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CREATING LINKS
"Only truth is revolutionary."
Lenin
"Don't hate the media, become the media."
Jello Biafra
OF POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT
What of political engagement today, particularly on the part of artists and intellectuals: that is, an awareness of a responsibility, in their creative work, toward social reality in this "post-modern" world? A world that has seen neoliberalism prevail everywhere, triumphant after the fall of the Communist Block, and the rise of rampant globalization and its correlate phenomena - the dwindling of state powers before the multinationals, and the citizen-subject's transformation into a consumer-individual.
It will certainly not be a question, in the limited framework of this text, of attempting to resolve the status of socially or politically concerned art, from an ontological point of the view - what it is, what it isn't, what it must be to be such, following what criteria, etc. -, but simply of establishing a few signposts, some points of reference, based on some very general considerations and propositions. I then examine a few select works and their "involvement" in the current context of the world as it is.
That said, what is activist art - and particularly, as it concerns us, activist "Web art"? No doubt, one could start by answering that an activist work of art is one to which the author (and subsequently the reader/spectator) attributes political value, that is, a work that allows at once for an observation (information/exposure) on the state of the world, and for a call to action (consciousness raising, a desire for change). Thus, in the first place, it stands to reason - to my mind at least - that, in attributing a political value to a work, we'll generally take into consideration the author's or artist's intention in creating such a work, his or her knowledge of the political and social situation (in general or in detail) when creating it, and of course the medium chosen and aesthetic strategies employed. One will also be concerned, in this type of work, with the relevance of the "message": these works having, in my view, to entertain a closer relationship with the "truth" than do other types of art works, a relationship of correspondence, but also of revelation.1
Finally, the question will be raised as to the effectiveness of these works, their effect (on the reader, spectator, or visitor), their incisiveness, whether their message is "on the nose"; their rhetorical effectiveness as well, of course - the marks of "well-formed" discourse, the payoff from the aesthetic effort -, but also their political effectiveness: can this work help "change things" or not, "change the world" or not?
Such are the general considerations. We see that political art must comply, more than other kinds, with the hic et nunc. Indeed a work cannot be considered "political" simply because it extols the perennial and general principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. It must also be inscribed in the here and now, must be "in situation," as Sartre put it.2
That is why a "political" work will generally be narrative rather than non-narrative. Literature, theatre (and performance), film have traditionally been more appropriate media for political intention and intervention than musical or pictorial works - less intellectual, more material, or more abstract (as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone Weil have separately pointed out).3 For an "activist" work informs, explains, justifies, shows, denounces, exposes, proposes, disseminates, convinces, and calls to action, to interaction.
Although Web art most often uses language, it is not a narrative form per se (or only in a fragmented, exploded manner, as in "hypertexts," which in the end are the swan song of traditional narrative, akin to the more extreme experiments of modern literature - for better or worse!). And Web art may include images and sounds, but cannot be described as painting or music either. No unity of place, no material support, no linear or sequential time (rather a fragmented, exploded, proliferating temporality), no space in the traditional sense, but a compact spatiality, collapsed into the quick flow of bits. Web art seems no longer to exist in the here and now - how can it then be "political"?
Yet, this may be a choice medium for such activism - especially considering the current context, where the mass media have in fact taken over the whole world "stage" (a world as stage). It would be naive to deny, however, that the human world, by its very nature, has always been representational and mediatized; that does not mean that it has no relationship with the "real," or that it has no reality as such: it is simply the case, nowadays, that the world is so emphatically given over to spectacle, to mass media - newspapers, radio, movies, TV, electronic media, video games, etc. - not exclusively, of course, the "great mediator" will always be language.4 Which doesn't mean, again, that the virtual5 "swallows up" the real; simply that it has become a privileged means in our time for dealing with the real, for processing the real. In its turn, the real is influenced, reflected and inflected by the world of representations, culture, and media, as, for instance, in our world views and our understanding of behaviour.
