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  <div id="section05"> **anti-globalica: conceptual and artistic tensions in the new global disorder** **Introduction by Joasia Krysa & Geoff Cox** Welcome to the symposium. This symposium is set against an unnerving contemporary backdrop that reflects the complex intersections of global and local issues. Three obvious examples come to mind: - Poland is in the process of becoming a member state of the European union and the neo-liberal marketplace; - it is international worker's day, but we are at a symposium; - and whilst we occupy this space, 'coalition' forces illegally 'occupy' Iraq. The current global context articulates considerable tensions over sovereignty, political commitment and action which we hope to discuss in the context of media arts. We aim to investigate the local tensions around the ways in which artists and commentators respond to global processes, and the language and strategies they employ to do so. We will very briefly attempt to put this into a historical context to provide some background to our thinking in composing the symposium: **1. melting vision** 'All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real condition of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.' (Marx & Engels, 1848) 'Wszystkie uwazane za trwale okolicznosci z ich nastepstwami: szlachetnymi wyobrazeniami i pogladami zostaly zniesione, wszystkie nowo utworzone zestarzaly sie, zanim mogly skostniec. Wszystko co istniejace i stale - zniklo jak kamfora, wszystko co swiete - zostalo sekularyzowane, i wreszcie ludzie zostali zmuszeni do trzezwego spojrzenia na swoja sytuacje zyciowa, swoje wzajemne stosunki. Potrzeba ciaglego rozszerzania zbytu swoich produktow gna burzuazje po calej kuli ziemskiej. Zagniezdza sie wszedzie, wszedzie osiada i wszedzie rozwija siec swoich polaczen. ' The present phase of production still remains predicated on the speed and frequency of communications technologies as well as its organisation on a global scale. But old and relatively ordered 'cold war' oppositions have been pacified and replaced by new complex, asymmetrical ones. This asymmetry is partly as a result of the 'decomposition' of Communist power. Now, the phrase 'all that is solid melts into air' simply begins to sound like a truism. The very idea of change has paradoxically become stable (or solid rather than melting) and digital technology appears to be the engine for this approach. **2. empire** Like the communications industries that underpin it, Hardt and Negri describe the contemporary form of dominant power structure as 'Empire' - 'governance without government'. They say: '(Empire is) characterised by a fluidity of form - an ebb and flow of formation and deformation, generation and degeneration. (�) (It is the) decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command.' 'Our political task is not simply to resist these processes but to reorganise them and redirect them towards new ends. The creative forces of the multitude that sustain Empire are also capable of autonomously constructing a counter-Empire, an alternative political organisation of global flows and exchanges.' (Hardt & Negri, 2000: 202, xii-xv) 'Imperium charakteryzuje sie plynnoscia formy - przeplywami formacji i deformacji, tworzenia i od-twarzania. To niescentralizowany i niesterytorializowany aparat regul, ktory obejmuje coraz to wieksze przestrzenie globalne, z ich otwartymi i poszerzajacymi sie granicami. Imperium administruje hybrydalnymi tozsamosciami, elastycznymi hierarchiami oraz zlozonoscia wzajemnych relacji wymian poprzez regulacje systemem rozporzadzen. 'Naszym politycznym zadaniem nie jest jedynie organizacja oporu przeciwko tym procesom ale ich przeorganizowanie i skierowanie w inne rejony. Tworcze sily mas na ktorych Imperium sie opiera sa takze zdolne do samodzielnego stworzenia opozycji (anty-Imperium), do alternatywnej organizaji przeplywow i wymian.' To define this power base more closely as plural and multiple (not centred), they draw upon network and rhizomic metaphors that privilege flows and mutability - (in the tradition) of Deleuze, wherein resistance is disrupted - no longer marginal, but active in the centre and expressed in networks, chaotic and indeterminable. But if power cannot be grasped, how can it be resisted? **3. disorder** Alain Joxe sees Hardt and Negri's 'Empire' as lacking crucial analytical questions, in not taking sufficient account of the military question and of seeing globality as only answerable in equally global terms. So how is resistance to be best characterised? 