AUTHOR: Sarah Kanouse
TITLE: Networking the Revolution
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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ALLOW PINGS: 1
DATE: 06/04/2004 06:56:32 AM
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(originally written as a presentation for Radfest; the panel is "Networking the Revolution: Community Building, Media Activism, and New Technologies)

For three weeks this spring, a diverse set of objects, events, airwaves, and data packets existed together in a single location under the name The Public Square. The project, which I undertook for my MFA thesis exhibition, was an attempt to suggest and create a hybrid public square existing as much in the ‘virtual’ domain as the physical. Taking my cue from the multitude of theorists decrying the vanishing of public space, the impoverishment of the public sphere, and the contraction of the public domain, I sought to test the possibility of constructing a localized, temporary, autonomous space.

Built around the conceptual structure of the "square" the project was anchored in four locations two physical spaces and two electronic ones. The first physical location was the Krannert Art Museum, a public museum at the University of Illinois, in which I was expected to put work by virtue of my completion of the graduate program in studio arts. I had always considered the museum, with all the histories and economies white-washed in its cube, a problematic location at best, and the opportunity to explicitly engage the omissions of the museum was a chance too good to pass up. I set up an installation of four live mics and equipment for creating a webstream. The microphones recorded and streamed the sound from the museum 24 hours per day.

Each day for the duration of the exhibit, public, participatory events took place in outdoor locations all around the city. These events, which ranged from protests to bike clinics to discussions and other events, were selected because they represented some claim to physical space as a location for public discourse and action outside of the dominant commercial and private uses of that space. Most were created for the project; some were longstanding activities that related to the project’s themes and goals. These roaming events formed the second physical anchor of the conceptual square.
The webstream of the museum was picked up and broadcast 12 hours per day via unlicensed low power—better known as pirate—radio, which formed the third ‘anchor’ of the conceptual public square. The roaming events were broadcast as well, and the broadcasts of the museum and the events were mixed into a binaural, stereo signal and archived online at the website (the final anchor of the square. The website also provided information on the events, broadcasts, and the project. The website is still up, with photos of the events and the archived broadcasts, at www.thepublicsquare.net.
So by now, you may be wondering how such an idiosyncratic project got to be on a panel such as this? Sometimes when faced with unanswerable question, I find it helpful to engage in a tactic of exaggerated naivete. So, in that spirit, I’ll turn to the panel title for a cue and unpack the project, for all of us, piece by piece.

Networking
I enjoy thinking of resistance as a rhizomatic network of diffuse collectivity in which my project exists not so much in solidarity but in collaboration and dialogue with others. This network is at times overt, as projects and movements share ideas and skills with one another, as at this conference. At other times it is subtle, when one project is critiqued in light of another or answers the shortcomings of another project with its own new work. A network of critique as well as consensus is created.

How did The Public Square participate in that network? The project suggested a hybrid model of public space, one which is constituted both in the electronic world and in the physical world which, despite 1990s techno-utopianism, has been amply demonstrated to continue to matter. Because of the ways both technology and physical spaces are regulated, controlled, and policed, no viable public sphere can be constituted exclusively in one domain. Given the number of technical problems our DIY technology faced, it is also clear that we did nothing more than suggest a model. Not surprisingly, a viable public sphere, even a temporary one, is not something that can be constructed on a network of student loans and credit cards.

More concretely, the project furthered the goals of networking in several ways. By including both events I designed for the project, events created by others for the project, and events that would be happening anyway, The Public Square provided a new framework in which to understand activist and culturally resistant activities specifically in light of making claims to public space. The project created new skill networks by introducing activist tech people to one another and by distributing low power radio skills and equipment to a small network of engineers. And lastly, emporary networks created by the project promise to have lasting effects in town. Many people expressed their pleasure at meeting folks they had needed to speak with for a long time; undergrads met community activists and have begun to collaborate on projects. Most promising is the new Champaign-Urbana Food Not Bombs that formed out of a trial completed for The Public Square.

The Revolution
Tired of waiting or perhaps alarmed by the historic record, many of us on the left now hear talk of the revolution as quaint nostalgia or have come to place our hope in a multitude of small revolutions. The Public Square participated in the tradition of small-scale revolution, those based on profound transformations of our festive, intellectual, discursive, and needs-meeting lives. In working on the project, I was struck again and again by the profound sense of ‘rightness’ people had in the different activities we were conducting, regardless of how the authorities received them. The teens who dropped in on our barter of used clothing at the mall and the softball fans who excitedly made their own calls over pirate radio took it for granted that we had a right to be in the spaces, that we had a right to broadcast our own radio. In its own small way, the project increased the expectation for participation, which is the foundation of every revolutionary movement.

Community Building
I've often been critical of the way the word "community" is used in art, politics, and other field. When it is not an outright conservative term, as in "community standards," it is nonetheless monolithic, tending to assume that community is self-evident and identifiable by some clear marker, usually of identity or "lifestyle." What I enjoyed about The Public Square is that is refused to present itself as the authentic expression of some already-existing community; rather, a partial and contingent community was created every time a group came together. It provided multiple ways for individuals to participate in the forming of community, ranging from face-to-face interactivity to passive listening to written response, and it never promoted an identity for the community that would subsume the identity or activity of the individual.

Media Activism
The activism of The Public Square is structural, rather than topical. The project addresses the big picture we arguably are trying to achieve through all media activism—an expanded public domain. The project suggests that a public sphere can be created in the activities of daily life—an assertion with which I am uncomfortable, as it ignores the vast structural and policy apparatuses in place to circumscribe daily activities. The limited range and unclear sound on so many of the broadcasts underscore just how difficult it is to be heard even when one builds your own platform, and it is as activism that the project is least successful.

New Technologies
When Sascha invited me to participate in this panel, I felt that familiar twinge when forced to descibe my work in "new media" or "new technologies."The word "new‚" hasn't managed to shake that old avant-garde or utopian ring, and as a techno-skeptic, I have a hard time with the implication that "[better access to better] technology will save us" almost inevitably present in sentences where "community," "activism," and "technology" appear near one another. So, I'm inclined to protest that webstreams and pirate radio are really NOT very new technologies. Radio is over 100 years old, and webstreams became common more than five years ago ‚Äî an eternity in tech development these days.

What really interests me with both pirate radio and webstreaming is how they are complementary applications of old technologies. Almost everyone has a radio receiver to tune into a relatively small number of frequencies, while fewer have computers for listening to a staggering number of webstreams. However, it is easier to create streams using open-source software than it is to purchase pirate radio equipment and begin broadcasting. The inverse relation between the accessibility of the platform and the possibility for being heard continues to present tactical questions for activists and cultural producers, and I can’t pretend to possess any answers. How much do we need "new" technologies, and how much work do we still have to do securing our access to old technologies and applying them in more creative ways?

By Way of Conclusion
In considering this project in light of the theme of this panel, a set of tensions has been lurking in the background, and I hope to leave you with them to consider in discussion. As is often the case, these tensions relate to the ambivalent and ambiguous relation of art to activism or, to be more precise, cultural resistance to political resistance. In contrast to Sascha’s and Bob’s presentations, I can present no definitive data on the effects of the project, and in the world of community organizers, any event with such a brief engagement with creating public dialogue and with such a heterogenous approach to what we usually understand to be ‘issues’ is immediately suspect. While I agree with critics who charge much of so-called ‘new genre’ public art is rather ineffective and self-involved social work, I hope I have persuaded you there is room for the temporary and suggestive intervention in social and political space within the total network of resistance.