Tactics
Without Tears
- cont.
A crucial
component of the positioned work is its proximity to action,
or proximity to potential action. Proximity to action can be
illustrated, perhaps by an analogy to the placement of impulse-buy
goods in the checkout line at a supermarket or store. The placement
of these (generally low-cost and seductive) goods next to the
cash register is intended to create as little time as possible
between affect and action. A chain of affect, action, and effect
characterize our blueprint for media activism and creative engagement.
A strength of media is its ability to produce affects, and political
usefulness can be gained from transmuting affect into action
- a strategy used by grocery stores and political campaigns
alike. In both cases, efforts are made to make the proximity
between media and action as close as possible. Thus, for example,
political advertisements increase dramatically in the days before
an election as the temporal proximity to the action of voting
occurs. Political campaign managers develop election strategies
designed to produce a crescendo before an election, perhaps
instilling fear, pride, or disgust in their audience in the
months, weeks, and days before the election a crucial
component of their strategy is to channel the affects produced
by their media spots into a vote for their candidate on Election
Day.
In order
to turn this theoretical discussion into something more concrete,
lets look at an example. In June of 1967, the Anti-Poverty
Center and the Black Panther Party approached the City Council
of Oakland, CA to request a stoplight for a busy intersection
(55th & Market St.) near an elementary school.
Despite
the fact that a child had been killed and others had been injured,
the city claimed that a stoplight could not be budgeted for
at least a year and took no further action. Rather than see
another death in the interim, a small cadre of armed Black Panthers
proceeded to stop motorists and escort children across the street
on their way to school. Overwhelmed by the spectacle of armed
crossing guards, concerned motorists contacted police who proceeded
to block off the entire intersection. With no traffic flow to
threaten the children, the Panthers departed the scene, leaving
the miffed police behind to insure pedestrian safety. Approximately
two months later, a stoplight was installed. *
The obvious
vectors which converged around the stoplight issue were those
associated with the built environment (the intersection and
the associated public use: motorists & pedestrians) and
those connected to city government (politicians, bureaucracy,
resources, etc). Although city officials initially viewed the
intersection as an isolated problem of little concern, the Panthers
actions were able to overcome the bureaucratic inertia by extending
the sphere of influence to include those outside of the immediate
community (police and commuters). Rather than endure the complications
arising from additional public concern, blocked traffic and
police deployment, the City Government conceded to the community
demands. By amplifying public involvement and by providing resistance
to traffic flows, the intersection became a place of contention
for a variety of interests.
Although
the presence of guns helped to build the spectacle, they were
employed for their symbolic value and not as weapons. However,
it is important to note that in 1967, the prevailing conditions
did not inscribe the cultural climate in the same manner as
it would today. Not only was it legal to carry guns openly,
but more to the point, the spectacle counter-apparatus that
currently occupies public perceptions of terrorism, gang violence,
and the criminality of race was not as fully established. Consequently,
the Black Panthers, in this particular instance, were able to
confront police and government with a spectacularized blend
of militancy and community service. Moreover, they controlled
the spectacular environment in a way that leftist organizations
seldom do. Rather than relying on mainstream media to carry
a particular message to a broad cross-section of the public,
the target audience consisted primarily of community members,
city officials, police and motorists the vectors that
could most substantially influence the situation. The intervention
was a function of the sphere that it was designed to inhabit.
Throughout
activist and artistic communities alike, we find a multitudinous
flow of documentary films and video pieces intent on tackling
social and political issues. While many exhibit great successes
through the passionate and skillful treatment of their respective
subjects, few examples exist that demonstrate a truly positional
use of film and video media. Two examples of cultural-producers
who have managed to harness video towards tactical ends are
artist/director duo Gregg Bordowitz and Jean Carlomusto, and
the anti-police brutality group, Copwatch. Each has used video
in ways that are highly designed to engage the specific material
practices of a given situation.
Copwatch
is a community based organization dedicated to policing the
police in neighborhood streets. Often employing video cameras
in their work, Copwatchers enact their legal right as citizens
to observe police activity within public space. In so doing,
they help to insure that police wont abuse their authority
or the rights of others. Although countless hours of video are
recorded on a daily basis, few people will ever witness any
of it. Targeting the police as their primary audience, Copwatch
relies on the sheer act of bearing witness to achieve political
affect a more democratic formation of Foucaults
panopticon. Thus, video is treated as process, as opposed to
a product, that achieves affect through the inherent technological
associations with recorded surveillance. While surreptitious
footage of police brutality may achieve affect as courtroom
evidence or nightly news broadcasts (as in the case of the Rodney
King footage), the overt use of video documentation at the scene
may prevent a crime from happening in the first place.
