of the meet-
ings of the so-called Central Round Table of the GDR.
The Round Tables were an institution that sprung up
everywhere, not only in Berlin, after the government
lost its legitimacy in the autumn of 1989. They decid-
ed in November to start using this format, which came
from Poland initially, as a mediation platform, where
oppositional forces and members of the government
could meet. Round Tables were set up in schools, uni-
versities, town halls and regional governments. The
Central Round Table in Berlin, which was on the level
of the national government, started on the 7th of De-
cember 1989. It essentially had a quasi-government
function at the time, but was not based on represen-
tation. It is extremely fascinating, as it brings up all
2 1 5
sorts of interesting issues to do with what happens
when revolution starts to self-institutionalize. And this
was the moment that I was interested in, to see what
happens when revolution tries to install itself as per-
manent change, as institution.
I worked with a ten minute clip from the very frst
session of the Round Table that I had found looking
through the transcripts, or rather the index/content
pages of the transcripts for that day, where it said:
Demonstration passes the building. I immediately be-
came interested in that, because in this instance you
have the street, the liminal space of revolution, clash-
ing with this formal institution that is coming together
for the frst time. And this confrontation of the two
is what makes the clip extremely interesting. You see
people sitting in this space, which was a church as-
sembly hall, and they have only been there for an hour
or so, for the frst time. Then you hear these sounds of
whistling and shouting from the outside, and you have
this sudden intensity and drama, because people do
not know how to relate to this. Some people think the
demonstration is there to support the Round Table,
some perceive it as a threat, and everybody thinks
they have to legitimize themselves in the face of this
demand from the street. Because, in fact, the street
was the sovereign at that time. So you have this brief
moment, where the question of legitimacy is called
up, and the question of action, because they are sup-
posed to respond, but they do not manage. For ten
minutes they talk about what can we do, who can we
send out there, how can we represent the table out
there, who will the people going out there represent,
etc. essentially going through the very basic vocabu-
lary of politics.
This was the frst piece of footage that I began work-
ing with and that I actually continue working with
today.
In the frst installation piece I made based on this, I had
the video clip playing on a screen set into the surface
of a table I built, next to a small frame with what was
essentially the outcome of the Round Table meetings,
namely a draft for a new East German constitution.
To write this draft was one of the main tasks of the
Round Table during its three months of existence. But
in the course of these three months, the political situ-
ation had changed so dramatically, that by the time
the draft was completed, it was already obsolete. The
draft was produced by all political forces across soci-
ety, the former socialist party, reform socialists, greens,
citizens-rights people, social democrats, anarchists,
womens groups etc., i.e. including people that you
would not normally get in a government. And togeth-
er, in an extremely speeded-up process, they wrote a
document that responded very concretely to how the
project of state-socialism failed in East Germany. You
Figure 1. May I Interrupt,
Elske Rosenfeld, 2009. Video
Installation. Original footage
courtesy of Robert-Have-
mann-Archiv, Berlin. Elske
Rosenfeld, 2009. Used with
permission.
2 1 6
could say that it amounted to a kind of implicit history
of state-socialism, in the sense that it included very
precise regulations regarding those points where this
project was felt to have failed most specifcally. But it
is interesting also for its limitations; it is not a revolu-
tionary manifesto or utopian document by any means,
because of the unusual and wide-ranging group of
people that worked on it not by majority vote, but
solely on a consensus principle. This document was
commissioned in December 1989, because the as-
sumption was, that East Germany would continue to
exist as a separate democratic, but not necessarily
capitalist state. The revolutionaries at the Round Table
were not in favor of reunifcation at that time, in fact,
by and large it was not an issue in those early months.
When the revolution started, it was about reforming
socialism. But when the document was completed by
March, it was already clear that things would no longer
go that way. The use of the document in parliament
was then openly sabotaged; it immediately became a
subversive document. It also immediately became, and
still is, extremely obscure.
In my installation, I was interested in the communi-
cation between the video clip and the constitution
document. I showed this work at the Geschichtsforum
in May 2009 in Berlin, which was the biggest cultural
event in the context of the 20-year anniversary of the
revolution, initiated by the German Cultural Founda-
tion. And then I showed it again, in a diferent context,
in Halle, my home town, in the actual building where
the local Round Table took place and which is now
owned by an art association, who put on a show there
in October 2009 together with institutions that are
invested in memory politics in Halle, but from a very
ofcial point of view.
I later expanded this work for an exhibition in the
context of the Former West project at BAK in Utrecht
in 2010. Here, I condensed the table into a smaller in-
stallation, with the video on a screen by the entrance
of the room with my work. The original sound was on
headphones, but the sound you heard when you ap-
proached the room, was the sound of the demonstra-
tion, the outside sound, the iconic sound of protest/
revolution. So the inside/outside idea was there, but
it was very condensed and that was the intro to the
whole room. The room itself contained three parts:
frst, there was a table with a projection of me reading
the Constitution booklet silently, but in real time from
front to back. Efectively, visitors could read it along
with me watching the video, although it still remained
a solitary act of me reading this document. The other
part was an interview I did with a guy who was at the
Round Table, involved in the writing of the draft, but
also in its printing, which was done by a very small
oppositional publishing house in collaboration with
the East German ofcial state press. And next to the
Figure 2. Reading the Con-
stitution, Elske Rosenfeld,
2010. Video /Installation,
HDV, color, 43 minutes.
Elske Rosenfeld, 2010. Used
with permission.
2 17
interview with the story of how it was published and
distributed, I showed an image of the box in the store-
room of the publishing house today, that contains the
last remaining 20 copies of the document. On the
third wall was a video of the very last session of the
Round Table, where representatives of the main politi-
cal groupings take turns reading the constitution draft,
already knowing that it will not be used.
A: I think this series of work relates to something I am
very interested in, namely what art is, and can do, in
relation to politics. In the frst works you re-actualize
the it situation anew by directly presenting the con-
stitution in the places where it was at stake, which are
not art-contexts, whereas in the last installation, which
is presented in an art-context, you develop a more
complex reading of the situation. It seems to me as if
these diferent kinds of locations, representing politics
versus art, carry diferent possibilities for reworking
the it moment.
E: Initially, I placed this material in an art context in
order to see how it could be read outside of the nar-
ratives in which it has been encapsulated over the last
20 years. But I think, what I am moving towards in my
work now is not to rely entirely on this kind of transfer
from the space of historiography or document to the
space of art, but to see how and by what other means
such a transfer can be achieved, in order to bring this
material closer to the it that I am searching for. And
I am fnding that this it is less accessible in purely
documentary material, but begins to come into view,
if you introduce diferent forms of, let us call it, artistic
authorship if that is the right word.
