Activist Artists Subvert the Message

by Marcela Valente

From a distance it looks like an ordinary traffic sign, a
yellow rhombus like so many others in the Argentine capital.
But on approach, the sign can be seen to contain an unusual
warning message: "A former torturer lives 100 metres from here."

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 13 (IPS) -- The sign, quietly placed in a
public area, will not stay in place for long, but the Street
Art Group (GAC) does not care. "It may last a day, a week,
or a little longer," Carolina Golder, a member of the group, told IPS.

The aim of this collective of eight artists, designers and
photographers is to infiltrate traditional communication
systems and "subvert the message," she commented.

The GAC was formed in 1997 to back a protest by teachers
demanding wage hikes and a greater share of the budget for
education. The teachers had pitched a massive tent in front
of Congress, and took turns camping there for more than two
years.

The artists adorned the White Tent, as it was called, with
black and white silhouettes of the white coats worn by
teachers in Argentina.

The group became famous, however, when the Parque de la
Memoria (Memory Park) was inaugurated. This is a green area
along the bank of the Rio de la Plata commemorating those
who were detained and 'disappeared' during the 1976-1983
military dictatorship. The GAC put up a set of "road signs" with messages to recount the last few years of Argentine
history.

Danilo D'Antonio writes:

"GNP Against GNP

Danilo D'Antonio

Kind Madames and Sirs,

I present you my best and warmest regards.

I'm writing in order to humbly ask you to address your attention on the fact that today the economic systems of the developed Countries have a strongly military valence, of defense and attack, that predominates and misleads a correct economic function, directed to satisfy the legitimate necessities of a people in a perfect interaction with the rest of the world.

I humbly ask you to consider the fact that the growth of the Gross National Product (GNP) is today the only way officially granted to a Nation (after that the wars between greater States have become impossible because of the advent of the nuclear armaments) in order to maintain within balanced levels the pressure, equally economic, that every other Country turns against it.

By pursuing the increase of the GNP, governments try not so much to satisfy real inner economic requirements, they try instead to avoid the real danger of an invasion, may be at first even only commercial, and of a successive total oppression of one's own Country by whichever other Country that was reached to successfully grow much more. It is a concrete danger, extremely present, that comes as well from the West as from the East, that perfectly explains why the governments stubbornly continue to pursue a growth of traditional kind, numerical and not qualitative, very beyond the limit that would be opportune.

Danilo D'Antonio writes:

"GNP Against GNP"

Danilo D'Antonio

Kind Madames and Sirs,

I present you my best and warmest regards.

I'm writing in order to humbly ask you to address your attention on the fact that today the economic systems of the developed Countries have a strongly military valence, of defense and attack, that predominates and misleads a correct economic function, directed to satisfy the legitimate necessities of a people in a perfect interaction with the rest of the world.

I humbly ask you to consider the fact that the growth of the Gross National Product (GNP) is today the only way officially granted to a Nation (after that the wars between greater States have become impossible because of the advent of the nuclear armaments) in order to maintain within balanced levels the pressure, equally economic, that every other Country turns against it.

By pursuing the increase of the GNP, governments try not so much to satisfy real inner economic requirements, they try instead to avoid the real danger of an invasion, may be at first even only commercial, and of a successive total oppression of one's own Country by whichever other Country that was reached to successfully grow much more. It is a concrete danger, extremely present, that comes as well from the West as from the East, that perfectly explains why the governments stubbornly continue to pursue a growth of traditional kind, numerical and not qualitative, very beyond the limit that would be opportune.

"The Critic Operator of the Web 2.0?"

