The following is an edited transcript of excerpts from the "Art After
Activism?" panel that took place on 3.14.99 in Amsterdam as part of the
Next 5 Minutes 3 meeting on tactical media. David Garcia is an artist
and media critic living in Amsterdam. Steve Kurtz is a member of
Critical Art Ensemble. Associated with Paper Tiger and Deep Dish TV, Dee
Dee Halleck has worked in visual media for several years. Gregg
Bordowitz is a video maker and activist. Shu Lea Cheang is a nomadic
visual artist. Other participants included Renee Turner, Hans Kalliwoda,
Kate Rich and moderator Babeth van Loo. For more information see
http://www.n5m.org.

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David Garcia: One of the origins of the Next 5 Minutes comes from the
AIDS activist movement. One of my first contacts with the movement was
through Gregg [Bordowitz] and Act Up in a conference that a group of
people living in Amsterdam organized at the Paradiso building more than
a decade ago. We were very naive about many things. It was sort of a
political education for us to see so many of the tools that had been
developed by people like Jenny Holtzer and Barbara Kruger that were in a
way *critical* work, ethically vigilant work, but nevertheless diddn't
really go far behind the confines of the art audience, even when they
trespassed into the street. In a way perhaps the codes were so complex,
that they didn't really go beyond the art audience.

What we suddenly encountered were artists that apropriated the
techniques and used them and it seemed that art and art practic became
not just symbolic but an effective mobilizing tool for a whole area that
maybe had been invisible up until that point. I think that many of us
here in the Netherlands found that to be an amazingly inspiring model.
The Next 5 Minutes comes out of a perfect marrage, a relationship
between art and activism. The Next 5 Minutes has its origins in that
field.

Steve Kurtz: As some of you may or may not know, Louis Aragon, who was
the head of the communist party, and Andre Breton had a terrible falling
out and it was because Breton wouldn't get behind the party politics–he
thought this was throwing away his genius for no good reason. That was
1932 and at that time there probably was some kind of schism between the
avant-garde and and activist/organizers. And to have a panel like this
would have appeared very funny at that point.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge now and I think some very
profound changes have happened. Now this isn't to say that there aren't
artists that are still tenaciously trying to hold onto that modernist
idea of what an artist is, and that there aren't still people who
*perceive* artists as the "lone genius" wandering through the world.

But the two places that really show the kind of shift that has gone are,
first, that the enlightenment knowledge system is collapsing–the idea
that there are different knowledge bases, and you put each one it its
little box and that's where it stays. The current tendency towards
interdisciplinarity is to try to find spaces of hybrididy where various
specializations intersect. One of those intersections has been art and
activism. The second thing is the issue of globalization. Just think of
the various campaigns that we've heard about here. How many of you have
actually been to Nicaragua or to Haiti to see the sweat shops there?
Probably not too many. It's no longer an idea of politics that emerges
out of direct, immediate experience. From the get go (and probably the
whole time) politics is fully mediated. In other words we are
understanding it through the images that are brought to us, and through
various kinds of witnessing.

If I'm interested in the revolution in Chiapas it's not necessarily
because I was *there*. I know about it because people have told me about
it, I've read about it, I've talked to people, I've seen
videos–whatever. If we're thinking of building campaigns, of building
global supports, of really trying to construct movements, it's going to
be done through representation. And this is where artists carry such a
pivitol role. It is the artist's vocation to be able to manipulate
representation, to be able to use it as an effective communication
device. Even if we didn't want art and activism to be together, they
can't *not* be together. It is aetheticized from the get go. So, it
comes out that artists have to have some degree of activism within them
(some level of politics) and vis versa, the activist has some sort of
artist in them.

Dee Dee Halleck: With all due respect for superstructure, I really don't
think the revolution is going to be on imaging. There's a few other
things. I kind of cringe when I hear people say that the left has to
learn all these lessons from public relations. I just don't think we can
beat them at that game. And that's why Barbara Kruger and Jenny
Holtzer's work is so interesting, is because it's *not* really that.

The Zapatista's imagery is strong not because their guns are strong. The
strength is in the contrast between the *wooden* guns and the automatic
rifles that the Mexican army has. They know that that image is going to
go on TV–so there's sort of a strategic use. I don't think they should
paint their wooden guns to make them look like machine guns, because the
whole point is that they are wooden guns.

Gregg Bordowitz: I advocate both. From this position of art and
activism, these kinds of dychotomies, I always end up saying "yes" to it
all. Many of these problems can be solved with conjunctions: and, and,
and. Come one come all. Get on board. Technology is supplemental. It
adds another fold, another crease of the fabric.

