So I’ve been in New York for a few hours now and plan to head down to do my Public Gifting action at Occupy Wall Street this evening (Friday) after I attend a talk by Geert Lovink at the New School. Yesterday, Geert, a Dutch new media activist, and his collaborator Franco Berardi released an inspired document titled “A call to the Army of Love and to the Army of Software“. Here are a few excerpts:
“The so-called ‘financial markets’ and their cynical services are
destroying the very foundations of social civilization… The
yet to be seen effect of the financial crisis will be violence, as people
conjure up scapegoats in order to vent their rage. Ethnic cleansing, civil
war, obliteration of democracy. This is a system we call financial Nazism:
FINAZISM.”
“Right now people are fighting back in many places, and in many ways.
Occupy Wall Street inspired a mass mobilization in New York that is
extending across the USA every day.”
“Will our demonstrations and occupations stop the Finazist machine? They
will not. Resistance will not resist, and our fight will not stop the
legal crimes. Let’s be frank, we will not persuade our enemies to end
their predatory attacks (‘let’s make even more profit from the next
downfall’) for the simple reason that our enemies are not human beings.
They are machines.”
That should be enough to give you a taste. You can – and should – read the whole thing here. And if you are interested, you can read my enthusiastic response here.
What I especially like about their statement is the recognition that the solution to our problems lies in the collaboration of The Army of Love (oral) and the Army of Software (digital), which is of course what I have specifically been advocating in this blog and elsewhere.
I did manage to get to one Mobility Shifts event last night, which was a presentation by a fascinating artist’s collaborative called the Ghana Think Tank. This too is an interactivist project and I’ll be writing more about their work shortly. In the meantime I expect to see them this evening at Occupy Wall Street where they too have a creative inter(action) planned.
More updates as things progress…
YOU ARE YOUR MEDIA 