[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Normalization is an attempt to control or deactivate this viral expansion,in the face of which the Colectivo Situaciones propose to politicize sadness,by way of different dynamics that allow them to avoid being co-opted ormarginalized: They look to dismantle ways of freezing events, to exercise thepower of abstention, to re-conceive public spaces of intervention by attendingto the specific content of each situation without a need for exceptionalconditions, and to re-elaborate the notion of collectiveness as complicityin the adventure of becoming a situational interface in the world.24In contemporary cultural activism, articulating protest on a global levelis central.Mujeres creando (Women Creating)25 is an anarchist-feministgroup formed in Bolivia in 1992 that publishes the Mujer Pública maga-zine, has a radio program and a cafe, all spaces that allow them to articulatea radical feminist agenda that is also linked to People s Global Action,whose third meeting was held in La Paz, Bolivia (2001).This articulationseeks to activate different specific agendas in a non-exclusive manner aspart of a more general one on all fronts that it seeks to maintain constantlyactive.Different experiences from the past in which militant cinema,Activism 241activist theater, montage techniques and theory, and action art in urbanspaces (murals, graffiti, intervention in urban signage, performance, the-ater, and street art) all gained potential from one another thanks to thepossibility of acting as a network.Networked activism produces specificpractices and a new vocabulary: access to programs, downloading content,distributing information (still images, moving images, and sound), open-ing access codes and making content available; generating participativecreation online, simultaneously articulating images and sound produced indifferent places, capturing a chronological narrative of events; breaking upthe idea of the center with those of multiplicity, heterogeneity, andsimultaneousness; adding potential to the notions of liminal, frontierspaces; the ideas of contagion, virus, and infection; of nodes and nodalinterconnection that provoke continual echoes and resonance; of everydayportable communications systems (like computers) that are itinerant andnomadic; the notions of node and orbit to describe mobile structures; theconcept of place as site, not as a precise place but as a site of intersection,like a situation between two localities (where work comes from and towhom it pertains); the possibility and capability of being in various sites atthe same time; the concept of zone as location, as an accessible space withfluid borders with no distinction between center and periphery as zones ofindiscipline.26 Networks possibilities intersect with increased potential forcollective experience, the carnivalization of protest in order to activate aglobal agenda that comes together in one place, based on human coexistenceand interaction.27Cultural activism today is based on interpersonal contact as much as it ison global interaction.Information and knowledge are instruments ofpower as demonstrated by the relationship between hackers and activistsin the case of Wikileaks that cultural activists (actual agents) strengthenby working via the internet.However, as we can see, not everything takesplace online.International meetings, periods in residency, living together,the exchange of knowledge, discussion forums that establish interventionagendas and strategies, parties and carnivalesque practices, and thedispersion of figures in terms of direction or hierarchy all bear the stamp ofan interpersonal dimension that is as relevant as that which sustainsonline activism.Contemporary activism is based on a different concept ofgeography and authorship, articulated by notions that restructure theorganization of knowledge and bring concepts and instruments that comefrom the history of more than a century of cultural activism an activisminaugurated by Courbet up to date.242 ActivismHowever, there is a radical difference that stands out in contemporaryartistic activism, especially in relation to that which burst forth in the1960s and 1970s.While activism in these decades proposed the completetransformation of society by way of revolution (with art being a major partof this colossal enterprise), today the task may seem less radical, althoughno less relevant.On the contrary, contemporary artists no longer await theperfect historical scenario in order to activate their practices jointly with arevolutionary movement.Nor do they aspire to operate as the detonators ofa revolution in the making.Activism has diversified its fronts and articulates them on an internationalscale.The internet allows for a degree of simultaneousness that thetechnology extant during the 1960s did not permit.Reactions againstcurrent wars or the global market can be organized and articulatedsimultaneously in various cities around the world [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]