Several years ago we coined the term
"communication guerilla" to designate a number of
political praxis forms - praxis forms that traverse the
old boundaries between political action and the everyday
world, subjective anger and rational political action,
art and politics, desire and work, theory and practice.
In other words, the term does not denote an organization
like Globalize Resistance, nor a political network like
Attac, nor any of the more complex, rhizomatic and
continuously newly constituted formations of the global
protest movement, such as People's Global Action [http://www.agp.org/] or the European
noborder network [http://www.noborder.org/].
The imaginary brigades of communication guerillas are
not necessarily networked with one another. What joins
them is a specific style of political action drawing
from a watchful view of the paradoxes and absurdities of
power, turning these into the starting point for
political interventions by playing with representations
and identities, with alienation and over-identification.
As it emerged in the 90s, the concept "communication
guerilla" was, not least of all, a response to the
exhaustion of traditional leftist activism after the
fall of the Berlin wall. The search for new forms of
praxis led (at least in some points) to a new,
transversal praxis beyond the realm of the "old"
activism - even though the point of departure for this
search was the experience of a seminal defeat of the
left. Today, following the rise and possibly already the
incipient downfall of a new global movement, the
situation is a different one, and the question arises as
to the extent to which this concept from the 90s is
still useful. The new activism has become more global,
more networked, but most of all, it has developed a new
dynamic beyond political and national borders. At the
same time, however, this activism still evinces many
features of the old polit-activism, not only in the
neo-communist party version of the SWP (Socialist
Workers Party) and Globalize Resistance. Despite all the
rhetoric, activism often still has a stance that is
strangely separated from people's everyday life, even
that of its own protagonists. The future of this global
activism will depend on whether it succeeds in being
capable of action at the local level, the level of
everyday life, while continuing to develop its
transversal, border-crossing character at the same time.
The most important border that has to be crossed is the
border that constitutes the activist her or himself in a
separation from the "rest" of society. We think that the
praxis of the communication guerilla can contribute to
this kind of border-crossing. This is our motivation for
discussing in the following text experiences with this
praxis along the lines of flight that are inscribed in
it, along the border-crossings, through which it is
constituted.
Art and Politics
A web site [http://www.gatt.org/]
that turns the self-presentation of the WTO right side
up: an inattentive conference assistant enters the words
WTO into a search engine - and a representative of the
Yes Men can appear as a representative for the World
Trade Organization at a congress for international law
[http://www.theyesmen.org/],
transforming the conference into a slapstick scenario.
We encounter the same Yes Men shortly after the protests
in Prague, costumed as "Captain Euro" at a demo against
repression and arrests in front of the Czech consulate,
but also at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, at art
events in Barcelona, Vienna or London - is it all an
artistic end in itself or political action? The campaign
against the German deportation airline Lufthansa [http://www.deportation-alliance.com/]
starts with a poster exhibition ("Deportation Class")
that attacks the airline's self-presentation and links
it with the theme of deportations. This exhibition tours
through German art institutions, while the corporation
simultaneously attacks the Internet version of the same
pictures with furious legal threats. This, too, is an
uninhibited way of dealing with the border between art
and politics. It is not the question of which of the two
fields a project should be attributed to that is
interesting, but rather: Does it work? How does one
manage to make a fool of a seemingly over-powerful
institution or person and possibly even partially force
them to take a defensive position?
Communication guerilla differs from traditional
political forms of action in that it consciously draws
from the density of meanings of images and narrations.
We are tired of private security services and the
omnipresent purchase obligation, the removal of park
benches that forces passers-by into cappuccino bars or
to just move on. We know about the privatization of
inner cities, the disappearance of public space. But how
is it possible to intervene against the apparent
automatism of these processes - with an information
event? A demonstration? A blockade of the pedestrian
zone? Or how would it be, if there were suddenly an
obstacle, a break in the Saturday business of the
pedestrian zone - not a colorful street theater or
exhibition project providing information about the
limitations and constraints of privatized urban space,
but rather something else that makes it possible to see
and experience these constraints, a test arrangement, in
which the users of the shopping street are assigned
their actual roles, but in an exaggerated form?