Those that
have seen these video tactics amplify the fear and self-discipline
of police will attest to the power of video when put to such
a use. However, those that have witnessed black-clad storm troopers
remove their badges before charging a protest march (unfortunately
not an uncommon police practice), are right to suggest that
the tactics cannot be blindly applied to any situation. Even
with a small army of Independent Media Center videographers
recording events at any number of recent anti-globalization
protests, massive amounts of unjustified police aggression goes
unchecked. With faces hidden behind gas masks and uniforms covered
with black ponchos, police anonymity is virtually assured. In
such cases, where the police are operating outside of the quotidian
constraints of normal law enforcement, video-as-process does
little to curb police brutality. As a product, however, the
same video may achieve political resonance through use as courtroom
evidence or as a recruitment tool for activist organizations.
Thus, media tacticians need to fully consider their use of a
particular medium and the context in which it is deployed.
With the
channels of information dissemination often so well-controlled,
individuals desiring to affect change through creative action
should hardly be surprised by the tactical shortcomings of spectacle
creation. However, applying a nuanced analysis to a given
socio-political constellation can reveal opportunities for activist/aesthetic
interventions that account for issues of audience, scale, and
context-specificity. Artist/directors Gregg Bordowitz and Jean
Carlomustos work around sexuality and safer-sex practices
in 80s New York involved close collaborations with different
queer communities to produce short porn videos demonstrating
safer-sex techniques while contributing to the development of
localized queer cultures. Working with the Gay Mens Health
Crisis as an umbrella organization, the videos were developed
from a series of focus-groups around African-American, Latino,
S/M, and lesbian themes.
Discussions
and ideas generated by focus group participants guided the development
of the scripts in tandem with the artistic ideas of Bordowitz
and Carlomusto. Actors in this series of videos were often recognizable
members of the communities that constituted the audience for
the tapes. Inspired by Soviet Positivism and Situationism, the
tapes were designed to be played in bars, bath houses, community
events, and as trailers to porn films. Thus, the tapes were
not only intended to demonstrate safer sex practices, but to
do so in contexts where sexual activity was taking place. In
locating the videos in the vicinity of sexual activity, a goal
of the work was to intervene in the constellation of power vectors
associated with localized sexual practices.
Although
art audiences are often compelled to view creative endeavors
with a critical distance that frequently subordinates content
to form, such is not the measure of success within spheres of
activity that demand concrete results. Looking to some of the
more adept manipulators of forces, we see that marketers, martial
artists and magicians achieve results through action cloaked
in aesthetics. While marketers candy-coat products with eye-grabbing
graphics, their strategy is to encourage an economic exchange;
no sale, no good, regardless of how spectacular their use of
media is. Similarly, a martial artist does not engage an attacker
hoping to merely raise the issue of self-defense.
The art of martial arts stems from centuries of
R&D in the not-so-proverbial trenches, a testing ground
thats none too supportive of trial-and-error tactics.
Nor does the stage magician smile with satisfaction when the
audience is more impressed by the craftsmanship of stage props
than by the illusions presented. In each case, the materials
are activated in a manner uniquely crafted to the specific goals
and circumstances. Whether selling crap or kicking ass, the
strategy is to facilitate a material result through the tactical/positioned
use of media.
Magicians,
the military, marketers, and martial artists all take a crucial
first step towards transforming reality by analyzing the forces
that participate within a sphere of activity. The analysis that
they all perform allows each to use the physical and psychological
terrain to their advantage. Likewise, gun-toting crossing guards
and camera-wielding activists develop effective tactics of creative-engagement
when they account for a diversity of influencing forces. By
inserting themselves into the context that they are attempting
to transform, and by deploying specific contextual tactics,
they are able to most effectively manifest an outcome in their
favor.
With the
acknowledgement that the creative act is a self-defining moment
that shapes our collective reality, comes the understanding
that transformation is derived from an active engagement of
the forces that shape the worlds around us. Such engagement
may shift forms like a doppelganger; yet, its potency
is always derived from an amalgam of creative will and material
action an alchemical potion that quenches the transformative
thirst of artists and activists alike.
back
to p.1
_________________________________
We
are borrowing the terms attitude and position
with regards to media from a distinction made by Walter Benjamin
in his Author as Producer essay. Benjamin, Walter.
Reflections. trans. Peter Demetz. New York: Schocken Books,
1978. pg. 222. Its relevant to note that the debate around
the political function of cultural production among the members
of the Frankfurt school had its own historical antecedent in
the debate between Marx and the Young Hegelians. Marxs
own position is outlined in his German Ideology. back to article<
Only
then does the commodity become crucial for the subjugation of
mens consciousness
as labor is progressively rationalized
and mechanized, mans lack of will is reinforced by the
way in which his activity becomes less and less active and more
and more contemplative. excerpted from Lukacs, History
and Class Consciousness, appearing in Guy Debord, The Society
of the Spectacle (NY: Zone Books, 1994 orig. published
in French in 1967) p. 25 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
(NY: Zone Books, 1994 orig. published in French in 1967)
p. 17 back to article<
From
David Hilliard, former Chief-of-Staff of the Black Panther Party,
personal testimony during a Black Panther history tour of Oakland:
www.blackpanthertours.com