Ignacio Nieto Interviews Jose Luis Brea, New Media Fix

Ignacio Nieto interviews Jose Luis Brea, who was formerly Dean
of the Fine Arts Academy of Cuenca and Director of Exhibitions for the Ministry of
Culture between 1985 ­ 1988. As a free lance art critic, he is a regular
contributor to Spanish and international art magazines including Frieze, Flash Art
and Parkett. He is Spanish correspondent for Arforum and regional editor for
"Rhizome." He has organized multiples exhibitions as independent curator and has
published several books including Auras Frias and El Tercer Umbral. Currently, he
is prefessor of Esthetics and Theory of Contemporany Art at Carlos III University
in Madrid, editor of the magazine Estudios Visuales and he is director of two new
online projects: salonKritik and ::agencia crítica::

­

Ignacio Nieto [IN]: With the popularization of blogs, a number of spaces have
developed which had no place within the logic of political economy; contained and
produced by media, creating a new front for ideas and critical thinking. For you,
what would be the advantages and disadvantages that blog technology has over
traditional media (newspapers, radio and television)?

Jose Luis Brea [JLB]: I believe that there are two fundamental advantages: an
extended possibility of access, and participation. The first is very important, of
course, because it proposes access to critical thinking that is made available to
a larger part of the population, something that was not possible in the past (this
is without exaggeration, of course, one must never forget that the supposition of
total access is an illusory fantasy‹an interest of Capitalist ideology).

Considering television and the culture of diffusion, Bourdieu called this the
"lowering of the level" (of access). Let's say that more people heard and
saw‹maybe even read‹for example philosophers; Derrida, and now Zizek, whom
they would never have had heard, seen or read before. This is much more evident
with new media (especially since the development of the web 2.0)

But for the same reason this amplification (possibility to access) would not have
an excessive importance; it would be purely quantitative, it would not contribute
without making "more of the masses" the culture of masses, and maybe to
incorporate in it cultural objects, of the critical tradition which before
belonged to areas in culture less popular, more "elitist" or more reserved for
specialized communities, let's say (for example "deconstruction," "Theory of acts
of speech," or "antagonist thinking").

"The Anti-Empire Report:

Some Things You Need To Know Before the World Ends"

William Blum, Killing Hope

How I Spent My 15 Minutes of Fame

In case you don't know, on January 19 the latest audiotape from Osama bin Laden was released and in it he declared: "If you [Americans] are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book Rogue State, which states in its
introduction ... "

He then goes on to quote the opening of a paragraph I wrote (which appears actually in the "Foreword" of the British edition only, that was later translated to Arabic), which in full reads:

El Kilombo writes:

"Response to Pierre Macherey"
Toni Negri, Multitudes (Autumn 2005)

On November 19th, 2004, Pierre Macherey presented an extended critique of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s book, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, on the occasion of Citéphilo at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille. Toni Negri, who was invited to speak at the seminar, responded orally to Macherey’s critiques. The text that we publish here is a more detailed and developed version of Negri’s response. Pierre Macherey’s text is available here. [LB]

It seems to me that the objections presented by Pierre Macherey, with the elegance of a master and the sincerity of a friend, are three in number: each of which, naturally, entails certain complications, as much in terms of questions as answers.

The first question, posed ex abrupto, concerns the central theme, the foundation itself of our discussion, namely the concept of labor. In insisting upon the immaterialization of labor, Macherey asks, do Hardt and Negri not finish by dematerializing it? Why not proceed in the opposite direction, and reconstitute the material reality of labor, the tediousness and suffering of exploitation, by first underlining its undeniable new productive characteristics? Do we not give in, in following Hardt and Negri, to a sort of post-modernist apology for change, whatever form it might take? Consequently, why do the authors of Multitude insist so forcefully upon the break between modernity and post-modernity rather than showing the continuity of exploitation between the two; or better yet showing the culmination of exploitation in a period that draws its breath from a most ferocious modernity?

Altitude Sickness / Notes on a Trip to Bolivia*

Colectivo Situaciones

from Chtoldelat

1. In its heterogeneity and permanent movement, Bolivia is at the same time the experience and the fracture of magma. It is there where faces, bodies, and languages tell stories that challenge those seeking to understand, accompany, and enjoy. Our trip, in February 2005, was a struggle between this attempt to understand and the difficulties of adaptation (of which altitude was not the least of obstacles). It is also a wager on the distinctive outlook opened by what took place in recent years in Argentina. And this dialogue between processes of de-institution-construction is vital for both.

