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Ramona_A_Stone · 19-05-01, 01:54 PM

Ricardo Dominguez is the Senior Editor of Thingnyc and a founder of Electronic Disturbance Theater.

I came across this piece and was simply struck by its beauty as well as perhaps a little jarred by it. I supressed my urge to post it with any initial commentary or personal interpretation, however as I see it this "disturbance theater" is a movement of modern artists whose activities encompass hacktivism, cyberterrorism and acts of electronic civil disobedience, and a movement which Dominguez and others have patterned after the "real" Zapatista philosophy, in its broadest global aims.

(I should also say that although I am not advocating acts of terrorism or violence, I am resonant with these issues on an artistic level, which extends in my definition to my, and I believe everyone's, presence and interaction on the Net - are we not all artists here ? Submitted for your contemplation: The Diary Of Nathan Adler or The Art-Ritual Murder of Baby Grace by David Bowie, the liner notes from the Outside and the source of my nom de guerre, who is described as a "tyrannical futurist.")

Let me quote a bit of the above Zapatista site, and though it may be a gross trivialization of their true, vital, and even militant nature, point out how some of this language might metaphor the concerns of many hyper-vigilant NetHeads toward the power struggles in their own cyber-backyards.

"...It is perhaps for this reason–the lack of interest in power–that the word of the Zapatistas has been well received in other countries across the globe, above all in Europe. It has not just been because it is new or novel, but rather because it is proposing this, which is to say, to separate the political problem from the problem of taking power, and take it to another terrain...

...Our work is going to end, if it ends, in the construction of this space for new political relationships. What follows is going to be a product of the efforts of other people, with another way of thinking and acting. And there we are not going to work; instead, we would be a disturbance...

...We do not want others, more or less of the right, center or left, to decide for us. We want to participate directly in the decisions which concern us, to control those who govern us, without regard to their political affiliation, and oblige them to "rule by obeying". We do not struggle to take power, we struggle for democracy, liberty, and justice...

...It is not our arms which make us radical; it is the new political practice which we propose and in which we are immersed with thousands of men and women in Mexico and the world: the construction of a political practice which does not seek the taking of power but the organization of society. Intellectuals and political leadership, of all sizes, of the ultraright, of the right, the center, of the left and the ultraleft, national and international criticize our proposal. We are so radical that we do not fit in the parameters of "modern political science". We are not bragging … we are pointing out the facts. Is there anything more radical than to propose to change the world? You know this because you share this dream with us, and because, though the truth be repeated, we dream it together...

...You struggle for power. We struggle for democracy, liberty and justice. This is not the same thing. Though you may be successful and conquer power, we will continue struggling for democracy, liberty and justice. It does not matter who is in power, the Zapatistas are and have always struggled for democracy, liberty and justice...

...We hope that the people understand that the causes that have moved us to do this are just, and that the path that we have chosen is just one, not the only one. Nor do we think that it is the best of all paths. …. We do not want a dictatorship of another kind, nor anything out of this world, not international Communism and all that. We want justice where there is now not even minimum subsistence. …. We do not want to monopolize the vanguard or say that we are the light, the only alternative, or stingily claim the qualification of revolutionary for one or another current. We say, look at what happened. That is what we had to do..."

In essence, (my interpretation) the Zapatista aspire to take the form of 'perpetual disturbance' to the cybernetic loop of government, a heuristic for tearing down obstacles to dialogue.

As I see it, this adoption of philosophy is not a "gloomy outlook" by any means, rather it is an affirmation for the future of the power of the individual. Clearly, this is a future that must be fought for, Not by opposing the orders which are fighting for their own capitalistic concerns and freedoms, but by breaking away and beyond these concerns. We must not make the mistake of fighting the same old corporate and political wars on the level of this 'new frontier' of cyberspace; such conflicts are inherently destined to forge the same responses, to focus the same systematic limitations back into the 'old world order.' The richer social interconnectivity TankGirl refers to is something that has always existed, and something which has never been adequately contained, acknowledged or expressed by the Power Media. Power is concerned with the mass of common denominators; its languages become increasingly archaic in the face of obstinate eccentricites whose voices are not heard. The "arms" we have on this "new battleground" are unique in History by the very virtue of their accessibility, the power of our own voices of intelligence and open-mindedness to create signs large and small, and for movements to follow gestures into the elsewhere.

"Instead let us like the Zapatistas continue to break the Mirrors of Power and move into the elsewhere."

