tactics in Mars & Medak 2019
and David Garcia invited us to
write about the project for an anthology on tactical media that was
to be published by the MIT Press. Tactical media is exactly where
we would situate ourselves on the map. Building on Michel de
Certeau’s concept of tactics as agency of the weak operating in the
terrain of strategic power, the tactical media (Tactical Media Files
2017) emerged in the political and technological conjuncture of the
1990s. Falling into the “art-into-life” lineage of historic avant-
tactics in Dockray, Pasquinelli, Smith & Waldorf 2010
ucated—the university. The
position of the artist in their work and the performance of themselves (often
no different) can take are manyfold. There are histories for all of these
postures that can be referenced and adopted. They are all acceptable tactics
as long as we keep doing and churning out more. But where does this get us,
both within the confines of the arts and the larger social structure? We are
taught that the artist is always working, thinking, observing. We have learned
the tricks of comm
e
contrary; performative action is the precondition for reflective space—or,
more appropriately, space and action must be coproduced.
Is the University even worth “saving”? We are right to respond with
indignation, or better, with an array of tactics—some procedural, some more
“direct”—against these incursions, which always seem to authorize themselves
by appeals to economic austerity, budget shortfalls, and tightened belts.
Perhaps what is being destroyed in this process is the very noti
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