November 27, 2004
Tactical Media
"The age of distributed media has facilitated political awareness and activism to a mass audience. From clicking to feed the hungry at www.thehungersite.com, to experiencing in real time first hand accounts of the bombing of Belgrade on the (original) Syndicate mailing list, to more recently the Salam Pax blogs from Bagdad, world issues seem very close to home. We've clicked to email politicians and institutions about local arts funding issues and global art sackings, and there were many eager mouse-clicking soldiers in RTMark's Toy Wars campaign, who jointly plummeted the stock price of a corporation that tried to destroy an online art group.
Today we take it for granted that mainstream media has a vested interest, and artists and writers use their skills to create another point of view. These artworks come under the banner of tactical media--'do it yourself' media, where mass distribution networks are used to critique and respond to social issues. They never present a monolithic perspective, but rather are individuals or loose collations defined by their activity that intervene, often subverting or reformatting, the images, texts and icons of mainstream culture."--Melinda Rackham, empyre, Thursday, 3 Jun 2004.
Posted by jo at November 27, 2004 04:23 PM
