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Bang.Lab / EDT Update, Call for Accountability and the Criminalization of Research
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In the past few weeks, a number of developments have happened in relation to the art/research practices of the bang.lab and Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) which we wish to share with the public in accordance with our long history of radical transparency.
- Since the November of 2009 the Transborder Immigrant Tool [http://bang.calit2.net/xborder] has become a media event with many groups and individuals, such as Congressman Duncan Hunter in his Op-ed in the San Diego Union Tribune, calling for the defunding of the Transborder Immigrant Tool, the University of California system began a financial audit of the project on January 11, 2010, in which they requested that every member involved be interviewed by Audit & Management Advisory Services (UCSD). The exact investigations (they claim that they are multiple) under way have yet to be clarified by UCOP or other UC entities, but in the interviews thus far, TBT members have been questioned about the usage of the funds and the originality of the project. The investigation has ‘arrested’ TBT’s developmental process and core research matrix.
- Indeed, due to widespread media coverage of the Transborder Immigrant Tool members of bang.lab and EDT also have been receiving copious hateful email and paper letters, some including threats of physical violence and murder [http://bang.calit2.net/xborderblog/?page_id=193]. Beyond the racist, xenophobic, classist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic “excitable speech” of the threats, the gendered nature of these hyperbolic responses has been as clear as the correspondence received in recent weeks by national representatives who voted for health care legislation or federal justices charged with representing those accused of terrorist acts.
- On March 2nd, http://Markyudof.com publicly declared the resignation of UCOP Mark Yudof in a gesture of minor simulation to encourage the imagining of other possible futures. On March 21st, bang.lab received notice that a faculty member at UC Riverside was being investigated in relation to this action.
- On March 4th, http://bang.calit2.net hosted a virtual sit-in against the UCOP website, providing a space for many people concerned with public education to embody their dissent online. As a result, UCSD IT Security shut down our server's access to the Internet for eight days. After that, we were informed that an investigation by the Senior Vice Chancellor (SVC) was begun by the UCOP of Ricardo Dominguez seeking criminal charges for the virtual sit-in, despite the legal precedent that a virtual sit-in is political speech, not a DDOS attack. This investigation has been framed by SVC as potential reason to end Professor Dominguez's tenure.
We feel that these events indicate a number of troubling trends within the current transnational struggle for education (and more equal distribution of resources, more generally speaking!):
- A complete disregard for our academic freedom as researchers engaging in trajectories of art, literature and technology research that the Visuals Arts Department and CALIT2 consider to be extremely valuable, and for which Professor Dominguez earned tenure for.
-The use of bureaucracy as a weapon, to prevent our research from continuing by bogging us down in endless meetings with accountants and investigations.
- The criminalization of dissent: across the UC system and the world on March 4th people engaged in actions, including civil disobedience, to try to restore public education, stop the budget cuts and work towards a better future for education. We are among hundreds of people facing charges for engaging in dissent from the very institutions that claim to foster independent thinking.
While we feel that poetry, walking art and queer technology cannot be quantified, “spread-sheet Excel-ed,” we in the bang lab harbor our own concerns for the lack of accountability that enables the UC system to continue transforming a public university for the state of California into a private corporation, accessible to a select few. That same selective lack of accountability fails to count the number of deaths tragically occurring because of international borders. To perform our own due diligence in the spirit of accounting for the here and now, we seek to “queer the census”: if you feel that you are a part of the bang.lab or have participated in any of our activities in mind, body, spirit (in real or virtual timespace), get up, stand up, sign your name in a comment at:
http://bang.calit2.net/2010/03/bang-lab-edt-update-call-for-accountability-and-the-criminalization-of-research/
- Since the November of 2009 the Transborder Immigrant Tool [http://bang.calit2.net/xborder] has become a media event with many groups and individuals, such as Congressman Duncan Hunter in his Op-ed in the San Diego Union Tribune, calling for the defunding of the Transborder Immigrant Tool, the University of California system began a financial audit of the project on January 11, 2010, in which they requested that every member involved be interviewed by Audit & Management Advisory Services (UCSD). The exact investigations (they claim that they are multiple) under way have yet to be clarified by UCOP or other UC entities, but in the interviews thus far, TBT members have been questioned about the usage of the funds and the originality of the project. The investigation has ‘arrested’ TBT’s developmental process and core research matrix.
- Indeed, due to widespread media coverage of the Transborder Immigrant Tool members of bang.lab and EDT also have been receiving copious hateful email and paper letters, some including threats of physical violence and murder [http://bang.calit2.net/xborderblog/?page_id=193]. Beyond the racist, xenophobic, classist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic “excitable speech” of the threats, the gendered nature of these hyperbolic responses has been as clear as the correspondence received in recent weeks by national representatives who voted for health care legislation or federal justices charged with representing those accused of terrorist acts.
- On March 2nd, http://Markyudof.com publicly declared the resignation of UCOP Mark Yudof in a gesture of minor simulation to encourage the imagining of other possible futures. On March 21st, bang.lab received notice that a faculty member at UC Riverside was being investigated in relation to this action.
