Idea Transcript
THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING In his writing about obsolescence and ruins, Walter Benjamin theorised that every technological process presents an utopian element at the point of its inception. As a tool in the hands of amateurs, the technological device offers a new grammar to represent reality and the opportunity to establish innovative forms of interaction. The diffusion of commercial video cameras during the 1970s brought promises of democratisation and free circulation of knowledge, challenging the hierarchy of cultural production and the passivity of viewer reception embedded in television culture. A prominent example of how these emancipatory ideals informed the creative use of video can be found in the local history of Grenoble. Between 1973 and 1976, a collective of activists and technicians known as Vidéogazette organised educational workshops on the use of lightweight video technology. Housed at Villeneuve, a socialist housing project at the southernmost district of Grenoble, Vidéogazette’s workshops sought to educate and empower citizens to claim control over their own representation. Producing a televised journal of daily life in Villeneuve, these workshops promoted an ideology of advanced democracy where viewers could become producers and, through the medium, share and discuss the social issues relevant to their everyday lives. Vidéogazette belongs to a broader context of independent initiatives centered on the idea of liberating television, and in turn liberating the means of producing information. Appearing as an aftermath of the 1968 protests, local cables offered a constellation of alternative points of view, from the community-based television programs to local broadcasts and pirate stations. A television free from state-control, and its distorted representation of reality, allowed citizens to represent themselves and project a more accurate mirror to society. Vidéogazette’s TV programs provided a space for this, presenting debates on social and political issues relevant to the Villeneuve residents and visibility for the various groups residing in the neighbourhood. Vidéogazette not only created this space but also supplied residents with camera equipment and offered courses on how to use them, with the belief that empowering citizens to produce their own information would generate greater participation in the decision-making process and accountability for one’s own context. A decentralised model of communication was later realised through the proliferation of media channels in the 1980s and 1990s. The privatisation of television and technological innovations such as satellite, digital and pay-TV drastically increased the number of channels, constituting a network of broadcasting stations that reformed the state-controlled pyramidal structure of information production. This move to the private sector multiplied news outlets, but it also corporatised the mediasphere and allowed major corporations and advertisers to increasingly monopolise information. Aspirations for social transformation through the liberation of television were ultimately absorbed into a technological utopia in which production and financial profit take precedence. New media today strongly re-affirms and expands the thematics proposed by post-68 experiments with video and television, serving as a vehicle towards direct democracy. The pervasiveness of smart devices that combine video and communication technologies allows witnesses to capture and present multiple perspectives on a single event, which are immediately shared and rapidly diffused throughout the web. Online platforms and social networks propose a scenario where information and knowledge is fully accessible, and where each of us can potentially contribute to cultural production, challenging the hegemony of corporatised mass media and political authority. These networks broaden the concept of “local communities” by connecting individuals around the world and allowing groups to form based on common interest on a global scale. While the connectivity and interactivity of the Network promotes participation and social exchange, it also fuels the production process of the new economy. As industrial labor is dematerialised and informationalised, interaction through networked communications is utilised as a form of labour that generates profit and directs marketing strategies. Social cooperation and constant connectivity are integral to work, augmenting the field of labour and blurring our public and private lives, our work and free time. The Internet realised the shift from the “pyramid” to the“network”, re-assessing notions of anti-hierarchical organisation and self-determination as principles belonging to the enterpreneurial business model. Rather than addressing a social change in terms of participatory democracy, the web supplies a supporting structure for the flow of capital and financial exchange, and advances a neoliberal ideology that supports the current mode of production and exploitation. Recently a re-politicisation of online tools has emerged in different contexts. Since 2006 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has publicly demanded and enforced the transparency of information by publishing classified diplomatic cables and private documents from various corporations and governments. He disclosed violations and abuses by major institutions in an attempt to render them accountable to the public eye. In 2011 the world press highlighted the role of social networks to support and amplify the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Iran. Partially inspired
