Where artistic-political praxes neither claim for themselves
the revolutionary pathos of demolishing power structures,
nor participate in debugging them in a reformist
way, a broad field of strategies for disrupting
the circuits of power has emerged, especially over the
course of the past decade. From the self-historicizing
post-neo-avant-garde of Neoism, the pleasurably subversive
actions of the communication guerilla, to hoaxes, fakes
and identity games in the zones between the real and the
virtual: far beyond the art space and back again.
Under the paradigm of the control society and immaterial
labor, incessant communication increasingly becomes
a central linchpin of power, and the question of disrupting
power structures also turns from staunchly storming
machines to interrupting the flows of communication.
Thus the contemporary form of sabotage is the wooden
block between the gears of communication, the creation
of empty interstices of non-communication, the shifting
and distortion of codes.
art sabotage debates methods and examples of
this new type of sabotage and its manifold means directed
against the flows of communication of the control society
command: subversive over-affirmation and over-identification,
purloining, alienation and image tarnishing, collective
myths, multiple names and open pop stars.
Translated by Aileen Derieg
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