Tactical media in the age of communicative capitalism – closed story, unfinished project or current alternative?

Abstract

While analyzing the status of tactical media in the middle of the past decade, Felix Stalder makes a drastic diagnosis, that tactical media are a finished project. I think, however, that this statement should be read not as an description of the facts, but a provocative challenge to re­think the concept of tactical media. In my paper I analyze theoretical reinterpretations of tactical media referring to latest propositions. Then I am going to pose a question about the characteristics of contemporary forms of the critical media art, and I will attempt to present my own answer to the question in the title. 17 First I present an overview of reinterpretations of tactical media as proposed by authors such as: Stalder, Lovink, Kluitenberg, Raley and Dieter. Next, I point to controversies and problems as well as new conceptualizations of tactical media. I focus on the following issues above all: the need to re­articulate the dichotomy of tactics and strategies in the context of transformations of the network society; sustainability of tactical media and the effectiveness of tactical resistance in the face of new power regimes in the network control society. In the last part I propose understanding tactical media as a cultural contamination, leading to a critical interpretation of standards and values supporting the neo­liberal status quo. In this conceptualization tactical media become a kind of theoretical parxis, which goal is to show what Chantal Mouffe calls “the paradoxes of democracy” ­ the immanent incoherencies and tensions between the various logic systems, discourses and practices within the neo­liberal democracy.