Tech and Revolution meeting in NYC, Nov 13

Please join myself, Radical Action Design, Progressive Technology Project, May First / People Link and other progressive and social justice movement technologists for a special Technology and Revolution mini-convergence, the 20th convergence of this kind this year, at ThoughtWorks - Monday, November 13 from 6- 9 pm in NYC. Tools have an important role in our movement -…

Femme Hacking

Femme hacking, n.: to use tacit knowledge of deprivileged structures [femme science] to apply roundabout methodologies of tool-using [hacking] in order to achieve an outcome. Having emerged from academia, I’ve thought a lot about the ways in which knowledge is articulated, permissioned, and authenticated: e.g., one must clearly express a defensible statement; problematized…

Liberation approaches to Technology: Interview

The fantastic author, librarian and activist Melissa Morrone [@InfAgit] interviewed me to discuss technology, feminism, decentralized networks of power, and liberation-focused approaches to teaching. quality content Read the whole interview here: http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/?p=4778. A few choice quotes: MM: can you talk more about that in your approach towards technology and intimidation?…

Political Art Lectures for 2014

I'm writing to share resources for teachers looking for a NYC-based field trips for classes on art/politics/sociology/archives, etc: INTERFERENCE ARCHIVE ON-SITE TOURS I recently began an appointment as the Resident Scholar at the Interference Archive [www.interferencearchive.org], a public archive of political art ephemera in Brooklyn. See a NY Times article…

Political art and Examining an Archive

Reprinted from The Interference Archive, http://interferencearchive.org/examining-the-archive-lecture-on-activist-posters/ What makes art activist? What makes it political? Does who is using it matter? The Interference Archive is uniquely situated as both a living collection of activist cultures and ideas, and a site of popular education and engagement with these ideas. One way we…

Tactical Media and Disturbance Art

“The shift in revolutionary investments corresponds with a shift in the nature of power, which has removed itself from the streets and become nomadic." -- Critical Art Ensemble artist-tacticians, Qud in Rita Raley’s Tactical Media. Tactical Media Enter tactical media, a resistant form of cultural production that uses networked intelligence…

Hierarchical Power, Invisible Users

[caption id="attachment_43" align="alignleft" width="225"] IWW poster, 1914 "The Pyramid of Capitalism"[/caption] “Envisaging an art without artwork, without authorship, and without spectatorship has an immediate consequence: art ceases to be visible as such.” – Steven Wright Part of the confusion between high art, activist art and participatory art and vernacular forms…