The Amsterdam-based counterculture movement, Provo, first emerged in the city’s Spui square in 1965 where artist and magician Robert Jasper Grootveld held his ritualistic “happenings” in, as always, a pro-pot, anti-tobacco and advertising-free setting. Provo began in Amsterdam but it later spread to other cities in the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, […]
A new apparatus of governance is assembling around big data and its algorithmic processing. The data produced through our daily encounters and interactions is becoming the focus for new ways to develop policy and enforce behaviour change. The raw material for these aspirations is the ‘volume, velocity and variety‘ of big data, […]
Public debate on digital media tends to be organised in “either-ors.” Such polarisation allows for clarifying positions, but it doesn’t do justice to the messy dynamics of everyday digital practice. Paolo Gerbaudo’s recent contribution on internet activism in OT24 is no exception. He contrasts what he calls a “cyber separatist […]
I moved studios this weekend and everything is still on the floor. Every surface is covered in piles of books and bin liners full of clothes. These days, a typical ‘studio’ day – or a ‘not at my job’ day – involves meetings with other artists, working on job applications […]
Words are spectral – they present what is not present, they slide and deceive and are defined by their power of deferral. While there has always been power in the persuasion of words, somehow their very symbolic nature cannot conceal their character as media: we are always aware that they […]
The 2008 film Gomorrah, loosely based on Roberto Saviano’s book of the same name, follows the lives of five people living in Naples. Eschewing the tiresome Hollywood format of intertwining stories in which characters are thrown into each other’s paths in improbable ways, the casts of the different chapters never […]
Anyone would have thought ‘Ill Manors’ was conceived specifically to generate broadsheet think pieces. With “rich boy”-baiting lyrics and a catchy Amen break chorus, Plan B’s latest single is as zeitgeisty as they come. The track has been lauded by Guardian columnists and Labour MPs alike (a surefire sign you’re […]
The Media Lens media analysis service was established in 2001 by political writers David Cromwell and David Edwards. The service aims to raise awareness of the systemic failure of the corporate media to report the world honestly and accurately, and to increase rational awareness, critical thought and compassion. Its output includes news analyses in […]
Since Occupy began, detractors of the movement have continually rolled out the same lazy questions and criticisms. Often these relate to a lack of concrete demands or aims despite the messages of social, economic and environmental justice – amounting to the pursuit of greater equality – being easy to comprehend. […]
It’s cold in the Occupation Records office in a UBS-owned building on Sun Street, now occupied by the activities of Occupy London. I drag myself out of the warmth of my bed – a half deflated air mattress and a bundle of sleeping bags – and reach for my phone, […]