The theme of this eleventh edition of Artefact is The Social Contract. That term has been used in political and philosophical theories since the 17th century, but still emerges regularly today, in interviews with politicians, political party programs and debates. Even the early adopters of the social contract theory, such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, used and interpreted the concept in different ways. The classic interpretation concerns the relation between the individual as a citizen and a political entity, in which the individual sacrifices part of his freedom and power in order for the state to offer safety and social and economic security to the citizen. But what is the position of the social contract in our current times of crisis in a globalized world?

One of the festival’s main questions is whether we can renegotiate or reform those ‘contracts’. Can we cancel them, rewrite them? The programme focuses on different forms of resistance and imagination. With exhibitions, performances, debates and meetings with international artists, we look for the position and alternatives for The Social Contract in our contemporary information and network society.

Artefact is initiated by provincie Vlaams-Brabant and STUK arts centre

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THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF IRATIONAL.ORG: Tools, Techniques and Events 1996-2006

Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina
Dunavska 37, Novi Sad, Serbia

Curators: Inke Arns (Dortmund) and Jacob Lillemose (Kopenhagen)
Dates: 28. October – 27. November 2008. from 9-17h, during weekends from 9-14h; Museum is closed on Mondays.

Production:
New Media Center_kuda.org, Novi Sad, http://www.kuda.org
Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, http://www.hmkv.de

Co-producers of the show:
Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, http://www.msuv.org
Institute for Flexible Culture and Technologies – Napon, Novi Sad, http://www.napon.org

Generously supported by:
Province Ministry for Education and Culture
Ministry of Culture of Republic Serbia
Cultural Office of the City of Dortmund in the framework of the twin cities program Dortmund-Novi Sad

Go to the irational exhibition 2006 in the PHOENIX Halle Dortmund
xhibitions&…

Irational is a loose grouping of six international net and media artists who came together around the server irational.org, founded by the British net artist Heath Bunting in 1996, going on to make decisive contribution to early net art from the mid-1990s onward. They include Daniel Garcia Andújar / Technologies to the People (E), Rachel Baker (GB), Kayle Brandon (GB), Heath Bunting (GB), Minerva Cuevas / Mejor Vida Corporation (MEX) and Marcus Valentine (GB).

The exhibition in Novi Sad, Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, 2008.

With dry humor and minimal aesthetics, irational commented the Internet hype of the mid-to-late 1990s, competing with the commercialization-euphoria of the new market by developing its own pseudo-ventures. Net art was immediate during this period, neither needing nor enjoying the safety of a mediating space or instance. This is why irational often hit upon humorless trademark attorneys, who wanted to keep irational from using brand names such as 7-11, American Express, Sainsburys and Tesco. These encounters, which the exhibition documents extensively, were little more than a prelude to more recent developments on the field of copyright, intellectual property, and brand protection. Heath Bunting was the first net artist to retire in 1997, putting an end to his exclusive work in the net and turning back to more intensive work in public space, which the Internet has become such an important part of today. If the activities of irational during its “net phase” were dedicated to calling virtual boundaries into question, its members now experiment with interrogating and overcoming economic, political, and social boundaries in real space, producing a great deal of comic relief, among other things.

The exhibition in Novi Sad, Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, 2008.

The exhibition in Novi Sad is coming after shows in Glasgow and Dortmund. Never before have so many complex and relevant artworks from around irational.org been shown in such a comprehensive exhibition. Its goal is to use the media of a large-scale presentation, workshops, and a comprehensive documentation to make these artistic-activist pieces more accessible to a general public.

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kustosi:Inke Arns, Jakob Lilemoze (Jacob Lillemose)

Muzej savremene umetnosti Vojvodine, Novi Sad

Dunavska 37, Novi Sad

28. Oktobar – 27. Novembar 2008.

Otvaranje izložbe: Utorak 28. Oktobar, u 20:00 časova

Producent izložbe:

Muzej savremene umetnosti Vojvodine, Novi Sad

Koproducenti izložbe :

Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund

Centar za nove medije_kuda.org, Novi Sad

Institut za fleksibilne kulture i tehnologije – Napon, Novi Sad

Irational je neformalna grupa šest internacionalnih net i medijskih umetnika koji su se svojevremeno okupili oko servera irational.org, kojeg je osnovao britanski net umetnik Heath Bunting 1996. Članovi Irational.org su: Daniel G. Andujar (Valensija/Španija), Rachel Baker (London/Velika Britanija), Kayle Brandon (Bristol/Velika Britanija), Heath Bunting (Bristol/Velika Britanija), Minerva Cuevas (Mexico City/Meksiko), Marcus Valentine (Bristol/Velika Britanija)

Sa humorom i minimalnom estetikom Irational su sredinom devedesetih kritikovali Internet pomodarstvo, takmičeći se sa euforijom komercijalizacije ovog

novog tržišta razvijajući svoje sopstveno pseudo-preduzetništvo. Ovo je razlog zašto su irational često tuženi od strane brojnih advokata, zaštitnika različitih trejdmarkova i brendova, koji su pokušavali da spreče korišćenje brendova kao što su 7-11, American Express, Sainsburys i Tesco. Ove njihove akcije su bile svojevrsni uvod u današnju debatu o kopirajtu, intelektualnim pravima, zaštiti brendova. Heath Bunting je bio prvi umetnik koji se penzionisao 1997. stavljajući tačku na njegov rad na Internetu i vraćajući se intenzivnijem radu u javnom prostoru. Ako su aktivnosti irational.org tokom njihove net faze bile posvećene problematizaciji virtualnih granica, sada članovi irational.org eksperimentišu sa ekonomskim, političkim I društvenim granicama u realnom prostoru, često proizvodeći komične situacije, pored ostalog.

Ovo je prvi put da se radovi irational.org sistematizuju na jednoj ovakvoj izložbi. Izložba se sastoji od elemenata klasičnih izložbenih praksi (većih formata), radionica i analogne i digitalne dokumentacije koja će ove umetničko/aktivistička dela približiti široj publici.

BIOGRAFIJE

Irational.org 1995. godina.

IRATIONAL.ORG je međunarodni sistem za uspostavljanje „iracionalnih“ informacija, usluga i proizvoda za raseljene i lutajuće. IRATIONAL.ORG potpomaže nezavisne umetnike i organizacije koje treba da održe informativne sisteme od velike važnosti za misiju. Ovi „iracionalisti“ stvaraju rad koji pomera granice između korporativnih carstava biznisa, umetnosti i inženjeringa. Glavnih iracionalista trenutno ima šest i trenutno su u procesu konsolidacije naše sistemske strukture da bi postali efikasniji i dovoljni sami sebi kao mreža. Mi gradimo softverski snažan onlajn alat koji je brz, jeftin i prilagođava se potrebama korisnika. Mi želimo da pružimo naše resurse široj javnosti.

Danijel Garsija Anduhar (Daniel García Andújar)

*1966.

