It is claimed that bioart is led by a problematic moral perogative to contest a 'pancapitalist' bioeconomy (Zylinska 2009), what other ways are there?

This essay works on the thoughts of most influencing theoreticians such as Zylinska, Thacker and Munster, in relation to the claim that bioart is led by a problematic moral power to challenge a 'pancapitalist' bioeconomy (Zylinska, 2009: 156-157). It looks into some of the dominating theories surrounding the field of this specific art movement and presents various points of view on the ethics of such an interdisciplinary entity.

Bioart, as a deliberately new art movement has always been a controversial topic. As said by Thacker, “the term bioart is often used to refer to projects that deal with biology as an artistic medium” (Thacker, 2005: 307), but in many cases the artists’ work is much more complicated. According to Zylinska, “the so called “bioart,” which stands for art utilizing biomaterial such as tissue, blood, or genes as its medium, evokes a lot of controversy, both within and without the art community” (Zylinska 2009: 149). As the author carries on claiming that “typical responses to bioart reflect a wider public anxiety regarding the current transformation of human and nonhuman life and its mediation by technology” (Zylinska, 2009: 149). As the author finds out while analyzing the work of Critical Art Ensemble: “there is an ambivalent relationship between moralist pronouncements and ethical forcework can also be identified in the work of CAE” (Zylinska, 2009: 156). She then carries on to positioning CAE “as both artists and activists, whose task is to “resist (…) authoritarian structures” of the dominant biopolitical regime and envisage a new techno-apparatus which will counter the “obsessively rational” military and corporate drives of “pancapitalism” (Zylinska, 2009: 156-157). As Zylinska finds the artists’ words prophetic, they carry on to explaining the mechanics at work which surround the world of eugenics, bioart, and the financial issues involved in these processes:

If big science can ignore nuclear holocaust and species annihilation, it seems very safe to assume that concerns about eugenics or any of the other possible flesh catastrophes are not going to be very meaningful in its deliberations about flesh machinepolicy and practice. Without question, it is in the interest of pancapitalism to rationalize the flesh, and consequently it is in the financial interest of big science to see that this desire manifests itself in the world. (CAE in Zylinska, 2009: 156-157)

The above quote “highlights the deeply problematic role of the biotechnological industry in shaping the current political and social consensus about the “value” of life” (Zylinska, 2009: 157). According to these words the pancapitalist machine creates two major issues surrounding the debate on power relations within the bio-industry: firstly, attaching different values to flesh and life; and secondly, creating an extremely closed economy - a centered power layout where big science and military are the only ones to explore and benefit from the potential of the genetic code.

A more positive view on bio-economy is presented by Thacker, where she claims that bioart “(…) not only marginalizes (or niche markets) art, effectively separating it from the practices of technoscience, but the notion of a “bioart” also positions art practice as reactionary and, at best, reflective of the technosciences” (Thacker, 2005: 307). This positioning of bioart as opposing the dominant power structure within the industry via creating something new via an exploration of the uncovered and separation from the dominant schemes is followed by an even further reinforcement on the powers surrounding the discussed. According to Thacker, bioart has a unique political power of pointing “(…) real fissures in the social, cultural, and material effects of biotechnologies” (Thacker, 2005: 318) throughout the world around us.

One could say that the view of opening the biotech industry to the amateur might be an illuminating experience for both the arts and humanities, but nonetheless various complications may surely arise. One example can be found while analyzing the work of Adam Zaretsky - a self-declared “vivoartist”, who according to Zylinska “(…) is all for reinserting “fun for fun’s sake into the social” and for “things getting really weird”. He admits he would be keen to see some more “interesting mutations”: “iridescent humans, spotted and striped, with multiple limbs” (Zylinska, 2009: 160). According to the author, Zaretsky takes on a role of a Nietzschean philosopher, attacking the “established values around biotechnology and “life” with a double-edged hammer of serious play, in order to undertake their transvaluation” (Zylinska, 2009: 160).

