In the years since World War Two, networked communication technologies have dramatically reorganized the functions and functionings of society. This trend, much discussed by artists and cultural theorists alike, is frequently framed diagrammatically, as the movement from centralized to decentralized to distributed models of communication and information flow.
This distributed-network architecture has been explored by artists as an aesthetic as well as a means of distributing power within society and creating a “networked public” standing (directly or indirectly) in opposition to the hierarchal network of decentralized corporate sovereignties. While the imbalance of power is real, these formulations fail to appreciate the emergent opportunities to engage with and tactically transform, rather than attack, the corporation. The historical asymmetry of power has relegated artist-activists to the role of artistic guerillas or artist/terrorists “fighting” the corporation. The “culture jamming” interventions by the likes of RTMark and the Yes Men, while critical and entertaining, are increasingly unproductive in their deployment of negative methods to address other negative methods.