Danijel Garsija Anduhar radi pod banerom Tehnologija narodu (Technologies to The People (TTTP), i istražuje virtuelnost, autentičnost, prava na umnožavanje, sponzorstvo, medije i moć kao novu tehnologiju, zajedno sa pitanjima ko ima pristup tome svemu, taj to i širi po svetu. Umesto da se preda kvalitetu novih tehnologija koji podseća na fetiš, TTTP se fokusira na iznikla bojna polja. Umesto potpunog odbijanja, TTTP ima pragmatsku funkcionalnost kada se uzme u obzir šta se sve može desiti, a naše mogućnosti za akciju u društvu utopljenom u brzu fundamentalnu promenu. Trenje u radu TTTP leži u očiglednoj slobodi interneta, znanju koje ono sadrži i ko, zapravo, poseduje i širi to znanje kao sredstvo za razvoj moći.

Rejčel Bejker (Rachel Baker)

*1970.

“Od 1997. godine, radim kao umetnik, širim mrežu i na internetu i na internet radiju. Moja umetnička praksa istražuje tehnike koje se koriste u savremenom marketingu da bi se sakupili, istražili i distribuirali podaci, a moji osnovni motivi su vezani za mobilzaciju umreženih zajednica. Radio kombinovan sa internetom (net.radio) formirao je ključnu oblast aktivnosti, a onda tek intervencije putem SMS poruka sa mobilnog telefona. Poslednji projekat ticao se istraživanja putovanja vozom kao mesta za distribuciju umetničke prakse i javno i privatno. Vodila sam projekte irational.org gde se sakupljala društvena umetnost i spajale mreže sa tehnološkim mogućnostiima, ali to je propalo tokom poslednjih par godina. Trenutno radim na obradi dodeljivanja sredstava u Umetničkom savetu Engleske (Arts Council of England) kao koordinator za medijsku umetnost Londona, a potom pravim muziku sa Antifamilijom (Antifamily, veb sajt koji se nalazi na irational.org), jedan od nekoliko bendova pri nezavisnoj diskografskoj kući Difikult fan (Difficult Fun).”

Kejl Brendon (Kayle Brandon)

*1976.

“Mene zanimaju prostorno-socijalni odnosi koji upravljaju oblastima svakodnevnog života. Volim da učestvujem i da stvaram situacije koje dozvoljavaju hirperrealna iskustva sebe i kritički angažman na nivou ulice. Angažovana sam u fizičkoj inteligenciji i provokativnoj intervenciji, Hit Banting i ja smo tražili iskustva koja otelotvoruju interesovanje za avanturom, preživljavanjem, igranjem i istraživanjem. Često bismo organizovali hepeninge sa učestvovanjem publike: takvi hepeninzi kao da imaju organizacionu strukturu koja sama reaguje, sa najvažnijim subjektima koji potiču iz okoline i stečenim kolektivnim iskustvima koja se nose kući i pamte. Moji omiljeni alati nisu nešto naročito, oni su otvoreni i jednostavni. Primenjujem tehnike koje otelotvoruju sistem „uradi sam“, etiku samoupravljanja i odnose koji imaju smisla. Ja sam amater u životnim naukama: status amatera, nekog sa hobijem vam dozvoljava da nešto zajebete, eksperimentišete s nečim i da budete nekonvencionalni, što uveko dovodi do toga da vam je život malko zanimljiviji. Trenutni konteksti za rad: domaća infrastruktura, kućne laboratorije i seoski zanati.”

Hit Banting (Heath Bunting)

*1966.

Hit Banting se pojavio osamdesetih i posvećen je stvaranju otvorenih/demokratskih komunikacijskih sistema i društvenog konteksta. On je došao sa ulice, prolazio kroz sledeće faze: grafite, performanse, intervencije, piratski radio, faks/mejl umetnost i BBS sisteme, i vraćao se tim fazama, da bi, na kraju, postao aktivni učesnik u vremenu ekspanzije interneta . Producent je mnogih internet projekata, neki su veoma poznati, i pomogao je da se formira snažan kontekst za praksu net.art-a. Zašao je i u polje genetike proglasivši ga sledećim „novim medijumom“, i takođe razvija rad u oblasti performansa fizičke mreže. Njegova glavna ambicija jeste da nađe način da sve to napusti i da živi van toga kako je Bog i mislio da treba.

Minerva Kuevas (Minerva Cuevas)

*1975.

Minerva Kuevas je osnivač Korporacije Mehor Vida (Mejor Vida Corporation), neprofitne korporacije koja se zasniva na ekonomskim intervencijama, koje su rezultat nepoverenja institucionalizovanog kapitalističkog sistema. Razvijen oko specifičnih socijalnih i političkih konteksta, njen rad ispituje korporativno ponašanje. Veoma je zainteresovana za izmenu logotipa i stvaranje štampanih radova. Pošto je radio-amater, ona odobrava kulturnu intromisiju i sabotažu. Član je iracionalnog.org i espora.org.

Markus Valentajn (Marcus Valentine)

*1964.

Markusov prvi iracionalni projekat i , i dalje jedan od najpopularnijih (pored smata), jeste Kako biti radio pirat, kasnije je to ime promenjeno u Radio stanica zajednice, nakon što je privukla negativnu pažnju i pritisak od strane britanske države koja pritiska piratsku radijsku aktivnost. U početku je Kako biti radio stanica zajednice predstavljala i obnavljala tehničke i praktične informacije iz ozloglašene brošure Radio je moja bomba, objavljene 1987. godine. Godine 1999., u tražeći način da promeni stanište, negde oko rođenja prvog deteta, dok je razmišljao o porodici, Markus je napravio Upitnik za nefunkcionalnost. Markus je trenutno glavni član Orkestra kjuba (Orchestra Cube), kolektiva za improvizovanu muziku zasnovanog u Kjub mikropleksu u Bristolu u Britaniji.

Kustosi

Inke Arns

*1968 u Duisdorfu/Bon

Inke Arns radi od 1993.godine kao freelance kustos i pisac koja se specijalizovala za rad na medijskoj umetnosti, net kulturi i istočnoj Evropi. Ona je osnivač nekoliko medijsko-kulturnih inicijativa od 1996. godine do danas; radila je u više navrata kao predavač od 2000. do 2004. godine, a doktorirala 2004. godine na Humbolt univerzitetu u Berlinu. Umetnički je direktor Hartvare Medienkunstferajna (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) u Dortmundu od januara 2005. godine.

Jakob Lilemoze (Jacob Lillemose)

*1974

Jakob Lilemoze je freelance kustos i kritičar. On vodi organizaciju Artnod (artnode.org) u Kopenhagenu, postavlja izložbe, objavljuje publikacije i razgovore, i takođe predsedava odborom Overgaden instituta za savremenu umetnost u istoimenom gradu. Redovno šalje priloge i savete za Le mond diplomatik u Skandinaviji, pokušava da radi na pitanjima koja se tiču veza između konceptualne umetnosti, društvene kritike i kulture zasnovane na kompjuterima, a trenutno je zaokupljen „materijalnošću izvan objekta“.