I think that one way to shuffle a set of concerns into political art is
to function from a place of desire: what do we *want*.

Alex Galloway: Maybe I'll go to bat for technology here. I agree with
you about the "and, and, and," but perhaps I don't agree with you to the
extent that technology is simply another tool. I think technology is a
very unique tool that has certain characteristics, some of which we've
never seen before and some of which we've seen before but only in less
potent forms.

The basic question here is: What do artists and activists have in
common? Things like fighting bureaucratic heirarchy, fighting control
over communications technologies like television. So if our shared goal
is really to create new machines to change these realities–new pieces
of software, perhaps–it's important that those machines act on a
material level, but it's also crucial that we make tactical machines
that operate in the realm of culture. So that's why we do net.art, to
supplement what other people do. And that's why some people are on the
picket line, to supplement what we do.

Let me mention a few things that are unique tools within technology:
net.art is the first artistic medium which from its beginning is
inherently global; we can use robots (software) to do work for us that
we can't do ourselves–the idea of artificial life; the many-to-many
communication structure that existed temporarily in little islands until
now; interactivity–we've seen this before, but never in its potent,
pure form where artists can create project that don't even *exist* until
someone else creates the artwork by using it and interacting with it;
and the last idea (that I don't really like very much because I don't
think it exists) is the idea of virtuality–a lot people think that
there are new things to be had with this new virtual world.

Steve Kurtz: I just want to jump in to answer Dee Dee, because she gave
a perfect illustration of what I was talking about: that, first, the
wooden gun of the Zapatistas is an aestheticized decision that is for a
secondary representation. So then to say that "if the artists come in
they're going to want to paint them" is, with all due respect, an
incredibly naive idea of what an artist is today. That's why we
endlessly need to have this kind of redundant discussion.

The second thing is how are you going to convince anyone out there that
they should be involved in the "Save Mumia" campaign? They're not in
Philadelphia, they have no lived experience with it. You're still going
to have to make these very aestheticized decisions like picking the
wooden gun: how am I going to communicate the information truthfully,
how am I going to bring the complexity of the situation to someone that
doesn't live it. This is where artists and activists come together.
Artists and activists aren't *exactly* the same thing. But there is a
very healthy overlap, a healthy meeting place between those two.

David Garcia: Bringing together the art community and the activist
community is not that easy. I feel they are very different communities
(and I wouldn't want to be monolithic about what the art community is,
obviously it is multidimensional). For me the character of a conference
that would only involve campaigners, or only involve political
movements, one that didn't involve the artists, didn't involve the media
and media theory–a conference like that would have a very different
character.

What's precious about the arts–the visual arts discourse
particularly–is the feeling that it doesn't necessarily give answers.
Very much like Gregg's proposition about starting from desire, I felt
very much (when we were trying to articulate some of the areas that we
wanted to look at in this conference) that for me the value of having
the artists involved is that sometimes the artists are able to dramatize
the difference between what we want and what we actually are. And that's
not just about giving answers. In a way, sometimes the other communities
with which we work are too clear about the good and the bad, and making
those distinctions. Being able to dramatize that difference seemed to me
to be one of the prime values of having the arts community involved.

Shu Lea Cheang: Let me add that desire is coded in the new media. I'd
really like to be able to bring a conversation to this whole idea of
structure and base: where are we working, and what are we functioning
under–what kind of structure we are actually operating from. I think
it's ok to say "working from the heart" and "desire" but for me desire
is so coded.

Gregg Bordowitz: I agree completely that desire is coded, and by
invoking desire I wasn't trying to invoke some kind of pure "sense of
heart" or something like that. Desire is mediate, politics are mediated,
in the same way that the ground on which we are operating is mediated.
So I think desire becomes an emblem or a cypher for the impetus of
identifying what it is we want, where our hopes and aspirations lie.
These are still some of the fundamental questions that have to be asked.

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Audience Q&A

Q: I'd like to say something about the issue of labor, because both art
and activism is labor. It's never mentioned, and particularly it's not
mentioned in relationship to the new technologies. Technology is not
transparent even though we try to make it so.

Dee Dee Halleck: The whole thing of labor.. it's tremendously hard to
keep an nonprofit organization going–mailing, writing the damn
proposials, and trying to pay the rent. It's really hard.

Steve Kurtz: I've got to agree with you on that. The commodity market of
culture has the whole system in the US locked-down. It's refusing to let
artists change what they are, to let practices change. At this point
it's all made to serve a kind of high end luxury market. We're basically
at a loss as to how to restructure that.