Syllabus

Introduction
w 8/31

• The Yes Men, New York Times “Dream Edition”
• “New York Times Hoax – The Yes Men Fix the World”
• Vincent Bethell, “Naked Protest”

f 9/2

• Nato Thompson, “Trepassing Relevance,” The Interventionists (pp 13 – 22)
• “Krzysztof Wodiczko,” The Interventionists (pp 25 – 28)
• “The Surveillance Camera Players,” The Interventionists (pp 83 – 88)
• The Surveillance Camera Players, “1984” (full version) (video, in class)

History, Revolution, Influence
May 1968 and The Situationist International
w 9/7

• Sylvère Lotringer, “The Great Refusal,” ArtForum May 2008 (pp 302 – 305)
• Guy Debord, “Separation Perfected,” “The Commodity as Spectacle,” and paragraph 67, The Society of the Spectacle (pp 11 – 34, 43 – 44)

Suggested:

• Situationist International and the Students of Strasbourg, “On the Poverty of Student Life”
• Greil Marcus, “The Long Walk of the Situationist International,” Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents (pp 1 – 20)
• McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street

f 9/9

• Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (film, excerpts in class)
• Situationist International, “Preliminary Problems in Constructing a Situation”
• Situationist International, “Questionnaire”
• Situationist International, “Definitions”

Suggested:

• Guy Debord, “A User’s Guide to Détournement”
• Nato Thompson, “Détournement,” The Interventionists (pp 151)
• René Viénet, Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (film)

The Zapatistas and 1994 Revolution
w 9/14

• Zapatista (film)
• Tom Hansen, “Historical Timeline,” The Zapatista Reader (pp 8 – 15)
• Andrew Kopkind, “Opening Shots,” The Zapatista Reader (pp 19 – 21)
• Zapatista Army of National Liberation, “First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle,” The Zapatista Reader (pp 217 – 220)
• Zapatista Army of National Liberation, “EZLN Demands at the Dialogue Table,” The Mexico Reader (pp 638 – 645)

f 9/16

• Chiapas Media Project, Caracoles: New Paths of Resistance (video)
• Subcomandante Marcos, “The Long Journey from Despair to Hope,” The Mexico Reader (pp 646 – 654)
• Subcomandante Marcos, “The Fourth World War Has Begun,” The Zapatista Reader (pp 270 – 285)

Suggested:

• Subcomandante Marcos, “Do not Forget: Ideas are also Weapons,” The Zapatista Reader (pp 311 – 315)
• Octavio Paz, “The Media Spectacle Comes to Mexico,” The Zapatista Reader (pp 30 – 33)
• Nettie Wild, A Place Called Chiapas (film)

Revolution, Art, and Analog Media
w 9/21

• Susan Meiselas, Pictures from a Revolution (film, on reserve)
• Diana Taylor, “Past Performing Future: Susan Meiselas’s Reframing History,” Susan Meiselas: In History (pp 232 – 236)

Shifts in Media
Digital Media and Control
f 9/23

• Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on Control Societies,” Negotiations (pp 177 – 182)
• Alexander Galloway, “Introduction,” Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (pp 2 – 17)
• Radical Software Group, “Carnivore”

***Essay 1 due in class***

Hacking
w 9/28

• Alexander Galloway, “Possibility,”  Anarchitexts: Voices from the Global Digital Resistance (pp 284 – 286)
• McKenzie Wark, “A Hacker Manifesto Version 4.0,” Anarchitexts: Voices from the Global Digital Resistance (pp 344 – 357)
• Cory Arcangel, “Super Mario Clouds” & “Super Mario Movie”

Suggested:

• Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker, “Counter Protocol,” “Notes for a Liberated Computer Language,” The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (pp 97 – 101, 159 – 166)

Tactical Media, Subversion, & Hacktivism
Tactical Media
f 9/30

• David Garcia and Geert Lovink, “The ABC of Tactical Media,” Anarchitexts: Voices from the Global Digital Resistance (pp 107 – 110)
• Rita Raley, “Tactical Media as Virtuosic Performance,” Tactical Media (pp 1 – 30)
• Josh On, “They Rule”
• RTMark,  “Barbie Liberation Army”
  

Suggested:

• Preemptive Media, “Zapped!”
• Critical Art Ensemble, “Halifax Begs Your Pardon!”