As the outward flow of this space expands, its growth is increasingly anticipated and projected so that many concerns are already meeting the "Mirrors of Power" reflecting the persistent systematic response back at them. These "mirror wars" could only prove to be, as TankGirl insinuates, the very forces which would confine this explosion of energy, sculpting it into a facsimile of the inwardly spiraling arguments of the 'old world.'

Quoting Ms. TankGirl, from the "A Day in the Life" thread: "Hammer down the phantom of Napster and you have WinMX and Morpheus instead. Hammer them down and you have 10 JXTA projects that are doing the same thing. There is no end to it. It's a pusher's nightmare: the clientele is learning to grow their own weed and even to spread it for free - just for the joy of sharing."

Nice fractal imagery, the Orbs of The Blob, responding to every hammer blow by exploding into mercurial octopi tentacles channelling toward the elsewhere, to root, swell, blob and be hammered down again, recursively. But I suggest that this is the sustenance of the 'Mesh,' the echoing sound of the same forge on which the old metals of industry were hammered. This is the Mirror War, in effect.

"Post-media cells must fight the future with gestures that have no name in the present. "

I glean another interpretation of the designation "Post-Media Cells." We simply are the post-media cells, you and I, no apocalypse here, rather a vision of ourselves and our progeny as the inheritors, the users of this media. We are They Who Get It. The Receivers. Again, to my mind's eye, a lovely vision; the information flowing out of and back into monitors everywhere, illuminating the envelope of each users experience and understanding like a dewdrop on Indira's Web, each user left with their own responsibilties to interact by the affirmation, correction, debate, amplification, synthesis, and creation of information.

The Napster user, as a post-media cell, is Uroborus, the serpent which swallows its own tail, but it's the dynamic interactive linkage of these cells, the 'joy of sharing' which defined its content and its true power. Napster however, as a multicellular post-media organism attains a predictable, and familiar form, and one that readily charges into the Hall of Mirrors to cannabalize itself and be hammered into the Mesh. Largely, subsequent replications may be an endless string of similar gestures.

"Post-media cells must travel among strings of inventions that fall outside of the logomass."

I think it's easy to see how, out of this fractal empire of building and tearing down the same structures, the very importance of P2P tech may be obscured, locked into an endlessly rising canon of repetitious gestures. I believe Dominguez means to warn us, simply and finally, to seek ways to break out of these loops. In my mind this could be as obvious as something I (and certainly others before me) have imagined for some time: a true revolution against "the music industry" in the form of a true independent explosion into the elsewhere; a 'folk movement' of independent art. Of course this implies the need for actors. And here, the Mirrors of Power have certainly done their work.

I can assure you, I often felt surprisingly lonely at the Napster forum as an independent artist who saw the basic phenomenon as having a purely positive effect, as being a possible if not probable medium for the exponential acceleration of something that had literally never had a medium before.

"We want justice where there is now not even minimum subsistence."

:: Jungle noises ::

Even before the mirrors were erected, the twilight began to pick up the colors of artist's fear. "if this is to exist at all, then it must be seen as a commercial model... how can we do that ?- advertising ? - borrowing energy from this or that ?" ...indeed it still seems persistently counter-intuitive that it could be otherwise... someone has, by God, got to be paid here. Soon enough though, those who prey on the artist came out of the forest wielding judicial gavels, and the fence was built. This fence is high and pervasive at this point, reflecting myopic old multi-national corporate concerns back at us from every sector.

"All post-media direct action cells must pursue the instabilities in Technologies--even before they become metaphors. We must move into areas that seem like the impossible - before they even gain presence among the protocols of the MESH."

Within the context of Napster, in one sense perhaps we did pursue its instability to the fullest. However I cannot help but feel, in a greater sense, an opportunity to act - directly - not against the power, but apart from it was, or is, being passed by. But certainly not by everyone... We must learn from every mistake.

"It does not matter who is in power, the Zapatistas are and have always struggled for democracy, liberty and justice..."

"We must be ready for the unexpected. Not just about the emergence of new technologies - but how people will use them."

This last statement, which is also the first statement in the Dominguez piece, implies that we are moving into areas of perpetual future shock, that we should be shocked at the possible diversity of voices in the future, and that we should have no pretense as to what they will be. We should only strive to insure that there is a political space, a forum, for them. Obviously, sharing information - not just music - is at the very heart of the Human experience, and is the point of power in the initiation of all change in the Human experience. The message in the persecution of Napster is a manifestation of a collective fear - "we should fear this technology - it will change the orders of power." Damn straight.

