Five years have passed since I wrote “Sign Wars”. Like Slavoj Zizek, I
look back 1990s as something of a Belle Époque. The 1990s feature in
my book because so much of what I experienced of the ‘jammer culture
in the USA in particular happened at that time. Zizek has often
commented that the twin disasters of 9/11 in 2001 and the economic
crash in 2008 bookend the decade and almost make one wish for what now
in retrospect at least appear to us as much simpler times. Gone
forever at least is the notion that globalized capitalism
automatically brings with it notions of democracy and fairness
wherever it goes. Today’s capitalism is more authoritarian, more
concerned with sheer production if the Chinese and Indian models are
anything to go by. Workers rights have seldom featured very highly in
the organizing principles of the new superpowers, rapidly now
overtaking the traditional economic hubs of Europe and the USA.
One the one hand we seem to face a darker future than we ever dared to
imagine. Every day brings new horrors of pointless oil wars,
catastrophic environmental destruction in the form of oil spills and
other man-made forms of enviro-rape. Dubious advances in biotechnology
speak to a future in which natural processes become copyrighted, human
cloning more likely. As Zizek notes with understandable alarm: the
Chinese seem to lack the moral qualms of the west in this regard. Ever
smaller micro-electronics spawn baroque new forms of surveillance and
control of unfathomable complexity, wired intricately into the
labyrinthine systems of militarized,
government-backed-yet-otherwise-totally-private global imperialism.
Authoritarian systems seem to want to define ever less democratic
models of capitalism stripped completely of any semblance of positive
social agency. The shocking waste, hubris and arrogant opportunism of
the Bush/Blair years scarred the world with unparalleled ruthlessness
and voracity. The rise of China and India as the new model for global
capitalism has further eroded the increasingly quaint neoliberal
notion that where trade goes, so does democracy.
Our once most prized, loved and used publicly funded resource in the
1990s, the Internet, has long since lost its once noble purpose of
simply enabling people to connect with each other and share ideas in a
commercial-free environment. Marginalized but not gone forever however
is the notion that TCP/IP and a neutral net should facilitate the
sharing of ideas as an end in itself, free from the mediating
influence of advertisers, market researchers, cool hunters and data
miners.
The public relations industry has managed to virtually hijack the
entire Internet via so called “social” media that offer "free"
services in exchange for amazingly brazen access to personal
information, ideas and creative output on the part of the population.
The rise of the myriad online systems for stripping people of ideas
and innermost thoughts on a daily, hourly, and minute-by-minute basis
speaks to the influence of the powerful "players" like
Google/Facebook/Youtube/Twitter/iTunes etc on those all too willing to
give ideas and secrets up for any semblance of a meaningful social
life.
People are told they have thousands of "friends" through these
systems, yet remain for the most part socially alone. Meanwhile what
they buy, what they want, how they feel, and every other aspect of
life is reduced to a few types lined in a text field which itself then
joins a vast system that aggregates this most personal experience into
a pattern making machine to further standardize the experience of
daily life itself. Stalin himself could not have devised so
all-encompassing a system for the management of a global population;
one that regulates itself with pavlovian predictability.
From another perspective however, the field for imagining new types of
society made possible in the last five years is wide open as never
before. As William Burroughs once opined on camera: “Every particle of
the universe contains the entire universe”. For Burroughs, cutting up
fragments of media at any time still opens up new corridors of
possibility.
San Francisco, my beloved home since 2005, is like anywhere worth
living in, besieged by the forces of gentrification, control and
authority. The countercultural heart still beats strongly here, and
the city continues to attract those driven by the imagination and the
promise of a better tomorrow for all. I see excellent examples of Jams
everywhere I look. Ironic satirical stencil art, amazing DIY
technology of the sort celebrated at the Maker Faire. The rise of
sensor technology and ‘cloud’ computing in particular offers many
possibilities for social interaction and many to many systems of idea
exchange as never before. Open source computing on ever cheaper,
smaller and more powerful machines makes for a more open, free and
interchangable set of experiences for those interested in hacking away
at new kinds of media and the new types of social relations they
imply. The war on terror has made life more like one big Guantanamo
Bay for everybody everywhere, but it has also spawed an ocean of cheap
computer parts and networking devices. Like the cold war before it,
hackers can hack the war waste to build a better tomorrow. Thus
defense becomes self defense.
On the subject of self-defense, I have taken up the art of Karate at a
small dojo here in the Mission district called IOMASDA and every class
brings new insights into the relationship between martial arts and
culture jamming. Like culture jamming, karate is more than merely a
set of techniques for self-defense. It is an entire philosophy, aimed
at understanding the role of oneself in relation to a much bigger
universe. It is also very much about focus, discipline and the sense
that there is not necessarily only way to do things. Zizek has
commented in his interviews that martial arts are traditionally the
domain of the poor. This explains the huge appeal of martial arts
movies as a genre closely associated with street culture since the
late 1960s. When all you have is your body, then adapting the body as
an emblem of protection and discipline is by no means a trivial thing.