A: Yes, the second presentation of your work has
more layers of complexity, also because you include
yourself in it. It is about you reading the material, and
you add that to the other perspectives of the flm clip,
the inside and outside, and the perspective of the
person who was involved in the printing and writing of
the constitution. You introduce the layer of the now
and what it means for you to read this text now. The
complexity of the relations contains so much, that the
place where it is shown is less important than your
authorship.
E: Yes, although the installations in Berlin and Halle
also importantly functioned as interventions in specifc
constellations of memory politics, which by and large
followed the established narratives of this history.
A: And then to place it in these situations as an inter-
vention can be very powerful.
E: Yes, the placing was important. And I think the
question is also what your main impulse in doing this
is. This is something I am still working out, but back
then I wanted it to be very immediate, a very direct
intervention in the commemorative events that were
going on in 2009, an almost activist, direct idea of
what art can do, of how it can take efect. I came from
this very literal concept of political or documentary art
the idea of showing something that is not otherwise
visible and achieving something just by doing that. But
I think art can also function in a diferent way, as you
mentioned, in creating an openness that is somehow
closely related to the openness of the revolutionary
moment itself. And this openness can in some ways
be an almost anti-activist space, because activism
suggests a clear instruction or message coming with
the work, and my earlier works had an element of this
immediacy. Now, I am increasingly also interested in
how art creates a sense of openness or disruption in
the ways of speaking about politics or about history,
in a way that does not follow a counter-documentary
impulse of saying this is how it was. How art can
open an experience up again, without necessarily
immediately putting a label on it. I guess, this will be
easier to explain when we talk about my more recent
2 1 8
works. But it is great that we already have this frame-
work for talking about my work, the diferent ways art
can be political, or interact with an audience, or have
an impact.
My next larger project was Watchtower/Ghosts, which
I conducted over four months in the summer of 2010
in a former East German border watchtower in Berlin.
I used the tower as a kind of open studio, making my
research available there, but also inviting diferent pro-
tagonists from 1989 for a series of talks that touched
on diferent aspects of this history. In terms of our
discussion of how art can be political, I guess, this was
partly research for me and for my own purposes, but it
was also very much about creating a sense that there
is an experience that is shared, rather than individual,
and to see what happens, if you bring together people
whose past experience has been muted and individu-
alized to such a shocking degree.
A: This somehow also makes me think of Adorno and
Horkheimer, and what they wrote about how to re-
cover Marxism, which they found had either been hi-
jacked by the Stalinists or domesticated within Social
Democracy. So, I am thinking of the work they did in
using cultural criticism as a way to refect on their own
failures. This might be an interesting parallel.
E: Yes, and in my work this kind of critical refection
is, in fact, addressed to two diferent audiences or
groups: Firstly, there is an ephemeral or, if you will,
non-community that I attempt to create around my
work by calling on those who shared this experience,
and the experience of its invisibility. In this sense, my
interventions in Halle and Berlin were also always
investigations of how this experience can call upon
such an audience and address it specifcally as a com-
munity vis vis a particular experience, rather than as
isolated individuals. The same goes even for a more
recent work which I did in public space, in the streets
of a Leipzig neighborhood, in 2012, where I worked
with magazine covers and texts from the period, and
which, again, communicates a political excitement and
a horizon that difers widely and goes far beyond what
the revolution is held to have achieved ofcially.
Secondly, also to move on to a diferent strand of my
research, my work is addressed to the Western domi-
nated present-day leftwing, of which I am also very
much a part. I feel that I can bring a diferent kind of
critical perspective to this project that of the experi-
ence of real existing socialism. To remind us, that this
idea of communism, which has such currency again
today, was actually supposedly implemented, or at
least in the process of being implemented, in this
whole part of the word. To look at the particularities
of how this project failed concretely, without cyni-
cism, but also without self-censorship, and to follow
the need for some kind of grieving work about this.
To look at all that could have been, and how it was
thwarted again and again by concrete acts. So, a start-
ing point was to look at communist iconographies and
the diferent desires they evoke in people from the
Western and, on the other hand, the Eastern Euro-
pean left. A frst project, which I started at a residency
in Canada, came out of a conversation I had there with
a very well-known American Marxist philosopher, who
was there as a tutor. When I told him about my work,
he said, this is all very interesting, but to me as a Marx-
ist, the history of state-socialism is not relevant. And
this was not the frst time that I have heard that from
high-profle leftwing Western academics.
A: That seems like an extremely lazy position. If you
want to talk about Marxism you have to think about
what happened in state-socialism. This is again why I
think Adorno and Horkheimer are so relevant in how
they consider theirs as well as others failures.
2 1 9
E: Yes, and this is, once again, a very clear and immedi-
ate political impulse to doing what I do. In response to
this conversation in Canada, I started looking on eBay
and researching for East German produced red fags
and made a series of prints of those images, exactly
as they were posted on eBay, with a small text plate
next to them that states where and when they were
purchased, alongside the name of the East German
factory where they were produced.
I continued with this theme at a residency in Berlin
Pankow, in a building that used to be a home of the
FDJ, the communist youth organization of East Ger-
many. In fact, the whole surrounding area is interesting
it was known as the home of the party and cultural
elites in the early days after the founding of the state.
Many politicians had their homes there, the embassies
were there, there was a street where all the writers
and artists returning from exile after the war were
housed, Eisler, Becher, etc. And a former Prussian pal-
ace there became the seat of the frst prime minister
and later the ofcial guesthouse of the East German
government.
The project I did here was a bit of a follow-on from
the Red Flag project, because I had bought this red
fag fabric and was thinking about working with this
material. I had come across a piece by the artist Felix
Gmelin, where he re-enacts a flm by Gerd Conrad
from 1968. Conrad had some students relay-run
through West-Berlin with a red fag, and Gmelin
re-staged this in Stockholm in 2002. I decided not
to restage it for the third time, but to use the same
camera perspective going through some streets of
Pankow, with basically an empty space in the middle,
where the relay runners are in the original video. The
voice-over is going through what these places were
and what their role in the architecture of the East
German state was, to give an idea of an actual state
apparatus, a power apparatus, being in place, that is
supposed to be the implementation of the communist
project. On the other monitor you see me stitching up
one of the pieces of red fabric to make it into a fag
and put it on a handle. The third component I included
was a Mayakovsky poem for the simple reason that
the main street that people associate with this area is
Mayakovsky Street. And, of course, Mayakovsky was
the most prominent poet of the early Soviet Union
until he committed suicide in 1930, which was very
much hushed up. There is this one poem from 1929
where you can get this implicit, but still very present
sense of his disillusionment with the project of the
revolution. This is another entry point into the tragedy
of the failure of this great project, through one of its
early protagonists, who sees his life-project fail and
kills himself.