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Año 2067, los diarios anuncian la muerte de la ex tenista y modelo Anna Kournikova eliminada con un potente rayo láser enviado desde un satélite, por haber sido erróneamente confundida con una imitación de sí misma.

El terrible incidente ha sido posible porque, según elucubra el artista estadounidense David Rice, en el futuro las estrellas como Kournikova, patentarán su aspecto físico y se protegerán de las copias a través de un sistema vía satélite capaz de identificar y eliminar los parecidos no autorizados.

El relato para Internet Anna Kournikova Deleted by Memeright Trusted System es una de las obras más emblemáticas de la exposición del mismo título, abierta en el HMKV de Dortmund (Alemania). Tal como indica el subtítulo “el arte en la edad de la propiedad intelectual”, la exposición reflexiona sobre las implicaciones artísticas del copyright.

“La historia de Kournikova denuncia los peligros de estas leyes. ¿Qué pasaría si la Time Warner decidiera recaudar los derechos para la canción Happy Birthday To You, que es de su propiedad? ¿Cada vez que celebramos un cumpleaños tendremos que pagarle?” se pregunta Inke Arns, directora del centro y comisaria de la exposición.

Mientras que las industrias culturales sostienen que la expansión del copyright significa un aumento de la creatividad, la exposición defiende la necesidad de reutilizar materiales existentes de otros autores, como condición creativa inexcusable, a través de obras de net, software y videoarte, que critican de forma divertida la colisión entre la economía y la cultura, y el desarrollo tecnológico y la administración de los derechos digitales.

Entre los 28 artistas seleccionados por su uso conceptual de técnicas como el sampleado, la copia, la apropiación y el plagio, se encuentra el español Daniel García Andújar, autor de Archiv, una instalación presidida por la Torre del Conocimiento Público, una estructura simbólicamente inaccesible, rodeada por dos mesas en forma de C (la Comunidad y el Copyright), que acogen el material reunido por el artista en el PostCapital Archive.

“La agresividad de las compañías está provocando una degeneración de las leyes, que se podrían convertir en un eficaz instrumento de supresión de la innovación. Lo demuestra el parón experimentado por el hip hop desde que los departamentos legales de los principales sellos han empezado a demandar el uso no autorizado”, explica Arns, preguntándose qué pasaría con algunas de las obras de la muestra como el vídeo musical de Hohe Kante o la animación digital de Fred Fröhlich, realizada con más de 10.000 fotos de archivo.

Se trata de una pieza plunderphonic, algo así como robofónico, término acuñado en 1985 por el músico canadiense Jon Oswald para definir la música compuesta exclusivamente de fragmentos preexistentes.

Otra obra de este tipo es Gimme the Mermaid de Negativland & Tim Maloney, un vídeo musical donde la Sirenita de Disney grita con la voz de un furioso abogado “no puedes usarlo sin mi permiso, demandaré incluso tu culo”, al ritmo de Gimme Gimme Gimme, de Black Flag. Negativland se arruinó en 1991, cuando realizó una versión no comercial sampleada de una célebre canción de U2. A pesar del activismo mediático de Bono, Island Records llevó a juicio al grupo, que fue obligado a destruir la obra y a pagar los costes procesales.

Otra película de Disney, El libro de la Jungla, sirve al francés Pierre Bismuth para crear una versión babilónica, compuesta por fragmentos doblados a varios idiomas, de modo que Mowgli habla español, la pantera Bagheera árabe, el tigre Shere Khan inglés y el oso Baloo hebreo. “A pesar de los idiomas, los personajes se entienden, lo cual apunta a las potencialidades utópicas de la comunicación global, en contraste con las pinceladas de humor negro con las que Bismuth define los caracteres nacionales”, concluye Arns.

HMKV: www.hmkv.de/dyn/e

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Die Ausstellung im Hartware MedienKunstVerein beschäftigt sich mit dem wandelnden Begriff der Arbeit in einer postindustriellen Gesellschaft. Vom 19. Juli bis zum 19. Oktober 2008 zeigen 25 Künstler und Künstlerinnen in Dortmund, was ihnen zum Thema Urheberrecht und Kunst eingefallen ist.

Was hat der sich wandelnde Begriff der Arbeit mit „geistigem Eigentum“ zu tun? In einer postindustriellen Gesellschaft werden nicht mehr allein materielle Güter (wie Stahl, Kohle etc.) produziert, sondern zunehmend mehr immaterielle Güter. Es gibt jedoch einen signifikanten Unterschied: Immaterialgüter wie Wissen und Informationen lassen sich verlustfrei reproduzieren. Um in einer Wertschöpfungskette funktionieren zu können, müssen diese Immaterialgüter daher in ihrer Verbreitung eingeschränkt werden – und zwar mit Hilfe des Patent-, des Urheber- und des Markenschutzrechts. All dies sind Formen „geistigen Eigentums“.

Auf das Konzept des „geistigen Eigentums“ als Wertschöpfungsinstrument verweist auch die perfide Kurzgeschichte von David Rice, der die KuratorInnen Inke Arns und Francis Hunger den Ausstellungstitel entlehnt haben: Im Jahr 2067 lassen Stars – wie der ex-Tennisprofi Anna Kournikova – ihre „Marke“ vor unerlaubten Lookalikes schützen, indem diese durch ein satellitengestützes System kontrolliert und gegebenenfalls durch einen starken Laserstrahl ausgelöscht werden. Die „echte“ Anna Kournikova wird auf einer nicht angemeldeten Reise in den asien-pazifischen Raum vom System als unerlaubte Kopie ihrer selbst identifiziert – und konsequenterweise eliminiert.

Die Ausstellung in der 2.200 qm großen PHOENIX Halle auf dem Gelände des ehemaligen Stahlwerks Phoenix-West im Süden Dortmunds stellt die These auf, dass sich die zunehmend strikte Anwendung geistiger Eigentumsrechte sich als hinderlich für die Entwicklung von Kultur als Ganzer erweist. Es wird immer schwieriger, über Kultur unter Verwendung von Bildern, Logos oder Soundschnipseln eben dieser Kultur zu sprechen. Sampling im Hiphop wurde bereits unmöglich gemacht – und zwar durch aggressive Urheberrechtsanwälte, die jedem Akt von Sampling mit Strafverfolgung drohen.

