Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media

by Critical Art Ensemble

This third volume of essays in tactical media (following The Electronic Disturbance and Electronic Civil Disobedience) traces the developing topographies of digital intervention. Indicating that no cultural bunker is ever fully secure, the CAE show the possibilities of trespass, unleashing semiotic shocks that collectively could negate the rising intensity of authoritarian culture. Topics include contestational robotics, the financial advantages of anti-copyright, recombinant theater-as-resistance, and the possible roles of children as tactical media participants.

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of five tactical media practitioners of various specializations including computer graphics and web design, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. For CAE, tactical media is situational, ephemeral, and self-terminating. It encourages the use of any media that will engage a particular socio-political context in order to create molecular interventions and semiotic shocks that collectively could diminish the rising intensity of authoritarian culture.[1]

Since its formation in 1987 in Tallahassee, Florida,[citation needed] CAE has been frequently invited to exhibit and perform projects examining issues surrounding information, communications and bio-technologies by museums and other cultural institutions. These include the Whitney Museum and the New Museum in NYC; the Corcoran Museum in Washington D.C.; the ICA, London; the MCA, Chicago; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the London Museum of Natural History; Kunsthalle Luzern, and dOCUMENTA 13.

The collective has written 7 books, and its writings have been translated into 18 languages.

Its work has been covered by art journals, including Artforum, Kunstforum, and The Drama Review. Critical Art Ensemble is the recipient of awards, including the 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Grant, the 2004 John Lansdown Award for Multimedia, and the 2004 Leonardo New Horizons Award for Innovation.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This group was founded by my friends Steve and Hope Kurtz. Steve is being prosecuted under the Patriot Act for materials pertaining to the Critical Arts Ensemble's work found when, on May 11th, 2005, he awoke to find Hope had died in her sleep.

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

luckily i was able to study with Steve Kurtz around the time this was written...