Fig. 1. Legacies of Tactical Media. Courtesy of Institute of Network Cultures, 2011.

Institute of Network Cultures releases a new publication titled "Legacies of Tactical Media: The Tactics of Occupation: From Tompkins Square to Tahrir" written by Eric Kluitenberg.

Publication Data

Kluitenberg, Eric. Legacies of Tactical Media: The Tactics of Occupation: From Tompkins Square to Tahrir (Network Notebooks 05). Institute of Network Cultures, 2011. ISBN/EAN: 978-90-816021-8-1.

Description

Tactical Media employ the ‘tactics of the weak’ to operate on the terrain of strategic power by means of ‘any media necessary’. Once the rather exclusive practice of politically engaged artists and activists, the tactical appropriations of media tools and distribution infrastructures by the disenfranchised and the disgruntled have moved from the margins to centre stage. The explosive growth of mass participation in self-mediation incountless blogs, video sharing platforms, micro-blog ging, social networking has created an unprecedented complexity in the info-sphere.

While this frenzy of media activity has been heralded as the catalyst of the new democratisation movements in North-Africa and the Middle-East, the anti-austerity/precarity movements in Southern Europe and the UK, and the recent #occupy movements in the US and Northern Europe, its increasingly intransparent complexity combined with the post 9/11 ‘crash of symbols’ has thrown its political efficacy into question. The demise of WikiLeaks as the crown jewel of on-line whistle-blowing has added to a thoroughly opaque picture.

More than ever tactical media operators require effective instruments to create tactical cartographies they need to navigate the hybrid realities they are immersed in. This notebook traces the legacies of tactical media to begin creating these hybrid cartographies.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
A Resurgence of Social Protest in an Era of Ubiquitous Media
Hybrid Space
TACTICAL MEDIA: BY ANY MEDIA NECESSARY
TACTICAL MEDIA: A NON-MOVEMENT WITHOUT A DEFINITION
On ‘The Tactical’ in Tactical Media
Tactical Media Ecologies
Tactical Media: Finished or not?
TACTICAL MEDIA AND THE POLITICS OF THE ARCHIVE
THE CRASH OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM: CULTURE JAMMING AFTER 9/11
Mental Environmentalism
EVERYONE IS A MEDIA ARTIST!
Social Sculpture
Schlingensief’s Chance 2000
Tactical Media and the Participatory Logic of DIY Media Culture
Collective Cultural Action
Intimate Media: Scale and Feedback
The Spectre of Affective Labour
MEDIA SQUARES: TACTICAL MEDIA IN HYBRID SPACE
Everybody Back to the Street! (Preliminary Lessons from Egypt)
Transgression in Self-Mediation
A New Subjectivity?
CONCLUSION: TACTICAL CARTOGRAPHIES FOR A HYBRID REALITY

About the Author

Eric Kluitenberg is an independent theorist and writer on culture, media and technology. He is editor in chief of the Tactical Media Files - an on-line documentation resource for tactical media practices world-wide.

The publication is available for PDF download here.