In karate, as with culture jamming, a successful outcome can only be
realized via the application of principled study, practice and
awareness. A good billboard or corporate logo alteration is like a
swiftly applied self-defense technique. The opponent, felled with his
own weight and the defenders knowledge of the attacker’s weaknesses,
is disarmed long enough to facilitate if only momentarily an escape.
The downed attacker now matter how soon he eventually gets up, must
from that point on always consider the idea that his assumed
superiority has been compromised.
In 2006 I joined a moped gang. Called the “Creatures of the Loin”, the
group is made up mainly of young artists and writers, designers and
students. COTL is a chapter of the Moped Army, a group set up as a
kind of ironic satire on motorcycle gang culture, but now seven years
after the fact has grown into a vast national association of moped
riders. Driven by the 2-stroke engine and its familiar lawnmower
engine sound, we mix oil with gasoline to ride freely up and down the
hills of the city to discover new possibilities hidden around us.
Mopeds are neither bicycle nor motorcycle, but a strange hybrid of
both, and are an essentially European idea. Mopeds (the small powered
bikes with actual pedals, not scooters) are perfect for small towns
and the backstreets of Italy or Paris. In San Francisco, riding them
can be fairly hazardous, and so every Monday night we gather to ride
on group rides around the city. Often no planned route is set up and
the experience is in effect the Situationist Derive. Indeed many a
Creature has read Situationist texts and it was the reference to these
ideas on their website that attracted me to the group. Moped bits are
exchanged and sold, often performance parts that make the 'peds go
faster, handle the hills better. Tuning a bike is like tuning a
beautiful old piano, and the act of riding is like playing music.
Mopedders come in many shapes and sizes but what they have in common
is a love of the contradictions inherent in the transport mode itself,
as well as the types of engagement with the city such a mode offers.
Riding through San Francisco on a moped in a group or on your own is
one of the most enjoyable experiences a person can have. The irony,
wit and satire of the jammer ethos is alive and well within the moped
army culture as any visit to its website will attest. There are
posters, flyers, movie trailers for rallies and events. It’s a whole
hipster movement that has taught me volumes about the importance of
drifting, and the political implications of doing so with lots of
other people all at the same time on a regular basis.
Other forms of micromobility proliferate here also; electric vehicles
of every shape and size, often home-made from parts like go-carts
powered by old washing machine motors hooked up to uninterruptable
power supples. Electric scooters can be seen cruising routinely around
the streets.
Today new modes of creative expression include the home-manufactured
custom product. Objects can printed out in 3D with inexpensive
printers. Virtual products, each one as unique as the person who made
it can be fabricated on the kitchen table. The rise in home
manufacturing is well-chronicled at sites like boingboing.net. You can
make you own custom plastic toys! Digital cinema has become cheaper
and cheaper to do. Award winning - entire feature films are made with
equipment costing well under the price of a second hand car. The rise
of the cell-phone camera has made filming events a commonplace. The
recent citizen cell-phone coverage of the shooting of Oscar Grant at a
subway station in East Bay on New Years Eve in 2009 helped convict the
Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer who shot the defenseless man in
the back multiple times. Surveillance now works both ways.
More people with more cameras with more access to online publishing
and distribution can only be a good thing, and as these devices
decrease in price, availability also increases. It is quite common to
literally find cell-phones with fully working video and still camera
as well as mp3 capability thrown away, recycled or donated. Fewer and
fewer people need be without a mini production studio at all times.
Miraculously Artist’s Television Access gallery is still going, and
Craig Baldwin is still living there and his Other Cinema screenings
continue as they have done now for over twenty-five years. Twenty five
years! It is a privilege to be part of the Other Cinema scene in its
now myriad forms – the screenings, the website, the online ‘zine and
of course the OCDVD label for which I have edited trailers. I am
working with Craig Baldwin on a new movie idea called “Invisible
Insurrection” about the fact that William Burroughs and Guy Debord
were both in the same part of Paris in 1961 at the same time. Given
that both contributed so much to the notion of
cut-up/collage/detournment, this is a story that has to be told. My
role is that of script and story adviser. I was also privileged to
supply the voice for the onscreen appearance of Aleister Crowley in
Craig’s last film “Mock Up on Mu” which garnered much attention and a
successful release in the festivals, theaters and now DVD. The scene I
learned to love in the 1990s is still here.
From where I’m standing, the work of the culture jammer today is as
‘finally unfinished’ as the book that you can now hold in your hands.
Let the Sign Wars continue.
This superb LedaTape production of my book would not have been
possible without the great effort of Mr Simon Strong to whom I would
like to send a heartfelt thankyou for this handsome edition.
Thanks, Simon!
And as we say at IOMASDA karate; “Be Ready and Observant at All Times!”
David Cox,
San Francisco
September 11, 2010
Sign Wars page at Melbourne University Bookshop