TY - CHAP

T1 - Biopolitical Interventions in the Urban Data Space

AU - Apprich, Clemens

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

N2 - Taking as a point of departure the acknowledgement that tactical media work has lost in importance over the past ten years, this paper addresses the question of divergent political, artistic, and cultural practices as they relate to the overall themes of activist media and biopolitics. Against this background, it is the modern city and its hybrid of physical and digital space that potentially offers new fields of action. With its architectural form overlaid by a large number of data streams, it could be the site of an entirely new aesthetics of crisis, criticism, and resistance. Vienna’s Public Netbase has been among the pioneering institutions in Austria and Europe who made the digital world accessible for critical media work, taking issue with surveillance and control in this data space. Looking back, it is possible to identify positions of interest and outline their relevance for a future artistic and cultural practice. This paper will focus on the art project Zellen Kämpfender Widerstand/Kommando Freiheit 45 (ZKW) as an exemplary intervention into symbolic spaces of dominance. This project was created as part of a critical engagement with the Austrian Year of Anniversaries 2005, where the biopolitical utilization of public space went hand in hand with historical representations of statehood. Looking back upon the work of Public Netbase makes it possible to create a context for the activist deconstruction of official imageries and biopolitical sign systems, while contributing to the debate on possible points of connection for tactical media work.

AB - Taking as a point of departure the acknowledgement that tactical media work has lost in importance over the past ten years, this paper addresses the question of divergent political, artistic, and cultural practices as they relate to the overall themes of activist media and biopolitics. Against this background, it is the modern city and its hybrid of physical and digital space that potentially offers new fields of action. With its architectural form overlaid by a large number of data streams, it could be the site of an entirely new aesthetics of crisis, criticism, and resistance. Vienna’s Public Netbase has been among the pioneering institutions in Austria and Europe who made the digital world accessible for critical media work, taking issue with surveillance and control in this data space. Looking back, it is possible to identify positions of interest and outline their relevance for a future artistic and cultural practice. This paper will focus on the art project Zellen Kämpfender Widerstand/Kommando Freiheit 45 (ZKW) as an exemplary intervention into symbolic spaces of dominance. This project was created as part of a critical engagement with the Austrian Year of Anniversaries 2005, where the biopolitical utilization of public space went hand in hand with historical representations of statehood. Looking back upon the work of Public Netbase makes it possible to create a context for the activist deconstruction of official imageries and biopolitical sign systems, while contributing to the debate on possible points of connection for tactical media work.

KW - Digital media

KW - media activism

KW - Energy research

KW - bio-politics

KW - Media and communication studies

M3 - Contributions to collected editions/anthologies

SN - 978-3-902811-04-2

SP - 39

EP - 46

BT - Activist media and biopolitics

A2 - Sützl, Wolfgang

A2 - Hug, Theo

PB - innsbruck university press

CY - Innsbruck

ER -