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VIDEOGAZETTE (1973-1976) Vidéogazette (1973-1976) was a group of activists, technicians and citizens who organised a public access television program in Villeneuve, a neighbourhood located south of Grenoble’s city centre. Through weekly workshops, Vidéogazette members taught the Villeneuve inhabitants how to use audio-visual technology and produce their own television. Informed by a critical vision of industrial cinema and mainstream news media, the group sought to decentralise the flow of information and activate the role of the spectator to one of producer. One of the slogans reproduced on the Vidéogazette flyers was “wherever there is a consumer, there is a producer and a possible creator!” By taking charge of the means of information production, the inhabitants were made aware of their social context and able to play an active role in the local democracy. “Community action through video and communal experience” and a “real labour of representation with the people who are going to watch their broadcast in the evening” were common descriptions of the project. Vidéogazette was the first local television in France and part of a greater social initiative at the time. Under the mayoralty of Hubert Dubedout (1965-83), Grenoble was transformed into a laboratory of pragmatic municipal socialism, with the Villeneuve housing complex taking centre stage. Conceived as a model of co-habitation and communal life, Villeneuve (literally “the new city”) sheltered many militants born out of May ’68, as well as people of different backgrounds including Arab, Spanish and Portuguese immigrants and Latin American refugees. Villeneuve’s community lifestyle meant that inhabitants were willing to leave their front doors open, take care of their neighbours’ children, eat together, and meet every evening in a shared space to discuss social issues. Through state and city funding, Vidéogazette offered different services at Villeneuve’s Audiovisual Centre, including the production of videos, films and posters; rentals of audiovisual equipment for the locals; and studio courses for primary school students and adults to familiarise them with the equipment. Initially located in a school, Vidéogazette’s focus was on children’s education and the promotion of cultural activities. Active participation within the local social context was one of the collective’s top priorities. Learn-by-doing educational workshops allowed both children and adults to produce their own news and entertainment programs, and later broadcast these shows to the community. Screenings were often organised in common spaces such as public yards and the local theatre Espace 600. After the installation of the cabled network in 1973, Vidéogazette started to broadcast the television programs in the neighbourhood apartments. The TV programs created and reinforced a sense of shared identity, promoted transparency within news media and accountability for one’s political and social surrounding conditions. Conceived as a platform for political debate, Agora was the main broadcast program in which inhabitants gathered in a theatre-setting and discussed their opinions on social matters such as unemployment, increases in housing rent, and local factory strikes. Here different immigrant communities were also encouraged to share their local tradition by organising music performances, films, and debates on relevant issues. Some examples include “El Jerida”, a news program in Arabic, and various forums with Chilean refugees discussing the 1973 military coup. In many instances, these events were the first time the local public was exposed to thematics such as the Palestinian conflict and the dictatorships in the Latin American countries. In 1974, the collective founded the Vidéogazette association, inviting all the residents to take part in the decision-making process. Many were invited to contribute content and participate in the production of the programs. Vidéogazette members affixed graphic posters around the neighbourhood and distributed weekly programs in mailboxes in order to advertise their television and keep Villeneuve inhabitants updated. Over the years, the role of the activists increased and the subjects of the programs became more explicitly political. The idea of video as a militant tool is clearly present in a series of posters that depict a group of cameramen lined up like soldiers embracing their cameras as weapons. Among the topics presented during these years, it is worth mentioning contraceptive methods and abortion. Vidéogazette activists organised different debates around these issues, involving doctors from the local family planning association and feminist groups. These activities had a strong political connotation at the time, as abortion was soon legalised in France in 1976. Vidéogazette initially garnered a lot of enthusiasm from the locals, but after a few years only a small number of inhabitants remained actively involved. The commitment implied in collective life was too demanding and tiring for many individuals. Many also claimed that the television programs were hard to follow, and rather preferred the films broadcast on the national television channels. Only a few cultural and political groups proposed the subjects to be broadcast, leading to programs that were soon described as long talks resembling “a radio program with images.” “It’s not of interest” and “it’s just intellectuals’ chattering” were also common responses by the locals. Filmmaker Jean Luc Godard offered another point of criticism, targeting the