"Political" or "activist" Web art is therefore representational - and referential - all the same, for the world of bits, although non-material and artificial, has a relationship and dealings with the real nonetheless, as we've seen. Such works help provide a critical look at the "real" world - that is, the facts, events, power relationships, interests, etc. -, as well as at how the mass media convey/process this reality. They are therefore also self-referential (most of the time, at least).
THE WEB AS WEAPON
It has become difficult, after the patent failure of so-called communist and socialist regimes - which turned out to be totalitarian, and often brutally so - to continue to dream of a bright future, to hope and to prepare for the great coming and the "end of history." It is a certain conception of history, inherited from Hegelian idealism, modified and corrected by Marx (with a touch of Christian eschatology), that fell with the Berlin Wall. In describing the current era, one has often heard (and continues to hear) of "disillusionment," and of "the death of ideology": a way of eviscerating and obsoleting any dissenting discourse,6 and to pass "globalization policies" (Bourdieu, 2002),7 which now dominate discursive space, for a natural and therefore inevitable (if not desirable) phenomenon.8
For the nature of this policy - and of the discourse that promotes it - is precisely the evisceration of history, of the political, even of "politics" as such, in favour of the sole dictates of economics, which present and impose the market economy as an inevitable and ineluctable process, like the effect of a natural law, comparable to the rotation of the Earth or the expansion of the Universe.
At the same time, "political parties," of the kind that have become conventional over the last two centuries, advocating ideologies that one can readily label and historical date - democrat or republican, liberal or conservative, communist or social-democratic, left or right -, have seen their influence and credibility wane. All the more so, that their confrontation in the political arena has long-since (especially since the advent of television) too easily degenerated into spectacle,9 to which the "citizens" are a captive and passive audience, too-often powerless (or led to feel that way). Thus, they have come to view career "politicians" increasingly as pawns, as powerless as they, playing the game of the large multinationals or supra-national organizations, like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization,10 which have become the real decision-makers and masters of the world.
A power that is supported by the media, themselves concentrated in ever-smaller - and more powerful - groups of people, and all the more invasive in that it operates in a world where modes of communication are proliferating, diversifying, and spreading throughout the planet:
"Media groups now possess two new characteristics: first, they deal with everything that has to do with the written word, anything to do with the image, everything to do with sound, and they disseminate this through the most varied channels - print, radio, television (terrestrial network, cable, satellite), the Internet, and every kind of digital network. Second, these groups are global, not just local or national."11
In such a context, the question of truth seems in danger of becoming obsolete:12 for information, "entertainment," advertising, propaganda, are not only on the same footing, often dealt with and disseminated by the same groups, but their distinctions are blurred. A sign of the times: new linguistic combinations - "infomercial," "infotainment," "spin doctor," "soundbyte," "reality-TV"! - have become current and are often used, without the slightest hint of irony.
Now, "in the new ideological war imposed by globalization, the media are used as a combat weapon. Information, by reason of its explosion, its proliferation, over-abundance, becomes literally contaminated, poisoned by all kinds of lies, polluted by rumour, by disinformation, distortions, manipulations, etc."13
Of course, one could say that this state of affairs isn't all that new: propaganda, disinformation, bluff, mythification (and mystification) have always been the ready weapons of power (for ruler and challenger alike); it has simply become increasingly efficient as means of communication have spread. Generally, and in all ages, those holding power have more possibilities (financial, among them) of holding on to these means of communication, to make them serve their own ends. Furthermore, of course, these habits are not always coordinated: to err is human, and journalists, like the public opinion they help create and which they serve in turn, tend rather, quite honestly, toward superficiality (because of ratings, demagogy, deadlines, but also through lack of information, knowledge, intellectual training, perspective, etc.)
Be that as it may, it seems these days that politics, war, the economy, information are all increasingly reduced, in whole or in (large) part, to the manipulation of data - image, sound, and word -, itself reduced to bits, all the more subject to interpretation and distortion that one can more easily manipulate them.14 Techniques used on all sides, one could argue. Except that, once again, opportunities are not equal: on the right, media and economic monopolies; on the left, the (erstwhile, ci-devant) citizens; in other words, private interests versus the common good, private interests whose power and importance seem inversely proportional to the political and ethical need for truth and transparency.
