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

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

hallo nettimers,

There were many who saw the techno-colonial shit-tsunami coming ! Sadly
these views were not featured prominently ( enough ? ) in the arts+tech
fests, nor in the hacker congresses, nor at tech industry conferences.

To address an aspect of Brian's orig post:

If... tech has poisoned people's brains and hearts, and your local fascist party
is about to get elected, or has just taken power?

Here's some good analysis of what - and how - our brains are poisoned
and colonized:

Nicholas Carr, borrowing from Harold Innis, writing about The Tyranny of
Now :

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-tyranny-of-now

" As Innis wrote in 'Changing Concepts of Time', his last book, he
feared that large media companies were becoming “monopolies of
communication” engaged in “a continuous, systematic, ruthless
destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity.”

Carr's latest book 'Superbloom' comes out TODAY, which might provide
some deeper perspectives, which artivists can probably use to push the
imagination further than the analysis, and assist in creating our
community responses to such tyranny. 

...

And perhaps to address some of Andreas' push toward what can be done to
make things better or Felix's 'living in the ruins'...

We would say activism probably needs to take more center stage in
cultural events. Less art ?! Less theory ?!

For years we've been going to all kinds of commercial and
state-sponsored culture events, and always find some fringe bits that
are inspiring, but are repeatedly exasperated by no one making any clear
rallying calls to address the exploitation, the manipulation, the
invasion and the abuse !

It is interesting to read Andreas' description of the time when art
could be described as "maintaining a certain level of autonomy and
productive uselessness. " Some artists might want to try and fight to
maintain that territory ! We support them ! But on the other hand all
the cascading emergencies seem to scream out for using your arts ( and
tech ) skills toward creating the pragmatic and/or dramatic resistances,
and showing solidarity for communities who are already drowning in the
Shitstorms.

Hopefully this will not sound too banal to end this post on, but
borrowing from that fairly potent sentiment from Bansky who was
basically saying f*ck the corporate bombardments, f*ck the 4 walls
galleries and all krapitalist and state-funded showtimes, it's probably
high time to put your work and your actions in all those public spheres
+ spaces, and there's absolutely no need to ask anyone permission ! It's
OUR planet !  And it's OUR ONLY PLANET !

And btw, if ya happen to be one of those who have had commercial success
... now's the time to spend it on purchasing WHOLE FLEETS of SHIPS and
giving them to the orgs who are fishing our fellow humans out of the
Poisoned Seas and/or building better futures for ALL ! 

In solidarity!

the XLterrestrials

p.s. Hey Brian, best wishes for the event in Stuttgart !!

We sent it out to some comrades of ours in the area who will definitely
appreciate it !!

If time, we'd really like to visit as well !!


    On 27/01/25 12:00, nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org wrote:

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>    1. Re: So what's the use of art, theory, activism?
>       (Andreas Broeckmann)
>    2. Re: So what's the use of art, theory, activism? (Felix Stalder)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 14:00:25 +0100
> From: Andreas Broeckmann <ab@mikro.in-berlin.de>
> To: collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> 	<nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
> Subject: Re: <nettime> So what's the use of art, theory, activism?
> Message-ID: <51a2f4d9-ba79-4773-950b-1aaf3b51dcad@mikro.in-berlin.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> 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
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 14:03:57 +0100
> From: Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>
> To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org
> Subject: Re: <nettime> So what's the use of art, theory, activism?
> Message-ID: <eb3230db-bcfa-4552-b70d-4a50530e002a@openflows.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
>
> On 1/22/25 23:50, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
>
>> 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
>
> On 1/25/25 00:12, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
>
>> All the big issues being discussed here are fundamentally important,
>> and I hold on to social theory and ecological science in order to
>> get some sense of what the future holds. But the future looks
>> desolate, people are afraid, and there is no use at all for art,
>> theory and activism if you can't share them> in a way that builds trust.
> Maybe we can take these two points together. We -- people in the 
> cultural field doing exhibitions, publications, workshops and events 
> "open to all" -- have held out for this notion of a public sphere until 
> the very end, longer than almost everyone else. The hard right never 
> believed in it. For them, the public has always been something to be 
> molded in the pursuit of power.
>
> The political center abandoned the notion of the public sphere in the 
> 1990s. Analyses of "post-democracy" around the turn of the millennium 
> tracked the rise of technocratic leadership and spin-doctoring closely, 
> but it did so --  writing books and making rational arguments -- by 
> appealing to the very thing its dissolution it was tracking. Many of our 
> "critical interventions" did the same.
>
> Now the dissolution has become so complete, it cannot be ignored, and 
> doing more of the same feels like feeding a zombie machine.
>
> I absolutely continue to see the value of art, theory and education. 
> They are part of the human condition and aspiration. But we need to 
> reimagine them beyond the notion of the public sphere, yet without 
> reverting to nativist tribalism (now "accelerated" by technology, as 
> Fr?d?ric and others pointed out).
>
> The under-commons, fugitive forms of trust, solidarity and togetherness, 
> point to a way of living inside the ruins. But beyond that? There is 
> only so much that rhizomatic structures can hold. Another hard lesson 
> from the digital experience.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

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