'In the absence of a declared enemy, the most formidable enemy one must face in politics is disorder. Disorder is present everywhere, like liberty, and this type of threat is never lacking as long as an elite brings it to the fore. This is the case today, although only because neo-liberal ideology (...) paradoxically considers disorder to be positive and order negative, the equivalent to an abuse of power. Yet the representation of disorder as something harmful was the original source of the political desire for order.' (Joxe, 2002: 118) 'W obliczu braku zadeklarowanego wroga najwiekszym zagrozeniem dla polityki ktoremu trzeba stawic czola jest bezlad. Wszechobecny jak 'wolnosc', bezlad i temu podobne zagrozenia nie zanikna tak dlugo, jak dlugo elity beda go faworyzowaly. Tak tez dzieje sie obecnie, chociaz tylko z tego powodu, ze neo-liberalna ideologia paradoksalnie traktuje bezlad jako pozytywne zjawisko a porzadek jako negatywne, jako cos co mozna porownac do naduzycia wladzy. A przeciez przedstawianie bezladu jako cos szkodliwego bylo pierwotnym zrodlem politycznego pragnienia porzadku.' It is as if power has taken the form of resistance itself - that order is expressed through disorder if you like. In such a scenario, the strategic standpoint of resistance seems powerless to resist power. Does political action require new forms, by basing resistance on the structure of chaos itself? **4. resistant subject** Is the new world order simply the logic of the post-political? The very notion of politics stems from the conflict between order and disorder � politics, itself and its negation. There is a paradox at work. To return to Marx's 'melting vision' - what appears as in flux is simultaneously stable � leaving the capitalist mode of production as solid as ever at its core. To Zizek, 'It seems easier to imagine the 'end of the world' than a far more modest change in the mode of production, as if liberal capitalism is the 'real' that will somehow survive even under ecological catastrophe�. 'How are we to reformulate a leftist, anti-capitalist political project in our era of global capitalism and its ideological supplement, liberal-democratic multi-culturalism?' (Zizek, 1994:1 & 1999:4) 'Wydaje sie ze latwiej wyobrazic sobie 'koniec swiata' niz zmiany na duza mniejsza skale jakimi sa zmiany w systemie produckji - jakby liberalny kapitalism byl czyms 'konkretnym', czyms co mogloby przetrwac nawet w obliczu zagrozenia katastrofa ekologiczna. 'Jak zatem mozna przeformulowac lewicowy, antykapitalistyczny projekt polityczny w dobie globalnego kapitalizmu i jego ideologicznego uzupelnienia jakim jest liberalno-demokratyczna wielokulturowosc?' This is what Zizek calls the 'failure of identity politics' - the hybrid, fluid, subject identifications that reflect the processes of globalisation itself. How might resistant, creative subjectivities be conceived in the new global disorder � the proletariat or multitude, the activist, the hacktivist? Are artists and hackers merely locked in resistance mode only as a kind of rhetorical action, nostalgically repeating the tactics of the previous artistic vanguard? How do we move beyond resistance to social transformation? SCHEDULE AND SPEAKERS All speakers will address these ideas in terms of the viability of 'local' resistant networks. The proposed symposium is divided into two sessions addressing: AM - conceptual tensions in the new global disorder Adam Chmielewski Esther Leslie Andreas Broeckmann Followed by panel discussion and audience participation PM - 'micropolitics of global media: artistic and curatorial strategies' Monica Narula James Stevens Zoran Pantelic Piotr Wyrzykowski Followed by panel discussion and audience participation **Session 1** What conceptual tools might be employed to best understand these formations and changes? **Speakers** Adam Chmielewski is a professor of philosophy in the Institute of Philosophy, University of Wroclaw. Esther Leslie is a lecturer in the School of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London. Andreas Broeckmann is the Artistic Director of transmediale - international media art festival in Berlin. **Panel discussion questions** What chance does networked resistance have of being resistant in such a scenario? What models (or metaphors) are there left to aspire to? or to re-invent? **Session 2** Welcome to the second part of the symposium in which speakers, cultural practitioners themselves, will attempt to address some of the key issues raised earlier today. I would like to introduce the session by referring to Homi Bhabha� analysis of the congruences between postcolonial and postmodern politics. There he points out a crucial distinction that has to be made between 'the semblance and similitude of symbols across diverse cultural experiences and the social specificity of each of these productions of meanings as they circulate as signs within specific contextual locations and social system of values'. This distinction can be extended to explain existing tensions within the current global cultural economy. It seems to reinforce a single, dominant model of social, political, cultural and economic organisation, while on the other hand, this seemingly universalist model is by no means homogenous in the context of specific locality. Arjun Appadurai argues that rather than global disorder, 'The new global cultural economy has to be understood as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order, which cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing centre-periphery models? [...] Even the most complex and flexible theories of