The images: a pedestrian zone -- lifestyle shops,
cafes, buying, street musicians and idlers, who are
discreetly expelled from the square, advertising stocks,
black-clothed security at the portals of noble shopping
passages ... construction sites .. red and white
barriers in the flow of the promenading crowd ... a
large square area in the middle of a city square is
blocked by red and white ribbons, flanked by security
guards in black jeans and white T-shirts. Friendly
employees wearing the company logo address passers-by,
the same logo is repeated at an information table.
Information sheets with a questionnaire about the use of
the pedestrian zone are distributed: How often do you
come into the city? How much do you expect to spend
today? Which method of payment do you prefer? The
questionnaires are used to determine permission to cross
the area or not. The narration: "We are conducting this
survey for the company Bienle, which is contemplating
the purchase of the entire Castle Square. We are using
this test arrangement to determine the user profile of
the area to be purchased, in terms of profitability." [1] What is important is that the picture is
right. The barricade is executed precisely, the body
language of the security guards radiates
uncompromisingness, the company employees operate
smoothly and in a friendly manner, but firmly; the
corporate identity is thoroughly and professionally
styled, all the way from the company logo to the outfit
for the "staff". The activists adapt the language of
power, the plausible over-identification is implemented
through precise and reflected observation, an eye for
aesthetic details and a professional way of dealing with
materials.
This action was carried out by the politically active
artist group 01, but it was not identified as an art
action -- except to a few irritated members of the
police force, who had obviously not been informed by the
"Bienzle Company" ahead of time. The art label was thus
employed here only instrumentally as camouflage and
protective shield. For the passers-by, the action was an
irritating reality resulting in a subjective experience
of the fact of the privatization process in their city,
forcing them to take a position more than an information
or protest event would have done. It is also imaginable
that a project like this could be conducted in the
framework of an art festival -- there, however, the
predominant framework of interpretation for outside
observers would not have been "privatization" or
"intervention in the freedom of movement", but rather
"art": the same project, conducted within the boundaries
of an art space, produces tame artistic social
criticism, not communication guerilla. It is also
imaginable that a project like this could be exhibited
in a museum -- the art business' current greed for
contact with "authentic" actors makes it possible. [2] The Yes Men subsequently exhibited their
appearance as "Captain Euro" as a video installation at
worldinformation.org in Vienna [http://www.theyesmen.org/]. At the
same event, a technical device for checking irises
regulated the turnstile at the entrance. Here criticism
of the surveillance possibilities of the control society
take the form of technical playfulness in keeping with
the site of the presentation, the Technical Museum. The
potential of an action depends on the context, this
determines which codes the audience uses to read it.
Communication guerilla pursues a political concern.
It attempts to criticize the rules of normality by
creating irritations and ambiguities, thus enabling new
ways of reading familiar images and signs. The criticism
of naturalized power structures first requires making
these visible -- and they become visible where the
smooth functioning of the sign systems and
interpretation mechanisms starts to get stuck. This is
hardly possible, however, within the framework of art
operations: the general interpretation framework of
"art" has the effect of a kind of lubrication that makes
it possible for the viewer to easily swallow even the
crudest provocation. Radically slandering the
established art scene, for example, has long since been
legitimized and thus defused as a modus of the artistic
avant-garde. Mixing up images and signs by employing
artistic techniques first becomes exciting, when it
leaves the integrating framework of art behind.
