DATA browser 04: Creating Insecurity — art and culture in the age of security (2009):: edited by Wolfgang Sützl & Geoff Cox:

‘Today we are facing extreme and most dangerous developments in the thought of security. In the course of a gradual neutralisation of politics and the progressive surrender of traditional tasks of the state, security imposes itself as the basic principle of state activity. What used to be one among several decisive measures of public administration until the first half of the twentieth century, now becomes the sole criterion of political legitimation. The thought of security entails an essential risk. A state which has security as its sole task and source of legitimacy is a fragile organism; it can always be provoked by terrorism to become itself terrorist.’

Following the words of Giorgio Agamben (from his 2001 article ‘On Security and Terror’), security has become the basic principle of international politics after 9/11, and the ‘sole criterion of political legitimation’. But security – reducing plural, spontaneous and surprising phenomena to a level of calculability – also seems to operate against a political legitimacy based on possibilities of dissent, and stands in clear opposition to artistic creativity. Being uncalculable by nature, art is often incompatible with the demands of security and consequently viewed as a ‘risk’, leading to the arrest of artists, and a neutralisation of innovative environments for the sake of security.

Yet precisely the position of art outside the calculable seems to bring about a new politicisation of art, and some speak of art as ‘politics by other means’. Has art become the last remaining enclave of a critique of violence? Yet how ‘risky’ can art be?

The contributors to DATA browser 04: CREATING INSECURITY address these questions at the intersection of art, technology, and politics.

Contents: (PDFs NOT AVAILABLE YET)

CREATING INSECURITY – INTRODUCTION by Wolfgang Sützl
ON SECURITY AND TERROR by Giorgio Agamben
CRITIQUE OF SOFTWARE SECURITY by Geoff Cox & Martin Knahl
BUFFER OVERFLOWS by Florian Cramer
VIR.US.EXE by Luis Silva / carlos katastrofsky
GLOBAL SECURITY ALLIANCE by Konrad Becker
LANGUAGES OF SURPRISE by Wolfgang Sützl
LISTS OF INSTABILITY by glorious ninth
SECURITY AESTHETIC = SYSTEM PANIC by Brian Holmes
SECURITY MANIA by Daniela Ingruber
A BRIEF HISTORY OF REALTIME by Mukul Patel
IMPLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY by The Institute for Applied Autonomy
ON MOVING by Norbert Koppensteiner
MY MOBILE WEIGHS A TON by Naeem Mohaiemen
ANTITERROR LINE by Bureau of Inverse Technology
THE OCCULTED STATE by McKenzie Wark
FAILURE TO COMPLY by Tiziana Terranova
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

The DATA browser series presents critical texts that explore issues at the intersection of culture and technology.