At the fourth »Next 5 Minutes« festival for tactical media, an event that Amsterdam has hosted at irregular intervals since 1993, the prevailing atmosphere seemed far removed from the festival’s original fervor at the idea of setting off in courageous new directions. Instead, the mood was more one of quiet contemplation on the question of how effective current artistic means could actually be. While artists at the last festival (in March 1999) still firmly believed in the potential impact of tactical media, thanks to the pioneering work in building up Internet culture that had already been rendered, now this brand of self-referentiality forms more of an exception to the rule.

It was everywhere evident that important occurrences since »Next 5 Minutes 3« had left deep tracks in the conception of this year’s festival and in the discussions held during the event 1 – incidents and repercussions that can be summed up with catchwords like Seattle, Genoa, 9/11, dotcom crash, wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yugoslavia.

The after-shocks caused by the publication of »Empire« and the effects of the founding of the Indymedia Center in 1999 also played their part in coloring the themes addressed at »n5m4«. Unlike at the last festival, this year’s themes did not only pinpoint particular or local situations, but also – more than ever before – dealt with a frequently invoked »whole«. Although the festival’s various focuses -- »The Reappearing of the Public«, »Deep Local«, »The Tactics of Appropriation« and »The Tactical and the Technical« -- continued to emphasize, usually in workshops and film programs, the festival’s traditional empathy for local agendas, in the general discussions large-scale, global themes predominated. This could be felt in the introductory panel discussion or in the discussion critiquing biotechnology, as well as in the closing discussion, in film programs such as »Global Conflicts« and films including »The Fourth World War«2 (a strongly emotional and, with its call to action, ultimately essentialist film) or in the live broadcast from the WTO Summit in Cancun. These all demonstrated that demands for an alternative form of globalization and the policies of tactical media had come together to define common goals (internationalism, solidarity, mobilization, etc.). What this entailed above and beyond such goals, however, in concrete terms of usage, strategies and the definition of tactical media, was noted by many to be at least problematic, if not in a downright crisis situation. The genre of tactical media, which played such an important role in the discourse on Net culture and Net activism during the nineties, today finds itself at a critical impasse, now that the Internet has changed in a direction that is anything but conducive to activism.

Thus, an analytical mood set the tone at n5m4, along with a self-conscious earnestness. Euphoria was at any rate scarce, and its absence should be taken to be a positive, self-reflexive signal. The days in which subversion, activist Net art, fake »adbusting« and »hacktivism« were upheld as valid methods for the use of tactical media (as was still the case in 1999) are over. Now it can no longer simply be a matter of merely attacking the image itself; the solution put forth at the festival seemed to lie more in putting a finger on the connection between political power and the structures constituting knowledge as conveyed in the media, and trying to exercise a realistic political influence on this relationship. And therein lies the crux of this tactic, since it also signifies a departure from the politics of symbolism, and a loss of faith in the adequacy of merely correct media representation.

Even in the introductory debate on whether the concept of «multitude» was still pertinent today, a gulf between aspiration and impact could be felt at the festival. Characterized by some of those participating in the panels as a «myth» or as a misleading tool for representation (taking the anti-war demonstrations of 15 February 2003 as example), the term »multitude« did not exactly become the leit motif of the festival. The fact that forcing a premature consensus was not an issue in Amsterdam is a tribute to the festival’s ability to continue to produce accessible criticism. In Geert Lovink’s new book, »My First Recession«, which was launched during the festival, the author applies »radical pragmatism« and uses an analysis of mailing lists such as Syndicate, Xchange and Oekonux to argue vehemently for a continuation of Net criticism. Lovink is able to link this legacy of the nineties most trenchantly with the situation in Amsterdam: »The society of global networks is no longer a promise, but is now fluid and dirty reality. Instead of today once again announcing the next new wave of the future, it would be more interesting to assume that we’re already there, and to stop and study its mechanisms«. 3

As far as n5m4 is concerned, this was by no means, as Lovink claimed to have ascertained while there, the festival at which art and activism were finally to be fused. At any rate, the works by Bureau d'études and Richard Rogers (»Issue Atlas Project«) presented at the panel discussion on «Tactical Cartography: Diagrams of Power – Visualising for the Public Eye» were not really able to convey that a direct connection had been found here to activist practices outside the art world. Whereas Brian Holmes, speaking for Bureau d'études, perceived a visualization strategy in the group’s work that reflected precisely the hegemony spawned by identifying with the system represented, Rogers criticized the Bureau maps as a »positivist« undertaking. Speaking from the audience, Ted Byfield interjected that Rogers’ project did not produce maps, but rather diagrams, while Felix Stalder attributed a uniform, simplifying character to Bureau’s approach, which was unable to take into account the paradoxical structures of the system depicted. This discussion demonstrated once again that, even though these kinds of maps functioned as artistic visualization strategies, their applicability and the reliability of the data used in respect of the opportunities provided for tactical practice did not go unquestioned.

The fact that this discussion reflected more of a problem with how to handle tactical media than an artistic issue was confirmed in the closing discussion, »Crisis in Tactical Media«. In the course of this event, questions arose that were both fundamental and potentially fatal for a festival of tactical media. Joanne Richardson cited, as an example of a functioning use of tactical media, a Web forum run by Rumanian Neo-Nazis, using it to back up her thesis that the use of tactical media had been invalidated by virtue of the fact that the term itself had been emptied of meaning and urgently needed to be replaced by something more apt. And David Garcia, one of the founders and organizers of the festival, complained that, although there were still plenty of nerds and activists on the activism scene, the divas were long gone, leaving the field bereft and »unsexy«. In this area of much-needed speculation, the question came up of whether another »Next 5 Minutes« festival was necessary at all.

»When a conflict is not productive, you just leave it« – perhaps Garcia had in mind here Brian Holmes’ words (spoken in another context) during the opening discussion. The fourth n5m was a festival whose actual productivity will possibly unfold only in retrospect (in the period leading up to the next n5m, which would be a welcome continuation). One touchstone here will certainly be the events put on by the »WE SEIZE! « group during the WSIS, the »World Summit on the Information Society«, organized by the UNO and taking place this December in Geneva. The fact that the amazingly well-attended working meetings of this group during the festival, conceived as open discussions, are only now showing consolidated effects, namely on the corresponding mailing list 4, speaks in favor of the supposition that n5m4 will be characterized by a belated productivity. And, although many visitors could be heard commenting that they felt overwhelmed by recent developments (political, economical and technological), culturally pessimistic laments were mostly absent – or, as Lovink summed it up in his modernist way: »World history is still speeding on ahead«. And the march through the institutes and NGOs has only just begun.

Next 5 Minutes 4, De Balie, Paradiso, Melkweg and other venues in Amsterdam, 11 to 14 September, 2003, http://www.next5minutes.org

 

Translated by Jenny Taylor-Gaida

 

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