So essentially, the second strand of my work deals
with this, a kind of grief work around the project of
state-socialism, but a form of grieving and dissecting
that nonetheless insists on the validity of a political
project that aims beyond the status quo.
My next project after these two was the video Je
ne rentrerai pas, which goes back to my research on
1989 and revolution, and the question of what other
Figure 3. Red Flag, Original, GDR, Elske Rosenfeld, 2011. Pho-
to Series. Elske Rosenfeld, 2011. Used with permission.
2 2 0
ways, beyond narrative or documentation, you have as
an artist of engaging with such an experience. I decid-
ed to go back to a flm that I saw a few years ago at a
flm festival in Oslo, the French militant flm La Reprise
de Travaille aux Usine Wonder, which was made by
Jacques Willemont in 1968. It is a ten-minute clip of
the end of a strike, where one of the striking women
is standing outside the gates of a factory refusing to
go back inside. When I frst saw this in Oslo, it was not
even subtitled, so I just knew the situation, and I saw
her face and her body language, and I was completely
blown away by it. It was the most powerful image for
my experience of 1989 that I had ever come across
much more so than any documentary material I had
seen from the period itself. So this clip had been in my
head for a long time, I had written a short text about
my encounter with it, and I decided to go back to it,
and intervene in the footage directly, based on this
earlier text. What I was interested in, was to use this
to look into the non-verbal, almost gestural level of
this type of experience in this flm, but also in much
of my material from 1989. To work with the fact that
the intensity of this kind of moment is not in the lan-
guage, but in the non-verbal, the physical.
In the flm, I go through diferent motions of engag-
ing with the material and confronting it with my own
experience of 1989. I took only three minutes from
the original flm and I go through it in diferent loops
around the moment where she screams: I am not
going back inside, I am not going back into that pigsty
of yours in French. Which is the only text from the
flm that is translated, the rest is in French. I even
worked on the sound a bit to make it harder to under-
stand, even if you do speak French, just to recreate
my experience with the flm of not understanding the
words. The three-minute clip is basically of her shout-
ing, while the two union ofcials try to calm her down,
and this clip gets repeated in diferent ways. First of all,
there is the level of what she does and how she goes
through this set of gestures, which one could maybe
describe as an afective cycle from being resigned and
depressed, listening to the ofcials and almost giving
up, but still with a sense of defance, and then erupt-
ing again with rage. In the original footage you have
about fve full cycles of this motion, of which I picked
one. From almost giving in, listening to reason, to
faring up again with rage, insisting again, that you can-
not go back inside. In two of the cycles of this full set
of motions I use very minimal text. One cycle shows
her cut out in front of a white background, and on the
second screen I show quotes from a documentary
that was made by Herv Le Roux in the 90ies, using
a few statements from his interviews with her former
colleagues, where they all say how much they empa-
thized with her and felt the same way. The second
cycle is of her being cut out of the image and the
two men talking to her empty silhouette from both
sides, where I used quotes from a translation of what
they were saying, all the reasons for why she should
be content with the small changes that the strike
has achieved, and go back inside, and not be upset.
And you have this minimal text alongside her going
through this cycle of gestures, of her rearing up and
calming down. From that I wanted to do something
that continues this physical process as a space of
Figure 4. Pankow Colourtest
(Die Rote Fahne, III), Elske
Rosenfeld, 2011. Video instal-
lation or 2-channel video,
HDV, color, 14 minutes.
Elske Rosenfeld, 2011. Used
with permission.
2 2 1
resistance into the present. To work on this space as
anchored in the body, to enact it through my bodily
recognition of her refusal and her rage. So, I experi-
mented with a few gestures that repeat, recreate this
space in the body, gesturally.
I have been reading a lot about gesture, and on per-
formance and body art, and I am becoming extremely
interested in the idea of the body as an outside to lan-
guage, and therefore as a possible site of disruption. I
think there is something important in this for under-
standing revolution, or the Political in more general
terms, especially if you look at how the recent upris-
ings in Cairo, or the Occupy movement have been so
much about the physical formation and sustenance of
a community of bodies in space. I think it is important
to insist on this physical level of the Political, espe-
cially because the body has been neglected to such a
degree by post-structuralist theory, and the suspicion
this has caused, also in the feld of art, towards using
the body, because of the claims of authenticity and
the essentialist overtones of a certain type of body art.
In order to get a better understanding of this, I have
started looking at more contemporary material, from
2011, and at how these events were constituted above
all by such physical acts as camping, sleeping and eat-
ing together in space. I am collecting images of those
activities from diferent protest sites and planning to
develop some performative, maybe choreographic
work around those. Right now I am working on a
script for a performance based on the note that was
put up around Zuccotti Park on November 15
th
2011
to end the protests there. This notice goes through
a list of activities that are being prohibited, and it is
extremely specifc about which bodily position you are
allowed, or not allowed to assume in the square, in
terms of lying, or reclining, or sitting down. So these
restrictions concern very basic physical positions, and
not political actions in the classical sense of giving
speeches or holding up banners.
I am also working on some material I shot in Cairo
last year in February with a friend of mine from there,
where we drove around Tahrir Square one night in
her car in three circles, while talking about revolution.
This gesture in some ways marks the endpoint of a
revolution, or maybe not actual endpoint, but point of
disillusionment after revolution, but at the same time
it performs this moment of potential closure and disil-
lusionment also as a physical gesture of persistence,
by going round the square physically, several times.
Figure 5. Je ne rentrerai pas, Elske Rosenfeld, 2011. 2-channel video, HDV, b/w and color, 7 minutes. Original footage Courtesy
of Jacques Willemont. Elske Rosenfeld, 2010. Used with permission.
2 2 2
A: I really fnd it interesting that you, through this
whole process, arrive at the body and the non-verbal.
I share your analysis that so much of what is at stake
concerns the subjugation of the physical body, and
it tells something about the urgency of the situation,
where much else is already lost. The name Occupy
also shows that this is the strategy, to go out in the
streets and insist with your physical body by not leav-
ing the place.