Resistance is forming, however, on a planetary scale, not so much against the "virtualization" and the speedy circulation of information - a hopeless enterprise -, but against the concentration of this information in the hands the few. It is first an ideological war. And the resistance, if there's to be one at all, will be global - but to counteract the concentration of power, it must itself be decentred, its operations no longer vertical (seeking to overthrow a national government, for instance, or a particular group), but horizontal, networked. Not creating (armed) factions, but connections. The resistance with have to both play and foil the "virtual," from a distance, such as to counter a globalization that functions along two axes: the concentration (of power, primarily economic); and atomization, separation (of communities, individuals, areas of expertise).
In this context, the appearance of the Internet - decentralized, varied, a network of networks, a web, the Web - is precisely what this resistance should look like. And how appropriate, and ironic, that it was first devised by the US Department of Defense - the DoD - for military purposes.15 Nobody could have predicted its use by civilians and its extraordinary expansion, especially since the mid-nineties. Alterglobalists, among others, were quick to see its advantages.
For has the Web not become the world's preeminent public forum at the dawn of this millennium? That is, a place to intervene, to represent, to receive and confer acknowledgement, to gather (generally and in principle), freely and democratically, both as individuals and in communities (virtual or real), leading (sometimes, at least) to actions, also virtual or real. The alterglobalist movement would never have achieved its current magnitude and strength without the Web. With our current era's concentration of economic and political powers, privatization of public space and commercialization of private space, the Web is one of the only places - and an incredible tool - to allow other voices to be heard, information (of all kinds) to circulate, debates to occur, dissent to organize.16 Thus, "political" sites often serve as a complement to or extension of other media (like Le Monde diplomatique), for political groups with a precise program (like Attac), or for community groups (the micropoliticization of the seventies have given way to "glocalization."17) But these websites can also exist independantly on the Web, like the website Over My Dead Body, to name but one example, where the visitors are invited to take part in a "virtual demonstration" against all that is bad in the world today.
STRATEGIES
Given, then, that the Web has now become a choice place for engagement, and an efficient one, by reason of its availability, speed, globality, and democratic nature; and that, by the same token, information sites, discussion forums, and so on, are abundant; given, also, in a world where the mass media are used as weapons of (dis)information and large-scale distraction: reappropriating such media, "storming" them, or at least knowing how to use them and put them to other purposes, certainly constitutes a political act. One can confidently say that this new medium can offer the political artist a choice means of expression and dissemination. As early as 1948, Jean-Paul Sartre, observing literature's loss of influence and prestige, was suggesting writers turn unabashedly to the "mass media" in order to create works specifically for these new mediums (at the time, newspapers, radio, cinema).18
But when can a "political" site be considered Web art? And when can Web art be considered "political"?
To refer to the points given at the start of this text, an author's or artist's commitment does not in itself constitute a sufficient condition, nor his or her greater or lesser knowledge of the political situation: he may choose to express himself not through an artwork, but through pamphlets, letters to editors, petitions, or even through an information site, and so on, putting his status as a known writer or artist on the line, that is, as a public personality serving a cause, like Voltaire during the Calas affaire, as Zola with the Dreyfus controversy, or, closer to us, the "Manifeste des 121," in France, during the Algerian war.
That leaves the "aesthetic means or strategies" the work puts into play, and their effectiveness, or at least their effect on the spectator (intended by the author or produced in the work). One often notices that codes and strategies typical of modern art19 will mesh with those of new media.
Web art (as is typical of the post-modern or, let's say, more cautiously, of a certain conception of the post-modern) is characterized by its hybrid, "impure" nature: it mixes words, images, sounds, it samples things, it re-contextualizes, and, above all, inhabiting the Web, it is not closed on itself (in as much as any art can be entirely closed), but open (to the Web, onto the world), calling (demanding) the spectator's/visitor's active participation.
