Hacktivism: Street protests, politics, and mobility

beatriz

Eurozine
By Olivier Blondeau
Hacktivism
Street protests, politics, and mobility: A study of activist uses of syndication

Rather than the presidential elections, perceived by many American activists as a defeat forecasted in the absence of any credible challenger to George Bush, it was the protest movement against the Republican National Convention in New York in August 2004 ("A31-RNC") that more likely crystallized the political, technical, and artistic innovation potential that came to the fore during the whole American election campaign.

A31 as an urban electronic resistance fest
A31, to borrow the Critical Arts Ensemble's words, was truly an "electronic resistance" fest at the level of a whole city. For four days, in a place that had practically been put under a state of siege, New York's streets were transformed into a vast testing ground of "tactical media", mobilizing a variegated range of sometimes very unexpected actions. It is beyond the to-be-expected displays of the "street-theatre" of the so-called "reality", perfunctory performances whose subversive potential fatally ends up being absorbed by "cultural consecration", that one probably has to look for political innovation and the true insurrection of meaning, that is: in the new forms of electronic resistance. (....)

continue reading: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/article_2005-07-19-blondeau-en.html