Re: [-empyre-] Tactics and Strategies

Ryan Griffis <ryan.griffis@gmail.com> · Sat, 14 Oct 2006 18:18:17 -0500

On Oct 13, 2006, at 10:47 AM, Renee Turner wrote:

I am sorry for the delayed response.  We were in Stockholm and  
could only go online via a coin operated surfing station in our  
hotel. The whole experience was a nightmarish mixture between  
broadband technology and a penny arcade.

yikes... sounds like a potential project starting point though (penny  
arcades and broadband, that is)!

...Sometimes, it is interesting to be both consumer and producer.   
There are immense potentials in operating at that intersection.   
(maybe that's the pragmatism you speak of...)

yes - i think this idea/potential is part of my interest in  
"pragmatism." As undefined and blurry as that interest is :)

Borrowed languages and adapted tools, create space for things not  
to be what they seem.  They open up space for works to tap into  
other systems, known languages and as a result, reach audiences  
never imagined.  And here, I would like to pick up on another  
notion of De Certeau,  "la perruque", the wig or disguise. He  
writes: La perruque is the worker's own work disguised as work for  
his employer.  It differs from pilfering, in that nothing of  
material value is stolen. It differs from absenteeism in that the  
worker is officially on the job.  La perruque may be as simple a  
matter as a secretary's writing a love letter on "company time" or  
as complex as a cabinetmaker's "borrowing" a lathe to make a piece  
of furniture for his living room. (p.25)

CAE also wrote a great text that takes this idea of appropriation of  
time/resources at work titled "Slacker Luddites." Their idea of SLs  
is expressed as:

<quote>The slacker Luddite delights most in misappropriating the  
technology, and in turning the authoritarian codes of the workplace  
inside out. H/is mission is not to destroy the material aspects of  
work - this would be as misguided as the actions of the originary  
Luddites - but rather to destroy the symbolic order that confines and  
alienates the individual. This is not to say that an occasional  
intentional freezing or crashing of the technology never occurs, or  
that such actions are not of interest; however, these tactics, when  
done under the sign of slack, are only a means to a very limited end.  
All high-end slackers know that it is the hallucination of the  
workplace that must be destroyed, not that which conveys the  
hallucination.</quote>

( full text available here http://critical-art.net/books/ecd/ 
index.html ).
 In a way, through mis-recognition and the vernacular of the web,  
our work can move across unfamiliar territories or finds itself  
viewed in unconventional registers.

This is exactly what i was thinking regarding the cross-over of the  
sub-rational and rational... and precisely what attracted me to your  
work for the subRational eRuptions show.

Actually, in an interview many years ago someone asked this same  
question.  If you say your engaged in "research" it is inevitable.   
We couldn't answer then...and we've discussed this point with each  
other quite a lot.   "success or failure?" ....it was a question  
that literally stupefied us.   Not because there is nothing at  
stake, but maybe successes and failures have their own delusions.   
Could there be another option, of going back to the drawing  
board....again... and again...?

Yes... this has been my reaction to similar questions, and why i am  
so interested in, yet wary of, the ideas of pragmatism/positivism  
that i see surfacing in some current work and certainly in the whole  
"post-critical" discourse. Martha Rosler once wrote in an early text  
(1979) titled "For An Art Against the Mythology of Everyday Life"  
that <quote>Cultural products can never bring about substantive  
change in society, yet they are indispensable to any movement that is  
working to bring about such changes. The clarification of vision is a  
first step toward reasonably and humanely changing the world.</quote>

i guess my question isn't whether continuously going back to the  
drawing board is an option, but what information/desires/needs we use  
to decide when to reassess/redesign/rework. i think you're right,  
that notions of "success" and "failure" are too elusive and  
problematic to be tactically useful. Can we discuss what the stakes  
are in non-zero-sum terms...

hopefully this is somewhat coherent... allergy/sinus meds are taking  
their toll.

best,

ryan