global development have not come to terms with 'disorganised capitalism'. The complexity of the current global economy has to do with certain fundamental disjunctures between economy, culture and politics which we have barely begun to theorize.' (Appadurai, 2000: 221) 'Nowa globalna kulturowa ekonomia powinna byc rozumiana jako zlozony, zazebiajacy sie i rozbiezny porzadek, ktorego nie da sie juz dluzej postrzegac w kategoriach dotychczasowych modeli opartych na opozycji centrum-peryferje. Nawet najbardziej kompleksowe a zarazem elastyczne teorie rozwoju globalnego nie moga pomiescic idei 'zdezorganizowanego kapitalizmu'. Zlozonosc aktualnych procesow ekonomii swiatowej ma wiele wspolnego z fundamentalnymi rozbieznosciami pomiedzy ekonomia, kutlura i polityka - z czym dopiero teraz zaczynamy sie zmagac w sensie teoretycznym.' Orthodox postmodern thinking would suggest that simple binary oppositions like global/local or homogenous/heterogeneous cannot be easily justified or maintained. Instead, Appadurai proposes a model in which the complexity of the current global economy is made up of 'flows' and 'scapes' (evoking Manuel Castells' 'space of flows'), which 'sweep through the globe carrying capital, information, images, people, ideas, technologies'. These evocative metaphors can undoubtedly be useful in describing current cultural practices in defying orthodox and simplistic distinctions and instead aiming to explore what might be described as a �micropolitics of global media�. The key question that needs to be posed is, how can digital technologies that inherently serve to support process of globalisation be used to promote and maintain what is locally specific, culturally and socially heterogeneous, and what artistic and curatorial strategies might be employed to respond to these conceptual tensions? **Speakers** Monica Narula is a media practitioner, filmmaker, cinematographer, photographer and writer with the Raqs Media Collective, and one of the initiators of Sarai. Delhi. James Stevens runs DECKSPACE., media lab in London. He is a co-founder of Consume.net, the UK's largest free network. Zoran Pantelic is an artist and media activist. He founded the association APSOLUTNO and kuda.org - media education centre, in Novi Sad. Piotr Wyrzykowski, aka Peter Style, lives and works in Gdansk and Kiev. He is a technology artist and co-founder of the C.U.K.T. collective - Technical Culture Central Office. **Panel discussion guestions** How does contemporary artistic practice respond to these tensions, especially when using or reflecting the use of network technologies? Do artists and commentators simply respond using the same fashionable rhetoric as the system they seek to question? More questions emerge: A backdrop to this is the shift from Socialism (or state capitalism) to the neo-liberal capitalism of globalisation. Poland's impending entry into the EU is a case in point of the choice with no choice of global forces. How does art practice conceive of itself in relation to these overwhelming forces of the market? Even opposition is determined by it? Does a term like anti-globalisation hold any relevance in this regard? Most would reject this description of resistance preferring anti-capitalism saying that there is nothing wrong with globalisation as such, just the way it is currently expressed. What is wrong, is that it isn't radical enough. Is it possible to conceive of an arts practice that responds critically to globalisation without employing its systematic logic? Or do examples like the 'no borders' movement reinstate the logic they seek to disrupt? Does the nation-state offer little positive potential either? Might there be an idea of a progressive european culture? What collective model is left to aspire to? What theoretical tools might be employed to understand these changes? What might an understanding of complexity theory contribute to these debates? Might the tension between a new world order and disorder be usefully understood in dialectical terms? Does the anti-capitalism/globalisation movement work anti-thetically? Is the negation of negation workable in this context? Is the new world order simply the logic of the post-political? How do artists work through praxis in this regard? How do they maintain a socially-engaged practice? Is net.art simply a rhetorical strategy that disregards the global tensions around access and race (as Coco Fusco�s recent postings on nettime suggest)? Can identity politics really be regarded as a failure, and as a distraction from issues around the political economy? The failure of identity politics is evident in new fundamentalisms and multiculturalist identity politics alike � serving the supply of hybrid, fluid identifications against the backdrop of globalisation. How might a resistant creative subjectivities be conceived in the post-political era working on behalf of the global proletariat, the multitude, the hacker? Perhaps the reconstituted subject of the new world order is required to invent an absolute 'Other' as a necessary corollary to its sense of universality (or globalisation). </div>