Radical media, politics and culture.
July 26, 2005 - 9:03am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

"The $256 Question"

Stan Cox, AlterNet

By prosecuting Steven Kurtz and Robert Ferrell, is the Justice Department trying
to clamp a lid on political art or looking to chalk up a win by exploiting fears
of bioterrorism?

S. marcescens: Dangerous Bacteria or Harmless Art Material?


The way William Hochul sees it, the situation couldn't be simpler: "We take an
oath to follow the Constitution and enforce the law. The law says you can't
acquire any property by fraud — whether it's a gun or an automobile or
something biological, it doesn't matter."


As an assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of New York, based in
Buffalo, Hochul is leading the prosecution of Steven Kurtz and Robert Ferrell,
who were indicted a little over a year ago for mail and wire fraud. Kurtz, a
professor of art at the University of Buffalo and co-founder of the
internationally acclaimed Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), is accused of obtaining
bacterial cultures illegally through the mail.


Ferrell, a geneticist and professor at the University of Pittsburgh, allegedly
provided Kurtz the organisms for use in an artwork, rather than using them in
his own research, thereby violating an agreement he had signed when he
purchased the cultures for $256 from the American Type Culture Collection
(ATCC).


Although Hochul doesn't say so, this has to be a frustrating time for him. Last
spring, he and the Terrorism Division that he heads appeared to be setting
their sights on a big-time conviction. Federal agents in biohazard suits had
confiscated laboratory equipment and bacterial cultures from Kurtz's home. And
they had served subpoenas — under the U.S. Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism
Act — on several of Kurtz's colleagues and a company [Autonomedia] that publishes CAE's
books.

July 22, 2005 - 11:46am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Zapatistas: The Second Stage"

Immanuel Wallerstein

When NAFTA came into effect in January of 1994, the Zapatistas — a group
representing the indigenous Mayans in Mexico — revolted in Chiapas, one of
the poorest regions in the country, and drew attention to their right to
autonomy. For the last 11 years, the Zapatista rebellion has reinvigorated
anti-systemic movements around the world. The protests at the 1999 WTO
meetings in Seattle, as well as similar demonstrations in Genoa, Quebec
City, and Gleneagles, were in no small measure inspired by the Zapatistas.
Last month, however, the Zapatistas declared that their struggle had entered
a new phase, one that would be political and inclusive, but not military.
Similar to the actions of 1994, this declaration, says Immanuel Wallerstein,
seems once again to be the barometer of an international shift in sentiment.
Although the details have yet to be revealed, the author implies that this
new initiative could be the inspiration for a similar reevaluation
throughout similar movements around the world.

Since 1994, the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas has been the most important
social movement in the world — the barometer and the igniter of antisystemic
movements around the world. How can it be that a small movement of Mayan
Indians in one of the poorest regions of Mexico can play such a major role?
To answer that, we have to take the story of the antisystemic movements in
the world-system back to 1945.


From 1945 to the mid-1960's at least, the antisystemic movements (or Old
Left) — the Communist parties, the Social-Democratic parties, the national
liberation movements — were on the rise throughout the world, and came to
power in a very large gamut of states. They were riding high. But just as
they seemed to be on the cusp of universal triumph, they ran into two
roadblocks — the world revolution of 1968, and the revival of the world
right.

July 20, 2005 - 10:04am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

Randy Walburger writes:

"Corporations, Poverty and Homelessness"
Randy Walburger


          Isn't this the richest nation on earth? Aren't we forever reminded how humane this country is? How can so many Americans be left out on the cold street at night to suffer, without homes or shelter, in hunger, sickness and death year after year in growing numbers in a nation that preaches 'justice and a humane democracy'!? Today here in Los Angeles County there are upwards of 100,000 homeless people on the street each night! That number has been growing every year since Ronald Reagan and the defeat of labor in the 1980's. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, "Recent studies suggest that the United States generates homelessness at a much higher rate than previously thought." According to the Urban Institute in 2003 there were approximately 3.5 million homeless in the United States.

July 19, 2005 - 12:14am -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
Independent Media

An Assault on Neurospace (Misguided Directions for)

Matteo Pasquinelli

We are implicit, here, all of us,

in a vast physical construct of

artificially linked nervous systems.

Invisible. We cannot touch it.

— William Gibson, "In the Visegrips of Dr. Satan"

1. A libidinal geology of media spaces

What is the field that media art and media activism are meant to occupy today? What is the place of the creative act? From the modern
utopias to movie and television imagery into the cyberspace of digital technologies, different kinds of media spaces populate contemporary history and produce each their own characters,
conflicts, aesthetics and narrations. Quoting Michel Serres1 we can say today: "we inhabit a multiplicity of media spaces". The present paper sketches out a short history of material and immaterial, political and psychic media spaces, wondering with Jameson: "why should landscape be any less dramatic than the Event?" 2. According to
Henry Lefebvre (author of the seminal The production of the space3) space is never a neutral background, but always the product of a
social conflict. In that sense we want to study its invisible architecture, how our desires are invested in it, how new spaces are opened by new technologies, languages and practices. We would like to apply to media spaces what Lefebvre wrote in 1974, not without being accused of fetishism: "Today more than ever, the class struggle is
inscribed in space". Today's place of political and artistic action is but a stratification of previous spaces, and we need a sort of a
geology of the invisible to write its history.