Hartware MedienKunstVerein
PHOENIX Halle Dortmund
19. Juli – 19. Oktober 2008
www.hmkv.de

Künstler
Agentur / Kobe Matthys (B)
Daniel Garcia Andújar (E)
Walter Benjamin (USA)
Pierre Bismuth (F)
Christian von Borries (D)
Christophe Bruno (F)
Claire Chanel & Scary Sherman (USA)
Claire Chanel (USA)
Lloyd Dunn (USA/CZ)
Ramon & Pedro (CH)
Fred Fröhlich (D)
Nate Harrison (USA)
Michael Iber (D)
Laibach & Novi kolektivizem feat. John Heartfield (SLO)
Kembrew McLeod (USA)
Sebastian Lütgert (D)
Monochrom (A)
Negativland & Tim Maloney (USA)
Der Plan (D)
David Rice (USA)
Ines Schaber (D)
Alexei Shulgin & Aristarkh Chernyshev (RUS)
Cornelia Sollfrank (D)
Stay Free (USA)
UBERMORGEN.COM & Alessandro Ludovico & Paolo Cirio (CH/A/I)

Arbeit 2.0 – Urheberrecht und Kreative Arbeit im Digitalen Zeitalter
ist ein Projekt von

Hartware MedienKunstVerein
iRights.info

Träger:
mikro e.V.
Informatik in Bildung und Gesellschaft, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Informatik

Gefördert durch:
Kunststiftung NRW
Der Ministerpräsident des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen
Kulturbüro Stadt Dortmund
dortmund-project
NRW Kultursekretariat Wuppertal
Kulturwerk der VG-BILD-KUNST GmbH, Bonn
Hans-Böckler-Stiftung
ver.di

Medienpartner:
Heinz Magazin

Kooperation:
Heimatdesign 07.07.08 , Inke Arns

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‘You can’t use it without my permission … I’m gonna sue your ass!’ shouts Disney’s Little Mermaid with the angry voice of a copyright lawyer in the video Gimme the Mermaid (4:49 min., 2000).

The video by Negativland and Tim Maloney, situated at the exhibition entrance, is only one of more than twenty works included in ‘Anna Kournikova Deleted By Memeright Trusted System: Art in the Age of Intellectual Property’, an exhibition presented by Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) It is part of Arbeit 2.0 – copyright and creative work in the digital age, one of thirteen projects in Germany funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation focusing on ‘The Future of Labour.’ In the framework of Arbeit 2.0, HMKV – together with the Berlin-based collaborative partner iRights.info/mikro e.V. – explores the relationships between creative work, intellectual property law, and technology (www.iRights.info).

So how does the changing notion of (creative) work relate to intellectual property? Today we live in a post-industrial society where the goods being produced are no longer material (like steel, coal, etc.), but immaterial. The Ruhr Area, with its vast deindustrialised landscape, paradigmatically stands for this transition from the Industrial Age to the information or knowledge society. However, there is a significant difference: Immaterial goods such as knowledge and information can be reproduced without loss. Therefore, in order to function in a value-added chain, the distribution of these immaterial goods has to be restricted. This is effectuated with the aid of intellectual property (IP) law, namely copyrighting, patenting, and trademarking.

David Rice’s perfidious short story ‘Anna Kournikova Deleted By Memeright Trusted System’ – from which curators Inke Arns and Francis Hunger have borrowed the exhibition title – deals with the concept of intellectual property: In 2065 stars – such as ex-tennis player Anna Kournikova – have their ‘brand’ protected by a satellite-based system that identifies unlicensed look-alikes and eliminates them via a strong laser beam. During a trip to the Pacific Rim, not officially cleared, the ‘real’ Anna Kournikova is identified as an imitation of herself and is consequently eliminated by the system.

The exhibition in the PHOENIX Halle, measuring 2,200 square metres and located on the grounds of the former steelworks Phoenix-West, puts forward the thesis that the increasingly strict application of intellectual property law hampers the development of culture as a whole. It proves increasingly difficult to impart this culture by employing images, logos, or soundbites of this very culture (for instance, sampling in hip hop, which has already been made impossible by aggressive copyright lawyers threatening any use of sampling with legal action).

The artists represented in this exhibition explore the question of art in the age of mechanical reproducibility positioning itself differently in a post-Fordist era permeated with digital networks than in Fordist, analogue times to which Walter Benjamin has referred. Artistic techniques like cut-up, sampling, détournement, appropriation, copying, remixing, plagiarism, and repetition are employed.

Participating artists: Agentur/Kobe Matthys (B), Daniel Garcia Andújar (E), Walter Benjamin (US), Christian von Borries (D), Christophe Bruno (F), Claire Chanel & Scary Sherman (US), Lloyd Dunn (US/CZ), Laurent Fauchere and Antoine Tinguely aka Ramon & Pedro (CH), Fred Fröhlich (D), Nate Harrison (US), John Heartfield (D), Laibach/Novi kolektivizem (SLO), Kembrew McLeod (US), Sebastian Lütgert (D), Monochrom (AT), Negativland and Tim Maloney (US), Der Plan (D), David Rice (US), Ines Schaber (D), Cornelia Sollfrank (D), UBERMORGEN.COM & Alessandro Ludovico & Paolo Cirio (CH/AT/IT), a.o.

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• 1998/2006
• Website with linked images
• www.irational.org/tttp/Crypto/armed1.html
• Presented in the exhibition with large-format DVD slide projection and Folder

Presented in the exhibition as an upgrade of almost 100 images, the internet project Armed Citizen shows a series of 17 small arms. No information is given on their origins. Who owns them? Are they being used as criminal evidence? Are they perhaps murder weapons? Who does the ›armed citizen‹ of the title refer to — the police? Or a citizens’ defence group that has taken up arms? Is there some allusion to the liberal firearms laws in the United States, to bloody incidents like the amok shootings that took place in Columbine High School, Colorado, in 1999, or in the Gutenberg Gymnasium in Erfurt in 2002? Armed Citizen is difficult to pin down. But it is safe to assert that it deals with an indeterminate feeling of fear and menace, and, by association, with the growing longing for security in a world felt to be increasingly less safe. The exhibition deliberately groups Armed Citizen in a kind of »security zone« together with Heath Bunting’s CCTV and Rachel Baker and Heath Bunting’s CCTV Sabotag — further irational works pointing to the essential futility of technology — or weapons based protective measures. (Inke Arns)

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Hardly a day goes by without some news item about the discovery of a carefully concealed crop of genetically modified maize, about liquid explosives in airplanes and bombs inside suitcases on trains, about calls for blanket video surveillance, about the global spread of avian ’flu. We wonder when the virus will reach our own part of the world, have long begun to feel the pinch of economic cutbacks in Germany, to notice the effects of climate change, and cannot help but think: Life’s harder than it used to be.

That was something which irational, founded in the post-Thatcher Britain of 1996, knew ten years ago already. Unerringly ever since, the group has formulated themes and proposed idiosyncratic solutions. These are now presented, for the first time comprehensively, in the exhibition The Wonderful World of irational.org. The irational platform includes companies pressing for access to new technologies to be defined as a human right (Technologies To The People) or pleading for a “better life” with a “human interface” (Mejor Vida Corporation). Alongside mailing lists such as American Express and 7-11, irational houses the Cultural Terrorist Agency, which infiltrates contemporary forms of performative ideology and rhetoric by creating a new London borough and declaring a by-election there, or by marketing a “genetically modified anti-Capitalist superweed” whose built-in resistance to the broad-spectrum herbicides of Monsanto represents a threat to the profitable deployment of GM grain types. As well as criticizing the irresponsible dissemination of genetically manipulated organisms, irational also considers specific action to be taken in the case of a global influenza pandemic. Increasingly precarious conditions of employment were countered with slogans like “Temps of the World Unite – Turning Shit into Gold” (even if, seven years back, the word “precariat” had not yet been coined), or with proposals for the free usage of public transport or universal access to student ID cards. Altogether, movement – irationalists overcome fences and walls with the simplest of means (home-made nets, for instance) and scaling techniques, cross borders without going through the official channels. It is invariably a matter of experiencing space differently: for instance, while engaged in communal tree climbing during the annual International Tree Climbing Day held under the motto “Liberate the Horizontal”, or in the three-contestant World Downhill Skate Championships staged in Bristol, UK.

