NYC Anti-War Protests: Art & Actions
05.10.2003Ongoing Project Documenting Anti-War/Activistic Actions and Interactions in NYC since 09.11.01
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we documented immediate political events after the collapse of the World Trade Center and leading up to the Iraq war.
NYC Anti-War Protests: Art & Actions
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Recently, with the continuing availability of powerful technologies, the American masses have had the undeniable opportunity to become participant observers, documenters and distributors of their own human thoughts and experiences, and also 'information warriors' in global battles against vast state and corporate infrastructures. With inexpensive still and moving cameras in hand, and digital culture and technology within the intellectual grasp, these 'real-time' warriors are witness to overly prevalent forces known to 'limit the potential of the people' (Chomsky 2002). They have been given the opportunity to use the same tools (digital camera, laptop, Wi-Fi) that the mainstream media now use in 'embedded' situations as well as the power of information distribution. In the hands of global citizens, new and available technologies present the opportunity to tell personal and shared narratives to initiate the promotion of social and political justice through visual means (Stephen 2003).
By 'going-native' and becoming participants within some of these dynamic formations, we personally witnessed that some sub-cultural resistant groups and collectives (from traditionally organized to anarchistic self-organized) have 'flipped the script' or folded over the medium of digitized information in direct opposition to the ideologies of their corporate manufacturers (who solely rely on the mechanism of the culture-industries to remain progressively stable), while concurrently seeking what Hakim Bey would call, 'Temporary Autonomous Zones' (1985).
As this has been defined, "the TAZ is like an uprising that does not engage directly with the State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/else when, before the State can crush it." (Bey 1985: 99). Among these sub-particle, micro-political structural systems is a strengthening alternative media and the wide distribution methods of shared ideas and experiences that the mainstream press has the inability to embrace in full . Such emergent systems of recording, editing (or non-editing), and distribution combined with grassroots and mainstream screenings of independent documentaries, internet-streaming, art exhibitions and experimental television have become a contemporary form of tactical hegemonic disturbance. This disruption has become a method of resistance against state, corporate and institutionalized power structures.
Demonstrative interruptions in opposition to the state and corporate infrastructures is not unlike Nathan Martin's idea of critical deviant practice, where, "...the deviant member should be supported in an attempt to establish a reciprocal system or network or action that addresses the fault they observe" (Martin 2004). Support for such practice is generated in the micro-networks of individuals and group actions, acting simultaneously in critical collaborative practice. This practice is identified in the growing use and 'shared' nature of the digital video activist as was personally witnessed during the Republican Convention demonstrators of 2004.
Nevertheless, we often must begin a march without knowing when or where it will actually terminate.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1986: 128)
Like Martin Luther King Jr., we began this study without knowing where it might lead. We had inclinations into the purposes and uses of digital technology within the social spheres through our own experiences with the medium, and some theoretical readings shaping a field of study into resistance and technology. Our study of the digital activistic culture surrounding the protest movements of 2003-2004, including the globally massive Stop the Invasion of Iraq campaign, and its local cousin, the Say No to the RNC campaign, grew from our personal interest in video activism and our professional interests in the artistic production of video media as a pedagogical tool for public education. In the desire to locate our identities in alternative systems that are occupied outside of the conventional American status quo and hierarchy of power systems, we saw an opportunity to study a subject (video activism) that we felt was frequently overlooked within institutional environments. This was informed by our understanding that there are certain things that are not proper to say and are not proper to think in the "uniformity of ideology in the intellectual culture" (Chomsky 2002: 112).
In direct participatory action and as contributing observers we engaged in a form of 'critical action research', where research is undertaken by those personally involved in certain social situations, in order to better understand these circumstances and their own "social or educational practices" (Morrow 1994: 319; Kemmis and McTaggart 1988: 5). As participant-observers, our collection of ethnographic footage ultimately became a methodological tool for an interdisciplinary analysis of certain events and structures that we locate within various cross-disciplinary texts and theories. These consist of studies in network and media theory (including radical alternative media studies), Critical Theory as research method and social theory, the widening field of Cultural Studies, and Deluezian notions of ryhzomatic, self-organizing networks.
We used Critical Theory, as even 70 years after the development of the Frankfurt School it "retains its ability to disrupt and challenge the status quo" (Kincheloe and McLaren year? :260) Critical Theory is involved in struggles for social change, and seeks the unification of theory and practice (Kellner, Critical theory and the crisis of social theory, :8). We too sought to unite digital media and social network theory with video practice, and analyze their strengths for social justice issues. For instance, we explored techno-theory claims that investigate the perimeters of new technological boundaries, to gauge their usefulness for individual liberation, plurality of message, and democratic participation. Often these parameters involve the "misuse" of new technologies (Dery 1996). Radical videotaping and publication, especially of footage where police officers used great force to dominate peaceful protestors, becomes an activity that expands the boundaries of socially-transformative technological practices.
Critical Theory is also concerned with instances of domination, as "complex notion[s] based on a concern with the ways social relations also mediate power relations to create various forms of alienation and inhibit the realization of human possibilities" (Morrow 1994:10). As our experiences with this protest movement increased over time, we began to understand that though the protests were strong in number (over 250,000 people marching in NYC streets) they were not strong enough to persuade the government to dismiss their war plans- or even to persuade NYC's mayor not to endorse the Republican Agenda. We were also concerned with the lack of news coverage of these protests, feeling that here was an instance of the media inhibiting the realization of the protest's message(s) by refusing to acknowledge it/them. We sought to use the self-publication possibilities inherent in digital technologies to tell the story of those who were actively engaged in the democratic process, and resisting the mandate of war and conceptualizations of power.
