| podinski via nettime-l on Fri, 24 Jan 2025 14:36:23 +0100 (CET) |
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| Re: <nettime> So what's the use of art, theory, activism? |
Hi Brian and all, Good questions for those in the arts + edu + culture sectors... and wherever ! The identifying, naming and defining exercises ( as Ted and others sharply deflected ) seems to be where the mainstream media would like to keep the mass consciousness loops lingering, debating, polarizing... for as long as it takes to make people lost and irritated and passively consuming more of the over-mediated soup... Alot of arts+media skills can be used to cut through the fog ( that creates so much inaction )... This is a good punching-nazis-style media activist culture jam that happened in Berlin just the other nite... By UK's Led By Donkeys project: "Heil Tesla !" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjWl_RNDMSA This approach is going to have pretty niche fx ( first saw it on the fediverse ), but inspiring when it reaches us and it works ! But obviously all kinds of arts+media strategies are going to be required to break through the incessant corporate / oligarch bombardment of useless information + all the induced digital somnambulism ! ... We'd also jump in here to expand on what Stella offered... > The third is to resist. Find ways to avoid authority, and ways to actively participate in dismantling it. We talk about this step too much without putting understanding and conviviality in place first. We agree that some conviviality approaches are great for building the broad umbrella communities... and even having some better impact on some of those people somewhere in the long chain of authoritarianism than the head-on-type confrontations. But there's definitely all sorts of arenas where bolder resistances + demonstrating + practicing solidarities and attempting to draw whatever lines in the sand ( that seem viable in the dangerous climate ) are going to be required ! This post, also seen on the fediverse, about how to set up ICE Watch neighborhood programs is maybe an example that is somewhere inbetween the 2 approaches: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/ice-watch-programs-immigrants-how-to-start Teen Vogue obviously is not any radical left media, but does at times seem to utilize a corporate outlet to push some disobedience buttons. Not going to post here too much in the vein of next level activisms... But if anyone's interested in resources for that, we might be willing to send you some great links to guides, pamphlets and books offlist. ... Finally... just wanted to share some things that we found fantastic inspirations just this past week, that fill well to the thread ... We watched this doc called Bella Ciao - per la liberta ( 2003 ), which goes into some fascinating details about this Antifa anthem / culture that has become a global cultural phenomenon ( both good and bad examples ) that we were not aware of... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZq1jlMmK1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI6oa_vYl6o ( ital ) And afterwards discussing the film, a comrade ( who was also once upon a time an arts professor ) alerted us to, and lent us, an incredible book by Susan Hiller called "Song Book with 102 protest songs + lyrics, with great short texts describing each one. And great agitprop imagery to highlight the various struggles that the songs relate to. https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/33064/ It was produced for Documenta 13. Wow, so great to discover Susan's work ! So... sharing our (radical ) inspirations is also a MUST in these dark times ! ... We are currently working on an article about arts and praxis and cultures of resistance inspired by the doc film and the book for the "XLterrestrials Radar" on substack. Coming to another Silicon Valley platform blogger page near you ;) ... for whatver that's worth. ... "¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!" XLterrestrials arts+praxis group On 24/01/25 12:00, nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org wrote: > Re: So what's the use of art, theory, activism? -- # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: https://www.nettime.org # contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org