Dear Nettimers,
we’ve written the discussion text below as a proposal, a strategic contribution and are curious what you make of the ideas and questions we raise. For sure that there more topics and angles that could be added. Do you see any possibility for funding such an effort to come together? Should this be a festival, a translocal network, a support campaign for various movements? Let us know what you think and if you want to get involved.
There are a
number of topics that overlap and point at a widening of agendas beyond
politics and the use of internet technologies in society. We feel that we can
no longer keep these spaces separated, or leave them surrounded by ambiguities
and grey areas, or appropriated by alt-right groups, populism or regressive
politics. We think it‘s time to brigde this gap, create new forms, and restore
alliances between tech and progressive politics.
We feel
there is a growing tension between the global, immaterial level of social media
and the concrete sphere of local grass-roots level and related political
action. Funny enough, digital technologies are becoming smaller, more invisible
and even further integrated into our messy, always-connected everyday life. But
this is not bringing neither tech policies, nor the use of tech by
political parties and movements, down to earth: with the only exception of the
few who make use of tech as propaganda to prove their group's horizontal,
partecipative, open-to-all-credentials.
Overall,
while the managerial cosmopolitan classes have a similar, exchangeable and
shared lifestyle, wherever they operate, the gap between them and the
local middle-lower classes is dramatically increasing.
It is
therefore that we feel an unease to organize yet another new media festival
event, or sign up for this or that NGO campaign. We notice that it is becoming
harder and harder for techies and activists to talk to their local
counterparts. They seem to have taken refuge in the way more familiar and
comfortable zone of global, cosmopolitan, like-minded crowds. Think, just
as an example, of the Tahrir activists who, once having liberated the
country, were kicked out of the square and of their own movement, becoming
completely alienated from local politics and then replaced by a grass-roots
party, which has been now suffocated in its turn by a more repressive mix of
local authoritarianism and global interests.
The tension
between the fascination for the global language of the immaterial sphere with its ‘planetary computation', and the
particularities of the local and its idiosyncratic culture, manifests itself as
a growing gap not only in the domain of finance and economics, but also in
circles of technology experts and media activists who are increasingly becoming
cosmopolitan and detached from local communities and struggles.
In the past,
there was an alternative to broadcast media: it was to switch them
off. This was easily accomplished by those who wished to silence the noise, and
did not result in social isolation or disconnection. But networked media do not
offer this ancient privilege, as signing off from social networking platforms
translates into social suicide.
Today
television, and broadcast media in general, do no longer have the strength to
generate new political formations as they used to do in the past. They rather
just remediate content from social networking platforms. The social spectacular
at the time of Web 2.0 is peer-produced and generated by individuals who are at the
same time victims and perpetrators of their own (networked) frustration and
anger. This logic is reproduced in every domain, including that of politics,
where people have to be co-producers and no longer can just absorb messages and
content dictated by the mass spectacular. Political participation in the social
spectacular is understood as a process of continuous remediation of inputs and
messages that is undertaken by each of us, weather willing or not. Because we
are our own re-mediators and no longer enjoy being remediated by broadcast
media participation becomes exhausting. It no longer translates into political
action, but stays relegated in the domain of endless remediation.
There is a
crisis of representation on both the levels of politics and aesthetics. Even
though it was evident in visual culture a long time ago, this is only now
becoming apparent in the domain of politics. What does democracy mean in the
absence of representation? Can democracy exist without mediation? The dream of
direct democracy emerges at a time of even more complex bureaucracy,
lengthy negotiations and long procedures in which a multitude of different
interests are being brought together in a shady procedure, dominated by
consultants, marketing and deal making behind closed doors.
Social media
offers a device for collective fantasy that some call 'direct democracy'. This
political culture has been generated by images that long time ago have
abandoned their representative function. Images that no longer inhabit the
domain of representation. We witness the birth of a new, enhanced reality that
no longer refers to politics as a classic realm. Memes are transitional objects
in this sense. Whereas politics still uses the written form, even in the social
media world of Facebook and Twitter, we can expect that in the near future politics
will, inevitably, take a visual shape. How is such an image-politics going to
look like?