E: Absolutely, and the next thing I want to do is bring
my investigations of the physical in these more recent
situations back into my work on the past, and how
it relates to this deep sense, that something of my
experience of 1989, and therefore of the experience
of revolution in general, persists in the body as poten-
tiality, even after revolution becomes closed down in
language, re-institutionalization and historiography. I
think, this work is so pressing, because within a clas-
sical concept of emancipation as linear progress, all
of these revolutions, the one in 1989, the one in Cairo,
even the events of 1968, must be considered as failed,
at least in terms of the ambitions of their original pro-
tagonists. I am interested instead, in a notion of the
Political that is not linear, that unfolds on this juncture
between order and the opening/rupture of this order.
And then to ask how art can contribute to creating
such instances of rupture or openness, also by work-
ing directly on bodies and on embodied memory of
a past political experience. To create experiences of
entering such an outside, and to see if and what shifts
can occur in this back and forth between outside and
status quo. And this, of course, proposed a particular
relationship between art and politics that I want to
understand better and continue to experiment with.
2 2 3
A R T I C L E
NOBODY EXPECTS THE #SPANISHREVOLUTION
On May 15, 2011, thousands of citizens in the main
spots of Spain took to the streets in demonstra-
tions of protest, answering the call of a Facebook
event that had circulated in the previous months
through social media and online communities. The
protest was not backed by any major political party
or union, only by a horizontal loose collective of activ-
ist groups with minor impact and support, up until
that point. In fact, the original call came from a loose
pseudorganization, Democracia Real Ya!
1
(Real De-
mocracy Now) with no public faces or a very defned
agenda; At the time of the demonstration, Democracia
Real Ya! was in fact only three months old.
Reasons to protest were quite defned and specifc,
though. A rampant unemployment that for younger
people was reaching dramatic proportions (a rate
around 45% for the 18-25 demography), a widen-
ing of the gap between citizens and a political class
perceived as privileged and detached from everyday
problems, constant scandals of corruption, and above
all, a deep insatisfaction with a disfunctional democ-
racy, stuck in a increasingly bipartisan system where
both options end up meaning, in practical terms, no
TAKEN
SQUARE
On the Hybrid Infrastructures of the #15M Movement
by
Jose Lui s de Vi cente
2 2 4
A R T I C L E
The text of this article is based on a lecture imparted during the Ars Elec-
tronica Festival 2011 as part of the Sensing Place, Placing Sense Sympo-
sium in September 2011. Several weeks after this talk, the emergence of
the Ocuppy Wall Street movement and its global spread replicated many
of the features and strategies of the Spanish 15M movement six months
earlier. Instead of reevaluating the Spanish protests in light of the Ocuppy
Movement, we have chosen to keep the focus on the original events that
took place in May 2011.
real option, and perceived as equally inefcient and
unable to provide real solutions.
The demonstrations themselves, even though con-
templated with scepticism by the mainstream media
and political parties, were not surprising. About time
was one common answer from citizens and analysts
who were sure that the degrading social conditions
would spawn eventually some reaction on the street.
It was not surprising either or particularly new in 2011
that the reaction wouldnt come from traditional or-
ganizations, but from loose self-organized groups that
would use Social Media to coordinate collective action
and create a critical mass of participants. The argu-
ment that Social Media can be a catalyst that enables
unprecedented mechanisms for collective action, and
that these can have an impact on the political sphere
have been discussed countless times in the last few
years..
What was surprising is what happened the night af-
ter the demonstration. A small group of around 40
people who didnt know each other, wandering what
to do once the demonstration was over, staged an im-
proptu assembly at Puerta del Sol, the main square at
the heart of the city center, and decided to stay.
2
Its
not clear who was the frst to actually say what if we
stay?, but three days later it was not 40 people, but
more than ten thousand; it was not only Madrid but
Barcelonas Catalonia Square, or Metrosol Parasol in
Sevilla, a shiny brand new example of Iconic architec-
ture from German architect Jurgen Meyer (the biggest
wooden structure in the world today) and that was
previously void of any signifcance in the city, until the
movement took over it.
So you could safely say that nobody expected this;
it was very clearly a case of a Black Swan.
3
Not that
people would decide to go out on the street and pro-
test, but the fact they did it in a fashion that nobody
expected: reclaiming public space, rearrangeing it,
reshaping it so that it would become a laboratory for
discussion and participation. The shape of this move-
ment would happen through appropiation, redefnition,
and reconfguration of the city.
In this particular case, the debate on wether social
media is a tool that enpowers citizens catalyzing
2 2 5
A R T I C L E
decentralised actions, or if this form of slacktivism
creates a false sense of participation that cannot ac-
tually replace political action -best expressed in the
Shirky-Mozorov debates
4
and in the cultural wars
around the Internets impact in diferent social upris-
ings- is irrelevant. The important story in this scenario
might be not so much if the participants in the May 15
protests, what would come to be known as the 15M
movement, suceeed in changing the political structure,
but how they expressed a reimagining of public space,
of its role in community building, that was intimately
connected to dynamics originating in online space.
At the center of the instant city that became the Puer-
ta del Sol camp, known as Acampada Sol, a 21 year old
architecture student called Alberto Araico, interested
in sustainable architecture, built a semicircular dome
out of pallets. It would become the information point
of the camp, and the closest thing it had to an archi-
tectural icon. Looking at the picture published by El
Pais, Spains most important newspaper, of the dome
with its builder,
5
I could not help thinking: what if the
Smart City, that image of a clean efcient urban envi-
ronment mediated by technology, would in fact actu-
ally look instead like this?
Maybe you can build a new sense of public space
shaped by technologies that are not sophisticated
sensons, public objects with APIs, energy monitors
and the rest of lexicon of Smart urban technologies,
as hyped by an emerging industry of corporate agents
that want to be involved in the construction of the
21st Century Mega Cities. Maybe there is another
Smart City built up by citizens downloading DIY-
instrutables showing you what you can do with pallets,
cheap tools like free, ad-sponsored video streaming
services, and popular microblogging sites that allow
us to coordinate on public space with unpredictable
results.
A PROTEST OF MANY PROTESTS
In the months after the events on May 15 many difer-
ent narratives where proposed and drafted to create a
genealogy of a movement that, with the vague refer-
ent of the Arab Spring (arising in radically diferent
circumstances) seemed to come out of nowhere,
unite diferent agents in the ideological spectrum, and
claim no direct parents. Probably the most exhaustive
one was the Conceptual Map of Acampada Sol,
6
a
collaborative mindmap developed as the events where
taking place, trying to connect every specifc request,
strategy or action with previous cases in the recent or
not-so-recent history of activism. The map shows how
in the previous 2-3 years, difent modes of campaign-
ing, diferent demands and diferent agents gathered
in an unlikely common goal in time and space. Many of
them combined online organization with public space
occupation.