Other authors such as Der Derian explore the topic further by contemplating future perspectives carried out by the expected release of biotech basic knowledge and cheap and accessible equipment to the public domain. He believes that “bioart project might come to be seen as the material evidence supporting practices of bioterrorism speaks not of ideological but instead of information warfare” (Der Derian, 2001; in Munster 2011: 6). Still, this clear link between bioart and bio-terror is brought down by Munster, where she purposes an example of how to deal with the arising problem while working on thoughts of Thacker:

The linking of life through the nodes of the network materializes information in such a way that it becomes the giant regulating principle of a properly organized, databased and policed info-sociality. Contestational biology must therefore also dispute this application of a generalized network as the fundamental and overriding design principle organizing social, cultural, economic and biological life. In Biomedia, Thacker has suggested that a critical approach to the materialization of information design through the theory and practice of contemporary biologies could begin to operate by deploying a rather different idea of 'metadesign' (Thacker, 2004: 191-193).

Rather than a principle of (linked) design accounting for the interactions and connections that constitute living systems, the living system might be reconceived as one that is structurally open to the variability and contingency of whatever interactions, nodes and links it sustains. (Munster, 2011: 8)

Still, this utopian solution does not seem to be convincing enough: It would create a situation influx of network over this unique biological practice will generate further surveillance issues. Furthermore, linking life-practice via a networked system will not stop nor oppress terrorism, as most likely future bio-rebels will surely find ways around it (keeping in mind the popularization and accessibility of home made eugenics labs.

A far more positive perspective can be found while looking at the words of Stelarc, a world famous new media and bioartist. According to Zylinska “Stelarc repeatedly tells us that he has no ambitions to be a philosopher or a political theorist. He refuses to be prescriptive in his work and so will not instruct us as to how we should treat our bodies or how we should coexist with technology” (Zylinska, 2009: 173). As the author believes, “listening to Stelarc will allow us to envisage a more effective politics and ethics. This will be a technopolitics of distributed agency and suspended command, informed by an ethics of infinite - and at times crazy, shocking, and excessive - hospitality toward the alterity of technology (that is always already part of us)” (Zylinska, 2009: 173).

Looking at the above thoughts devised by both artists and theoreticians, one could say that the best approach to consider the golden middle expressed by Zylinska while talking about Stelarc: sampling openness towards biotech from artists such as Zaretsky, but keeping in mind the politics surrounding this newly emerging art of life manipulation. This would create a situation described by Zylinska, where “it is not to say that “we are machines” or that “we are all Stelarcs now,” as the Krokers put it. If humans and machines are collapsed—as they tend to be in some current accounts of “the network society”—into a fluid epistemology in which difference is overcome for the sake of horizontal affective politics (Zylinska, 2009: 173).

Bibliography and Readings:

Critical Art Ensemble, 'Transgenic Production and Cultural Resistance: A Seven-Point Plan', in Molecular Invasion, New York: Autonomedia, 2002, pp. 58-75.

Rebecca Schneider, 'Nomadmedia: On Critical Art Ensemble', The Drama Review 44.4 (2000): 120-131.

Eugene Thacker, 'A Biotech Hobbyist Manifesto', in Natalie Jeremijenko and Eugene Thacker (eds) Creative Biotechnology: A User’s Manual, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Locus +, 2004, pp. 38-39.

Eugene Thacker, 'Conclusion: Tactical Media and Bioart', in The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 305-320.

Anna Munster, 'Why is Bioart Not Terrorism?: Some Critical Nodes in the Networks of Informatice Life', Culture Machine 7 (2005), http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/31/38

Joanna Zylinska, 'Green Bunnies and Speaking Ears: The Ethics of Bioart', in Bioethics in the Age of New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009, pp. 149-174.

Beatriz da Costa, 'Reaching the Limit: When Art Becomes Science', in Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008, pp. 365-385.

