CIRCA–BF writes:

The Politics of Being Clandestine
Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army–Border Faction

The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army–Border Faction (CIRCA-BF) consists of 33 rotating members who come from different affinity groups, collectives, and disOrganizations. We are all locals; we are all multinationals. We are a network of bodies without organs. We are in your group, your class, your family, your television, your neighborhood. You don't see us, but that is exactly our strength: our invisibility.

The Aestheticization of Politics

To not exist is our goal. Until then, we will joyously work hard to construct the conditions that allow for moments of autonomy and spontaneity to occur. Unpredictability, Spontaneity, Risk — these elements are being systematically eliminated from the practice of everyday life. We (dis)organized a Reclaim the Streets on January 20th in symbolic solidarity with the counter-inauguration protests in DC in order to retrieve the self-empowering aforementioned characteristics and import them back into the practice of everyday life. We believe that creative, nonviolent direct action is the appropriate methodology for achieving these ends.One does not need to read Foucault to note the formal similarities between prisons and schools, both temporally and spatially. The paths we think we freely move on, the words we think we freely speak, the media we think freely report and even the concepts we think we freely conceive are all heavily determined by inherited institutional, linguistic, and economic norms of power.

For example, from one side, Reclaim the Streets was a successful action for the throngs of protesters and people who won the streets, broke innumerable laws, and gathered peacefully to dance, sing, chant, and share. From the other side, Reclaim the Streets was a success for the police who surrounded the route, contained the crowd at most of the times, protected property and allowed for the purely aesthetic manifestation of a political will to occur. In other words, the politics of Reclaim the Streets, like all politics today, can also be interpreted as purely aesthetic: self-expression under the guise of change. The aestheticization of politics is the logical result of Fascism, as Walter Benjamin writes:

Fascism attempts to organize the masses without affecting the property structure . . . Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life [via] an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values.(1)

What does it mean to live in a country where expression is more important than change, where simulacra are more important than reality, where the possibility of political theatre is warmly received by all, but the reality of political resistance is dismissed as fantasy?

The First Question of Political Philosophy

But why do we adhere so closely to the regulative norms of power, language, and capital? In Empire, Hardt and Negri write:

A long tradition of political scientists has said the problem is not why people rebel but why they do not. Or rather, as Deleuze and Guattari say, "the fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): 'Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?'” The first question of political philosophy today is not if or even why there will be resistance and rebellion, but rather how to determine the enemy against which to rebel. Indeed, often the inability to identify the enemy is what leads the will to resistance around in such paradoxical circles. The identification of the enemy, however, is no small task given that exploitation tends no longer to have a specific place and that we are immersed in a system of power so deep and complex that we can no longer determine specific difference or measure. We suffer exploitation, alienation, and command as enemies, but we do not know where to locate the production of oppression. And yet we still resist and struggle.(2)

The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army–Border Faction is a movement of bodies not identical to themselves which seeks to identify those localities of repressive power in order to put pressure on them until temporary autonomous zones can erupt with joy. When we search for the enemy, we don’t look outside. We look for the structures of power that we have internalized, repressing autonomy, wills of resistance, and radical freedom. We do not dismiss power altogether; power produces as many subjects, imaginations, loves, and freedoms as it represses. We reject, ambivalently, the representation of others and ourselves through the manipulation of language, images, and ideas that certain forms of power mandate. If the signs we use to communicate and structure our everyday life are organized to produce commercial output at the expense of human contact, then we are enslaved to a language that will never allow for radical thought to articulate itself.

Anarchist Architects

As just one faction of the global network of Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Armies, we decided that a Reclaim the Streets action — a tactic used in Britain, France, Germany, Australia, New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C. — would be effective not in actually changing any political structures, but in collecting bodies that contain the will to resist and allowing them to freely associate. San Diego does not need a political party to organize resistance to the status quo. The concept of the “political party” is itself status quo. What it needed was a coming-out party. What it needed, was a street party.

We are nothing more than anarchist architects, guerilla event planners and stage crews. We built a stage, minimally, for the possibility of a non-dogmatic politics to emerge. We do not take the credit for Reclaim the Streets. The people of San Diego made it possible. We were the actors, dancers, cyclists, jugglers, photographers, students, musicians, soldiers, workers, doctors, lawyers, mothers, and lovers; we were the invisible hosts who prepared the scenery, made the dinner, decorated the house, sent out the invitation, and played the music. We were simultaneously, indistinguishably guests and hosts. In other words, the distinction between host and guest is completely illusory. The party had no center, no leader, no limit. It was as flexible as capital and fluid as information. Many loci emerged, minor circles of activity, organization, creativity, and autonomy. There were no hosts or guests, there was only carnival. The only distinction that remained was between the authority of the cops and the humanity of the people.