It was not least in this capacity of travel enterprise of a different kind that irational adopted the logo of the International Air Transport Association IATA [1] (founded in Havana in 1945): a stylized winged globe symbolizing global communication and global traffic. The appendage “irational” turns the logo into a seal of quality for a special art of movement through space.Six international net and media artists are loosely grouped around the irational.org server founded by the British net artist Heath Bunting in 1996. Many of the participants importantly influenced the early net art of the mid-1990s: Daniel Garcia Andújar/Technologies To The People (Valencia/E), Rachel Baker (London/GB), Kayle Brandon (Bristol/GB), Heath Bunting (Bristol/GB), Minerva Cuevas/Mejor Vida Corporation (Mexico City/MEX), and Marcus Valentine (Bristol/GB).With dry humour and minimalist aesthetics, irational commentated the internet hype emergent as of the mid-1990s, and launched its own pseudo start-ups to match the burgeoning New Market euphoria that set in around 1996/97. Art on the net was direct, without the need for – or safety of – a mediating space or instance. This immediacy was reflected during that period by frequent skirmishes with unsmiling patent attorneys threatening irational with legal action for using company names like 7-ELEVEN, American Express, Sainsburys and Tesco. Documented in detail in the exhibition, these disputes were only a prelude to the present-day litigation surrounding copyright, intellectual property, and trademarks (most recently, FIFA’s jealous protection of the World Cup™ trademark in 2006). The world’s first net artist to announce his “retirement”, Heath Bunting stopped working exclusively with the net in 1997. His activities increasingly returned to public space (of which the internet, of course, is now a vital component). If in the “net phase” irational activities were devoted to questioning virtual borders, today the members experiment with questioning and overcoming the borders – economic, political, social – defined in real space, which they make more porous in often highly entertaining fashion.

The output of irational in the period 1996–2006 covers a broad spectrum of pertinent sociopolitical issues. From an early date, the group negotiated themes like the growing sense of in/security in an increasingly technology-based world, questions of surveillance and data collection (via “irational” questionnaires, for instance, or re-purposed customer cards), branding and trademark protection, workplace insecurity, as well as DIY cultures, media, and economies. With the shift of focus from the net to physical space, moreover, the work of irational immediately, singularly and paradigmatically displayed something that is now increasingly evident in contemporary media art: an interest not so much in the actual media and technologies as in current spaces complexly interconnected by these technologies and shot through with media-based networks.

But the magic figure of ten was not the only reason to link this exhibition with the jubilee celebrations of Hartware MedienKunstVerein, since the budding association also played a part (and fun it was) in bringing together two irational protagonists. In 1996, Daniel G. Andújar spent six months as a grant-holder in Künstlerhaus Dortmund, during which time he met Iris Dressler and Hans Christ. The result was intensive cooperation with Hartware on a number of subsequent occasions. 1996 was also the year in which Daniel G. Andújar took part in a Hamburg exhibition – discord. sabotage of realities [2] – during which he met the fellow exhibitor Heath Bunting [3]. Both irational and the Hartware Projekte association were founded later that year.

The four participants in the The Wonderful World of irational.org project – the initiators Susanne Ackers, Francis Hunger and myself, together with Jacob Lillemose, who was soon enlisted as co-curator – were quick to realize that the diverse activities of irational required a varied range of presentation formats. We addressed this diversity by supplementing the exhibition, co-curated by Jacob Lillemose and myself, with the irational Action Weekend staged by Francis Hunger in mid-September, as well as the publication The Hartware Guide to irational.org.

And now to the exhibition, the medium with which we consciously chose to work – a statement that would be superfluous if the subject of the exhibition were not net art. Over the past ten years there has been much discussion (if no agreement, so far) as to whether net art can be exhibited at all, and, if so, how. One need only recall the hapless office situations set up in exhibitions like the documenta X (1997) or the staged internet café ambience of shows like net_condition at ZKM (2000–01). Sarah Cook and Steve Dietz recently put irational itself on show as a huge chalked mural plus an online computer in Banff, Canada. We chose the opposite strategy, and decided to “take offline” the 57 chosen works, instead developing in dialogue with the artists individual concepts appropriate to the exhibition space of the PHOENIX Halle. It was a matter of establishing immediacy in the exhibition context, sometimes without regard to originals medium such as the internet. And the show might be reproached for doing precisely that: for putting back inside an “institutional” mediating space the net art which always took pride in its direct reference to the recipient, and for robbing the works – by declaring them to be “art”, something never explicit on the net –of part of their ambivalence. The view we take is that even – and perhaps especially – net art needs a clear-cut space of mediation (wholly regardless of the fact that the idea of art without mediation is a utopian vision). Via its medium – the internet – net art could have reached a potentially global, potentially vast, audience. Only it has not done so. Net art has reached a small, specialized audience and sometimes baffled unsuspecting surfers. Because we think it would be a pity simply to leave these inventive projects to the net, we opted for this form of implementation.

In this sense, the exhibition is not about net art, either. One might go one step further, and assert that irational itself was never net art. The themes addressed by the group extend far beyond the borders of their medium. All of the projects take a very shrewd approach to topical themes. Whether these themes are handled and implemented on the net or offline is of secondary importance. To this degree, the exhibition attempts to bundle the conceptual red threads of irational into roughly half a dozen thematic areas: language as property, alternative forms of economies, overcoming borders, questioning security technologies and biotechnology and genetic engineering, the transmission of knowledge in participative projects, as well as the enabling of new spatial experiences. Indeed, more: the art of movement through (augmented) space is a theme of almost all the projects. And it has always been a question of expanding the subject’s possibilities of action – in the sense of a tactic of individual empowerment. Irational formulates a politics and a poetics of spatial disobedience. So use the services offered by your favourite travel agency, and fly irational!

________________________

[1] The International Air Transport Association, http://www.iata.de/

[2] un-frieden. sabotage von wirklichkeiten – discord.sabotage of realities, Kunstverein and Kunsthaus Hamburg, 1996, curated by Inke Arns and Ute Vorkoeper, see http://www.projects.v2.nl/~arns/Archiv/Discord/. In regard to the participation of Technologies To The People, see also Inke Arns: Technologies to the People® – Our Sponsor, or: How we got the attention of both Apple (TM) and the left German art critique. In: Technologies to the People®. Annual Report 2000 [i.e. Daniel Garcia Andujar], Alicante 2001, http://www.projects.v2.nl/~arns/Texts/tp.html

[3] Heath Bunting was featured with the Vunerability project, which is also presented in The Wonderful World of irational.org.