For the artist can assume, at a bare minimum, that if the spectator/visitor isn't familiar with the rhetorical and artistic strategies and methods typical of modern art - at least consciously, for its language has of course thoroughly seeped into popular culture, often thanks to the movies, or even to ads! -, the latter is now at least familiar with the world and codes of the new medium that is the Web, its modes of operation, its procedures, whether invited to explore a site, click on links, search Google, download images or music, send or receive e-mail or instant messaging, or play video games. The aesthetic is also unmistakable, the specific aesthetic of video games, for instance, or of government sites.
Artists will know how to use such (re)cognition - and the complicity with the viewer/spectator that such (re)cognition and its use can ensure - to recontextualize the accustomed action, relating it to (and clarifying it with) social and political content obtained through a critical perspective on the sate of the world, which one must disclose, criticize, denounce, help change. The artist, in short, will know how to use the Web, to a certain extent, against the Web (and certainly against the mass media and the powers they reinforce).
FIVE POLITICAL WEBWORKS20
One will find such strategies at work in a piece like September 12th, which blurs the distinction between (video) war games and war as (video) game, war as simple strategy game... without strategy, war as game of chance, war as happenstance: who are the good guys, who the bad, why are they fighting, at what price?
Or in a work like They Rule, where the tentacular, interwoven, almost incestuous nature of the centres of economic power and their decision-makers is manifest when spectators/citizens employ Web specific means, like a Google search, for instance, to bring to light and visualize for themselves, by themselves, the multiple interconnections and potential collusions or conflicts of interest that would otherwise most often remain hidden and ignored by the general public.
The dehumanizing, degenerative nature of the world of labour - which, subject to globalization and the market's exclusive "reasoning," has for many become not only mechanized and devoid of general meaning (typical of assembly line work, as of video games), but also unsteady and underpaid - is illustrated with humour in the seemingly juvenile and harmless games of Molleindustria, where the spectators/players are invited to "play" the role of a worker and to see him and make him (see themselves and make themselves) gradually and ineluctably slip into the underclass.
One constant then: from a concrete situation, make visible what was not visible - (re)create links and, at the same time, cast a critical eye on ways of life and codes in use on the Web, in the mass media in general - and in reality, that is, in the workplace, the corporate world, the political world, the entertainment world, etc. For to make links or not to make links is the crucial choice: links of correspondence, of association, of causality, of responsibility, between one event and another, one piece of information and another, one decision and another, one sphere and another, one world and another...
Thus, Andrey Velikanov's 1.1.0.9 presents images that have a "TV look" about them, borrowed from news coverage and Hollywood movies alike - and in which we see the workings of causal links that had hitherto been implicit, or all too obvious, often rushed or faulty, artificial or simply incomplete, leading to various interpretations, explanations, justifications for nonetheless acknowledged historical events, like the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, or US military intervention in Irak. The spectator is led to ask: how are these "facts" inter-connected? Is truth simply a question of causality? Are these causes specific or global? Are we ever told "the whole truth"? Can one recognize it?
Finally, US Department of Art and Technology (US DAT) clones an American government site so realistically (for whoever has frequented such sites at all - a large part of the population, at least in developed countries - and can immediately recognize the style) that, on first glance (and even on second), one takes it for "real." There's even a photo of President George "Dubya" Bush in person, shaking hands with the site's creator, artist Randall M. Packer, and naming him Secretary of State. Given the context of current American policies, one easily grasps the irony of this mirror play - where a fictional department presents itself as a real one, "backed up" by photographs - and how a lie, if served artfully, and skillfully, can easily pass for truth.
As the famed (late) French sociologist and activist Pierre Bourdieu puts it:
"I think that artists have a role, just as writers and researchers
do. They even have a significant role to play. They could contribute
to defending the gains of artistic research by pushing them forward,
this would be progressive action in itself. Even if they are not
"politically engaged," it would already be enormous. But they can
also, while mobilizing the most advanced resources in their field,
like new forms for example, contribute to social struggles and expose
the nonsense of what occurs in culture, science, etc..."21 - as well
as (why not?) in economics and politics."
Notes
1 : Following traditional - and most common - conception of truth. 
2 : See Jean-Paul Sartre (1948) Qu'est-ce que la littérature ?, Coll. Folio Essais, Gallimard, Paris.