The frsts ones were dealing with the protests de-
manding a right to housing, in the wake of one of the
most extreme real state bubbles in the West, leaving
3 million empty houses waiting for a buyer, and hun-
dreds of thousands of young people unable to aford
a house due to the skyrocketing prices created by
speculation. V de Vivienda (V for Housing)
7
was an
important precedent in staging public space protests
for the right to housing before the bubble exploded,
from 2006 onwards.
Equally important was a protest movement complete-
ly focused on what was going on the Internet around
the copyright wars and anti-piracy legislation, a con-
fict that had essential relevance on online space, but
was also slowly seeping into the street. Sindes Law
-named after a flm screenwriter who served as Minis-
ter of Culture between 2009-2011- would allow clos-
ing websites without court action, using a commitee
of experts under the rule of the Ministry of Culture
that would attend the reclamations of IP Holders. The
massive protest movement against the law completely
2 2 6
A R T I C L E
monopolyzed the social media sphere in the country
for the last couple of years. #Nolesvotes
8
frst
movement named after a hashtag promoted heav-
ily in Twitter and Facebook voting against all parties
that supported Sindes Law in 2011 elections, and two
years before the Manifesto for Fundamental Rights
on the Internet, a collaborative Manifesto
9
written
as a Google Wave by many bloggers, journalists and
local internet pundits that become the most heaviliy
retweeted, blogposted document in 2009, defending
fundamental civic rights on the internet under threat
by antipiracy legislations.
Maybe the most interesting hybrid activist movement
preceeding 15M was that originated by Plataforma
de Afectados por la Hipoteca,
10
a series of groups
defending people evicted from their own houses by
mortgage foreclosures. One of the most socially con-
fictive circumstances arising from the crisis is that
afecting those who bought a house at high prices at
the peak of the bubble, at low interest rates, then saw
how as unemployement exploded and rates rised, their
home was simultaneously devaluating. This has left
thousands of citizens, many of them inmigrants, in the
worst possible set of conditions; out of a job, unable to
pay a ever-increasing mortgage, they would lose their
home to the bank. However, since their property had
devaluated heavily, losing their house wouldt cancel
the totality of their debt, and many would have to face
the burden of a monumental debt that would make
them unable to reconstruct their lives. The Plataforma
de Afectados, uniting people under this condition,
would develop a surprising and efective methodology
to denounce the unfairness of the situation. Every time
an eviction was programmed, they would use Social
Media to announce the location and time of the afect-
ed house, asking citizens to attend and stage a fash-
mob blockade. In dozen of successful actions, court
ofcials executing the order would stand powerless in
front of 300 to 500 people preventing them access.
NOT A DEMONSTRATION, A RECONFIGURATION
Returning to the 40 people united at Puerta del Sol
on the night of May 15, you could probably say that the
single most important decision taken there that night
(willingly or unwillingly) was framing their activity not
as an action, but as a transformation of space. This
would not be a protest, but a reshaping and a redef-
nition of this very signifcant public space, to turn it
into an open laboratory to stage experiments in the
practice of democracy and to recover the function of
public space as Agora.
A signifcant moment takes place when at that same
asembly the people gathered decides that they will
become an entity and a location. To make this explicit
they open a Twitter Account, @acampadasol,
11
pub-
lishing their very frst message at 01:55 am. A website
would soon follow, Toma la Plaza,
12
that will become
a communication hub between diferent cities as
camps start spreading all over Spain, with their own
twitter accounts and website. In a matter of days the
movement efectively becomes a network.
The members of Acampada Sol understand in an intui-
tive way that social media is not only a communica-
tion tool but also the arena where their movement
is gaining support and recruiting new members. On
the second night at the square, a police intervention
dismantles the camp. The permanent narration of the
events through Twitter creates a strong popular reac-
tion against the police intervention, multiplying the
number of people at the square ten-fold in little more
than 24 hours, consolidating their presence at the
square to the point it becomes clear the camp will not
be easily dismantled.
RIDING THE ALGORYTHM
As the camp at Puerta del Sol grows larger, an increas-
ing number of banners, signs and legends start to
2 2 7
A R T I C L E
cover up the space of the square. But being aware of
theintimate connection between public space and the
space of social media, the movement is as profcient
and prolifc creating hashtags that are retweeted and
referenced again and again. At this point, an inventive
strategy is developed (or accidentally discovered):
instead of focusing on a single hashtag for all mes-
sages, it is replaced with a new one every couple of
hours. Because the Twitter algorhythm calculating
Trending Topics does not consider only the volume of
messages using one hashtag, but the speed of a con-
cept spreading from nowhere, the efect is a complete
monopolization of the full list of Trending Topics on
Spain. During the week following the 15M event the
protest monopolized the national twitter stream, to
the point it was hard to fnd messages that did not
made reference to them, or included hashtags linked
to the movement.
The notion of the protests not as an event but as a
spatial intervention defnitely takes over when maps
of the camps started being drawn out, as an actual
neceesity to navigate the square. The need for basic
infrastructure giving support to the hundreds sleeping
in the square and thousands using it during the day,
along with the organizational structure of the protest-
ers that generates commisions and working groups,
produced an emerging Instant City coming out of no-
where in 2 days.
The map of Acampada Sol
13
shows how to fnd their
library, made up with hundreds of books donated by
participants and citizens; the legal department, ofer-
ing legal assistance to protesters as they follow the
evolution of events; a small dispensary for medical
attention, a kindergarten, and the most popular and
crowded, the kitchen-restaurant, cooking for the resi-
dents of the camp with ingredients donated by citi-
zens (money donations where consistenly rejected).
The twitter account is actively used to organize a
chain of supply, connecting the supporters willing to
help with the specifc material needs of the camp at
every given moment.
The Instant City is consistent, in a certain way, with the
nature of the protest, since the climate at the camp
in this moment is not one of desperate complain and
rejection, but a propositional atmosphere centered
around the desire to build something new. The bodies
that will channel this desire are the commisions and
the assemblies, holding open sessions were anyone
can participate. In order to stablish a time and a space
to open up the discussions on themes ranging from
feminism to cultural policy, to economy and the envi-
ronment, the city is segmented so that specifc cor-
ners of the square and intersections of nearby streets
are devoted to specifc discussions. Sometimes
protests end up in the staging of assemblies in every
possible space in the city, creating unlikely scenes like
public assemblies in the asphalt of a major avenue at
3 AM.
As everyone who has participated in horizontal un-
structured processes of participatory democracy will
surely know, the assembly creates huge challenges for
the decision taking process; as participants go from
dozens to hundreds, scalability becomes a problem
and there are huge bottlenecks; for many participating,
the process is as invigorating as frustrating, and a bet-
ter system to aggregate opinion and channel decisions
is longed for, but not developed.