Michael Dieter, 'Issues, Process, AIR: Toward Reticular Politics', Australian Humanities Review 46 (2009), http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2009/dieter.htm

It has been suggested that locative media is the “avant-garde of the ‘society of control’”

This essay focuses on the ideas explored by Tuters and Vernelis (originally devised partially by Broeckmann and Lovink) about the state of locative media technologies, and the true nature of their power in relation to contemporary new media art:

The reluctance of many locative-media practitioners to position their work as political has led some theorists, such as Andreas Broeckmann (director of the Transmediale Festival), to accuse locative media of being the “avant-garde of the ‘society of control’”, referring to Gilles Deleuze’s description of the contemporary regime of power. Broeckmann suggests that, since locative media is fundamentally based on the appropriation of technologies of surveillance and control, its practitioners have a duty to address that fact in their work. Geert Lovink has claimed that the movement instead has turned the media-art conference circuit into a “shopping-driven locative spectacle”. (Broeckmann and Lovink in Tuters and Vernelis, 2006: 360)

According to the above quote, this essay will focus on two presented characteristics embedded in modern mapping and visualization techniques. The firstly mentioned “avant-garde of the ‘society of control’” can be shortly described as all relations of the above to the military and surveillance procedures, and will be critically discussed according to the thoughts of most influencing theoreticians in the field. The second characteristic, as mentioned by Lovink, can be narrowed to all related commercial aspects, and will be judged upon based on a few examples found throughout the Internet.

To begin with, the most important thought about the introduced problem can be found while looking at the work of Bruno Latour. In the beginning of Visualization and Congnition the author mentions both the law enforcement and administration. As he keeps analyzing the “divide between prescientific and scientific culture”, calling it “merely a border”, he states that “It is enforced arbitrarily by police and bureaucrats, but it does not represent any natural boundary” (Latour, 1986: 2).

Other theoreticians such as Russell in his Headmap Manifesto claim even more connections of the recently evolved techniques of mapping to military practice. While discussing it in terms of conquest and control, he claims that “The military has always been actively involved in map making, the Ordinance Survey in the UK is the primary source of civilian mapping data and is the primary governmental mapping organization, until recently it was directly controlled and funded by the military” (Russel, 1999: 10). He also concludes the paragraph with an example from the gulf war: “(…) in former Yugoslavia, the commanders integrated a whole range of spatial mapping technologies, from 3d terrain models to GPS, to enhance their formidable command and control systems” (Russell, 1999:10).

Moreover, Russell while discussing the politics in software, points out two extremely important specifications of mapping: firstly, no guarantee of liberatory use via a direct link to both the military and business corporations, which is followed by the scary idea of social control through information via never-ending ethereal display of ads. As looking at the first aspect, the author claims that “new technology, before it arrives, heralds destruction or liberation depending on whose account you happen to be reading” (Russell, 1999: 15). He follows with explaining that “the internet has been (all at once) an anarchists tool, a military tool, a tool for salesmen and businesses, and in general a communications medium for everyone able to use it for whatever purpose they intend” (Russell, 1999: 15). This sad vision that we have to keep in mind while using mobile aware devices is further explored under the issue of constantly raising corporate domination via social control. His contemplation starts with idea that “LAPD will continiue to win political support for ambitious capital investment programs in new technology” and this will, according to the author, lead to “both criminal and non criminal” being “monitored by both cellular and centralized survaillances” (Russell, 1999: 15). Analogously “If this technology impacts without privacy built-in, all kinds of organisations could not only know your internet browsing habits, but where and when you go (in real time - i.e. where are you now), what you buy and who you see, and from that establish the patterns in your spatial behaviour” (Russell 1999: 16). This domination over technology-mediated experience raises questions of “how do we stop salesmen getting access to our every waking moment irrespective of place and time?” (Russell, 1999: 16).

Brian Holmes presents a very similar perspective on the potential of locative projects while analyzing “swarm cartography” by a Spanish activist group, where in Network Maps, one could state, that he stresses the claims the prime aim of mapping in general. According to the author, this technology’s one side is “(…) a map of power: on a Mercator projection turned upside-down, it shows sea-going migration routes, refugee camps, destination zones, electronic surveillance systems, military installations, internment centers, etc. But the other side traces a complex meshwork of activist groups on both sides of the Straits, showing their interrelations, their meetings, their evolution over time. The aim is not only to represent, but above all to catalyze a future range of possible interventions by autonomous agents (…)” (Holmes, 2007: 5). Even though this example, no matter how noble, the same technology is used by governmental, corporate and law enforcement agencies, filtering even bigger data bases and providing with more accurate outcomes.

