ART 80F - WEEK 7 LECTURE CONTENT
Tactical Media - Definitions + introductions
Three different perspectives explored - via Tactical Media Files . net
- Using multiple forms of communications media, including distribution technologies (either in whole or components of) to communicate or highlight perspectives and/or information that are usually excluded, suppressed or de-legitimized in more mainstream channels.
- Usually more individual / collective effort
- Often engages with social / political / environmental justice issues
Critical Art Ensemble
Collective formed in 1987 - "tactical media practitioners"
Use forms of media (web, print, live performance) as modes of political and social disruption, activism + art
"...focus has been on the exploration of the intersections between art, critical theory, technology, and political activism."
The Yes Men
2 person collaboration of performance + other tactical media projects - founded 1995 - Yes Men Projects
From the recent Yes Men Project, Share the Safety
Tarana Burke - #metoo
Tarana Burke, an organizer, activist + founder of Just Be Inc began "Me Too" in 2007
“It wasn’t built to be a viral campaign or a hashtag that is here today and forgotten tomorrow,” Burke told Ebony on Monday. “It was a catchphrase to be used from survivor to survivor to let folks know that they were not alone and that a movement for radical healing was happening and possible.”
Trevor Paglen - Data + Surveillance activist / researcher
"Makes the invisible visible"
Since 9/11, what is commonly referred to as the war on terror has given governments a licence to invest in covert operations at home and abroad. Paglen has photographed black sites in Afghanistan and listening stations within the 13,000 square miles of America’s National Radio Quiet Zone, central to the National Security Agency’s Echelon intelligence interception system, where radio waves are tightly restricted. He has tracked and photographed US reconnaissance satellites and drones — particularly reaper drones that can carry “Hellfire” missiles, used in Iraq and against Isis. In 2012 he sent a disc etched with 100 photographs — a time capsule of this point in human history — by satellite into geostationary orbit, where it could remain for billions of years. Most recently he has been photographing locations off the coasts of Europe and the US where international underwater fibre-optic cables come together before reaching land.
Art21 Videos on Trevor Paglen