MEDIA INFRASTRUCTURES
On the frst spontaneous gathering of protesters at
the square two days after May 15th, a young journalist
named Juan Luis Snchez climbed to the top of one
of the buildings at Puerta del Sol and recorded what
was going on before any national TV station got there.
2 2 8
A R T I C L E
This original 40 second clip
14
spread in minutes
through social media, reaching international blogs, and
being reproduced hundreds of thousands of times
in the following hours. It would also be the start of a
continous selforganized media covering of the events
at the square. For the next three days, Juan Luis
would stay up there holding his iPhone in his hand,
broadcasting to thousands of viewers daily through a
free streaming service.
The unmediated online streams that would broadcast
24/7 the events at Puerta del Sol would be an essen-
tial cohesive element to unite those who were on site
and those following the events through Social Media;
it was a back channel that certifed and in a way stabi-
lized the actual presence of the camp. The audiovisual
commision of the camp, coordinating broadcasting ef-
forts, will play a central role also in the coming months,
at the big demonstrations that are organized in june
and october 2011 all over the country. Their role is to
ofer a testimony of the reality of what was going on,
bypassing the distrust and scepticism that many felt
towards mainstream media and their coverage of the
protest.
But media devices and their communication infra-
structures would fulfll another essential function
for the protesters; it would become a mechanism for
defensive surveillance, as the permanent presence of
recording devices would ensure that any event would
be registered, from multiple points of view. This vid-
eos would provide valuable information, but also a tool
for negociating the conditions in public space. When
the frst episodes of police violence against demon-
strators exploded in Barcelona two weeks after May
15, during an operation to clean up the camp at Cata-
lonia Sqaure, the events were recorded, uploaded and
widely seen before the political representative who
ordered the action could host a press conference ex-
plaining their version of events. In an ironic twist, the
politician would complain of the unfairness of debat-
ing a situation in the public arena when one side could
ofer plenty of recorded material to defend their posi-
tions while the other -his- couldnt. Video would also
be used to identify particular police agents that were
involved in specifc acts of violence, as police ofcers
would systematically deny their identifcation number
when requested, and, against regulation, would not
display it on their uniforms.
TAKEN SQUARE
One of the most iconic images produced by the 15M
movement would be taken in Valencia on May 20.
It depicts two young persons, a man and a woman,
climbing up the faade of the city hall, with a sign
on their hands. The picture shows how what they
are trying to do is intendng to change the name of
the square, from Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall
Square) to Plaza 15 de Mayo (May 15 Square). They
would not be alone in this; diferent street art and
activism actions would some of the most iconic sen-
tences created by the movement and turn them into
street signs. The most memorable one sat at the foot
of the equestrian statue at the centre of Plaza del Sol.
Installed by art students, it simply said We were slept,
we woke up. Taken Square.
Like the camp, the placard is not there any more; it
has been installed and removed several times. It is a
reminder though that the movement that took over
one specifc point in the city was using the language
of the city to express a will to the city, a need to bring
back the political and recover public space as the
natural space where the public can be discussed.
A distinct model of taking over the city to reshape
it and reclaim it was in action in Spain during three
weeks. One hybrid model of global participation, tak-
2 2 9
A R T I C L E
ing many elements of the self governance of online
communities and injecting them into the heart of the
city, reinvigorating it, recovering it as the space for
discussing what model of society we want, to imagine
and shape out a new one. And in this exercise of re-
covering the city, the weak links of social media, the
strategies of peer production communities and the
mechanisms of emergent organization without strong
hierarchies were absolutely central. Beyond Social Me-
dia activism, the 15M movement became a movement
for the shared, spontaneous creation of space.
1. The website of Democracia Real Ya!, http://www.democ-
raciarealya.es/ (accessed January 13, 2014).
2. For a detail account of these frst hours of the movement,
see Juan Luis Snchez, The First Forty at Sol, Human
Journalism, June 6, 2011, http://english.periodismohu-
mano.com/2011/06/06/the-frst-40-at-sol/ (accessed
January 13, 2014).
3. An event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is nor-
mally expected of a situation and that would be extremely
difcult to predict. Coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. See
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the
Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2007).
4. Evgeny Morozov and Clay Shirky, Digital Power and its
discontents. Mozorov & Shirky, an Edge Conversation,
Edge.org, http://edge.org/3rd_culture/morozov_shirky10/
morozov_shirky10_index.html (accessed January 13, 2014).
5. Patricia Goslvez, Reportaje: Arquitectura de guerrilla
en el 15-M, El Pais, June 17, 2011, http://elpais.com/
diario/2011/06/17/madrid/1308309860_850215.html
6. The website of Una lnea sobre el mar, Mapa conceptual
de la acampadasol, 2011, http://www.unalineasobreelmar.
net/mapa-conceptual-de-la-acampada/ (accessed January
13, 2014).
7. Sindominio.net, http://www.sindominio.net/v/ (accessed
January 13, 2014).
8. NoLesVotes.com, http://www.nolesvotes.com/ (accessed
January 13, 2014).
9. Lacking a website of its own, this text collaboratively
drafted was massively reblogged. See, for instance, Esco-
lar.net, Manifesto: En defensa de los derechos fundamen-
tales en Internet, December 2, 2009, http://www.escolar.
net/MT/archives/2009/12/manifesto-en-defensa-de-
los-derechos-fundamentales-en-internet.html (accessed
January 13, 2014).
10. The website of Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca,
http://afectadosporlahipoteca.com/ (accessed January
13, 2014).
11. The Twitter account of acampadasol, http://www.twitter.
com/acampadasol (accessed January 13, 2014).
12. The wesbite of Toma la Plaza,http://tomalaplaza.net/ (ac-
cessed January 13, 2014).
13. The wesbite of Toma la Plaza, Plano de Acampada Sol,
May 21, 2011, http://madrid.tomalaplaza.net/2011/05/21/
plano-acampada-so/ (accessed January 13, 2014).