The arts
have all but disappeared behind the hypertrophic realm of the visual. Everyone
is a maker and is destined to output creative works, whether they like it or
not. This is why art as a discipline has disappeared into each and every object
and action, and the form of technique or technology. On parallel, there is a
gradual withdrawal of the strategic importance of visual arts as a socially or
politically meaningful (if not explosive) activity. The arts are not longer the
golden gateway to resolve complex issues in society. This is a sad reality we
can only start to deal with and mourn. This is why there are so few artworks
that can convey, facilitate and amplify social and political issues. In
response, artists have retrieved themselves into the safe realm of cosmopolitan
networks in which their works circulate as empty signifiers. People are
not following artists. The interpreters of our time are 'influencers', not
artists. What’s left for the few of them is the global art market, while a
majority of them have been co-opted and retrained as precarious creative
workers.
Our aim is
to trigger a discussion on how to bring the two realms of tech and politics
into dialogue again. We would like to achieve this by bringing together
multiple forms of knowledge and practices, with people from different
backgrounds and skills. We are ourselves not immune from the processes that we
describe here. We are definitely experiencing these contradictory dynamics
ourselves.
Proposed
topics:
From Web
2.0 to Political Power
Italy’s Five
Star Movement started off as an individual blog. They like to
call themselves ‘the people of the networks’ in critique of the classic
political party model. Politics as a profession has always been their main
target. The movement presents itself as a pro-active, everchanging entity
which borrows the dynamics of the Web 2.0 using terms such as participatory
democracy, horizontality, P2P, equal access. In contrast with
this vocabulary, the actual organization of the movement was built around
a personal blog (Beppe Grillo's). Only an internal group of elite members was
involved in the decision-making process (using the platform called Rousseau).
At the same time Grillo travelled across the country and invested a lot of time
and energy to build up a grass-roots structure, an activist base to support the
movement. The secret of its success can be read as a combination of web-based
networks and local grass-roots support.
In the
previous decade, the left has lost a connection to both vital elements. It
neither understood the organizational dimension of the internet, nor did it
find ways to reinvent the relation to the local. What lessons are to be learned
from the ‘unconventional’ way the right-wing populism in Europe has gained
visibility and influence? Can the web element, the global and virtual one, and
the very concrete grassroots level be combined for progressive politics?
or is the ‘glocal’ mix only serving conservative agendas? How can social
movements re-invent their relation to local interests? Has the left of
today become an elitist group that only relies on its global, immaterial ties?
If one would have to start all over again, would a Facebook group be the new
blog à la Grillo, the tool to build a movement from scratch? Are social media
platforms the best place to shape an organizational structure for a political
movement? To build a new grass-roots movement one would need time. Do we have
time in the real-time age? What are the arguments against taking a decade to
build such a movement? Would another option be to renew connections
between the political left and progressive grass-roots movements, such as
refugees welcome, eco activism, commons-based initiatives and self-organized
spaces?
Beyond
the Self: Towards Collective Action
Recent
analyses of the online-self have produced two divergent readings. The first one
concluded that the celebration of the self in social media resulted in a
culture of isolated individualism, disorganized precarity, ultimately leading
to mental stress, burn-out and depression: organized sadness. The other
interpretation holds on to the older promise of the liberation of the self as a
progressive value. Empowerment and self-determination should lead to more
creativity, more diversity and new forms of socio-economic innovation. In both
analyses, the focus is still on the individual.
Is this
really the core question or, rather, ideology? Is there any space inside the
online self for collective experiences? Can there be a plural self, or is it
quintessentially a libertarian self-obsessed category? Is there any desire to
overcome the self-referential ego land? Where can we find ‘they’, the once
agonizing, desperate lonely souls that are ready to morph into another state?
How can the scattered fragments ever come together? The 'festival' shows us a
way out but how do we deal with such one-off events that have such a temporal
and local quality? How do we build a continuity in this process? How do we
re-invent a social glue that lasts?
The
Social Media Question: Where are the Alternatives?