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The makrolab1 of Slovenian artist Marko Peljhan was initially installed at the 1997 documenta X in Kassel, was in operation on the West coast of Australia at the beginning of 2000, in Scotland in the early summer of 2002 and, from June to December 2003, on Campalto Island close to Venice. Makrolab is a self-contained research, work and living unit which, with the help of all kinds of technical devices, charts the “topography of signals “2 of the entire electromagnetic spectrum – as a kind of private ECHELON-system: The laboratory is equipped with transmitting and receiving antennae which pick up different frequencies and are able to record the data streams circulating there (private telephone conversations, satellite-based navigation systems, and military and commercial communication). Conceived as a ten-year research project, makrolab is set up in areas as remote as possible, away from large cities or exhibitions, and from 2007 onward is intended to be installed permanently in the Antarctic.

At the beginning of June 2006 two Bulgarian truckers drove a 47 strong audience in a converted lorry through a thick net of motorway service stations, loading bays, container ports and warehouses in the German Ruhr area. “Cargo Sofia is a model of Europe, of a cell of globalisation, in which the audience become voyeurs, observing the most everyday perspective of long-distance haulage. [...] The audience travel through the North Rhine-Westphalian landscape of production and consumption on a converted lorry whose side has been covered with transparent glazing. [...] Complementing these ready-made stage sets of transit are South-East European biographies from the driver’s cab, dialogues with the Essen traffic police and Duisburg container hauliers, music from the Balkans and engine groves.” 1 The project by Stefan Kaegi, member of the Swiss-German performance group Rimini Protokoll, is a mixture of theatre, performance and multimedia show. In this way, between staged reality and everyday fiction it allows a new look at the (un)usual day-to-day life of globalisation. As a carefully observant cell, Cargo Sofia negotiates the landscape of globalisation, which is being changed by transnational goods traffic. Video projections in the interior of the lorry overlay reality, creating and referring to an “augmented space”. 2 In this space the GPS (global positioning system) equipped lorry is present from the outset, visible on the screens of the haulier’s headquarters.

British artist Heath Bunting takes an interest in the establishment of communication and the creation of social contexts and interconnection of virtual and physical space. In the 1980s, Bunting intervened psycho-geographically in urban spaces by means of graffiti, and was active in the context of Fax and Mail Art and London pirate radio stations; in the 1990s he became one the of most prominent exponents of so-called “net.art”, an informal group of predominantly European net artists who adopted a critical attitude to Internet hype when it emerged in the middle of the 1990s. Between 1994 and 1997 Bunting mostly used the Internet to develop his artistic projects. At that time he was one of the most high-profile net artists and also one of the first to withdraw again from net art. Since then he has been exploring routes for the unregulated crossing of European national borders. The Internet project BorderXing Guide (2001), commissioned by the Tate Modern, documents the illegal border crossings within and outside Europe which Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon embarked upon in the last years as a self-experiment.

BorderXing Guide sees itself as a guide to crossing borders without papers. Being British, Bunting and Brandon do have EU passports, but chose to follow those paths through woods, rivers, mountains and tunnels that refugees and those not in the possession of papers are forced to follow in order to get from one country to another. The information on the individual routes, provided by Bunting and Brandon on their website in the form of photographs, detailed notes, maps and laconic comments, is not available to every Internet user. In order to gain access to the project one must physically travel to one of the “social servers” (places with public Internet access and static IP-addresses1) which Bunting views as trustworthy. On the one hand BorderXing Guide is concerned with embedding virtuality in a specific social context, on the other hand the project refers to the paradox connection between an ever improving interconnectedness within the Western world (money, goods, information) and the simultaneous sealing-off against unwanted immigrants. With its principle of “reverse authentication” BorderXing also alludes to the everyday experiences of illegal border crossers.

Within the framework of the 2005 exhibition Verstreute Momente der Konzentration. Urbane und digitale Räume (Dispersed Moments of Concentration. Urban and Digital Spaces) French artist Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil presented two entirely unmedial works in the Dortmund PHOENIX hall. GPS (2001) addresses the ambivalence of localisation and control in the age of satellite navigation. At first, the mural painting in the colours yellow, pink and green appears to be mere decoration yet, upon closer inspection, it turns out to be a visualisation of the way GPS works. GPS makes it possible to locate people or places equipped with an appropriate receiver anywhere in the world, with an accuracy of a few metres. Code International Sol/Air No.14 (1999), realized as a large mobile flowerbed, communicates a secret message (“Need Weapons and Ammunition”) to helicopters and aircraft flying by. This is an element of the international code for surface to air communication, which serves the communication between aircraft and military or civilians on the ground. The work refers to the growing importance of vertical vectors in urban networks.

All these examples show that the area covered by Media Art today has widened. It now makes use of a whole range of media which, until a few years ago, would not have been considered worth a mention in the context of Media Art. The media and technologies used in Language (property) and makrolab make them clearly recognisable as exponents of Media or Net Art. Like makrolab, Bunting’s and Brandon’s hybrid project BorderXing Guide interweaves real and virtual space and anticipates the activities of this part of the irrational. From 2000 onwards these increasingly shift to the (sub)urban public space and address the physical surmounting of fences and borders (Tour d’Fence, Tunneling workshop, Public Sculpture Climbing). Cargo Sofia, as a “mobile theatre space”, allows us to experience these increasingly intermingled virtual (medial) and real spaces of globalisation as tangible truck routes. In the aforementioned example it is a mural painting which illustrates the workings of the GPS system and a mobile flowerbed, communicating its messages to the skies.

But why are wall paintings, digital prints on canvas, journeys by lorry or climbing trips Media Art? Or rather: why can they be called Media Art, as the Hartware MedienKunstVerein (Hartware Media Arts Association) has been doing programmatically in its exhibitions since 2005? My theory is that what back in the 1990s was collectively labelled Media Art is gradually emancipating itself from this conceptual restriction. To be more precise: Media Art is emancipating itself more and more from the use of new media/technologies – a paradox development. At the same time it deliberates, with great matter-of-factness and great ease, how the world surrounding us, which is increasingly based on these technologies, is changed by them. This development is probably due to the nowadays routine use of these media/technologies in our everyday lives. Internet, telecommunication, video, cameras, the convergence of all these media into one, namely the all-purpose machine computer, all this has become progressively more normal in the last five to seven years. So normal (in fact), that the Media Art courses, newly founded ten to fifteen years ago, have trouble finding new students: On the one hand it becomes harder and harder to find suitable applicants (namely, ones who do not confuse Media Art with commercial applications or the advertising industry), on the other hand, students define the territory of Media Art, contrary to their syllabus, according to their own rules, which is to say they are increasingly uninhibited in their choice of media.