"Is it not better to distort the signs than to
destroy them?" Roland Barthes once asked. The militant
leftist scene works hard at signs, too, their actions
are also symbolic -- yet here it is a matter of the
gesture of a military attack, of the destruction of
signs: paving stones into the windows of banks, the
obligatory trashing of a McDonalds branch, the battle
with robo-cops. The significance of this praxis of signs
with its staging of battle, revolts, tumults, should not
be underestimated. It is not without reason that the
Seattle riot functions as a sign, simultaneously
symbolizing and catalyzing the emergence of a new global
movement. The media treatment of this riot catapulted
the image of a militant resistance against the abstract
lack of alternatives of the capitalist economy into the
eye of the public. This image -- a war machine opposing
the abstract war machine of global capital -- developed
a huge mobilizing impact. At the same time, though,
militant resistance is always already integrated in the
mythology of parliamentary western democracy. In the
bourgeois media, the images dwindle into an illustration
of basic democratic principles: the ones to "blame" for
the street battles are a few wicked hooligans, who
functionalize the peaceful, colorful protest for their
own purposes. The "Black Block" does not uphold the
basic rules of non-violent protest, the recognition of
private property, the democratic game rules, and must
therefore be restrained with a massive police presence.
This figure of argumentation legitimizes not only the
violent appearance of state power, but also the right of
the globalization managers to continue to make their
decisions without public scrutiny.
However, the example of global protests can also be
used to show the effectiveness of the tactical
distortion of signs. At the protests against the World
Bank meeting in Prague in September 2000, the
hip-swinging fairies of the "Pink Block" not only
managed to penetrate into the symbolic "heart of the
beast" (the conference center of the World Bank meeting)
-- which neither the Tute Bianche in their cushioned
overalls, nor the black-clothed warriors of the Black
Block had succeeded in doing -- in addition, they also
created images that took the icon of the stone-throwing
street fighter against the police to the point of
absurdity. The warrior is a fighting woman in pink, she
is a samba dancer. A year later in Genoa, it was
martians, UFOs, the U-NO men and women soldiers of the
PublixTheatreCaravan, bikini girls, tire men, and others
that distorted and alienated the firmly fixed image of
what a radical demonstration is supposed to look like
and how it is to act.
We have the feeling that the self-image of many
militant activists holds the danger of thinking of
oneself as separate from the rest of society: an
activist subculture is emerging with its own signs, its
own values, and its own patterns of legitimization.
Resistance derives its legitimacy from the authenticity
of the use of one's own body, the intensity of one's
commitment. There are lamentations about the isolation
of the activist ghetto, but at the same time, the
"purity" of one's own side is anxiously maintained, the
rhetoric of confrontation and the apocalyptic
millenarianism of the activists camp clearly separates
it from mainstream society. This separation also finds
expression in the turbulent discussions about contacts
with the mainstream media, or in the laboriousness of
attempts to make contact with the neighborhood of
squatted houses. Despite occasional collaboration, one
is distrustful not only of the often narcissist art
world, but also of the "geeks", the cyberactivists of
the 90s, who flocked around events like the "next 5
minutes" congress in Amsterdam. A playful way of dealing
with signs, images and meanings, allowing for hybridity
and complexity, could contribute to partially breaking
down these demarcations. In an optimistic scenario, the
paradoxical meeting of two marginal social fields, the
art scene and polit-activism, could lead to the
emergence of a transversal art-polit-activism that
overcomes the boundaries and limitations of the
respective scenes. In October 2000, the Museum for
Contemporary Art in Barcelona held a series of curated
workshops on the theme of "Direct Action as one of the
Fine Arts", which evolved into a two-week meeting of
activists [http://www.lasagencias.net/]. Watched
at first distrustfully by many "veteran" activists, this
event resulted in several political projects that are
still active today -- ninguna es ilegal organized a
border camp in 2001 at the southern tip of Spain [www.sindominio.net/ninguna], where
thousands of African refugees arrive; indymedia
Barcelona [barcelona.indymedia.org] was founded,
and a coalition was formed that took part with graphical
and theatrical means in the protests against the planned
and then canceled World Bank meeting. It is not a
coincidence that communication guerilla forms and
techniques are often used with projects that arise on
occasions like this, forms that can stimulate the
pleasurable appropriation of artistic methods in
political work as well as the politically effective
employment of artistic potentials.