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NEW COMMISSIONS Conceived as a generative platform for collaborations, this online collection brings together artists and writers who explore the creative and critical uses of technology as a tool supporting political and social action. Invited by the curators to produce a newly commissioned work, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, The Public School Philadelphia and Pierre Musso offer a series of essays and collective projects that address the Network both as a practical tool to organise multiple voices and a conceptual model that informs how we even think about organising. Drawing a line from post-68 experimentations with video and television to new media today, we asked the contributors to explore the re-politicisation of communication technologies in the 2011 protest movements, considering the contradictions within the technological medium. Offering a platform for discussion and debate, the Internet informed the protest movements across Western countries—such as the Spanish indignados and Occupy Wall Street—redefining the way collective space is articulated. These movements prioritise non-hierarchical and leaderless organisation where individuals directly participate in the decision-making process, and claim a political stake in the transparency of the web against the opacity of power. Creating a virtual architecture for the flow of capital, the Internet also supports the same financial system that these protest movements oppose today. In doing so, it furthers the dominant neoliberal agenda of the free market, and offers an ideal site for immaterial labour and post-Fordist production. The invited contributors responded to these issues by highlighting notions of embodiment and physicality against the disembodied and abstract character of the virtual space. This contrast points to the paradox inherent in communication technologies—on one hand they offer a set of tools to facilitate dialogue and direct action, on the other mediative devices that affect and distort our daily interactions. The image of the rock accompanying Journal of Aesthetics And Protest’s Occupy Wall Street Dispatches depicts this tension. Uncannily floating through the streets of New York’s financial district, the rock offers a symbol of protest and political struggle, as well as an incongruous physical presence challenging the abstract space of financial power. JOAAP’s inquiry into the largest “internet generation” organised protest explores the concrete characteristics that define the Occupy Wall Street experience and the practical obstacles that protesters encounter during day-to-day occupation. Contrasting the ideology of the Network with the reality of political struggles, Pierre Musso’s essay contribution criticises the illusion of a participatory democracy made possible through an internet connection. According to the media theorist, the myth of a revolution via the Network replaces and marginilizes actual attempts for social change—it fetishises technology and shifts the political to the technological. While it amplifies and broadens existing social action and public protest, the Internet does not create the conditions for political transformation nor can it substitute existing forms of collective organisation. Using an open source web platform to organise and promote courses, The Public School Philadelphia presents a series of class proposals and visual accompaniment that address alternative modes of education outside of the academic institution. They take Vidéogazette’s educational workshops as inspiration and explore ways to initiate a self-education process that allows students to re-imagine and decide how one can learn and engage.
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************************************************* JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS AND PROTEST is a Los Angeles based artists’ collective which sits at the discursive juncture of fine art, media theory and anti-authoritarian activism. Working collaboratively with individuals and collectives on several continents, JOAAP publishes a journal and organises projects to challenge hegemonic representations (of knowledge, art, activism) and spark situations for community-based social change. While they publish critical theory, they have no ties to any academic or cultural institution. PIERRE MUSSO is a researcher and theorist in telecommunications and broadcasting. He holds a Philosophy diploma and a doctorate in Political Science, and is a professor of Information and Communication Sciences at Télécom ParisTech and Rennes 2 University. He currently holds the Chair of teaching and research, «Modélisation des imaginaires, innovation et création», and is the author of numerous books including Réseaux et société (PUF, 2003); Critique des réseaux (PUF, 2003); Territoires et cyberespace en 2030 (La Documentation Française/DATAR, 2008);
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PIERRE MUSSO Networks Broaden Socio-Political Action, But Cannot Replace It. For two centuries, every “industrial revolution” has been sustained and accompanied by the construction of a large territorial and technical network. This began with the railroad, in the early nineteenth century, followed by the electrical power grid, and in turn the Internet – the latter originating from the convergence of telecommunications and computing. These large-scale industrial networks have been defined as “technical macro-systems”, in that they combine technical networks and structures of power. [1] The “Third Industrial Revolution,” the computer revolution, which began in the 1950s, has given rise to a generalized computerization of society and the economy on the one hand, and on the other, to the development of the Internet, social networks, and information systems, [2] along with virtual and digital technologies. The new “macro-system technique” is thus made up of information, command and exchange networks, interconnected and overlapping with transportation and energy networks. The Internet is the public highway, just as the information systems of institutions and businesses are the private highways. The Web [forms] a new public sphere, rich in actions, encounters and exchanges that take place amongst a-territorialized “communities” whose interests and affinities stretch across the globe. It creates