I would therefore like to propose the following theory: What defines Media Art today is not its range of media, but rather its specific form of contemporaneity, its content-related examination of our present, which is to a high degree typified by media. It deals with what Friedrich Kittler described exactly 20 years ago in the succinct phrase “the media determine our situation” 1. Which media are used becomes progressively more irrelevant. In other words: Media Art is no longer the formal category or formal genre it was considered to be, above all in the 1990s (e.g. at the Karlsruhe ZKM, the ars electronica or various courses of study in Media Art). Rather it defines itself through an intensive content-related examination of the world surrounding us, one increasingly medialised and based upon new technologies. At the same time this examination does not necessary entail the use of the new technologies, but rather makes use of (almost) all media and technologies. It frees itself from the compulsion to utilize the latest technology, discards the conceptual support afforded by the newness of the medium and faces the challenge of art. It is (finally) growing up.

In this context it also becomes very clear that Media Art is no engineering competition for the development of technologies. When artists have mastered those media and technologies they work with and make use of (e.g. in Software Art they do the programming themselves) that does not automatically mean that they also have to get involved in the development of these technologies, the definition of their standards and formats as, for example, Friedrich Kittler demanded time and time again almost apodictically. By doing so Kittler disregards the basic potential of art. The specific form of the contemporaneity of Media Art is not its technical expertise in the narrow sense of the word. Rather are the artists and authors mentioned above inventors in a broad sense, which is to say, the very sense of their specific contemporaneity, the conceptual examinations expressed within it and, by all means, also in their participation and involvement in a world in which the use of media and technology is becoming increasingly normal and which, as a consequence, is changing radically.

This change, however, is not happening right before our eyes. Even more: Since this increasing medial composedness in the form of radio waves, computer interfaces and everyday applications remains predominantly transparent or invisible and thus goes unnoticed, many of these artistic projects set to work on making these transparencies visible or discernible. The Russian formalists called such a procedure “faktura”. Such a faktura, in the era of spaces influenced by information and signals which elude sensory perception (“augmented space”) might be the only possibility for translating the signals of one system into signals that can be interpreted by another. Not the aspect of functionality is being emphasised (i.e. Media Art is not in competition with engineering), but obstacles for the eye and the other human senses are being created. This movement leads from one stage of transparency to a perceptible visibility and the sensory experience of intrinsically unintelligible spaces of data. 1

Now one could ask: Why this adherence to a nowadays obviously redundant term such as Media Art? The answer is simple and has not changed in the more than ten years during which I have been working in the field of Media Art: because this field is still not an established part of contemporary fine arts. (The professorial chair at the Dusseldorf Kunstakademie, held by Nam June Paik, after whom this award is named, and a few other professorships held by media artists, are the exceptions which confirm this rule.)

To all intents and purposes “the art formerly known as (new) media art“ comprises everything that in content and concept deals with the world’s increasing medial composedness. This exploration results in a kind of contemporaneity, which is to say, a taking part in and an inquisitive exploration of the present, which in this form cannot commonly be found in contemporary graphic art (and there, is still considered too worldly).

Maybe Media Art today is less media than concept art: Here something is taking place which, polemically speaking, at some academies has been driven from the terrain of the once more current manner of painting, obsessed with gut feeling and emotions: the initial formulation of a concept, followed by the freedom to chose a medium – from mural painting to mobile research laboratory.

1 makrolab http://makrolab.ljudmila.org
2 Daniels, Dieter, in: cITy. Internationaler Medienkunstpreis 2000 (cITy. International Media Art Award 2000), SWF Baden Baden, Karlsruhe 2000, p. 94-97, here: p. 95.
3 Cf. Website PACT Zollverein, www.pact-zollverein.de, 27 July 2006.
4 Since the beginning of 2005 the Hartware MedienKunstVerein (the Hartware Media Art Association) has occupied itself intensively with the field described by the Russian media theorist Lev Manovich as “augmented space”. “Augmented Space” describes the real space which surrounds us, which is increasingly enriched and permeated by information or is criss-crossed by immaterial information streams. See Verstreute Momente der Konzentration. Urbane und digitale Räume (Dispersed Moments opf Concentration. Urban and digital landscapes), published by Hartware MedienKunstVerein / Inke Arns, Frankfurt am Main 2005.
5 In principle all static IP-addresses from third-world countries such as Angola, Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, and Vietnam are allowed to access the site.
In addition some “trustworthy“ servers from inside and outside the EU are granted admission such as UBERMORGEN.COM (Vienna), Sarai (New Delhi) and mama (Zagreb). The list of social serves can be found on http://irational.org/cgi-bin/border/clients/list.pl.
6 Friedrich Kittler, Grammophon, Film, Typewriter (Gramaphone, Film, Typewriter), Berlin 1986, p. 5
7 Cf. Inke Arns: Faktur und Interface: Chlebnikov, Tesla und der himmlische Datenverkehr in Marko Peljhans makrolab (1997-2007), in: Kwastek, Katja (Ed.): “Ohne Schnur….” Kunst und drahtlose Kommunikation. Kommunikationskunst im Spannungsfeld von Kunst, Technologie und Gesellschaft, Revolver: Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 62-79
Inke Arns: Facture and Interface: Chlebnikov, Tesla and the celestial data traffic in Marko Peljhans makrolab (1997-2007), in: Kwastek, Katja (Ed.): “Cordless….” Art and wireless communication. Communication Art in the field of tension between Art, Technology and Society, Revolver: Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 62-79

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written for Technologies to the People [d.i. Daniel Garcia Andujar], La sociedad informacional, catalogue, to be published in August 2000 [English / Spanish]

„I am not fond of manipulation, and I think you should not use it for political aims.” (1)
(Left-wing squatter in Berlin, April 2000)
In 1996-1997 together with Ute Vorkoeper we organized and curated the international exhibition project discord. sabotage of realities (2) which took place in the Kunstverein and the Kunsthaus in Hamburg. The exhibition was part of the Hamburg Week of Visual Arts 1996, partly funded by the city’s Cultural Office. Artists worldwide were invited to submit artistic concepts dealing with today’s more and more un-peaceful political and social realities. The organizers received more than 500 concepts from 31 countries. The actual exibition discord was divided into six thematic zones focussing on control (security/insecurity), news services (disinformation), everyday (alienation), border politics (walking the tightrope), state machineries (law, discipline, repression), science fiction & economy (the administration of the future) and included an international selection of 34 artistic works most of which were premiered in the exhibition, and 26 additional artistic concepts from 18 countries.

The Spanish non-profit organization Technologies to the People® (TP) was one of the participants of the discord project. Unfortunately the large scale photos which Technologies to the People® had prepared as its contribution disappeared somewhere on their way between Spain and Germany. Another solution had to be found quickly. It was finally agreed upon with the organizers that Technologies to the People® would become one of the main sponsors of the discord. sabotage of realities project. As our sponsor, Technologies to the People® put its black large-scale logo (TP) on an entire wall in the exhibition space and in the catalogue. In addition to that TP distributed small boxes containing propaganda leaflets describing its product range: the Street Access Machine®, the Recovery Card®, the Personal Folkcomputer®, and the Internet Street Access Machine®. On the back cover the leaflets contained a long list of TP’s sponsors, among them such big corporations as Tokio Mitsubishi, Fuji, Sakura, Industrial Bank of Japan, Norinchuking Bank of Japan, Long Term Bank of Japan, Deutsche Bank, Crédit Agricole, Crédit Lyonnais, HSBC Holdings, Asahi Bank, Industrial&Comercial, CS Holdings, ABN Amro, Chase Manhattan Chemical and Societé Générale.