More Tactical Media and Subversion + Hacktivism and Disturbance (2 hour session)
w 10/5

• The Yes Men, The Yes Men Fix the World (film, on reserve)
• Mark Tribe, “etoy.SHARE,” New Media Art (42 – 43)
• etoy, “TOYWAR.COM”
• Critical Art Ensemble, “Electronic Civil Disobedience,” Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas (pp 7 – 32)

Suggested:

• 0100101110101101.org, “Biennale.py”
• Experimental Interaction Unit, “Dispersion”

***Essay 1 revisions due in class***

w 10/12 Hacktivism and Disturbance, continued

• “The Hacktivists Digital Zapatismo”
• Mark Tribe, “Zapatista Tactical FloodNet,” New Media Art (pp 40 – 41)
• Brett Stalbaum, “The Zapatista Tactical FloodNet”
• Ricardo Dominguez and Coco Fusco, “Electronic Disturbance,” Anarchitexts: Voices from the Global Digital Resistance (pp 98 – 106)
• Jill Lane, “Digital Zapatistas,” The Drama Review 47, 2 (T178), Summer 2003 (pp 129 – 144)

Suggested:

• Ricardo Dominguez, “Electronic Disturbance: An Interview,” Cultural Resistance Reader (pp 379 – 396)

Bioterrorism
f 10/14

• Lynn Hershman Leeson, Strange Culture (film, on reserve)
• “Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund”
• Critical Art Ensemble, “Free Range Grain”
• Critical Art Ensemble, “GenTerra”
• Critical Art Ensemble, “Acknowledgements,” “Introduction: Bodies of Fear in a World of Threat,” “When Thought Becomes Crime,” Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health (pp 7 – 10, 13 – 21, 117 – 121)

Suggested:

• Claire Pentecost, “Reflections on the Case by the U.S. Justice Department Against Steve Kurtz and Robert Ferrell,” Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health (pp 123 – 148)

Globalization and Neoliberalism
Hardt & Negri
w 10/19

• Okwui Enwezor, “Reckoning with Empire,” ArtForum October 2009 (pp 175 – 177)
• Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, “Part 1: The Political Constitution of the Present,” Empire (3 – 66)

Suggested:

• excerpts from Hardt & Negri’s Commonwealth in October 2009 ArtForum
• The Fourth World War (film, on reserve)

Raqs Media Collective
f 10/21

• Mark Tribe, “Raqs Media Collective,” New Media Art (pp 76 – 77)
• Pamela M. Lee, “How to Be a Collective in the Age of the Consumer Sovereign,” ArtForum October 2009 (pp 185 – 189)
• Raqs Media Collective, “A Concise Lexicon of/for the Digital Commons,” Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader (pp 340 – 349)
• Raqs Media Collective works (fous on “On the Other Hand,” “Time Book,” “Fragments from a Communist Latento,” “There has been a Change of Plan,” “Preface to a Ghost Story,” “Lost New Shoes,” “The Impostor in the Waiting Room,” “A/S/L,” and “OPUS”)

GeoAction and Mapping
w 10/26

• Brian Holmes, “Do-It-Yourself Geopolitics: Global Protest and Artistic Process,” Escape the Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society
• Brian Holmes, “Drifting Through the Grid: Psychogeography and Imperial Infrastructure,” Unleashing the Collective Phantoms (pp 29 – 34)
• disOrientation Guide, Counter-Cartographies Collective
•  An Atlas of Radical Cartography (Introduction, Trevor Paglen & John Emerson, “Rendition Flights 2001 – 2006,” and Pedro Lasch, “Guias de Ruta / Route Guides”

Suggested:

• Brian Holmes, “Cartography of Excess: Bureau D’Études & Multiplicity,” Unleashing the Collective Phantoms (pp 7 – 14)
• Brian Holmes, “The Revenge of the Concept: Artistic Exchanges, Networked Resistance,” Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader (pp 350 – 368)