"Let the MESH spend its time tweaking these possibilities."

As Ms. TankGirl implies, one's approach to the idea of anarchy is a question of one's spirituality; either one embraces that truth, intelligence and good will ultimately prevail toward the best of all possible ends for humanity, seeking to open every channel for their expression - or one simply fears that the ultimate "chaos" of the elsewhere equals the dissolution of necessary policies designed to subvert our nature into ritual and often frustrated forms of expression. But doesn't an anarchy of Human concerns already exist ? Is this not the lot of our species and the very gift of our individuality ? As the 'elsewhere' is nothing but the subjective experience of up to six billion other living Human beings, and the internet is a realm of ideas, I submit that one's very definition of anarchy is a statement of relative "self-trust" - a reflection of one's confidence in the strength of the Human Spirit to change the world into a place more like itself than it found it, so to speak. It is my personal belief that, as the World Wide Intellect is the only observable force in nature which works aggressively against The Second Law of Thermodynamics, true chaos is impossible - as beyond the threshold of individual experience as it is beyond the probabilities of the system I am speaking to you through now. There is nothing to fear but limitation. Again, in agreement with She of The Tanks, the first step toward breaking beyond the screens of these microcosmic limitations is to not engage them, but to seek, or if necessary, create exits.

And finally, the mystical essence of "Mayan Technology For The People":

"The plane makes a pass over Pedrito's hut, and he raises the stick and waves it furiously at the war plane. The plane then changes its course and leaves in the direction of its base.

Pedrito says "There now" and starts playing once more with his piece of cork, with his little car.

The Sea and I look at each other in silence. We slowly move towards the stick which Pedrito left behind, and we pick it up carefully. We analyze it in great detail.

"It's a stick," I say.

"It is," the Sea says.

Without saying anything else, we take it with us. We run into Tacho as we're leaving. "And that?" he asks, pointing to Pedrito's stick which we had taken. "Mayan technology," the Sea responds."

An imaginative gesture by a young boy, which diverts an annoying war plane. Successfully.

The final constraint of the magick of the teleological process, the final affirmation of reality, is the power of our IMAGINATION.

