[Blake_Stimson,_Gregory_Sholette]_Collectivism_aft(z-lib
Artists’ Collectives Mostly in New York 213on TV and in the tabloid press as obnoxious and riotous. Bullet Space wasthe most innovative of these spaces, producing numerous collective exhibitionsand a tabloid called Your House Is Mine (1989–91).In the United Kingdom, as in Amsterdam, Berlin, and cities inItaly, squatters had a sounder legal basis for taking vacant buildings, and themovement was older, wider, and better organized. Throughout the 1990s,the Squall collective organized squatters and ravers in England—participantsin the nomadic dance and music culture called rave—against repressivelegislation. A strong radical ecology movement fought against building newroads, and in the mid-1990s, spectacular art-based activism arose in the groupReclaim the Streets. RTS demonstrations were ludic occasions, styled asparties and celebrations. This reXects a theoretical current that has guidedactivist cultural work since 1968, an ethic of urban play based in the revolutionaryurbanist theories of the Situationists (especially Constant) and theiracademic ally Henri Lefebvre who wrote of the social “production of space.”Strategies of cultural activism have been reWned and enlarged withthe emergence of a broad popular global anticorporate movement in the late1990s. Organized against the rise of neoliberalism, new cooperative modesrely on afWnity groups and central spokescouncils to organize and directactions. International demonstrations in the early twenty-Wrst century werecarefully choreographed affairs, coordinated by e-mail lists and text messagingto cellular phones, with groups of actors differently garbed dependingupon their intentions for a particular situation. A shifting array of contingentartists’ collectives supported the street work with costumes, posters,banners, and performances. The emphasis was on telegenic spectacle andtactical surprise.As the example of this activism makes clear, the Internet is a powerfulnetworking tool that is inexorably transforming the social sphere. Asaccess to the World Wide Web spread in the 1990s, a global movement ofanticorporate activists at last became visible to its geographically separatedconstituents. Alternative Internet-based media was inspired by the exampleof the Serbian independent radio station B92 that switched to streaming itssignal over the Internet after the wartime government closed its transmissiontower in 1996. After the events of Seattle in 1999, new activist medialike the global IndyMedia network arose helping to connect the movementby reporting on demonstrations and actions. Many of these Web sites usecollaborative authoring software, so that visitors can post their own storiesand photos to the site.With the dissolution of the bipolar cold-war world—the fall ofthe Berlin Wall in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union—autonomouspopular power has seemed to many the only route to global justice in the
214 Alan W. Mooreface of states and corporations perceived as collusive partners operatingthrough sweeping new international commercial treaties. The rise of indigenouspeoples’ movements has given this movement a soul and strong examplesof antistatist decentralized organization. The media savvy Zapatistasof Chiapas in southern Mexico, with a charismatic thoughtful leadership,exemplify the claims of the new indigeneity.As soon as the Internet medium arose, so did new forms of digitalart and Internet art. In the 1990s artists formed groups to work in thisnew medium in a reprise of the sort of collectivity that marked the technologyart boom of the 1960s. 50 These included groups and collaborationslike adaweb, Rhizome, Etoy, and the activist oriented RTMark (properlyspelled “®ark”). What has driven a lot of the new technology art and Internetprojects is broad change in the conditions of media art production. TheXuid networked community of computer programmers includes “hackers” withan ethic of independence and a proprietary sense about the cyberspace theycollectively created. Originally developed as a communications tool for themilitary, the Internet evolved from nonproWt and institutional beginnings.The ethos of what Richard Barbrook called a “high-tech gift economy” 51pervades the development of free- and shareware programs. Many of theseare written for the operating system Linux, which is an open source program(i.e., written in publicly accessible, nonproprietary code).There is a continuous conXict between artists, many of theminvolved with collectives and public art, who seek to enlarge the sphere ofpublic creativity, and an art market that requires a scarcity of artistic products.This is basically a conXict between inventive creativity and the embodiedpower of capital. 52 Artists’ collectives regularly address questions of intellectualproperty that have become key legal issues in the twenty-Wrst century.Chief among these is the issue of copyright. General Idea was sued byLife magazine in the late 1970s over the format of their artists’ periodicalFile. The Residents, a mysterious San Francisco rock group that performedanonymously wearing tuxedos, top hats, and big eyeballs on their heads,made a collage music that was at the heart of an avant-garde rock musicscene. Small in commercial terms, it evaded industry control. Negativland,another San Francisco media art group, was dramatically sued for their collagework. Like collage Wlms and sampling music for rap recordings, questionsaround the proprietorship of cultural property have arisen continuously asthe outcome of artistic practice in multiple media. 53 Collectives acting likecorporations diffuse responsibility. They add to the traditional outlaw andrevolutionary expedient of the alias. Within the “Neoist” movement, malleableartistic identities arose that could be claimed by any participant, likeMonty Cantsin and Luther Blisset. 54
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Artists’ Collectives Mostly in New York 213
on TV and in the tabloid press as obnoxious and riotous. Bullet Space was
the most innovative of these spaces, producing numerous collective exhibitions
and a tabloid called Your House Is Mine (1989–91).
In the United Kingdom, as in Amsterdam, Berlin, and cities in
Italy, squatters had a sounder legal basis for taking vacant buildings, and the
movement was older, wider, and better organized. Throughout the 1990s,
the Squall collective organized squatters and ravers in England—participants
in the nomadic dance and music culture called rave—against repressive
legislation. A strong radical ecology movement fought against building new
roads, and in the mid-1990s, spectacular art-based activism arose in the group
Reclaim the Streets. RTS demonstrations were ludic occasions, styled as
parties and celebrations. This reXects a theoretical current that has guided
activist cultural work since 1968, an ethic of urban play based in the revolutionary
urbanist theories of the Situationists (especially Constant) and their
academic ally Henri Lefebvre who wrote of the social “production of space.”
Strategies of cultural activism have been reWned and enlarged with
the emergence of a broad popular global anticorporate movement in the late
1990s. Organized against the rise of neoliberalism, new cooperative modes
rely on afWnity groups and central spokescouncils to organize and direct
actions. International demonstrations in the early twenty-Wrst century were
carefully choreographed affairs, coordinated by e-mail lists and text messaging
to cellular phones, with groups of actors differently garbed depending
upon their intentions for a particular situation. A shifting array of contingent
artists’ collectives supported the street work with costumes, posters,
banners, and performances. The emphasis was on telegenic spectacle and
tactical surprise.
As the example of this activism makes clear, the Internet is a powerful
networking tool that is inexorably transforming the social sphere. As
access to the World Wide Web spread in the 1990s, a global movement of
anticorporate activists at last became visible to its geographically separated
constituents. Alternative Internet-based media was inspired by the example
of the Serbian independent radio station B92 that switched to streaming its
signal over the Internet after the wartime government closed its transmission
tower in 1996. After the events of Seattle in 1999, new activist media
like the global IndyMedia network arose helping to connect the movement
by reporting on demonstrations and actions. Many of these Web sites use
collaborative authoring software, so that visitors can post their own stories
and photos to the site.
With the dissolution of the bipolar cold-war world—the fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union—autonomous
popular power has seemed to many the only route to global justice in the