a ubiquitous and simultaneous time-space continuum of exchange and above all serves as a means of increasing and broadening activities of all kind. It is a “second world.” In their development, large-scale, technical networks have always been accompanied by numerous myths, fictions, images and imaginary projections aimed at socializing them. Beyond the various forms the image of the network takes, depending on the technical apparatus to which it is associated, an invariant remains: namely, the fetishization of social change through technology. The schema of the network always draws from a mythological source, denoting destiny and social passage. From now on, social change will be permanently experienced by way of connection, “logging-on”, circulation and the immersion in virtual worlds and fluxes. Thus the technical network becomes both the end and means to think and bring about social change, if not the revolutions of our time. Whether it is literary fiction, futurology or socio-economic analysis of network society, the imaginative universe of the network never stops proclaiming the “revolution” of (and via) networks. This is a means of circumventing the utopias of social change, effecting a shift from the political to technology. Technology acts as a multifarious prosthesis within fragmented and disintegrated societies: communication networks take the place of social links and tools for a new direct, interactive and instantaneous democracy. This euphoric facet of the technical network, in which the latter is understood as a new universal social link, gives meaning to the activities and desires of “switched-on internet surfers,” who commune with each other in an anti-hierarchical, anti-pyramidal or anti-bureaucratic vision. This libertarian theology of the Net joins that of the cyber-corporations (eBay, Amazon, etc.) who see in the Net a “planetary marketplace” for a global and personalized electronic commerce. The political illusion of a participatory democracy (“e-democracy”), made possible via an Internet connection, is another aspect of this technological religion. This is, however, no more than a revival of the “old” technological utopia mounted by Saint-Simonian engineers at the beginning of the nineteenth century when the first modern technical networks, the railway and telegraph, began to appear. The Saint-Simonians hyperbolized network thinking: “To improve the means of communication […] is to establish equality and democracy. The effect of the most perfect system of transport is to reduce the distance not only between different places, but between different classes.”[3] The geographical reduction of physical distances – if not the interchangeability of places – though communication channels is equivalent to the reduction of social distances. The modern cult of the network is born. This myth, established around 1830, continues into the present day. It is even revived with the advent of each new technical network: one can think of Lenin’s remark that electricity defines socialism in associating it with the power of the Soviets; or again, the telephone, followed by Internet, considered as society’s “nervous systems.” Thus in the mid-1990s, the Vice-President of the United States, Al Gore could declare before the international community: “the President of the United States and I believe that an essential prerequisite to sustainable development, for all members of the human family, is the creation of this network of networks. To accomplish this purpose, legislators, regulators, and businesspeople must do this: build and operate a Global Information Infrastructure. This GII will circle the globe with information superhighways on which all people can travel […] And the distributed intelligence of the GII will spread participatory
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JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS AND PROTEST In the context of of The Whole World is Watching, we are presenting our Dispatch project. The project stands as a journalistic effort to capture the zeitgeist of Occupy Wall Street. It also aimed to contribute to the organization of the consciousness of the participants in Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Inspired by Freirean notions of popular education(*) we understood the early stages of OWS as a significant site for popular education. We mean that the social void created by the “economic crisis” was not to be filled by a ready-made political or cultural organ but was partially being forged in the collective process of Occupy. That process was comprised of meetings, teach-ins, arguments, structured dialog, workshops, learning-by-doing; popular education. Dispatches was our attempt to organize research from within the movement to report on and further this process of education. It functions like this; researchers use self-generated questionnaires to collect particular snapshots of the psycho/social dynamics within Zuccotti and other Occupies. This data is disseminated for future movement use. Cross-currently, by canvasing the crowds with cogent questions, we provide a theoretical framework of shared investigation to help facilitate dynamics within the immediate occupations. The act of interrogating dynamics of internal processes, of opening up internal dynamics to constructive investigation is very important. Included in this online document are: an initial rubric provided by Ultra-red which we distributed to the researchers, the theoretical background of the project, and dispatches by Mark Read (Occupy Wall Street), Barbara Adams (Occupy Wall Street), Sarah Lewison (Occupy Carbondale) and Irina Contreras (Occupy Oakland). We understand the relationship between media and movement to be contextual. The Dispatch Project met with our interest in networked media because of the relationship to contextDispatches aimed to reflect back crowd