Nonetheless, some theoreticians believe that “there are many artists’ projects that map corporate and military power relationships” (A. and M. Kroker, in Diamond, 2010: 224), one should always keep in mind the power carried by mapping technologies, and watch out for hands wielding them. There are some, who try to oppose the dominant corporation, but in many cases they lack resources or get entangles within its concept. Artists’ visualizations in many cases fail to inform, phone applications such as Flook turn out to guide users to expensive shops and restaurants, hardware and software providers gathering intel about the users are all things we should be constantly aware of.

According to the above links of locative media, mapping and visualization technologies in contemporary media art can and should be critically approached as discussed by Tuters and Varnelis, where the unwillingness of most contemporary media practicioneers to strongly bias their work with correct political positioning has led to a situation where the described is driven by both the military and the corporate. This is mainly visible in the analyzed models of contemporary surveillence methods and the ways they are employed, but also by the tracking technology used by the police and military. This breaching of the private sphere may be also found while focusing on the information flow which is directly linked to location aware devices, which one has to keep in mind not to end up in a world covered with mind-molding corporate information.

Bibliography and Readings:

Bruno Latour, 'Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together', in Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar (eds) Representation in Scientific Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986, pp. 19-68.

Ben Russell, Headmap Manifesto (1999).

Marc Tuters and Kazys Varnelis. ‘Beyond Locative Media: Giving Shape to the Internet of Things’, Leonardo 39.4 (2006): 357-363.

Brian Holmes, 'Network Maps, Energy Diagrams: Structure and Agency in the Global System', Continental Drift (2007), http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/network-maps-energy-diagrams/

Teodor Mitew, 'Repopulating the Map: Why Subjects and Things are Never Alone', Fibreculture 13 (2008), http://thirteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-089-repopulating-the-map-why-subjects-and-things-are-never-alone/

Lev Manovich, 'Data Visualization as New Abstraction and as Anti-Sublime', in Bryon Hawk et al (eds) Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008, pp. 3-9.

Sara Diamond, 'Lenticular Galaxies: The Polyvalent Aesthetics of Data Visualization', in Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker (eds) Code Drift: Essays in Critical Digital Studies, Victoria, CA: New World Perspectives / CTheory Books, 2010, pp. 192-243.

Tactics

Abstract

According to Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter in their article ‘Dawn of Organized Networks’, “it is retrograde that tactical media in a post-Fordist era continue to operate in terms of ephemerality and the logic of ‘tactics’” (Lovink and Rossiter, 2005: 2-3). This essay focuses on the above quote in various ways: It approaches the concept of tactical media and provides a brief description of the entity, as well as explains the rooted aspect of short-terminism and concentrates on its logics. All this is related to the thoughts of most influencing theoreticians and my own experience within this specific field.

Tactical Media characteristics

There have been numoerous studies of ‚wired‘ political engagement in all its diverse forms, network-based activism and political organization (e.g., clicktivism, smart mobs) and hacktivism chief among them. While I do cross paths with some of these studies in my treatment of electronic civil disobedience and other hacktivist tactics, my interests lie in articulating the aesthetic strategies of artist-activists producing persuasive games, information visualizations, and hybrid (we might even say ‚new‘) forms of academic criticism. (Raley, 2009: 5)

According to the above author, as well as other influencing theoreticians, a new form of art expression emerges from the digital culture. Named tactical media, the entity got refined during the last few years of academic study and cyber-artistic activism; finally morphing into an extraordinarily extremist movement underlined with strong ideological background and guerilla tactics.