14. Vista area de la concentracin en Sol 17M #acam-
padasol, YouTube video, 00:40, posted by Juan Luis
Snchez, May 17, 2011 https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=ar2nmOQZEjw&.
2 3 0
A R T I C L E
2 3 1
A R T I C L E
As a general rule, it is taxation that monetarizes
the economy; it is taxation that creates money, and
it necessarily creates it in motion, in circulation,
with turnover, and also in a correspondence with
services and goods in the current of that circula-
tion.
1
Decoding the Flow is an exhibition by Paolo Cirio
with the Museum of Contemporary Cuts (MoCC)
that opened in parallel with another exhibition by
Cirio at Kasa Gallery that was titled Jurisdiction
Shopping.
Loophole4All, the artwork shown in these two exhibi-
tions, was a data-based critique of capitalism rendered
through a series of disruptive interventions, which
provided the opportunity to refocus ones attention
on the operational systems of contemporary Data
Capitalism.
Cirios realm of artistic activities is based on a critique
of contemporary society that touches and rattles, as
much as an artwork can, the smooth operations of
international corporations.
WHEN AESTHETIC IS
NOT JUST A PRETTY
PICTURE
Paolo Cirios Social Actions
by
Lanfranco Aceti
2 3 2
A R T I C L E
How could we defne the activities of an artist like
Cirio and should we neatly frame his works of art? It is
too easy and restrictive to place both, artist and works
of art, within a new media context, since they do not
live solely online, but are a composite of diferent ex-
periences, performances, processes and practices.
When developing these two exhibitions, Decoding the
Flow and Jurisdiction Shopping, as a curator, I was
in the midst of elaborating and refecting on a series
of critiques of the contemporary art world and its
patrons corporate tycoons who still see an artwork
as a pretty picture, monetizing galleries that sought
the next great cash cow (read: artist), or academic en-
vironments that promote obscurantist aesthetics and
exsanguinated esotericisms.
Loophole4All represented a valid alternative to the
usual requirements of aesthetic conformity and of-
fered a moment of refection on the conditions of ille-
gality within which the increasingly powerless majority
of people (99%) are obliged to live in.
JURISDICTION AS WELL AS SOCIETY SHOPPING
Cirios Jurisdiction Shopping was focused on the cur-
rent schizophrenic post-postmodern relationships
between state, corporations and citizens. The exhibi-
tion analyzed the process of personifcation of cor-
porations and their increasingly transnational nature,
which have produced a new set of relationships that
exclude and exempt some people from participation
in the shared onus (responsibility) towards the state.
It focused on the processes that allowed and still al-
low the privileged few to continue operating illegally
within the state; living, abusing and corrupting through
fnancial malpractices the very society within which
they live.
Cirios artwork, Loophole4All, democratized the pro-
cess of escaping from ones obligations towards the
state by allowing a liberalized and widespread par-
ticipation in the process of tax evasion no longer a
privilege of the rich few.
Jurisdiction Shopping ofered the viewer the pos-
sibility of engaging with a series of works of art that
are based on the artists experience of attempting to
democratize practices of illegality, thus presenting
Loophole4All (logo), Paolo Cirio, 2013. Courtesy of the artist. Used with permission.
2 3 3
A R T I C L E
the possibility of a world within which frameworks
for a generalized tax evasion exist and, accordingly,
the tools to replicate billionaires behaviors are readily
available.
In a historical period in which social injustice, illegal
market and fnancial behaviors, corporate malfeasance,
as well as multiple obscure and hidden charges have
become a form of private taxation and vexation paral-
lel to the public taxations and vexations of corrupt
states, Loophole4All presented itself as the ultimate
mass participation in the phantasmagoric and elusive
corporate world of billionaires.
Everyone could set a corporation in a tax haven = ev-
eryone could become a tax evader becomes the aes-
thetic mantra; the equation that attempts to dissolve
the diferences between the enlarging underclass of
have-nots (99%) and the minute club of haves (1%).
These were and still are the phenomena that con-
tribute to the creation of large underclasses within
Europe and North America. In this context, it is impor-
tant to understand Cirios artistic vision as one that
presented mass tax evasion as the new great social
equalizer and a democratic approach to illegality for
the creation of the great collective artwork.
The exhibition and its works of art poke fun directly at
the failure of the state in reshaping itself into a new
corporate and economic identity, as well as the failure
of the social body to understand that the new corpo-
rate mythology and its systems are, in Deleuzian terms,
part of the same old apparatus of capture and extor-
tion. Both the state and the social body have been
captured and are being squeezed from the corporate
global economics, which were presented as the saving
grace of a concept of society that had been declared
dead in the 1980s, and that now certainly no longer
exists.
DECODING THE FLOW OF MEANING
Closely linked with deterritorialization and reter-
ritorialization are the parallel terms decoding and
recoding, which bear on representations rather
than on concrete objects. Decoding, it is important
to note, [] refers to a process of dis-investing
given meanings altogether, to a process of uncod-
ing, [] ultimately the elimination of established
codes that confer fxed meaning.
2
The elimination of fxed meanings eliminates value and
generates a fow that can be orchestrated, manipu-
Data
center
California
U.S.A.
Executive
H.Q.
New York
U.S.A.
Company
register
Cayman
Islands
Citizenship
Italy
Corporate
H.Q.
London
U.K.
Financial
intermediary
Luxemburg
l
i
a
b
i
l
i
t
y

o
w

i
n
c
o
r
p
o
r
a
t
i
o
n

o
w
t
a
x

o
w
o
peration ow
cash ow

o
u
t
l
a
w

o
w

d
a
t
a

o
w

Loophole4All, Paolo Cirio, 2013. Courtesy of the artist. Used with permission.
2 3 4
A R T I C L E
Open Society Structures - Algorithms Triptych, Paolo Cirio,
2009. Serigraph (digital) print on Plexiglass, 54cm 39cm.
Courtesy of the artist. Used with permission.
2 3 5
A R T I C L E
Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI) - Algorithm diagram, Paolo Cirio, 2005. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Courtesy of
2 3 6
A R T I C L E
lated, structured and directed according to specifc
and particular interests within a capitalistic society
that exists and prospers on the lack of meaning. Here,
perhaps, in Deleuzian terms, the diference between
the representation and the action is displayed through
Cirios aesthetic approach, in his request to the audi-
ence of actively understanding how something works
and in taking an action.
Let us recall that decoding does not signify the
state of a fow whose code is understood (com-
pris) (deciphered, translatable, assimilable), but, in
a more radical sense, the state of a fow that is no
longer contained in (compris dans) its own code,
that escapes its own code.