generated knowledge at a very particular moment. The project formed less than two weeks after Occupy Wall Street began. At that moment, the debate as to whether OWS needed a set of demands and the questions of form and style which ran through the movement were still flowing hot. We imagined the Dispatch Project as a creatively pragmatic response to these mediatic debates. The Dispatches would internally highlight the dynamic antagonisms encountered in the occupations which were central to their growth and provide a way to further the dynamics. Context-less media pretends to clarify with clearly messageable points. Such media reports univocally, “Protesters at Occupy Wall Street stands for the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagle Act.” instead we imagined the Dispatches might say stuff like, “we are really encountering our own class assumptions and we just need to speak to more people to work through it, and here's how we've managed to work through it so far...” answers and questions aimed towards facilitating the needs of a growing movement. * We began considering Paulo Freire's work in earnest after reading Luis Genaro Garcia's Reclaiming Inner-city Education (http://www.freireproject.org/blogs/reclaiming-inner-cityeducation%3A-public-art-public-education-and-critical-pedagogy-social-and-) Ultra-red's contribution to issue 8 our our magazine, Andante Politics, Popular Education in the Organizing of Unión de Vecinos (http://www.joaap.org/issue8/ultrared.htm) View this essay for more background on the project: Common notions, part 1: workers-inquiry, co-research, consciousness-raising Marta Malo de Molina (http://eipcp.net/transversal/0406/malo/en/base_edit#redir)
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THE PUBLIC SCHOOL PHILADELPHIA
CONTACT This website is presented in conjunction with The Whole World is Watching, an exhibition curated by the Session 21 participants of the École du Magasin at MAGASIN-CNAC, 3 June – 2 September 2012. Download the press release here.
The Session 21 participants are: Shoghig Halajian (b. 1981, California, United States) is a curator who is involved with a number of experimental art venues in Los Angeles. In 2007, she co-found ETC (Eighteen Thirty Collaborations), an alternative performance art space that focused on collaborative projects between curators and artists. She was also involved with LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) as the full-time Outreach Coordinator, where she assisted in the gallery’s programming and communications for over two years. She holds a Master’s Degree in Critical Studies: Aesthetics and Politics from the California Institute of the Arts (2011) and a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in English Literature with a double minor in Philosophy and Women Studies (2003). In 2010, she participated in an artist residency at SOMA in Mexico City and in 2011 she completed her Master’s thesis on the practice of Los Angelesbased artist Wu Tsang and his work on the queer performance/party night called WILDNESS at the Silver Platter. Corrado Salzano (b. 1983, Turin, Italy) studied Arts and Education at the University of Turin and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Contemporary Art History in 2006 with a thesis focusing on the development of video art language during the Seventies. After working at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Fondazione Palazzo Bricherasio in Turin, he returned to the University to study the relationship between new media theories and contemporary artistic practices, where he earned a Master’s degree in Methodology and Critique of Contemporary Art in 2010. His final thesis focused on a group of artworks and theoretical essays from the last fifteen-twenty years reflecting on the legacy of Modernism and the shift from the modernist concept of medium to a post-medium condition. During the course of the last years, he has worked as curator assistant and exhibition planner in various spaces, from the established museum (Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin) to the commercial gallery (Francesca Kaufmann, Milan) and the non-profit foundation (SMART Project Space, Amsterdam). His main responsibilities have included curatorial research, writing texts and press releases, fundraising, and communication with artists and institutions. Sarah Sandler (b. 1983, Perth, Australia) holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Interior Architecture (honours) from Curtin University of Technology in Perth (2007). Shortly after graduation, she participated in the first exhibition of Australian design at the Salone de Mobile in Milan and upon her return received an accolade for her contribution to furniture design in Western Australia and is featured on a national postage stamp. In late 2008 she moved to Europe, initially to Amsterdam where she held the position of Interior Architect at a multi-disciplinary architecture studio. Here she assists in the design of furniture for Foscarini, Knoll and other boutique European manufacturers, the planning and realization of several Dutch art and design exhibitions and an installation for the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale. During her off time, she continues her personal practice of furniture and sculptural works that are selected for exhibition within The Netherlands and Italy. Paris has been her base for the last three years, where she works independently as a curatorial and artist assistant contributing in all aspects of research, production and communication for numerous contemporary art exhibitions throughout Europe and in Shanghai. She would like to thank the Western Australia Government, Department of Culture and the Arts for their support during her participation in Session 21 at L’Ecole du Magasin.
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