2. To arrive in Bolivia is to be surprised at an atmosphere that concentrates an extreme tension between different elements, a polymorphous dynamic that today characterizes, in different ways, the syntaxis of the movements and struggles of a good portion of Latin America. To connect with Bolivia is part of a necessary and renovated literacy.
It looks as though any image let itself be seen and read. Today the space referred to as “Latin American” appears to the public through the emergence of so-called “leftist” national governments. The literacy we propose is one that allows us to have new keys to read this process. These governments—each in its own way—function as an extension, interpellation, substitution, subordination, displacement and/or reorganization of the movements and experiments that strive, in entire regions of the continent—precisely the hotter and more creative ones—to unfold a politics from below. This democratic impulse does not thrive without moments of insurrection, which spatialize and open new terrains, but, evidently, nor does it emphasize the constructive and innovative dimension of the processes that have been opened.

3. As with the “piqueteros” in Argentina, in Bolivia the struggles summon new expressions. The media invent new ways of naming each irruption. Thus, the aggressiveness displayed by the struggles is immediately called “war for” (water, coca, gas). These “wars,” however, are not moments of organization within a designed and consistent strategy over the control of the apparatus of the state, as it could have been conceived only two decades ago, althought it is evident that the consequences of these conflicts have a bearing on a constant politicization and a neutralization and erosion of central power’s ability to command. The so-called violence in the struggles in Bolivia is not decided and deployed by traditional revolutionary organizations, but by communitarian impulses more or less configured as such. This is why the coexistence of an electoral strategy of indigenous and popular groups along with harder or hidden resistances is not only highly conflictive but also persistent and even partially articulable at some moments.

"Digital Universe
with L.A. at its Center"

Holly Willis, LA Weekly

"I¹m going to put the phone down now, "just hang on."

Media artist Michael Naimark was at LAX one morning a few weeks ago, on his
way to the Banff Centre¹s Refresh Conference on histories of new-media art.
Another artist, Simon Penny from UCI, was up ahead, also on his way to the
conference, and UCLA¹s Erkki Huhtamo, a new-media theorist, wasn¹t far
behind. Not wanting to lose our connection, Naimark put the phone into one
of those gray plastic containers and pushed it toward the X-ray machine.

David Horowitz's List of 100 Most Dangerous Professors in the U.S.

The Professor's Colleges and Universities

Arcadia University: Warren Haffar

Ball State University: George Wolfe

Baylor University: Marc Ellis

Boston University: Howard Zinn

Brandeis University: Gordon Fellman, Dessima Williams

Brooklyn College: Priya Parmar, Timothy Shortell

Cal State University, Fresno: Sasan Fayazmanesh

California State University, Long Beach: Ron (Maulana) Karenga

City University of New York: Stanley Aronowitz, Bell Hooks, Leonard Jeffries, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Columbia University: Lisa Anderson, Gil Anidjar, Hamid Dabashi, Nicholas De Genova, Eric Foner, Todd Gitlin, Manning Marable, Joseph Massad, Victor Navasky

Cornell University: Matthew Evangelista

De Paul University: Norman Finkelstein, Aminah Beverly McCloud

Duke University: Miriam Cooke, Frederic Jameson

Earlham College: Caroline Higgins

Emory University: Kathleen Cleaver

Foothill College: Leighton Armitage

Georgetown University: David Cole, John Esposito, Yvonne Haddad, Mari Matsuda

Holy Cross College: Jerry Lembcke

Kent State University: Patrick Coy

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Noam Chomsky

Metropolitan State College, Denver: Oneida Meranto

Montclair State University: Grover Furr

New York University: Derrick Bell

North Carolina State University: Gregory Dawes

Northeastern University: M. Shahid Alam,
Northwestern University: Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, Bernardine Dohrn