19-05-01, 01:54 PM	#3
Ramona_A_Stone Formal Ball Proof Join Date: May 2000 Posts: 2,948	Ricardo Dominguez is the Senior Editor of Thingnyc and a founder of Electronic Disturbance Theater. I came across this piece and was simply struck by its beauty as well as perhaps a little jarred by it. I supressed my urge to post it with any initial commentary or personal interpretation, however as I see it this "disturbance theater" is a movement of modern artists whose activities encompass hacktivism, cyberterrorism and acts of electronic civil disobedience, and a movement which Dominguez and others have patterned after the "real" Zapatista philosophy, in its broadest global aims. (I should also say that although I am not advocating acts of terrorism or violence, I am resonant with these issues on an artistic level, which extends in my definition to my, and I believe everyone's, presence and interaction on the Net - are we not all artists here ? Submitted for your contemplation: The Diary Of Nathan Adler or The Art-Ritual Murder of Baby Grace by David Bowie, the liner notes from the Outside and the source of my nom de guerre, who is described as a "tyrannical futurist.") Let me quote a bit of the above Zapatista site, and though it may be a gross trivialization of their true, vital, and even militant nature, point out how some of this language might metaphor the concerns of many hyper-vigilant NetHeads toward the power struggles in their own cyber-backyards. "...It is perhaps for this reason–the lack of interest in power–that the word of the Zapatistas has been well received in other countries across the globe, above all in Europe. It has not just been because it is new or novel, but rather because it is proposing this, which is to say, to separate the political problem from the problem of taking power, and take it to another terrain... ...Our work is going to end, if it ends, in the construction of this space for new political relationships. What follows is going to be a product of the efforts of other people, with another way of thinking and acting. And there we are not going to work; instead, we would be a disturbance... ...We do not want others, more or less of the right, center or left, to decide for us. We want to participate directly in the decisions which concern us, to control those who govern us, without regard to their political affiliation, and oblige them to "rule by obeying". We do not struggle to take power, we struggle for democracy, liberty, and justice... ...It is not our arms which make us radical; it is the new political practice which we propose and in which we are immersed with thousands of men and women in Mexico and the world: the construction of a political practice which does not seek the taking of power but the organization of society. Intellectuals and political leadership, of all sizes, of the ultraright, of the right, the center, of the left and the ultraleft, national and international criticize our proposal. We are so radical that we do not fit in the parameters of "modern political science". We are not bragging … we are pointing out the facts. Is there anything more radical than to propose to change the world? You know this because you share this dream with us, and because, though the truth be repeated, we dream it together... ...You struggle for power. We struggle for democracy, liberty and justice. This is not the same thing. Though you may be successful and conquer power, we will continue struggling for democracy, liberty and justice. It does not matter who is in power, the Zapatistas are and have always struggled for democracy, liberty and justice... ...We hope that the people understand that the causes that have moved us to do this are just, and that the path that we have chosen is just one, not the only one. Nor do we think that it is the best of all paths. …. We do not want a dictatorship of another kind, nor anything out of this world, not international Communism and all that. We want justice where there is now not even minimum subsistence. …. We do not want to monopolize the vanguard or say that we are the light, the only alternative, or stingily claim the qualification of revolutionary for one or another current. We say, look at what happened. That is what we had to do..." In essence, (my interpretation) the Zapatista aspire to take the form of 'perpetual disturbance' to the cybernetic loop of government, a heuristic for tearing down obstacles to dialogue. As I see it, this adoption of philosophy is not a "gloomy outlook" by any means, rather it is an affirmation for the future of the power of the individual. Clearly, this is a future that must be fought for, Not by opposing the orders which are fighting for their own capitalistic concerns and freedoms, but by breaking away and beyond these concerns. We must not make the mistake of fighting the same old corporate and political wars on the level of this 'new frontier' of cyberspace; such conflicts are inherently destined to forge the same responses, to focus the same systematic limitations back into the 'old world order.' The richer social interconnectivity TankGirl refers to is something that has always existed, and something which has never been adequately contained, acknowledged or expressed by the Power Media. Power is concerned with the mass of common denominators; its languages become increasingly archaic in the face of obstinate eccentricites whose voices are not heard. The "arms" we have on this "new battleground" are unique in History by the very virtue of their accessibility, the power of our own voices of intelligence and open-mindedness to create signs large and small, and for movements to follow gestures into the elsewhere. "Instead let us like the Zapatistas continue to break the Mirrors of Power and move into the elsewhere." As the outward flow of this space expands, its growth is increasingly anticipated and projected so that many concerns are already meeting the "Mirrors of Power" reflecting the persistent systematic response back at them. These "mirror wars" could only prove to be, as TankGirl insinuates, the very forces which would confine this explosion of energy, sculpting it into a facsimile of the inwardly spiraling arguments of the 'old world.' Quoting Ms. TankGirl, from the "A Day in the Life" thread: "Hammer down the phantom of Napster and you have WinMX and Morpheus instead. Hammer them down and you have 10 JXTA projects that are doing the same thing. There is no end to it. It's a pusher's nightmare: the clientele is learning to grow their own weed and even to spread it for free - just for the joy of sharing." Nice fractal imagery, the Orbs of The Blob, responding to every hammer blow by exploding into mercurial octopi tentacles channelling toward the elsewhere, to root, swell, blob and be hammered down again, recursively. But I suggest that this is the sustenance of the 'Mesh,' the echoing sound of the same forge on which the old metals of industry were hammered. This is the Mirror War, in effect. "Post-media cells must fight the future with