Borders
Transborder Immigrant Tool
f 10/28

• Electronic Disturbance Theater, “The Transborder Immigrant Tool”
• Alex Dunbar, “Follow the GPS, Ése: The Transborder Immigrant Tool Helps Mexicans Cross Over Safely,” Vice Magazine
• Transborder Immigrant Tool videos
• Micha Cardenas, “No Borders Struggles: The Electronic Disturbance Theatre 2.0,” DigiMag 62
• “Ricardo Dominguez and the Question of Academic Freedom at UCSD”
• http://markyudof.com

***Essay 2 due in class***

Identity
Cyberfeminism and Queer Desire
w 11/02

• Alex Galloway, “Cyberfeminism,” Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (pp 184 – 196)
• VNS Matrix Manifesto
• Maria Fernandez and Faith Wilding, “Situating Cyberfeminisms,” Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices (pp 17 – 27)
• Micha Cardénas, “Becoming Dragon”

Race
f  11/04

• Coco Fusco & Guillermo Gómez -Peña, The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey (clips in class)
• Mendi and Keith Obadike, “Blackness for Sale” (in art/performance section)
• Mongrel, “Colour Separation”
• Wafaa Bilal, “Domestic Tension” and “…and Counting”
• Nancy Burson & David Kramlich, “The Human Race Machine”
• Guillermo Gómez -Peña, “10 Psychomagical Actions Against Violence”

The University
Student Activism Today
w  11/09

• “Chronology of Occupations & Struggles in California,” Occupy California
• “Anti-Capitalist Projects: Questions and Answers,” Anti-Capitalist Projects
• “Communiqué from an Absent Future”
• “The Necrosocial”
• “Statement by the occupiers of Campbell Hall”
• “Occupied Berkeley: The Taking of Wheeler Hall”
• “UCSC Occupation – Friday Night”
• “UCSC Occupation #4 – Kerr Hall – Fri”

***Essay 2 revisions due in class***

Education Outside the University
f 11/11

• Nicholas Mirzoeff,  “Anarchy in the Ruins: Dreaming the Experimental University,” The Interventionists (pp 143 – 146)
• 16 beaver group
• “16 beaver,” The Interventionists (pp 111 – 112)
• The Public School
• AAAAARG
• “Looking at Los Angeles: The Public School,” art:21
• “Small is Beautiful: a discussion with AAAARG architect Sean Dockray,” Masters of Media

Suggested:

• “Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the ‘underground movement’ of (pirated) theory text sharing,” Open Reflections
• Edu-factory Collective, “All Power to Self-Education!” Toward a Global Autonomous University: Cognitive Labor, The Production of Knowledge, and Exodus from the Education Factory (pp 0 – 17)

***Sunday, November 20th, Essay #3 Paper Proposal due via email by 11pm***

Escape
Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee
w 11/30

• “FOX NEWS reviews ‘The Coming Insurrection’” 
• Aaron Lake Smith, “Vive Le Tarnac Nine!: The French Tradition of Brainy Sabotage Lives On,” Vice Magazine
• The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection

Suggested:

• Tiqqun, “How To?” Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader (pp 297 – 312)
• The Invisible Committee, And the War has only just yet Begun Part 1 & Part 2 (video)

Tactics
f  12/2

• Alexander Galloway & Eugene Thacker, “Tactics of Nonexistence,” The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (pp 135 – 137)
• Sean Dockray, “Facebook Suicide (Bomb) Manifesto”
• Hakim Bey, “From TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone,” Cultural Resistance Reader (pp 113 – 118)

Suggested:

• Bernadette Corporation, Get Rid of Yourself (video)

Protest & Affect
w 12/7

• Chto Delat, Museum Songspiel: The Netherlands 20xx  (video to be screened in class)
• Chto Delat, What is to be done?

f 12/9

• Mark Tribe, “Port Huron Project”
• Brian Holmes, “Affectivist Manifesto,” Escape the Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society

Suggested:

• Brian Holmes, “Swarmachine: Activist Media Tomorrow,” Escape the Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society
• A User’s Guide to Demanding the Impossible

***Essay 3 due ***

***Essay 3 revisions due via email on 12/16 at 3pm eastern time***