一塊地 Piece of Land

Author: Alessandre Renzi

Article Title: “The Space of Tactical Media”

Book: Boler, Magan Eds. 2008. Digital media and democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press  

1. Tactical media space, apprehended as contact zones, facilitates the encounter and development of discourses on the resistance and new formulations of the self in relations to different collectivities.

2. TM spaces are constituted primarily through websites, social software, and organized events.

3. More specifically, this mix of events, practices, and technology become the medium of social relations themselves. The repositories of theoretical texts allow viable forms of interaction that allow for diversity and pluralism.  TM space is characterized as polymorphism and the flow of such discourses and practices create the element of continuity that maps spaces of TM.

4. Event-driven (web) journals attempt to bridge the real and virtual by building in interactive elements between online audience and the actual site. (Lovink, 2002:49)

5. The project of Temporary Media Labs attempts to broaden its geographical compass and decentralize its editorial process.

6. Global cultural flows of Appadurai’s (1996): mediascapes + ideoscapes

7. TM spaces constitute the contact zones where groups and individuals who feel aggrieved by or excluded from the wider culture come together around issues of power and social change.

8. The work of the imagination as a “space of contestation” (Appadurai 1996:4): TM language’s most striking characteristic is its imaginative and disruptive capacity. Messages are subverted through stunts and pranks, which involve an appropriation of language and discourses of their political target. The subversion of symbolic codes is achieved by using a language that is familiar to the non-activists of symbolic codes and that pushes the audience to question its legitimacy. -> i.e. the Yes Men

9. The chance to briefly hijack the dominant language of power, especially that of the media, creates a potentially shared discourse that can offer alternative subjectivities as active producers of symbols rather than merely passive consumers. DIY media offers affordable tools to fight stereotypes, to elaborate new symbolic strategies of identification, and to foster participation in the communicative process.

10. TM can be seen as intersecting with other spaces through collaboration with the alter-globalization movement, activists, artists, and other minority groups. This not only takes place through dialogue, sharing of resources, and support of some campaigns but also simply due to the flow of new ideas and practices from TM into other sites of resistance.

11. TM language tends to attract attention by causing an effective response in their audience and requiring a form of engagement to decode their message. The “poetic-world-making” (Broeckmann et al. 2002) means not only the poetic function of language and affect in general but also the idea of poiesis as creation and production.

12. Warner (2002) sees publics and counterpublics as a result, rather than a starting point, of communication between humans: a public is understood as an ongoing space of encounter for discourse. Public unite because of participation rather than common identity, and they are sites of learning because individuals come to understand themselves differently as members of a public.

13. TM alliances function precisely on the recognition of the need for tools and knowledge that are embedded in different cultures and social relations. In the best cases, favoring local solidarities and collective self-determination also advances connections across lines of cultural and social difference. These can develop a sense of commitment, mutual dependence, and exchange between and within groups. This can take place not only in the alliances between international actors but also at the local level in the trans-disciplinary cooperation of different national groups. In this way, TM shapes new forms of solidarity across time and space.

14. TM works within an environment of competition as much as of cooperation; it is marred by flame wars and gender and language discrimination, as well as sometimes by a lack of long-term mutual commitment (Lovink 2002, 2003) 

Reference and my further reading- 

Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultrual Demensions of Globalizaion. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Broeckmann, A. D. (2002). The GHI of Tactical Media. Retrieved Feb 27, 2010, from http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0108/msg00060.html

Garcia, D. a. (1997). The ABC of Tactical Media. Retrieved Feb 27, 2010, from http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9705/msg00096.html

Garcia, D. a. (1999). The DEF of Tactical Media. Retrieved Feb 27, 2010, from http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9902/msg00104.html

Lovink, G. (2002). Dark Fibre. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Lovink, G. (2003). My First Recession . Rotterdam: V2_Publishing/NAi Publishers.

The Virtual Casebook Project . (2002). Retrieved Feb 27, 2010, from Tactical Media: http://www.nyu.edu/fas/projects/vcb/case_911_FLASHcontent.html

Warner, M. (2002). Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books.