There is no simple way to describe this radical interest group. According to Raley:

Tactical media are what happens when cheap do it yourself media made possible by the revolution in consumer electronics are exploited by those who are outside of the normal hierarchies of power and knowledge. (…) It is not simply about reappropriating the instrument but also about reengineering semiotic systems and reflecting critically on institutions of power and control. (Lovink in Raley, 2009: 16)

As presented by the author, the concept of tactical media puts the pressure on the creative process via two important aspects: the idea of reapplying a new media item and the deeply rooted thought of opposing the current power structure. The author describes the second aspect more precisely:

In its most expensive articulation, tactical media signifies the intervention and disruption of a dominant semiotic regime, the temporary creation of a situation in which signs, messages, and narratives are set into play and critical thinking becomes possible. Tactical media operates in the field of the symbolic, the site of power in the postindustrial society. (...) [Tactical Media’s] critical object is the substitution of one message for another, the imposition of an alternative set of signs in the place of the dominant. (Raley, 2009: 6-7)

Following the explanation of the term one may think of this artivist media practice as balancing on the edge of extreme power; planting the idea in the minds of people, disappearing from the scene and waiting for it to grow. This fast pace of action working in ‘new’ fields of communication, omitting strategy and approaching the system with a viral attack, as well as the loose structure and ephemerality of bodies and actions create a situation where tactical media may be seen as problematic. As addressed by Lovink and Rossiter:

Tactical media too often assume to reproduce the curious spatio-temporal dynamic and structural logic of the modern state and industrial capital: difference and renewal from the peripheries. But there’s a paradox at work here. Disruptive as their actions may often be, tactical media corroborate the temporal mode of post-Fordist capital: short-termism. It is retrograde that tactical media in a post-Fordist era continue to operate in terms of ephemerality and the logic of “tactics”. Since the punctuated attack model is the dominant condition, tactical media has an affinity with that which it seeks to oppose. This is why tactical media are treated with a kind of benign tolerance. There is a neurotic tendency to disappear. Anything that solidifies is lost in the system. (Lovink and Rossiter, 2005: 2-3)

Ephemerality and Tactics

While analyzing tactical media in general as a search for ephemerality and the logics of tactics, one should first direct his attention to the words of most influencing theoreticians covering the field. Looking back at the examples and characteristics of this specific media field, one may notice that the concepts of short-terminism/ephemerality and the preference of tactics over strategy are strongly linked to each other. As presented by Raley:

Choosing tactics over strategy might seem to suggest a certain temporal structure: the temporary rather than the protracted, the unguarded and unexpected moment rather than the long-range plan. (Raley, 2009: 9)

The author while quoting Martin further explores this idea of invisible, infected substitutes carrying out the unexpected and unrevealed plan:

Incident based parasitic media response takes place in a very specific time and space. There is no need for the parasite to live longer than a few days or even a few seconds. The more complex system is generative parasitic media response. Generative parasites must adapt and grow with their host system. This growth creates an allowance for greater sustainability of backdoors or hijacks. A parasite need not take advantage of its host’s vulnerability to hijack. It is in the best interest of the parasite to live and feed alongside its host. (Martin in Raley, 2009: 9)

Similarly as the described parasite attacks a body, tactical media feed on the minds of its viewers by planting memories and ideas, spreading the ideology hidden within the transmitting medium. Following, the nature of tactical media (in its viral tactics) promotes information exchange between the viewer and performer. According to Holmes “there are two factors that help explain the consistency of self-organized actions” (Holmes, 2008: 527). The first one is called ‘capacity for temporal coordination at a distance’ and is strongly linked with a constant evolution of a shared environment. The second one is called by him the ‘existence of a common horizon’ and is based on a link between the scattered performers. The concept of audience is therefore a constantly changing one:

To concieve of tactical media in terms of performence is to point to a fluidity of its actants, to emphasize its ephemerality, and to shift the weight of emphasis slightly to the audience, which does not simply complete the signifying field of work but records of a memory of the performance. And here we must once again place tactical media in context of Bourriaud’s commentary on contemporary relational art, to stress that the audience is an analytic category, an experimental rather than ontological entity. (…) The audience concept is thus as flexible and ephemeral as the artistic activity itself. (Raley, 2009: 12-13)