According to the definition and the visuals given on the propaganda leaflet, the whole range of TP’s products allow the underpriviledged to actively participate in the upcoming information society. The Street Access Machine® and the Recovery Card® enable beggars to transfer money from credit cards. The Internet Street Access Machine® realizes the wide-spread demand of ‘access for all’. Perfectly appropriating the IT industries’ rhetoric of technoutopian ideology which goes like „use these new technologies and the future will be even brighter”, or „the use of new communication technologies will allow everybody to participate in a better and more equal future world”, TP turns this rhetoric into its very opposite by showing the underlying cynical ‘hidden reverse’ of the IT business’s technoutopian lure: beggars will remain beggars, underpriviledged will remain underpriviledged and poor will remain poor even if they are all using new information and communication technologies. Technology alone does not change society; it may even prevent society from changing because it crystallizes existing social structures and widens the gap between the information-haves and the have-nots. It makes a difference only for the IT industry because they can make money out of selling their products.

The striking – and so obvious – contradiction included in the leaflets was overseen by a lot of people and thus the project caused a lot of misunderstandings. These misunderstandings, however, can also be read as hinting towards the conflicting understanding and the interpretation of the role of technology within society. More precisely, the TP campaign was taken dead seriously by representatives of various sides, a fact that sheds light on the interests of both industry as well as on the political left.

After the opening of the exhibition the organizers received an e-mail from the German branch of the company Apple. Apple read about TP’s advertisement somewhere in the media and was seriously interested in the (Internet) Street Access Machine®. They asked if there were already some prototypes which they could examine more closely. The discord organizers were amused. Of course there were not prototypes yet, and they were not to come either. Rather, the whole thing could be described as a meme intended to unveil the hidden desires of industry which, despite its rhetorics (as described above), is not exactly interested in an embetterment of society but is interested purely in profit. TP laid the bait and industry took it.

Also, the left German art magazine Texte zur Kunst did not get a clue. In an article entitled ‘Politics as Style’ (3) the student of philosophy Antonia Ulrich foamed with rage about the exhibition in general, and, amongst others, about TP’s project in particular. discord, of course, must have felt like poaching on the left’s very political terrain. Ulrich criticized the two curators and the participating artists for ‘aestheticizing’ political issues, for the missing applicability in real politics and for not leaving the art space and demonstrating in the streets of Hamburg. Well. Writing about art is perhaps not always the best thing to do if you want to be politically correct. Unsurprisingly, Ulrich misread most of the artistic projects. She took TP’s project for granted as if she had never heard about subversion strategies and the art of campaigning before. For her, TP was really about providing the ‘marginalized’ with access to the electronic media: According to Ulrich TP seriously „presented technology as a means to abolish social injustice, blindly believing in the progressive function of these technologies. Instead of laying bare the power mechanisms inscribed into these technologies, [TP] aestheticized technology.” (4) This obviously comes to no surprise at all for her, knowing that the TP project was „sponsored by Mitsubishi, Fuji, Deutsche Bank, and Crédit Lyonnais” (5).

What could have provoked this deliberate misreading of Technologies to the People®? Technology, obviously, is still a red rag to the left. But it was provoked as well by the fact that for the left the only possible way of confronting its enemies is criticizing them straightforwardly. Manipulation, communication guerilla (6) tactics and artistic strategies like the strategy of over-identification (7) have been neglected for a long time by the left. It was, and still is, just impossible to think about using „enemy strategies” for the ‘good’ cause.

Even if you are not fond of manipulation, like the naive left-wing squatter I quoted in the beginning, today, manipulation is everywhere. There is no such thing as whether to call it good or bad. It is there, and it is a fact. It won’t go away. In many cases, rather, it remains the only effective language left. Good intentions alone do not win fights. Rhetorics is not about having the right opinion, it is about using the right words. If the situation requires it, become a pop singer! or a stock broker! infiltrate corporate structures by appropriating corporate strategies and rhetoric! The majority of people in the squatted house who participated in the discussion about whether to use the Internet for political aims or not were of the opinion that because they had „good” political intentions they would not need „bad” manipulation. And, besides that, the computer was an instrument of power which you should not let your children use. I just felt bad, sitting there and being confronted with so much politically correct stubbornness. We soon left the place, sobered, and drove out into the night in a fat old black Mercedes, listening to the sound of Plaid.

Notes

1 Left-wing squatter in one of the last squatted houses in Berlin („Bandito Rosso”), during a discussion in April 2000 about whether to use the Internet for political aims or not. I participated in the discussion with some people from the Chaos Computer Club (CCC; the German hacker’s club), them of course also being a red rag to the left-wing squatters movement. The squatter turned openly „against manipulation” after somebody mentioned the fake fpo.at website that was installed after the right-wing Austrian FPÖ party got into the coalition with the ÖVP. The fake fpo.at website contained links to militant right wing organisations and thus intended to reveal the ‘hidden reverse’, i.e. that which remains unspoken in the rhetorics of the FPÖ. A common left criticism was that the fake fpo.at website could provide FPÖ fans with links to ‘appropriate’ organisations, i.e. could push them in an even more radical direction.
2 <http://www.icf.de/discord>
3 Antonia Ulrich, ‘Politik als Stil’, in: Texte zur Kunst, März 1997, 7. Jg. Nr. 25, S. 123-126
4 Ibid., p. 124 (my translation)
5 Ibid., p. 126, footnote 9 (my translation)
6 C.f. autonome a.f.r.i.k.a.-gruppe / Luther Blissett / Sonja Brünzels, Handbook of the Communication Guerilla [German original Handbuch der Komunikationsguerilla, Hamburg/Berlin 1997]. Here, RTMark’s <http://www.rtmark.com> and etoy’s <http://www.etoy.com> anti-corporate strategies come to one’s mind. C.f. Inke Arns ‘Recent Net Campaigns (esp. Toywar) and the Importance of Small Media or Wide-Spread Non-Hierarchical Systems’, lecture given at the conference Pro@Contra, Moscow 11-14 May 2000 [to be published in the documentation in the course of 2000] <http://procontra.danet.ru>. The SuperWeed Kit 1.0 project sponsored by the Cultural Terrorist Agency (i.e. Rachel Baker and Heath Bunting) <http://www.irational.org/cta> fits into this category as well: SuperWeed Kit 1.0 „is a lowtech DIY kit capable of producing a genetically mutant superweed designed to attack corporate monoculture” <http://pages.hotbot.com/politics/superweed/>.
7 C.f. Inke Arns, ‘Mobile States / Shifting Borders / Moving Entities. The Slovenian Artists’ Collective Neue Slowenische Kunst’, in: Irwin, Three projects: Transnacionala, Irwin Live, Icons, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 1998, pp. 59 – 76. See also <http://www.v2.nl/~arns/Texts/NSK/finale.htm>

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