3 : Doubless, their are exceptions: like photography, which stands as a document. Or works like Picasso's Guernica, an oft-cited example; but a pictorial work often needs to be placed in context to be truly understood as a "political" work.
4 : As well as tools, of course, including the computer.
5 : In the sense that has become current (if not necessarily right, cf. Blaise Galland (1999), Espaces virtuels : la fin du territoire ?) in our time to speak of the computerized world.
6 : "Struggling against globalization, is (excuse the expression) like pissing against the wind," Alain Minc (énarque, influential and much publicized essayist, author of many books, and liberal proponent of globalization. Author, in particular, of Epîtres à nos nouveaux maîtres, Grasset, Paris, 2003), cited in Maurice T. Maschino, "Intellectuels médiatiques, Les nouveaux réactionnaires", in Le Monde diplomatique, octobre 2002.
7 : "I speak precisely of 'globalization policy,' not of 'globalization,' as if it were a natural phenomenon." Pierre Bourdieu, "Pour un savoir engagé", in Le Monde diplomatique, février 2002.
8 : A strategy typical of the middle class since it acheived supremacy and established hegemony in the 19th century: indeed, short of claiming "divine right," like the nobility of the old regime, the middle class rather claimed a "natural" right to power, a claim reinforced by the scientific ethos of the modern era (cf. Sartre, op.cit.) Thus, notions like "social Darwinism" are more popular than ever in this era of neo-liberalism and "survival of the fittest."
9 : Guy Debord: "In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation." in La Société du spectacle, [trans. by Ken Knabb].
10 : The "great globalizing trinity," to quote Ignancio Ramonet, editor for the Monde diplomatique. Cf. Ignacio Ramonet, "Le Cinquième pouvoir", in Le Monde diplomatique, octobre 2003.
11 : Groups like "News Corps, Viacom, AOL Time Warner, General Electric, Microsoft, Bertelsmann, United Global Com, Disney, Telefónica, RTL Group, France Télécom, etc., ibid.
12 : In its place we no longer find a question - that is, a questioning, research, or inquiry -, but ready-made answers: either the "Truth," known in advance and imposed from above (fundamentalism, monolithic thought, cant), or "to each his own truth" (solipsist relativism, nihilism) in which anything goes and nothing matters.
13: Ibid. Everyone will of course remember the notorious "weapons of mass destructions" put forward by the Bush administration to justify its armed intervention in Irak. (As an aside, one may look at http://www.desinformation.com/ for a satirical counter-offensive, perhaps not as satirical as all that!)
14 : Cf. Guy Debord, op.cit. : "Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation," in "La société du spectacle" - or at least it seems convenient to have us believe as much.
15 : "In 1969, ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency), an agency set up by the US defense department, decided to connect its research facilities so as to share computer equipment; this gave birth to ARPANET, a network sufficiently decentralized to continue to function if a part of the network were destroyed in a nuclear attack. A whole series of protocols were implemented that would later serve the Internet." (cf. www.ac-nancy-metz.fr)
16 : Weblogs and warlogs are prime examples (among others), cf. Francis Pisani, "Internet saisi par la folie des " weblogs "", in Le Monde diplomatique, octobre 2003.
17 : cf. Blaise Galland (1999), Espaces virtuels : la fin du territoire ?
18 : He even uses the term, in op.cit., p : 266-268.
19 : Like sampling and collage, recontextualization, distantiation, self-referentiality, self-reflexivity, irony, parody, etc. - a quick and partial enumeration, of course, given here purely as an example and reminder. Moreover, one recalls that these procedures were used much earlier, particularly in literature. Indeed, perhaps one can say that modern art is characterized by a transposition of literary techniques to the visual arts, a transposition furthered by the advent of mechanical reproduction.
20 : The five works mentioned here are commented on in detail separately in this issue, so I give only a brief description at this juncture.
21 : « Entretien avec Pierre Bourdieu » ("Interview with Pierre Bourdieu"), in Flux News no 27, décembre 2001-janvier, février 2002.
Anne-Marie Boisvert
(Translated from French by Ron Ross)
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