Facebook is
perceived as the number one enemy, yet everyone keeps using it. The question is
not whether to find a way out of Facebook as there’s also Instagram, WhatsApp
and the likes (not to mention Google). It is not an option for many of us to
delete Facebook, as this leads to social isolation and cuts off short-term
possibilities for events and campaigns to mobilize and inform potential
publics. We need a post-colonial alternative as large parts of the world
population heavily rely on Facebook because of a lack of physical spaces as
alternatives where to meet up and discuss/conspire. To leave dominant social
media platforms is therefore a white-men elitist choice. How can we develop
alternatives for organizational purposes in the shadow of the platforms and
then bring the outcomes there, using them exclusively for ‘broadcast’ purposes
-as the critical mass of people is there? Can we undermine the social media
business model by ‘hacking’ the platforms and exploiting or squatting them by
producing the least amount of data?
In the
meanwhile, can we develop a Five Year Plan to organize the mass exodus? Can
open source still help us in this effort to develop alternatives, or has it
proven to be too nerdy, too far away from people, several decades after these
principles were first launched? Similar to the left, it has retrieved to
co-working spaces, far away from the streets, and withdrawn in safe spaces where
coding for code's sake has become a self-referential elitist activity. Apart
from the usual re-appropriation of capital, such as Microsoft’s latest
acquisition of GitHub, what can we still expect from the geek class? Why are
social media alternatives never on the agenda of the big hackers' meeting? Why
are they solely focused on surveillance and privacy issues that are the
quintessential _expression_ of the neo-liberal self? Is there a way for the
progressive tech community who is part of the creative industry-start-up logic
to serve a collective political goal? Is the leak à la Wikileaks and Snowden
the only possible political gesture?
The
Ghosts of 2011 Protest Movements: Resurrection or Burial?
There was a
time when political movements seem to be on the rise. From the Arab world to
the USA, from Greece to Spain, there was a celebration of grass-roots
movements. Seven years have passed and the vital social energy seems to have
completely vanished, either disappeared in complete silence or crushed into blood.
Is there a residual potential of left-overs of the street festivals in Cairo
and New York, or should we bury any hope? When we visit these places all we
find is depression, expulsions, exile and fear. We witness a restauration of
old regimes in an even harsher form, the rise of neo-liberal ideology: whether
in the form of its authoritarian face or in its market features such as brands,
shopping malls and online services that are the same across the globe, causing
a numbing flatness and culture of indifference wherever we go, pushing people
inside their houses. The appearance of the body in public space is carefully
orchestrated and managed, both by authoritarian and market regimes, pushing
people indoors, thereby preventing the potentially dangerous physical presence
of bodies coming together. This results in the global state of depression and
apathy, no matter where you are.
Can we
preserve the 2011 images and make them alive again? Where are the activists?
How can we catalyze the human potential that’s left—if any? Instead of
forgetting, how can we stage a serious discussion about what has happened, and
step out of our isolation, out of the private spaces (on social media),
reconvening again with our bodies? Is the occupation of spaces still working is
a method and, if not, what could replace it? Can we use our imagination to find
new strategies and tactics beyond those that have been tried out? Is the global
connection of local struggles still possible—and desirable -- or should
we reconcile with small, fragmented clashes that, for the time being, do not
resonate with events elsewhere? Is there anything happening in the first place,
or are we blinded by our informational overload? Is it possible to find
communalities in struggles?
Future
of Europe and the Polis Networks
Right-wing
movements portray Europe as a bureaucratic monster that only claims more power
and financial resources for itself. Progressive left regards it as a club of
the few representing global industrial interests of banks and financial giants.
How do we find a way to redefine Europe in other terms rather than within this
limiting opposition? How do we reconcile the local element that we celebrate
here, with transnational forms of solidarity? How do we bridge the macro with
the micro, preventing that the macro becomes the distant, immaterial dimension,
whereas the micro degenerates into boring and selfish provincialism? Can we
find an inspiration in networks of rebel cities that stand up against both
populist nationalism and global capital? It seems more doable to arrange
concrete exchanges between cities, its citizens and officials, rather than the
empty gestures of bilateral meetings. But those exchanges presume strong forms
of local organization and cannot be advocated in all cases. Without movements,
without winning elections, not much will happen. How can the boredom, projected
onto the national level, be overcome? What does it mean that we donate the
organs of the nation state to right wing populists, for a long time to come?