July 18, 2005 - 6:32pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
War

New analysis of civilian casualties in Iraq: Report unveils comprehensive details

"A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005" is the first detailed account of all non-combatants reported killed or wounded during the first two years of the continuing conflict. The report, published by Iraq Body Count in association with Oxford Research Group, is based on comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 media reports published between March 2003 and March 2005.

July 15, 2005 - 11:33pm -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

Hacking Public Spaces in Vilnius: Politics of a new media space inside the Lietuva (soviet) cinema

Interview with Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas
by Geert Lovink

Ever since I met Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas in 1999, two contemporary artists from Lithuania, they have been in search for an art space where they could establish a media lab, host talks and exhibit new media related art works. In August 2004 their organization, Vilma, hosted the RAM 6 workshop in Vilnius--yet another example which showed how well organized they were, and how desperate in need of their own infrastructure to do critical and innovative projects. This spring, Nomeda and Gediminas suddenly saw a chance--and grabbed it. They occupied the huge voyer of the privatized Lietuva cinema, over which a controversy had arisen. In May 2005 Nomeda and Gediminas were in Amsterdam briefly for the opening of the Populism show at the Stedelijk Museum, a moment we used to catch up and prepare for the following interview, which was done through email over the past few weeks. The situation of their exciting projects is changing on a daily basis and we'll hope to keep you informed. In the meanwhile, if you would like to support them, for instance by sending them taping which they could screen, please contact them (information below).

July 13, 2005 - 2:49pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

"The Making of the Counterculture"

Kenneth Rexroth, Bureau of Public Secrets


I


In the winter of 1954–55 America was in an economic, social, and cultural interregnum. One style of life, one mood — like Victorianism or Edwardianism — was giving way to another. The industrial age based on the mechanical exploitation of coal and iron was giving way to electronics, computers, automation — with all the social and intellectual results such a basic revolution implies — but as yet few indeed understood what was happening.

July 13, 2005 - 8:51am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Dmytri Kleiner writes:

"What is Venture Communism?"
Dmytri Kleiner

Venture Communism is an investment model designed to be a form of revolutionary worker's struggle. The Venture Commune is a type of voluntary worker's association, designed to enclose the productivity of labour and enable the possibility of the collective accumulation of Land and Capital, which, in the endgame, will eventually allow the workers to buy the entire world from the Capitalists.

July 7, 2005 - 11:14am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Louis Proyect writes: Charles Mann wrote an article in Atlantic Monthly in March 2002 that argued that indigenous people were healthier and happier in 1491 than they ever were afterwards. The article is a stunning refutation of social Darwinism or any Marxist "stagist" schemas. The article can be read here.

"The Founding Sachems"

Charles C. Mann, NY Times

Amherst, Mass. — Seeking to understand this nation's democratic spirit, Alexis de Tocqueville journeyed to the famous centers of American liberty (Boston, Philadelphia, Washington), stoically enduring their "infernal" accommodations, food and roads and chatting up almost everyone he saw.

He even marched in a Fourth of July parade in Albany just ahead of a big float that featured a flag-waving Goddess of Liberty, a bust of Benjamin Franklin, and a printing press that spewed out copies of the Declaration of Independence for the cheering crowd. But for all his wit and intellect, Tocqueville never realized that he came closest to his goal just three days after the parade, when he stopped at the "rather unhealthy but thickly peopled" area around Syracuse.
July 4, 2005 - 11:42am -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

Event Horizon

The Free Association

June 2005

"And what is the phantom fuzz screaming from Chicago to Berlin, from Mexico City to Paris? 'We are REAL REAL REAL!!! as this NIGHTSTICK!' As they feel, in their dim animal way, that reality is slipping away from them." — William Burroughs, commenting on the police beating protesters at the Democratic convention, Chicago 1968.

1. DOCTOR WHO

We’re used to thinking of time as a straight line. When we look back at history it seems like all past events only existed to lead us to this point. And when we think about the future we can only imagine that line continuing. The future we imagine is really only the present stretched out ahead of us. Therein lies the truism that science fiction is really always about contemporary society.

But history isn’t a straight line. It moves in a series of uncontrolled breaks, jolts and ruptures. Every now and then we get events that seem to have popped out of an alternate dimension. Events that don’t seem to belong to the timeline we were just on. These events carry their own timelines. When they appear, history seems to shift to accommodate them. Funny how we couldn’t see it before, but now we come to look there’s a line of history that seems to have existed just to lead us up to this moment. Such events also seem to carry their own alternate future. Things that seemed impossible a day or two before seem irresistible now.

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