Archive for the 'Tactical Media' Category
File this one under WTF. Adidas finds a safe rebellion to latch onto to give it some street cred by creating a little action movie about rebel gardeners with GPS, night vision and an assortment of other TV crime show devices. Notice the quasi-’70s-era bongo suspense music. Thing is, gardens take nurturing, building and developing their niches, in other words, an ecological context. Additionally, what about starting a *community* garden? In this case I at least hope once they plant these beautiful set pieces that someone will water them!
Sadly, as much as I think guerrilla gardening is a cool action worth promoting, the ad is so trite and contrived I think most that would potentially be inspired by the idea will see through Adidas’ ploy as yet another tactic to equate fashion with revolution. Rather than pass itself off as a device for urban rebellion, just sell the damn product for what it is: a shoe! And stop pretending your dumb-ass sneakers are a tool for social transformation.
Still in case you are enthused, here’s a link to a nonpartison group, Guerilla Gardening, which may inspire you to do your own action (with or without corporate sponsorship).
And not to disappoint, there are a number of DIY books on how to start your own urban (gardening) revolution:
“On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries” (Richard Reynolds)
“Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto” (David Tracey)
“Guerrilla Gardening: How to Create Gorgeous Gardens for Free” (Barbara Pallenberg)
Image from Romanyg’s photostream
Banksy helped organize the Cans Festival, an open source stencil art event that anyone can join. The AP has more.
Here is a link to Cans Festival photostream.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT*
This is an open event and coming with your own stencil is positively encouraged but please observe the following
- This is a stencil only event no freehand lettering or characters
- Report to reception on arrival and they’ll show you where to paint
- No going over other artists* Painting outside the designated area may well result in prosecution.
Update:
Technorati Tags: Banksy, Cans Festival
Now that you have seen Yochai Benkler’s TED talk, you should also view this clever little Slidecast by Matt Mason who presents the main thesis of the fascinating book, Pirate’s Dilemma.
The Surveillance Camera Players doing tactical media.
One of my favorite media theorists, Geert Lovink, wrote the indispensable Dark Fiber, a collection of critical essays published by MIT about media activism and networks. His discussion of tactical media as an alternative to culture jamming is why I put any kind of media activism under that category of the same name.
In a recent interview, he discusses politics and social media.
SBJ: Have social medias taken over the political debate and activism or do real life debates and organisation still serve a purpose–and if so which?
GL: Taken over? No, there isn’t any statistical evidence for that. Television, assisted by newspapers and radio, are still dominating the political agenda. The Web is playing a strange, new role in all this. For many, Internet is the perfect place to hang out and escape the boring, pre-programmed world of the ‘old media’. Simultaneously, society is moving into the Internet at the same time, just think of the re-invention of advertisement out there. What we see happening is not an easy convergence of media. Real and virtual mix but in unexpected manners. That’s the fun of it. However, the current crises are not properly addressed either in cyberspace. It’s really questionable to think that the paperless Internet is contributing in a positive way to the global warning and environmental pollution that we have in China as the place of production and Africa as the waste basket. But I remain positive. Remember that all these hyped-up self-important dotcom people in the late nineties had no idea about their own upcoming crash, let alone about the social aspects of Web 2.0. This makes me optimistic about Web 3.0, 4.0 and so on. Why won’t some Afro-Brazilian consortium draw up the principles for the Internet architecture in 20 years time?
Wall are communication devices - image by Antonio Lopez (see flickr sets)
Is China’s great “Firewall” having its Berlin Wall moment? Recall that the same year– 1989– that barriers crumbled between Europe and the former Soviet Union, we had Tiananmen Square and the strengthening of the electronic border around Chinese dissent. But the Chinese leadership must know that they are playing with digital fire as the proverbial foot is jammed on the economy’s gas peddle, which, like it or not, means greater integration into the global info economy, making an already porous border even more permeable. Despite the Berlin Wall’s seemingly stone-like invincibility, there was an indication that some day it would eventually crash: the ubiquitous cover of graffiti, AKA citizen diplomacy. Same can be said about that horrendous wall being erected across Palestine. Though walls close in as much as they lock out, inevitably they also become media themselves, that is, a medium of communication. Walls– whether made of solids or electrons– are membranes of semiotic worlds, and ideas are a bit like radio waves which magically disregard physical barriers. I was once reminded of this as I took a Mexican cab across the the US border into Juarez and the whole time the network of taxies were loudly chirping with their radios as if no border existed between them.
