The Volkswagen case reminded me of case study (more of an anecdote really) related by the distinguished Sociologist the late Ulrich Beck. It was a story he told to illustrate the process of institutionalised denial by which some organisations seek to mis-manage a new era of risk. The story is… read more →
There has long been a question over whether the default humanistic anthropology and “interiority” of the traditional 20th century “literary novel” was equipped to say anything fresh about life in the technological society. Proponents of speculative or science fiction from Ballard to Gibson suggested that other forms were of fiction… read more →
One of the defining attributes of Tactical Media, that quasi-movement of the 1990s, is that it continually sought to propel itself beyond the confines of the semiotic landscape, setting out, not so much to describe things, as to do things. Tactical media’s preferred modality is that of “media acts”, which… read more →
This morning in a newspaper article Tony Blaire made a last gasp appeal to preserve some shred of the New Labor project, urging those planning to vote for Corbyn to come to their senses. It was a strange article laced as it was with the clear understanding that no one… read more →
As that most straightforward of publishing devices, the mailing list, also turns out to be one of the most resilient of the collaborative media forms to have emerged from the internet revolution, it makes sense for nettimers to get acquainted with the writings of the critic Claire Bishop, particularly those… read more →
Tactical Media Connections is an extended trajectory of collaborative research tracing the legacies of Tactical Media. The program is being realised through a series of meetings and exhibitions, culminating in the publication of a Tactical Media Anthology with contributions and dialogues ranging across generations and territories. Taken as a whole… read more →
The Fusion hypothesis is a natural development of Steve Jobs’s description of Apple’s ethos as being the marriage of technology to the liberal arts. But in recent research carried out in Brighton’s creative hub we see this concept adapted to the routinised ‘creativity lite’ of the new creative ecologies that… read more →
An all to familiar error goes largely un-challenged in the extensive public discourse on the Creativity topic, the tendency to elide the term creativity with the arts as though the two were interchangeable. The facts on the ground tell a very different story, revealing an inflationary expansion of the notion… read more →
A radical thinker with totalitarian tendencies Slavoj Zizek, writing in the New Statesman on the Charlie Hebdo killings used the opportunity to (once again) highlight the perceived weakness of liberalism. Negri and Hardt, in their book Multitude, relate an incident from the Bible when Jesus faced with a man possessed… read more →
Warhol’s most famous aphorism could easily morph into – “In the future everyone will have a job for 15 minutes”. Although he never once utters the words Creative Industries, the art critic and theorist Thierry de Duve’s wonderful little book, Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx, does much to… read more →