Conundrum Nr . 2 - 23 April 2008

Has Webolution displaced Revolution as the focus of cultural and political activism?
Dr. John Philips ( artist, designer, curator, writer and director of London Print Studio)
The conundrum discussion took place at the exhibition AgitPop: Activist Graphics Images & Pop Culture 1968 - 2008, in the London Print Studio on the 23rd of April 2008. John set the scene by the following words:
‘ The counter-culture and new-left movements that emerged internationally in the second-half of the twentieth century were frequently linked to the temporary or semi-permanent occupation of physical spaces: squats, communes, university sit-ins, factory occupations, arts centres, women’s centres, protest camps etc. These spaces enabled activists to express and enact transformations in lifestyles and social relations. Changes within the commercial and domestic property markets have, in recent years, restricted the availability of spaces to ‘occupy’ and people, radicals included, spend increasing lengths of time at home in the company of their computer and its virtual communities.
From the mid-sixties through to the mid-eighties posters, created in a wide-variety of styles, were an important vehicle of protest, publicity and pleasure within activist culture. With the advent, firstly of photocopying, and more recently computer graphics, stylistic pluralism has diminished, leaving much of the art of protest stylistically indistinguishable from corporate advertising. The digital ‘webolution’ with its virtual, as opposed to physical, spaces and ubiquitous Photoshopped graphics appears to be shaping activism. Whether this is for better or worse, is a conundrum.’

John started the discussion by stating that ‘ activism is space occupied in a way it is not supposed to be - such as by squatting – the rules are already broken.
Today, mobile phones, and the internet bring people together in a virtual community but we don’t occupy physical spaces. Being together we form working relationships that become transformation centred in protest. We change, as we aim to change society. Working with people through online activism doesn’t seem to be abut transformation.

Making the hand printed posters in the 60s and 70 s was about transformation, starting from inventing the original image and physically producing it together. Now, artists and students, alone in isolation, down-load existing, and already repeated protest images from the internet, re-arranging components thinking it is activism.
Few create visual protest, but copy over and over. Therefor, the web protest is too vast and creatively watered down , and there is difficulty to trust it is original content.
The internet is endless reproduction and not origination.

When communities got together in those spaces, they became a force to be reckoned with – creativity was a way of tribal marking –a process of self- identification through images. The web- revolution is the diminishment of protest. The potential for transformation , although seductively vast, global and instant – is by passed by the lack of relationships.

Joelle: Not believing in Web-evolution is nostalgia. The web is powerful – otherwise China would not ban it as done recently during the human right protests.
The internet is an open library. It is knowledge.

John: There is a difference between knowledge and feeling. Meeting face to face forces engagement. Relationships are forged. Making a poster from drawing to printing and together with a community becomes transformative.

Beth Anderson: Maybe you can say that because you were fortunate to experience the ‘ revolution ‘ in the sixties? Now there’s an apathy. There’s little incentive to go out and grab life. Apathy inhibits opportunities for protest. Yet-we are wrong to discredit the internet, and its potential for transformation. Teenagers use web-sites as a way of forging identities. It is not a real world, but they use it in ways an older generation can never fathom. However, to engage in a human dilemma- you have to go out there and to be face to face to develop empathy which catapults action.

Iris de Leuwe: Protest is being present. Printmaking is a physical process - we think through preparing the plate. Making the posters in the sixties you had to get physical – you had to be there in the studio- be there together to make and feel.

John: Presence is about the complexity of experience and presence enhances feeling. The web is not visceral and by not being there, in the studio physically making the print- only by moving the digital mouse- feeling is absent on the internet.

Bess: We, an older generation, don’t fully understand what the internet can achieve in ways of protest . We use it as a tool rather than approaching is a en entirely new entity, or as a new ‘virtual ‘ printing technique. If protest is about disseminating ideas, we need to remember that future wars will be about disabling communication and data storage systems. As result - the country is down!

Therefore, we need to redefine the revolution . It might be about overthrowing systems and changing societies, once through graphic images on printed posters, but now bybe taking over the control of information and data storage archives.

Beth: Then the hacker is the new anarchist.

Bess: Yes- the hacker is the new revolutionary. By redefining the revolution and making the hacker to new anarchist, protest becomes a solitary act- rather than the movement of communities.

Iris: Revolution is about responsibility. Being responsible for someone else. The web is too vast to develop that responsibility , trust is absent as the hacker works alone.

Bess; Is it the image- or the communities making the prints that drove the revolution ? We need to ask what that poster on the wall actually did? In what way did it aid transformation?

Eithan: First , it is about defining these key words: Trust. Transformation. Presence. Knowledge versus feeling. Responsibility.Relationships.

Bess: We have made the web the new God but forgotten us- the person on the street. Protest is about combining forces- the vastness of the web and its potential for the global, and the print’s physically limiting visual choices and thereby forcing innovation,as well as being present creating together in a dialogue through the visceral.

However, let’s remember that the invention of the printing press turned the European world upside down, Knowledge could be widely disseminated. God – and his monastic scribes were removed of their absolute power over knowledge.

John: The printing press opened up the age of reason. What has the web opened up but a mass of knowledge to get lost in . The print revolution observed knowledge. The web observes the usage of knowledge.

Rob: Lets’ return to what the hand printed protest posters did. The power of the image was driven and fuelled by the relationship between scarcity and politics.
The 1960s posters transformed the visual landscape through being scandalous and exciting and original. It wasn’t a cut and paste of regurgitated ideas.

The group concludes that the vast visual archive of the web limits the senses- by not physically occupying a space it hinders the relationships and visceral experience on which history, and the print rest , but is doesn’t hinder knowledge – on the contrary.
It is a matter of understanding how to use the internet to sustain a web evolution rooted in the innovation and relationships of 1968.

For more information on Conundrum . See: http://www.arts.ac.uk/alumni/bulletin08/apr/conundruminvite.html

Small intaglio and linocut print on Somerset paper, created in response to the first Conundrum discussion. Edition is limited to the number of participants who recieve the print through the post.

For further information on the next Conundrum event, follow this link:

http://www.arts.ac.uk/alumni/41437.htm