The environment of the global protests creates a
social space of its own in the form of an activist
subculture that transgresses national borders and is
constituted through manifold digital and physical
networks. Sometimes it seems that the networking itself
and the mastery of its tools are (still) the most
important result of this movement. The "art scene"
provides a room on the side in this social space, too.
People meet again -- not only at the next global
protest, but also at biennales and film festivals, at
Documenta and Ars Electronica. The interaction between
art and political scenes is still intermittent,
communicated through a few hyperactivists oscillating
between art and politics. A stronger interaction, which
could become the starting point for a broader
transversal praxis, still needs to be developed in
concrete projects. The art scene's current interest in
"real social life" can provide an impetus for this; the
possibilities for succeeding in the art market with
resistive practices will also play a role. Whether or
not more will come of this remains to be seen.
Activism, Everyday, Work
The media image of the activist, as well as his
self-image (for the person represented is usually a
"he") reduce the activist to the practice of action. It
seems as though these people do nothing else but occupy
buildings and organize demonstrations -- just as the
artist is also reduced to his projects and products in
the public view. Both, however, the artist and the
activist, are normally quite different. They work in
agriculture or in construction, as seasonal laborers,
professional charity donation collectors, in social
work, or as part-time employees in offices and
call-centers; they teach at language schools, adult
education centers or universities. Not least of all,
they work in the field of new media -- graphics and web
design, network administrators, computer specialists.
They move in the working world and simultaneously in an
activist world that has its own calendar, its own
temporal and spatial order. This is nothing new (the
artist Franz Kafka was an administrative employee, too);
what is new though, in our opinion, is the increasing
integration of knowledge, lifestyle and resources from
both areas.
Just as it is still customary in some trades to take
tools during the lunch break in production for one's own
needs, office copy machines are used for the production
of flyers, information material is run through the
company postage machine. Various indymedia sites are
largely updated from places of work. On the other hand,
many media workers have their means of production, like
computers and video cameras, at home and can use them
not only for work, but also for political actions. Most
of all, though, the knowledge of the dominant discourse
and the predominant aesthetics constantly glides from
one area to another, can be used both for reproduction
and for criticism of existing power relationships.
Here the border-crossing goes in both directions:
knowledge about how to arrange texts that activist
desktop-publishers acquire through faking city
information brochures or official letterheads, is also
useful for paid commissioned work. Those who conversely
reproduce the design and ideological structures of the
advertising world day after day in their professional
everyday life, can turn the statement of advertising
aesthetics upside-down with just a little twist in a
successful fake. The knowledge of the "language of
power" that is required in professional life can be
turned into resistance and into subversion at any time.
For communication guerillas, this knowledge is central.
One of the reasons why the campaign against the
deportation airline Lufthansa was so successful was
because the form of professional self-representation was
imitated so perfectly, while the meaning was turned into
its opposite through consistent exaggeration - from
Lufthansa's "we fly you there" to the " we fly you out"
of the Deportation Class.
For communication guerillas, it is not enough to know
the adversary -- the point is to master the forms and
signs that constitute "the language of power", so to
speak, ourselves. Communication guerill@s are not spies
or undercover agents in the working world or the world
of bourgeois consensus. In their life praxis, they are
often part of it, accepting roles as teachers or
colleagues, assuming functions in the capitalist system.
Yet it is precisely in this way that the oscillation
between radical criticism and camouflage becomes
possible. The recipient-journalists and their readers,
potential customers, everyone confronted with the
advertising material of the Deportation Class, are
automatically drawn into the contradictions of the
capitalist system and its western humanistic ideology:
Is Deportation Class really a cynical special offer from
Lufthansa for cheap seats on deportation flights? Or is
it in fact a particularly successful criticism of their
deportation practice? If the recipient decides on the
first reading, then they are confronted with the
question of whether this entails money-making at the
expense of human dignity or a legitimate marketing
instrument. If they see through the Deportation Class as
a fake, then they cannot simply dismiss it as an absurd
slander -- it is too close to the logic of the narration
of the real Lufthansa ideology. Regardless of which
reading the recipient decides to take, once the
questions are posed, they stick to Lufthansa. In this
way, soiling an image breaks open what is widely
accepted and taken for granted in the capitalist system,
thus opening up an unmediated view of contradictions
between reality and representation.