While focusing on the question why is tactical media still keeping this specific structure, I find important to recall the Critical Art Ensemble’s comparison to Scythians (CAE, 1994: 14-15). As the authors keep investigating traces of power-flow in transition between nomadic dynamics and sedentary structures, they pinpoint the very true nature of the analyzed entity. They bring a story of an ethnic group of nomadic warriors whose land was too hostile to inhabit. Due to the conditions they kept pillaging the neighboring territories. Due to the lack of value for the land itself the warriors were in constant move – being unable to localize as well as with unstable and shifting leadership. This created “an invisible empire that dominated ‘Asia’ for twenty-seven years, and extended as far south as Egypt” (CAE, 1994: 14).

Driven by the same mechanism as the Scythian empire, tactical media does not want to be centralized. Similarly as the ancient warriors, tactical media projects prefer the ‘hit and run’ tactic as well as the phantom nature, as this may seem to be the only way of avoiding getting eaten by itself or the power they are meant to oppose.

Experience

During the last few months I had a chance to get closer to tactical media than I ever imagined. Recently I saw a movie on YouTube presenting the freshly growing technique of dead-dropping – a hybrid form of art combining digital data exchange and graffiti. Due to the fact I always was interested in street-art, wallpainting, urban activism and I always could declare myself as a fully armed urban-pirate, I watched the movie and got infected with the ideology of free culture, file exchange without Internet connection, and the viral unconventional approach to embedding data within a material urban landscape. The thought of installing USB flash drives within the city walls in places that are not covered by cameras grew in my head rapidly. I prepared my driller, stencil, glue and a stripped pendrive. I infected another person with my plan and went out to the city during night (as I used to with spray-paint). After the flash drive was glued into a building wall we vanished from the scene leaving no trace behind. In this particular example, the ephemerality of dead-drops is not found in the idea that sooner or later the drive will stop working due to the usage of material. As for my experience with this technique, ephemerality could be found the other day when we went to check if there was any additional data on the spot – the hole in the wall was even bigger than we drilled - both the stencil and the pendrive were gone.

Now as I think about this specific experience with a freshly emerged art practice, I am glad the USB vanished from the wall. Even though it is not there, someone who took it off got infected by the described ideas, and hopefully, one more ghost in Warsaw will try to spread the message under the banner of Jolly Roger.

Summary

While answering the problem stated by Lovink and Rossiter, one should bare in mind that the concepts of tactics over strategy and the preference of ephemerality over still structure are closely bound together. This is even more visible while looking at the participation of audience, transmission of ideology, viral structure of planting memories and ideas, artistic expression, and liquid structure. I believe tactical media, even though the common guerilla connotations and ‘borrowings’ of other artistic techniques, is best described by Raley in terms of its never-ending pressure on ephemerality of body and idea – its temporal nature:

Tactical media is performance for which a consumable product is not a primary endgame; it foregrounds the experiential over the physical. It leaves few material traces. As the action comes to an end, what is left is primarily living memory. (Raley, 2009: 13)

Bibliography and Readings:

Rita Raley, ‘Introduction: Tactical Media as Virtuosic Performance’c e , in Tactical Media, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009, pp. 1-30.

Critical Art Ensemble, ‘Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance’, in The Electronic Disturbance, New York: Autonomedia, 1994, pp. 10-43.

Geert Lovink, ‘An Insider’s Guide to Tactical Media’, in Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002, pp. 267-287.

Michel de Certeau, ‘On the Oppositional Practices of Everyday Life', trans. By Fredric Jameson and Carl Lovitt, Social Text 3 (1980): 3-43.

Brian Holmes, ‘Swarmachine: Activist Media Tomorrow’, Third Text 22.5 (2008): 525-534.

Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter, 'The Dawn of Organized Networks', Fibreculture 5 (2005), http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-029-dawn-of-the-organised-networks/

Lev Manovich, ‘The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass Production to Mass Cultural Production?’, Critical Inquiry 35 (Winter 2009): 319-331.

Jacques Rancière, ‘The Paradoxes of Political Art’, in Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, London: Continuum, 2010, pp. 134-151.