Though both optimistic and pessimistic schools of thought exist in relation to the democratic uses of technology for social and individual liberation, we chose to employ the discourses of critical theory and technology as a non-objective process that is utilized by individuals for good or harm.
From a critical theorist perspective, the non-objectivity of technology has been well examined in many texts over the past 70 years, most notably by the Frankfurt School when it "rejects the neutrality of technology" (Morrow 1994: 282). They have argued that "technology is not a thing in the ordinary sense of the term, but an "ambivalent" process of the development suspended between two possibilities (our emphasis)" (Feenberg 1991: 14). With this in mind, our investigation into the opportunities or detriments of digital video processes in its relation to the social and political sphere began with our own working knowledge of such processes, and resulted in our understanding of the transformative effect that certain technological processes can promote.
Over the course of several months, our 'action-based research' study involved the consistent videotaping of police and demonstrator activities at several key activist events. Our primary technological tools (info-weapons) were the Panasonic DVX100A digital video camera, the Canon GL-1 digital video camera, an external omni-directional microphone, and a body tripod. Collected throughout these demonstrations was over 15 hours of video footage; this included video interviews of a number of demonstrators, as well as more organized speeches, marches, acts of civil disobedience, surprise autonomous/deviant acts, debates by civilians in the street, and other statements of highly-organized to self-organized resistance to the convergence of national right-wing ideologies in the urban center of New York City.
We found that by embedding ourselves within various movements, we had the opportunity to personally observe that members of the NY Police Force were either unable or unwilling to speak for the camera (although the police in turn had plenty of cameras for themselves ). We also worked spontaneously with the Independent Media, Lawyers Guilds, individuals involved in direct forms of action, and even the mainstream media (ABC). We had the opportunity to screen some of the footage at art shows in three cities, and distributed DVDs of material to those who had an interest in watching it.
Two real-life events sparked our initial interest in studying the uses of digital video in the culture of resistance "as a form of memory against effacement", or to defend culture against authorities in search of domination (Said 2003: 159). One of these occurrences was the witnessing and documenting of what (was perceived to be) police brutality and possible racial profiling. The second was another example of police brutality, and the subsequent sharing of the footage gathered. We provided the taped event to the Independent media to distribute, and also gave copies to Legal Aid and the Legal Observers, (two groups of volunteer legal services aiding demonstrators and bystanders caught up in sweeping arrests)
We found that the physical and digital convergence of a network of camera people, editors, writers, lawyers, bike messengers, demonstrators, chefs, farmers, and other professionals was an interdisciplinary group of energized individuals who used their strengths to create zones of autonomy where the normal rules of living are replaced with community action. Their collaborative efforts were for a common goal, and not based on financial rewards.
Media theorist Geert Lovink, who considers himself to be a radical media pragmatist, calls for the opening of a dialogue among "media activists, journalists, those who work in fashion, pop culture, visual arts, theatre, and architecture" so that an active Info-war can begin, and begin successfully (2002, 315). We found his vision to be somewhat narrow to those expected to participate, as our post-analysis of collected materials (including images, image sequences, text and sound) opens wide the notion of whom is to collaborate in combating or resisting dominant discourse in social practices.
In these protests, where slogan's such as Martin Luther King's "Injustice anywhere is Injustice everywhere" abound, we found many small organizations had come together under a larger umbrella movement of the War Protest, or those who came to protest the American agenda under the Bush administration. Some of the groups who were represented included, the Communist Voice Organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Women's Global Strike, American's Coming Together, Swing the State.ORG, United for Peace and Justice, War Resister's League, Critical Mass, Another World is Possible, various artist collectives, Families Against Bush, and the list goes on and on.
In this paper we have argued that video as a disruptive medium has the potential to create new ways of viewing and changing societal norms. As Chomsky has described, institutions inherently will not allow a mechanism to exist that will eventually lead to their own self-destruction (Wintonick, Archbar & Miquet ?). Therefore, video and the electronic image as documentary mediums must exist in non-institutionalized, independent form either working completely outside and against the institutionalized norm, or as a micro-political act of internal dissent from within: small enough to lay low under the radar, but large enough to make an eventual impact.
This model of radical video practice reconceptualizes the entire historical framework of communicative models of video technologies in the understanding that radical video does more than just promote an 'alternative' message prescribed by the same classical steps of communication discourse. As Dahlgren (1997) observes the conventional steps involved with video production and distribution: 1) in the sender of the message and the circumstances of its production methods; 2) the from and the content of the message that is distributed; 3) and the processes and impact of the receptions and consumption of that message. In contrast, radical video as a medium is more that just an alteration of the 'message' but instead the alternative message is accompanied by new networks of organizational practice that redefine the distribution, production and the audience of the medium itself.
An alternative message in this form of autonomous (working outside institutionalized structures) materializes in the social practice where the audience actually become the 'involved' over the merely informed. The educator teaches how to create knowledge over merely how to consume it. The distribution of information is technologically decentralized over information centralization; it comes from groups, collaborative and individuals rather than large institutionalized structures such as the mass-media. The audience becomes not merely the 'public' of consumers, but become the multiple points where the social production and distribution begins. This extreme democratic organizational structuring produces a multiplicity of meta-narratives and personal stories. It opens up hidden atrocities and doesn't 'edit' for a focused audience. It doesn't discriminate against information that is perceived as 'unimportant' or 'invalided'. It is radical in its organizational design and it is new very powerful medium.
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