3
Decoding The Flow on the online platform of the
Museum of Contemporary Cuts was a necessary
counterpoint to the physical exhibition that took place
simultaneously at Kasa Gallery. Decoding the Flow was
an artistic and curatorial statement that created a fow
of images and code, that escapes its own code
4
by
presenting a survey of Cirios aesthetic and artistic
practice.
Starting from the latest of Cirios works of art, Loop-
hole4All, MoCC presented a series of images with the
clear understanding that this could only be an attempt
to decode the fnancial and social crisis, as well as re-
present the larger social issues that characterized the
last part of the 20th century and the beginning of the
21st century. The exhibition wanted to direct the gaze
of the viewer to the loss of meaning of both state
and citizen in a world where corporations were and
are re-shaping in capitalistic terms not just their own
existence but the lack of meaning and conditions for
everyone else within it.
Loophole4All, Paolo Cirio, 2013. Courtesy of the artist. Used with permission.
2 3 7
A R T I C L E
Loophole4All, Paolo Cirio, 2013. Multimedia Installation at
Aksioma, 2014. Courtesy of the artist. Used with permission.
2 3 8
A R T I C L E
2 3 9
A R T I C L E
Loophole4All, Paolo Cirio,
2013. Courtesy of the artist.
The following were the questions that arose and be-
came part of the curatorial statement for the exhibi-
tion:
In a world of corporations is there any role left for
the individual? What are the future implications of
the current processes of exploitation, commodifca-
tion and enslavement of the individual to suprana-
tional economic entities? Are there processes that
would allow extended forms of community and
citizenship to unveil and alter the power relation-
ships between the post-citizens, the post-state and
the omnivorous corporations? In order to recon-
sider these power relationships, what alternatives
and constructive frameworks can be ofered by
contemporary aesthetic and artistic practices?
Cirios works of art have attempted, over the years, to
respond to these questions and have received critical
acclaim and attention from the press, as well as raised
corporate eyebrows that have lead to legal actions
and controversies.
Such controversies are embedded in the capitalistic
process of decoding, whereby aesthetic analyses
in this particular context of disproportionate power
relationships can make of the artist an embodied
mythological representation but also the embodi-
ment of an action for a struggle that increasingly sees
the concept of citizenship reduced to a condition of
slavery. This condition is systematically imposed by a
widespread corporate perception of economic power
that is endorsed and supported by a skewed under-
standing of statehood and democracy.
2 4 0
A R T I C L E
Loophole4All, Paolo Cirio, 2013. Multimedia Installation at Aksioma, 2014. Courtesy of the artist. Used with permission.
2 4 1
A R T I C L E
Loophole4All, Paolo Cirio, 2013. Multimedia Installation at the Centre for Contemporary Culture
Strozzina, 2013. Courtesy of the artist. Used with permission.
2 4 2
A R T I C L E
It is for this possibility of the action more than the
representation that the aesthetic practice of Cirio
suggested and continues to suggest peaceful meth-
odologies of re-appropriation of civic forms of shared
participation and civility, which may still be possible to
salvage from what Adorno defned as the age of total
neutralization, and within which Cirio, as an artist,
does not seek any false and easy reconciliations.
It is the action that still suggests a meaning, and not
vice-versa, in a capitalistic society of simulacral repre-
sentation that produces and proceeds from the elimi-
nation of meaning to the elimination of action.
The Museum of Contemporary Cuts disseminated
every day, for the entire duration of the show, one
image of the exhibition Decoding the Flow on its elec-
tronic platforms, creating an accretion of content, a
fow, a structure to which meaning could be attributed
through decoding, coding, uncoding and re-coding.
The meaning was and remains that of an action, an
event, an exhibition that happened in spite of and de-
spite cultural frameworks and corporate structures.
THE CONCLUSION OF AN EXPERIENCE
The exhibition Decoding the Flow at the Museum of
Contemporary Cuts complemented and enriched
the physical exhibition Jurisdiction Shopping at Kasa
Gallery, and confrmed with this publication the impor-
tance of another discourse in the fne arts. These are
aesthetic discourses that should be outside corporate
agendas and exist beyond the requests of exhibiting
names.
The two exhibitions were successful in as much as
they were actions and provided meaningful experi-
ences upon which to refect, both in curatorial and
aesthetic terms.
In this context, my curatorial action was that of en-
forcing an agenda that ignored and defed requests to
present not innovative works, but the true and tried
and tired, replicating a circuit of names and artistic
practices that left little to the imagination.
2 4 3
A R T I C L E
It seems at times a pointless exercise to present the
same works of art that have no contribution to make,
that have been cannibalized, chewed to smithereens
and spat out as pulp not by the artist in an act of def-
ance as in the case of Art and Culture aka Still and
Chew by John Latham but by the corporate and
marketing promotional tools of high art. Particularly,
if nothing is added, nothing else is constructed, noth-
ing is destroyed and no other thought is sedimented
upon the building blocks of history of art, what is the
value (excluding monetary compensations) of revelling
yet again in the same trite aesthetics?
Paolo Cirios two exhibitions fall in this unusual con-
vergence of digital and physical space, of action and
representation, of literal and obscure, simple and
complex. Loophole4All was and is an artwork able to
instigate reactions and actions and not just represen-
tations. The reterritorialization of meaning in a new
utopian society devoid of capitalism may as well
come through an artwork that advocates for demo-
cratic tax evasion.
1. Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1987), 443.
2. Eugene W. Holland, Deleuze and Guattaris Anti-Oedipus:
Introduction to Schyzoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1999),
20.
3. Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 448-449.
4. Ibid.
2 4 4
A R T I C L E
Loophole4All.com investigates ofshore centers through interviews with experts and Loophole4All.com introductory video -
Became a pirate, hijack an ofshore company!, Paolo Cirio, 2013. Still images. Courtesy of the artist. Used with permission.
2 4 5
A R T I C L E
Loophole4All, Paolo Cirio, 2013. Multimedia
Installation at the Centre for Contemporary
Culture Strozzina, 2013. Courtesy of the artist.
2 4 6
A R T I C L E
Loophole4All, Paolo Cirio, 2013. Multimedia Installation at the
Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina, 2013. Courtesy of
2 4 7
A R T I C L E
2 4 8
A R T I C L E
2 4 9

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VOL 20 NO 1 VOLUME EDITORS LANFRANCO ACETI, SUSANNE JASCHKO,

JULIAN STALLABRASS / EDITOR BILL BALASKAS

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