alexander brener and barbara schurz anti-technologies of resistance letter

8/6/2019 Alexander Brener and Barbara Schurz Anti-Technologies of Resistance Letter

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Alexander Brener and Barbara Schurz

Anti-Tenologies ofResistance

2000


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In the beginning of 1999 we published a lile book called Whatto do? 54 Tenologies ofResistance AgainstPowerRelationsin Late-

Capitalism (in Vienna, and before that in Moscow.) is book is acollection of a number of semi-anecdotes and semi-reflections about

the possibilities of political and cultural resistance under the con-dition of a globalized market and multiculturalism. e centre ofour examination were so-called technologies of resistance: familiarand traditional methods ofpolitical struggle and cultural resistance,as well as individual transgressive techniques. On the one handwe tried to analyze critically technologies such as demonstrations,sit-ins, hunger strikes; on the other hand we discussed the effective-

ness of showing your ass in front of your enemy, throwing eggsand spiing on your opponents dress. Resistance must take intoconsideration concrete circumstances of place and time and mustact from very precise strategies and tactics of local struggle, if itwants to be effective. Borrowing from Foucault, who spoke aboutthe specific intellectual we suggested the term local and specificresistor. Such a resistor doesnt act from universal concepts or outof the doctrines of parties or groups, but struggles against these

very doctrines and keeps moving endlessly, not knowing what heor she will do tomorrow. In combating the current art-system, localscandals, interventions, leaflets, graffiti etc. may be effective at acertain moment but useless in another context. So subversion, aheritage inherited from the 1980s, is no longer adequate, and thehidden undermining of the political context of the enemy is obsoleteand has finally degenerated either into cynicism or into conformism

and strategies of success and survival within the system. War isnecessary! was our answer to the question What to do?However, the term technologies of resistance, which we have

used until now, no longer satisfies us. From now on we want totalk not about technologies but about anti-technologies of resistance.Aer the works by Artaud, Bataille and Foucault, Lacoue-Labarthe, itbecomes clear that the Greek term techne, which denotes a mimeticideal in the sphere of art and is directly connected with the art of

politics, still subordinates itself to political and aesthetic activitiesin modern society. Techne implies a model of society that is based


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on the hegemony ofcertain technologies ofpower and on the sub-jection of the will of individuals in a direction favorable to the elite.Technologies are the skills and abilities which guarantee the func-tioning of knowledge and power in very different fields from a

shoemakers business to the construction of intercontinental bal-listic missiles, from artistic collages to espionage satellites. Powerrelations produce technologies and distribute them partly throughdictatorship, partly through seduction, but always in the interest ofthe ruling order. Even if one or another technology is employed inthe service of resistance, at a certain moment it inevitably turns outto be the hostage of power and, deriving from power relations, it

permanently return us to them. Technologies serve the oldest andmost productive game ofpower, where its myths get the final andcompetent confirmation from experts. Nowadays techno-mythsserve the neo-liberal elites, repressive tolerance, and the new Right.We no longer want to speak about technologies of resistance be-cause we associate the term technologies with power rather thanresistance. Anti-technologies of resistance are necessary!

In 1959 Gustav Metzger presented his concept of auto-destruc-

tive art. (Destructive of what? Destructive of the peace of mind,the pleasure in the arts, the moral integrity of people directly orindirectly supporting the violence of the state, structural social dis-criminations, different forms ofoppression. . .) Metzgers conceptwas directed against an understanding of art as a stable and com-pleted technology that has a fixed aesthetic and market value. Atthat time, Metzgers political views were close to anarchism, and

he thought that auto-destructive art would enact the destructionof capitalist economy and imperialistic politics. Metzger discoveredand articulated the connection between aesthetic technologies ofthe production ofart and political technologies of the reproductionof the hegemonic concept of cultural memory, tradition, and thehistory of the winner Unless an artwork destroys itself, it is at theservice of capital. Metzger was the first to question how technologies(of art and power) can turn into their opposite, destroy themselves

and become something else.Anti-technologies of resistance entail the destruction of the cul-