gestures that have no name in the present. " I glean another interpretation of the designation "Post-Media Cells." We simply are the post-media cells, you and I, no apocalypse here, rather a vision of ourselves and our progeny as the inheritors, the users of this media. We are They Who Get It. The Receivers. Again, to my mind's eye, a lovely vision; the information flowing out of and back into monitors everywhere, illuminating the envelope of each users experience and understanding like a dewdrop on Indira's Web, each user left with their own responsibilties to interact by the affirmation, correction, debate, amplification, synthesis, and creation of information. The Napster user, as a post-media cell, is Uroborus, the serpent which swallows its own tail, but it's the dynamic interactive linkage of these cells, the 'joy of sharing' which defined its content and its true power. Napster however, as a multicellular post-media organism attains a predictable, and familiar form, and one that readily charges into the Hall of Mirrors to cannabalize itself and be hammered into the Mesh. Largely, subsequent replications may be an endless string of similar gestures. "Post-media cells must travel among strings of inventions that fall outside of the logomass." I think it's easy to see how, out of this fractal empire of building and tearing down the same structures, the very importance of P2P tech may be obscured, locked into an endlessly rising canon of repetitious gestures. I believe Dominguez means to warn us, simply and finally, to seek ways to break out of these loops. In my mind this could be as obvious as something I (and certainly others before me) have imagined for some time: a true revolution against "the music industry" in the form of a true independent explosion into the elsewhere; a 'folk movement' of independent art. Of course this implies the need for actors. And here, the Mirrors of Power have certainly done their work. I can assure you, I often felt surprisingly lonely at the Napster forum as an independent artist who saw the basic phenomenon as having a purely positive effect, as being a possible if not probable medium for the exponential acceleration of something that had literally never had a medium before. "We want justice where there is now not even minimum subsistence." :: Jungle noises :: Even before the mirrors were erected, the twilight began to pick up the colors of artist's fear. "if this is to exist at all, then it must be seen as a commercial model... how can we do that ?- advertising ? - borrowing energy from this or that ?" ...indeed it still seems persistently counter-intuitive that it could be otherwise... someone has, by God, got* to be paid here.* Soon enough though, those who prey on the artist came out of the forest wielding judicial gavels, and the fence was built. This fence is high and pervasive at this point, reflecting myopic old multi-national corporate concerns back at us from every sector. "All post-media direct action cells must pursue the instabilities in Technologies--even before they become metaphors. We must move into areas that seem like the impossible - before they even gain presence among the protocols of the MESH." Within the context of Napster, in one sense perhaps we did pursue its instability to the fullest. However I cannot help but feel, in a greater sense, an opportunity to act - directly - not against the power, but apart from it was, or is, being passed by. But certainly not by everyone... We must learn from every mistake. "It does not matter who is in power, the Zapatistas are and have always struggled for democracy, liberty and justice..." "We must be ready for the unexpected. Not just about the emergence of new technologies - but how people will use them." This last statement, which is also the first statement in the Dominguez piece, implies that we are moving into areas of perpetual future shock, that we should be shocked at the possible diversity of voices in the future, and that we should have no pretense as to what they will be. We should only strive to insure that there is a political space, a forum, for them. Obviously, sharing information - not just music - is at the very heart of the Human experience, and is the point of power in the initiation of all change in the Human experience. The message in the persecution of Napster is a manifestation of a collective fear - "we should fear this technology - it will change the orders of power." Damn straight. "Let the MESH spend its time tweaking these possibilities." As Ms. TankGirl implies, one's approach to the idea of anarchy is a question of one's spirituality; either one embraces that truth, intelligence and good will ultimately prevail toward the best of all possible ends for humanity, seeking to open every channel for their expression - or one simply fears that the ultimate "chaos" of the elsewhere equals the dissolution of necessary policies designed to subvert our nature into ritual and often frustrated forms of expression. But doesn't an anarchy of Human concerns already exist ? Is this not the lot of our species and the very gift of our individuality ? As the 'elsewhere' is nothing but the subjective experience of up to six billion other living Human beings, and the internet is a realm of *ideas, I submit that one's very definition* of anarchy is a statement of relative "self-trust" - a reflection of one's confidence in the strength of the Human Spirit to change the world into a place more like itself than it found it, so to speak. It is my personal belief that, as the World Wide Intellect is the only observable force in nature which works aggressively against The Second Law of Thermodynamics, true chaos is impossible - as beyond the threshold of individual experience as it is beyond the probabilities of the system I am speaking to you through now. There is nothing to fear but limitation. Again, in agreement with She of The Tanks, the first step toward breaking beyond the screens of these microcosmic limitations is to not engage them, but to seek, or if necessary, create exits. And finally, the mystical essence of "Mayan Technology For The People": "The plane makes a pass over Pedrito's hut, and he raises the stick and waves it furiously at the war plane. The plane then changes its course and leaves in the direction of its base. Pedrito says "There now" and starts playing once more with his piece of cork, with his little car. The Sea and I look at each other in silence. We slowly move towards the stick which Pedrito left behind, and we pick it up carefully. We analyze it in great detail. "It's a stick," I say. "It is," the Sea says. Without saying anything else, we take it with us. We run into Tacho as we're leaving. "And that?" he asks, pointing to Pedrito's stick which we had taken. "Mayan technology," the Sea responds." An imaginative gesture by a young boy, which diverts an annoying war plane. *Successfully.* The final constraint of the magick of the teleological process, the final affirmation of reality, is the power of our IMAGINATION.