What Didn’t Take Place on J20

As hundreds of people were penned in at 4th and Market, a tactical Furniture subFaction of our Border Faction was busy preparing 5th and Market for the Party. This was our destination; this was our goal. Many people did not know that a Reclaim the Streets party is intended to reach an intersection, block it, occupy it, and party there until the blockade can be moved. In London, cars crash into each other, blocking entrances to highways so that the people can party until the sun goes down. In Germany, people rise on 20ft. tall tripods in the center of intersections, dangerously placing themselves in harms way so that the people can party around them.

The tactical March subFaction was trying to split the people into multiple marches in order to approach the final destination from multiple sides. Unfortunately, the police were scared enough to block off every cross street from 4th Ave, not allowing any rapid splits or detours to occur. The heart of the Gaslamp, the arteries of capital in downtown San Diego, must be protected, they thought. Protected from what? The possibility of people nonviolently controlling their own corporeal paths of movement; the possibility of multitudes not submitting to the laws of force and capital.

Were we overzealous in trying to occupy 5th and Market? We don’t think so. As the aesthetic and geographical center of commerce in San Diego, we were prepared to temporarily blockade the roads so that a festive party could emerge in the middle. The tactical Furniture subFaction placed two couches in the intersection, hung a 20 ft long banner between two street lights that read “RECLAIM THE STREETS”, dropped beach balls and streamers, and ran away, expecting the crowd to arrive any second. The police, however, blocked off the multitudinous protesters at 4th Ave., containing the CIRCA-BF teams inside, along with/as the plethora of individuals, collectives, and organizations.

The couches were moved, the banner was cut, and the people were just one block away. If the march had a couple hundred more people, it would have been strong enough to break through the police blockade, declared 5th and Market occupied, and had the Reclaim the Streets party right there. We did not have that luxury. However, the spontaneous and creative protesters outmaneuvered the police and eventually did make it to the crosswalk at 5th and Market. Our party was contained between 4th and 5th instead of at the intersection at 5th and Market, but we were ecstatic. We made it. The streets were ours. All of our plans changed, and yet, that was the biggest success of all: organizing an event that allowed, in fact, required spontaneous movement, multivalent politics, and creative aesthetics. Reclaim the Streets is a border zone; it straddles preparation and receptivity, order and chaos, movement and stability, joy and fear.

Who is CIRCA-BF?

Anyone who makes art until there noses bleed with fumes of passion, anyone who wheatpastes until they reek of moldy yeast, anyone who graphic designs until their hypertexts are overflowing with biopolitics, anyone who drives an hour to stay up late to paint masks and falls asleep on the couch, anyone who has to negotiate a school schedule, a job, a loved one, a family, anyone whose dreams are infected with the taste of anticipation, anyone who not only is willing to learn but to teach, anyone who goes to bed a liberal and wakes up an anarchist, anyone who goes to their first direct action training and then proceeds to organize one, anyone whose bellies are on fire with fear, love, and courage, anyone who drinks more coffee than water, eats more pizza than vegetables, anyone who decides to become a guerilla audio engineer, anyone who emails so much that it congests cyberspace with virtual invitations to a party in San Diego, anyone who brings their unsuspecting friends to street party and maybe just maybe converts them into revolutionaries, anyone who papers maches like its 2nd grade all over again, anyone who attends meetings and makes consensus as if they were making babies, anyone who gives up a night on the town for a night at an art party, anyone who doesn't just hope for temporary autonomous zones within everyday life but makes them happen, anyone who brings chips, beer, paint, salsa, tape, screws, dogs, wires, and all those minute applications of life that are essential to productivity, anyone who can't sleep at night because that indefinite moment that will erupt like a volcano of joy has dominated their waking life, anyone who dances to the beats of DJ Q-bert, sings along with against me!, and makes their own music too, anyone who is scared, depressed, and overly committed yet still unable to let go of a project like this, anyone who remembers to cover their the media, legal, and aesthetic bases, anyone who is willing to go to jail for the political cause of dancing, anyone whose soul is stitched to their body with the flesh of resistance, anyone who thinks absurdity is just as meaningful as clarity, anyone who believes that events should be constructed not spectated, anyone who believes our philosophic ancestors the Situationists when they said with their graffiti "Be Realistic. Demand the Impossible."

We do not speak for ourselves or others. This is a text with no uniform structure of meaning, but rather, a playground for readers to enjoy meaning actively within.

CIRCA-BF homepage: CIRCA–BF

Notes
1. Benjamin, Walter "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Epilogue."
2. Hardt and Negri, Empire, Chapter 2.6: "Imperial Sovereignty."

References

  http://slash.autonomedia.org

  http://ctheory.net/home.aspx

  http://critical-art.net

  http://organiccollective.org

  http://www.hactivist.com

  http://reclaimthestreets.net

  http://radioactiveradio.org

  http://clownarmy.org"