Walls of fear can be overcome - Chines riot police in Tibet
With the bold defiance of Buddhist monks against Chinese illegal occupation of Tibet, the coming summer Olympics might present the perfect catalyst that opens debate and spurns action on Tibet. But don’t expect the US to do much. With the Chinese holding purse strings on US bonds and an another military occupation across the globe of dubious legality, there is no moral or practical high ground for US officials to stand on. But there is us. So please do your part to dismantle the great Chinese Firewall and do something for Tibetans. You can start by going to Amnesty International and supporting this campaign to help Tibetan monks arrested for peacefully demonstrating.
The Whole World is Watching: China’s Media War:
With the advent of the World Wide Web, it was thought that such barriers to information would topple. Instead the Chinese government created what has ironically come to be known as “The Great Firewall of China,” a well-funded, sophisticated, and ultimately successful effort to control the Internet and ensure that reporting and discussion about Tibet and other sensitive subjects such as relations with Taiwan — or what really happened at Tiananmen Square — remained severely constrained.
Will the world media now allow the Chinese government to establish “information dominance” over the Tibetans – and the rest of us? Or will the protests succeed in focusing world attention on China’s human rights record ahead of the Beijing Olympics — intended by the Communist government to boost its international image?
The above video clip happened live during an Italian evening news broadcast I was watching a few weeks ago. Don’t worry about the language, it’s not necessary to know Italian to understand what’s happening. This goes to show what an echo chamber the news is. Rather than the news coverage itself being important, instead the appearance of Gabriele Paolini in the background making funny faces becomes the news. Who is this guy? Paolini is regionally famous for hijacking live news coverage by repeatedly jumping into the camera’s frame. He had disappeared for a while, because apparently he had been institutionalized. Now that he’s free, police have to monitor live newscasts to make sure he doesn’t disrupt them.
Paolini has a cause, which is to promote the use of condoms. But when I was first confronted by this character (and later learned there is another less-dispruptive publicity seeker who simply makes sure his face is always in the camera frame), I thought maybe this was the work of a brilliant prankster. Apparently not, just a well-known village eccentric, which goes to show that Rome is still intimate enough that it’s possible to be a local celebrity for being the weirdo who interrupts the news. I’m just glad it’s still possible to disrupt the slick dissemination of infotainment.
I suggest you enter Paolini’s name into YouTube (OK, I did it for you- click here) and you will be amazed by the numerous clips documenting his interventions, the funnier being when a news reporter kicks him in the nuts, and another when he jumps in front of the camera during the World Cup. The man has no shame, that’s why we love him so. Go Paolini!
Banksy strikes again. One criticism though - with a diet like that I doubt his body would be so fit!
(Via +KN | Kitsune Noir » Banksy’s New Fast Food Caveman)
Technorati Tags: Banksy
I’ve always thought that advertising was basically legalized gang warfare. In the Los Angeles barrio where I grew up gang graffiti was ubiquitous, more so than ads. Now the reverse is true. In either case, one formal the other informal, they are marking territory. Corporations– not all, mind you– work within the government’s monopoly of violence to control what is and is not seen. I know this is called democracy, but when it comes to media, economics (facilitated by laws written by lobbyists) defines the majority of what is viewed.
Meanwhile, some intrepid activists in NYC have begun a campaign to make this connection. By overlying those obnoxious TV monitor ads that crouch over subway entrances like cybernetic gargoyles, it’s about time these obnoxious flicker machines have the eyelid pulled down over them. Still, and I’m just thinking out loud here, is this kind of culture jamming ever going to succeed? As some critics have noted, spray painting over existing corporate graffiti doesn’t really change the paradigm, it’s just another kind of tagging. In this ontological warfare won’t the advertisers just fight back by making the culture jammer’s language their own? Or worse yet, make more ads?
Technorati Tags: culture jamming, illegaladvertising.com
Click to enlarge comic (via Words & Pictures)
Apparently not all are happy with the work of the Decapitator. And upon further review, I think perhaps the art borders on something far more nefarious.
words & pictures - UPDATED EVERY MONDAY:
Wired calls him a renegade artist and culture-jammer. That’s one way of putting it. Fucked up misogynist prone to homicidal fantasies might be another.
Technorati Tags: the Decapitator