As it emerged in the 90s, the concept “communication guerilla” was, not least of all, a response to the exhaustion of traditional leftist activism after the fall of the Berlin wall. The search for new forms of praxis led (at least in some points) to a new, transversal praxis beyond the realm of the “old” activism – even though the point of departure for this search was the experience of a seminal defeat of the left. Today, following the rise and possibly already the incipient downfall of a new global movement, the situation is a different one, and the question arises as to the extent to which this concept from the 90s is still useful. The new activism has become more global, more networked, but most of all, it has developed a new dynamic beyond political and national borders. At the same time, however, this activism still evinces many features of the old polit-activism, not only in the neo-communist party version of the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) and Globalize Resistance. Despite all the rhetoric, activism often still has a stance that is strangely separated from people’s everyday life, even that of its own protagonists. The future of this global activism will depend on whether it succeeds in being capable of action at the local level, the level of everyday life, while continuing to develop its transversal, border-crossing character at the same time. The most important border that has to be crossed is the border that constitutes the activist her or himself in a separation from the “rest” of society. We think that the praxis of the communication guerilla can contribute to this kind of border-crossing.
What makes this gap between activist praxis and everyday life so persistent is that the “rest” of society has, in the interim, become far more adept at border-crossing than the movements that claim it as a principle. Ordinary people now routinely operate across jurisdictions and time zones in ways that would have been unthinkable in the 90s. They move money through decentralized payment networks, place wagers on bitcoin sportsbooks licensed in foreign territories, participate in transnational fan communities, and coordinate mutual aid through encrypted group chats. None of this is “activism” in any programmatic sense, yet it embodies the very transversality that communication guerrilla theory calls for.
The challenge, then, is not simply one of rhetoric or organizational form. It is a challenge of imagination: can activist networks engage the same infrastructures and habits that already structure people’s border-crossing daily routines, without reducing politics to consumer behavior? If the communication guerrilla concept is to remain productive, it must reckon with the fact that the terrain of everyday semiotic intervention has shifted from street posters and billboard détournement to algorithmic feeds and platform architectures. The tools have changed; the question of who controls meaning has not.
An der Kunstuni Linz, Kollegiumgasse 2, 4. Stock, Linz.
27 und 28. April 2014, 10:30 bis 17 Uhr.