- On March 4th, http://bang.calit2.net hosted a virtual sit-in against the UCOP website, providing a space for many people concerned with public education to embody their dissent online. As a result, UCSD IT Security shut down our server's access to the Internet for eight days. After that, we were informed that an investigation by the Senior Vice Chancellor (SVC) was begun by the UCOP of Ricardo Dominguez seeking criminal charges for the virtual sit-in, despite the legal precedent that a virtual sit-in is political speech, not a DDOS attack. This investigation has been framed by SVC as potential reason to end Professor Dominguez's tenure.
We feel that these events indicate a number of troubling trends within the current transnational struggle for education (and more equal distribution of resources, more generally speaking!):
- A complete disregard for our academic freedom as researchers engaging in trajectories of art, literature and technology research that the Visuals Arts Department and CALIT2 consider to be extremely valuable, and for which Professor Dominguez earned tenure for.
-The use of bureaucracy as a weapon, to prevent our research from continuing by bogging us down in endless meetings with accountants and investigations.
- The criminalization of dissent: across the UC system and the world on March 4th people engaged in actions, including civil disobedience, to try to restore public education, stop the budget cuts and work towards a better future for education. We are among hundreds of people facing charges for engaging in dissent from the very institutions that claim to foster independent thinking.
While we feel that poetry, walking art and queer technology cannot be quantified, “spread-sheet Excel-ed,” we in the bang lab harbor our own concerns for the lack of accountability that enables the UC system to continue transforming a public university for the state of California into a private corporation, accessible to a select few. That same selective lack of accountability fails to count the number of deaths tragically occurring because of international borders. To perform our own due diligence in the spirit of accounting for the here and now, we seek to “queer the census”: if you feel that you are a part of the bang.lab or have participated in any of our activities in mind, body, spirit (in real or virtual timespace), get up, stand up, sign your name in a comment at:
http://bang.calit2.net/2010/03/bang-lab-edt-update-call-for-accountability-and-the-criminalization-of-research/
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Regardless of how one participates in civil disobedience, be that physically on the streets, or by way of virtual sit-ins, the reality of a presence that works to eliminate the manipulation of life remains a dull absurdity as a political performance. Only the fact that the body is being used as an art language to confer human rights remains relevant. In this way, art, life, and politics exchange opinions, apparent or theoretical, since it is the very nature of the real and of the virtual body which extends this need. Accordingly, the attitude and energy of particular groups (e.g., Zapitistas, queer nation, animal rights activist, etc.,) gives further strength to search for a relationship between what makes this type of art an aesthetic activity, which requires resistance from each individual, and what pushes it to the kind of art that ECD practices. That the actual 'act' requires a live person to make the performance into a reality remains relevant, as a critique. However, in the question of whether or not ECD is a useful tactic for contemporary activism, what matters most is not how the 'acts' are propagated, rather, it is how much public discourse follows from the performative act and what type of reactions get generated by those targeted that's most important. Moreover, not only is one's own life used as material in this arena, but also the public in general is needed to complete the event. Therefore, ECD must be involved in a collective experience that leads us to reconsider our daily existence and the rules of 'political' behavior that bring these groups to a level of anxiety, discomfort, and ultimately one that arises as a response to the danger of loss. For this reason, ECD's use of the internet counts as a valuable form of civil disobedience, since it not only enables the non-violent means for those typically without a voice to be heard, but the phenomenon comes as close as one can to uniting artists who represent different currents and tendencies with a way of making art forms necessary to destroy the artificial screen that separates the 'public' from the 'private'. Alongside this, with all the activism of incessant movement and experimentation, the enormous resources that FloodNet's operation generates through their SWARM performances, forms, such that ECD's art practice provides benefit to anyone wishing to support social justice campaigns.
In other words, by thinking of ECD as the social organism, in terms of a sculptor or architect, then each individual experience contributes to the whole as the 'object' of minimizing antagonism and maximizing complementarity, which sustains the most important thing, that is, non-violent acts of civil disobedience. Hence, the outrage once expressible only in forms of speech and street activism are now, by virtue of applying ECD's techniques, able to be sculpted and expressed as code, as the materialization that follows thought and action.
Thus, by enacting civil disobedience through the ECD platform, means that the human embodiment as a shared experience in the real world may be compared to how we experience our virtual embodiment as a shared experience. And thus, the idea where the nature of the 'body' is constructed and framed as a widespread struggle with the need to interrupt the "administrative" cyberspace, is felt as an electronic civil disturbance otherwise known as, Electronic Civil Disobedience.
In other words, by thinking of ECD as the social organism, in terms of a sculptor or architect, then each individual experience contributes to the whole as the 'object' of minimizing antagonism and maximizing complementarity, which sustains the most important thing, that is, non-violent acts of civil disobedience. Hence, the outrage once expressible only in forms of speech and street activism are now, by virtue of applying ECD's techniques, able to be sculpted and expressed as code, as the materialization that follows thought and action.
Thus, by enacting civil disobedience through the ECD platform, means that the human embodiment as a shared experience in the real world may be compared to how we experience our virtual embodiment as a shared experience. And thus, the idea where the nature of the 'body' is constructed and framed as a widespread struggle with the need to interrupt the "administrative" cyberspace, is felt as an electronic civil disturbance otherwise known as, Electronic Civil Disobedience.
For more information:
http://silver0rib.tumblr.com/
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