Occidental College: Tom Hayden

Penn State University: Michael Berube, Sam Richards

Princeton University: Richard Falk

Purdue University: Harry Targ

Rochester Institute of Technology: Thomas Castellano

Rutgers University: H. Bruce Franklin, Michael Warner

Rutgers University, Stony Brook: Amiri Baraka

San Francisco State University: Anatole Anton

Saint Xavier University: Peter Kirstein

Stanford University: Joel Beinin, Paul Ehrlich

State University of New York, Binghamton: Ali al-Mazrui

State University of New York, Buffalo: James Holstun

State University of New York, Stony Brook: Michael Schwartz

Syracuse University: Greg Thomas

Temple University: Melissa Gilbert, Lewis Gordon

Texas A&M University: Joe Feagin

Truman State University: Marc Becker

University of California, Berkely: Hamid Algar, Hatem Bazian, Orville Schell

University of California, Irvine: Mark Le Vine

University of California, Los Angeles: Vinay Lal

University of California, Riverside: Armando Navarro

University of California, Santa Cruz: Bettina Aptheker, Angela Davis

University of Cincinnati: Marvin Berlowitz

University of Colorado, Boulder: Alison Jaggar, Emma Perez

University of Dayton: Mark Ensalaco

University of Denver: Dean Saitta

University of Hawaii, Manoa: Haunani-Kay Trask

University of Illinois, Chicago: Bill Ayers

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Robert McChesney

University of Kentucky: Ihsan Bagby

University of Michigan: Juan Cole

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: Gayle Rubin

University of Northern Colorado: Robert Dunkley

University of Oregon, Eugene: John Bellamy Foster

University of Pennsylvania: Regina Austin, Mary Frances Berry, Michael Eric Dyson

University of Rhode Island: Michael Vocino
University of South Florida: Sami al-Arian

University of Southern California: Laurie Brand

University of Texas, Arlington: Jose Angel Gutierrez

University of Texas, Austin: Dana Cloud, Robert Jensen

University of Washington: David Barash

Villanova University: Rick Eckstein, Suzanne Toton

Western Washington University: Larry Estrada

Punkerslut writes:

"Better Living Through Chemicals"
Punkerslut

An Introduction to the Drug Situation in America

"Marihuana is that drug — a violent narcotic — an unspeakable scourge — The Real Public Enemy Number One! Its first effect is sudden, violent, uncontrollable laughter; then come dangerous hallucinations — space expands — time slows down, almost stands still.... fixed ideas come next, conjuring up monstrous extravagances — followed by emotional disturbances, the total inability to direct thoughts, the loss of all power to resist physical emotions... leading finally to acts of shocking violence... ending often in incurable insanity. In picturing its soul-destroying effects no attempt was made to equivocate. The scenes and incidents, while fictionized for the purposes of this story, are based upon actual research into the results of Marihuana addiction. If their stark reality will make you think, will make you aware that something must be done to wipe out this ghastly menace, then the picture will not have failed in its purpose... Because the dread Marihuana may be reaching forth next for your son or daughter... or yours... OR YOURS!" — "Reefer Madness", 1939

The concept of drugs and drug use has come a considerably far distance since the early days of "twenty years for possession and life for sale." The days of imprisonment for decades and decades for marijuana possession is a thing of the past, as much as the scarlet letter is considered a relic of a barbaric and cruel people. Most liberal cities, and even conservative cities that have libertarian judges, are now seeing that there is no solution in imprisoning a smoker of marijuana. Instead, many cities have seen a better policy in giving out tickets to those caught smoking marijuana. In most cities and states, these tickets are comparable to the traffic tickets that drivers sometimes incur. Policy has even been liberalized for those who use heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. Instead of thinking that imprisonment will heal them, it is understood that many of these people suffer from an addiction that is beyond their control, and that they are seeking help for their problems. Finally, society is starting to accept the idea that drugs are something that people go to when they are in search of a good, and many people survive lifestyles that involve frequent drug use, but there are some people who become addicted junkies that always suffer for their substance. Every year, it seems that sentences and punishments for drug possession and drug use are becoming more lenient; they are becoming more ethical. I look forward to the day when I can go to my local grocery store and a buy the top-brand, high-quality, imported marijuana in bulk packaging, the way they sell one pound tobacco bags. I am looking forward to this day, but I know in my heart, that with people like these, it may very well take some time.