The communication guerilla must have no fear of
contact: she has to dare to completely enter into the
logic of the detested dominant discourse, in order to
turn it around from the inside. And he has to trust in
the effectiveness of signs, not give in to the
temptation to offer explanatory information after all
and thus dropping the mask. In the course of the warring
escapades of the German SPD government, which was also
supported by the Greens, a poster turned up with the
familiar dying soldier ("Why?") [http://www.contrast.org/KG/]. A slight
distortion turned the "Why?" into "Why not?". The logos
of the SPD and the Greens at the lower edge of the
poster suggested that the poster could be a publication
from these parties -- although the knowledgeable reader
of signs understands very well that political parties
would never state the cynicism of their politics that
openly. Through the choice and montage of the images,
the poster clearly said: a cynical "Why not?" is the
attitude of these parties, whether they admit it or not.
With the addition of a reproachful text, however, this
intervention would have left the space of the
communication guerilla to become propaganda/agitation.
Its function would have been an explanation with a grin
factor, rather than irritation, which forces reflection
in the best case.
Globalization
There is no doubt about it: we are in the midst of
globalization, particularly as activists. The skills
that are practiced with the protests of the often
so-called anti-globalizers, are exactly the ones that
every corporate boss would wish for in his employees:
capability for teamwork in time-limited projects
together with previously unknown colleagues.
Flexibility, cultural competence, knowledge of foreign
languages. Flat hierarchies, optimum use of limited
resources, ability to improvise. Mastery of digital
communication tools. Speed, full dedication.
Transversality here too -- the only question is, to
which end?
If it is true that we find ourselves in the midst of
a transition to the control society, then in the future
it could be even more important to hone our subversive
potential at the molecular level, to make it even more
targeted. In the emerging Empire, it will become even
less possible for us to direct our displeasure to
individual governments -- the game with images and
representations will become increasingly important in
the networked parts of the world, but without a decrease
in the importance of vehement actions in public space.
It is a matter of a political positioning that is not
limited to theoretical analysis in the terms of
sociology and cultural theory, but rather which also
thinks in images and knows how to use sign systems. Fury
and irritation and the desire to flip off power often
lead more effectively than rational reflection to
recognizing the cracks and contradictions in dominant
discourse. Yet the communication guerilla does not stand
still in a self-referential temporary confusion -- she
continues to link it with argumentation in bourgeois and
own media, is connected to counter-public spheres and
refers to the themes and concerns of social movements.
In recent years, these movements have taken over new
technologies, from mobile phones to the use (and faking)
of increasingly interactive web sites and videos, to
live streaming.
Information technologies, useful instruments of the
control society, can be subversively turned around,
activists can make use of the skills they acquire in
their paid work for other purposes as well. Conversely,
the ways of working that they learn in the scene world
can also be useful to them in the neoliberal,
flexibilized everyday world of work. Time-limited,
project-oriented teamwork and spatial flexibility are
only two examples from many. Particularly in a societal
formation, in which signs, branding, images are
increasingly important not only in the business world,
but also for governments and multinational structures
such as the WHO or the G8, the communication guerilla
can carry out efficient attacks. The world of activism
is not located outside the globalization process, the
transition from the age of bourgeois democracies to
something else, something not yet defined. It is part of
this -- and it is in the intimate knowledge of the
structures to be fought that its potential to at least
question their legitimacy is found -- even if the next
grand narrative is yet to come.
Translated by Aileen Derieg
[1] cf. S. Brünzels, Dos ejercicios tacticos
para hacerse con el espacio publico, in: Modos de Hacer,
ed. P. Blanco et. al., Ediciones Universitad de
Salamanca 2001 [2] Although an art project by "Everyone is an
Expert" at the Turin Biennale in Italy was thrown out
after publicly criticizing Berlusconi, cf. http://www.expertbase.net/
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