Re: <nettime> So what's the use of art, theory, activism?

[Andreas Broeckmann via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Dear Brian, folks,

thanks for starting this thread and for your thoughtful questions.

I ask myself, though, whether the challenge that you put to "art, 
theory, activism" is aptly formulated. I understand that you see your 
own practice in this particular triangle, and I guess that the "we" you 
speak of is perhaps meant to circumscribe the people hovering around in 
the same sector. You also say "we on the progressive left." And you ask 
"us" - and I translate that as: you ask  me - to recognise "the mistakes 
[I myself] made on the path to this disaster."

One thing I wonder is how the political positioning is articulated with 
artistic practice? A practice, I would say, that is not necessarily 
inscribed as "activist" and "(aspirationally) useful", but one that 
draws its strength from maintaining a certain level of autonomy, and 
productive uselessness. - Put differently: If things went so badly 
wrong, was the art not good enough?

More importantly, your question also assumes that I (or the "we" in your 
missive) could actually have made a difference to the current situation. 
On the capillary level I agree: whatever we do, living, maybe teaching, 
maybe exhibiting, maybe activating, etc., does have a tendential impact 
on the way things go. But for the current situation, I think it is also 
important to recognise the transformations that go way beyond what "I" 
can influence.

One of these is the technological change that has led, for instance, to 
the almost ubiquitous availability of the communication platforms 
(so-called social media); supposedly, TikTok has a billion users 
worldwide. And then there are also Insta, F, X, and the others. My 
feeling is that what you call "this disaster" is - just quantitatively - 
less a result of my (and maybe your) failures, but rather of the changes 
in which the public sphere is constituted by these technical media. The 
delegation of decision-making to so-called AI systems is exacerbating 
this trend.

The responses in this thread to your initial posting have mostly 
followed up with political (and partly economic) arguments. My 
suggestion is that we turn to one of the virtuous aspects of Netzkritik, 
and look more closely at the ways in which the technological is an 
important basis of what it enables in the political and in the economic 
sphere. (At certain moments in the past, we here on the Nettime list 
discussed particular technical protocols and the political impact that 
they might have. And occasionally we remind each other of Phil Agre, or 
the technophilological diligence of Wendy Chun et al.)

I'm not arguing for some technological determinism. But what I see 
around me is a widespread usage of digital media that makes it almost 
impossible to even think straight, let alone develop a sense of what 
might constitute a good society (or "living-together", samenleving, as 
one says in Dutch). Large parts of the population, many many people, 
young and old, seem to be under the spell of doom-scrolling. And it 
seems to be part of the ensuing political system (what can perhaps be 
called a new fascism) that everybody is now fixated on the human 
individuals whose voices and faces are amplified most strongly in this 
system (DT, EM, etc.).

But in order to understand these mechanisms, we (readers, writers, 
lurkers on Nettime) should perhaps also think about the technical basis 
of this emerging system. (And, just as a provocation, consider whether 
what in the 90s we promoted as "tactical media", was perhaps an early 
instance of what are now the drivers of disaster.)

My suggestion is that the resistant thing to do here, on Nettime, is to 
rise to the occasion and to not just live right (that's also very 
important, and I think that Stella's examples are very inspiring), but 
to discuss how "the nets" impact "culture and politics". Perhaps with 
the ambition to understand what is going on, so that we can think about 
ways to influence the how-things-go towards the better...

Best regards on a rainy Sunday afternoon,

-a


Am 22.01.25 um 23:50 schrieb Brian Holmes via nettime-l:
> Anyone involved in the headliners of this post - or in teaching, free
> software, and dozens of other idealistic pursuits - can well ask themselves
> the question. What's the use, if the world is going to climate-change hell,
> tech has poisoned people's brains and hearts, and your local fascist party
> is about to get elected, or has just taken power?
>
> I am in Stuttgart right now to install an art show, and while exiting a
> restaurant I leaned over for a closer look at the Trump stickers plastered
> on the computer of the guy seating customers. "Oh, it's just for fun," he
> said to me. This is the beauty of the world that social media has made.
>
> When Millei was elected in Argentina, people on the left were struck
> speechless for months. With my collaborators at Casa Rio, we were involved
> in a complex project trying to sketch out the rising influence of China on
> the country's political ecology. But the public sphere in which such a
> project could be meaningful had just collapsed into savage rhetoric
> underwritten by a clear intent to use violence for a libertarian
> transformation of the social contract. At one point we all basically had to
> admit our despair. We resolved to go back to the basics, to the things we
> believe in so deeply that we can't abandon them.
>
> Now in the USA we are again struck speechless, for the second time. The
> difference is, this time we on the progressive left have been betrayed by
> those who claimed to represent us. Neoliberalism gradually made the culture
> that we produce into a mask over a corrupt political system. Then on
> October 7 the mask fell. We saw that the center-left elites, the masters of
> cognitive creativity, were imperialists ready to kill for the defense of
> global capitalism. Their first concern at home was to fire the radical
> professors and beat back the student protests with the truncheons of the
> police. When you have to fear your supposed friends, what to expect from
> your sworn enemies?
>
> I don't have the answers. It's why I don't post so much anymore. The themes
> that animated this list over some thirty years are all in tatters. The
> possibility of a more open and egalitarian world in which we all believed,
> in one way or another, has been smashed by gigantic wrecking balls. Anyone
> who looks back, and does not see the mistakes they themselves made on the
> path to this disaster, is not really looking at all, in my humble opinion.
>
> Yet I still hold to my deepest beliefs. And I am now an elder, who must
> turn experience - even the experience of failures - into something valuable
> for present and coming generations. Resistance happens in the streets, but
> not only. It happens in the way that you live, the way that you change your
> life without abandoning your past.
>
> I write today because someone wrote to me offlist. I no longer say a word
> about what I am doing, I can't promote myself, I'm not on social media, but
> I invite you all to the Kunstlerhaus in Stuttgart, and more substantially,
> to Watershed Art & Ecology in Chicago where I live. I invite you to
> correspond, to think and feel together, to carry on into the future.
>
> warmly, Brian
>
> https://kuenstlerhaus.de
> https//watershed-art.org
--
# 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