tural and scientific technologies which are at the service ofpower,


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and, secondly, the creation of unpleasant, dissatisfying, dubious,and crazy practices that cannot be included in the toolbox of thetechnologies of power. We would like to stress the importance ofthe terms dissatisfying and unpleasant. Dissatisfaction is the only

real product of anti-technologies of resistance. Deep, restless, and ex-citing dissatisfaction should be felt not just by the power structures,against which resistance is realized, but also by the resistors them-selves and by the uninvolved observing audience. To cultivate anti-technologies of resistance means to create an atmosphere of unpleas-antness, defeat, disappointment and indignation in todays worldofsuccessful humanitarian interventions (for example, in Iraq and

Yugoslavia) and festive representations of triumphing cultural impe-rialism. Anti-technologies of resistance are like a fart at a cocktailparty with guests dressed in evening aire. is fart must be re-ally unbearable and instill consternation and dissatisfaction into thesouls of those present. It should not have anything in common withChristof Schlingensiefs theater or Roman Singers performances.is fart must be really anti-artistic, but not like punk or J.J. Allin,because these are also technologies. Anti-technologies are not art,

but at the same time they are art because nobody knows what art isalthough everybody can do it. Anti-technologies are the striving forthe impossible, and in no case just another aesthetic phenomenonwhich decorates the pages of art magazines. Art magazines are shit!

Anti-technologies of resistance are atmospheric appearances, be-cause they are principally indescribable and non-reproducible. Itis impossible to repeat an anti-technology (otherwise it becomes a

technology.) Anti-technologies are anti-systematic. At the sametime some more or less constant characteristics of anti-technologiescan be named.

1. Connection with specific and local context. Only these specificconnections can determine the effectiveness of resistance. How-ever (we can say parenthetically) no one has ever practiced sucha deepening of context-from court organs to artists. Without

this deepening, there is no understanding.

2. e body as the opposite of a machine. Bodies do not organizeor create anti-technologies, but appear as anti-technologies-it is


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through bodies that anti-technologies become visible and per-ceptible. Bodies are not machines: neither machines of desire,nor war machines, nor machines ofpower. Bodies destroy theirfunction, come out of their frames, get into contradiction with

themselves. Bodies show their discrete anti-machinery. Bod-ies carry the truth of anti-technologies, which can be definedthrough the interrupted pulsing of 4 elements: body-thinking-happiness-suffering. Happiness is not a technology; neither issuffering. Suffering and happiness live at a high-speed detachedfrom technologies, like death is a high-speed detached from life.(If you dont understand this, try drowning in a bathtub.) ink-

ing is not a technology because it can exist only in desperatedisagreement (with the primate of technologies.)

3. Wild and antisocial activities. ese do not have anything incommon with all sorts of expressionism, or, moreover, with afrustrated iconoclasm. (Expressionism is just another mercantiletechnology.) Wild activity means introducing chance elementsinto the order of technology, thereby demolishing this very order.

Chance elements are bodies, chairs, water, night, dirt, hunger,flowers-in a word, everything available right at the moment.

4. Striving for decomposition and unproductivity. Decompositionis an aempt to hinder the repressive order, which in hegemonicculture is perceived as the main source ofproductivity. e nor-mative product in todays understanding is repressive consensusin a certain packaging. Exactly this consensus must be subjectedto the procedure of decomposition. Decomposition and disinte-gration are the weapons of a minority, calling into question theconsensus of a moral majority.

5. Striving for discontinuity. Discontinuity is a risky leap out ofthe body ofcultural history, which Benjamin called a history ofwinners. (e history ofwinners is the history of the fat gig-

gling ofpatriarchal owners who stage celebrations on the bodiesof poverty.) Leap into what? Into dissatisfaction, risk, pain. Into


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the void. . . But more than anything, a leap into thinking, intoproducing resistance.

6. Refusal ofany aesthetic and ethic satisfaction. No satisfaction,

not for yourself, not for others. No consumption and pleasureof success. We confess that this idea is not clear in the end evento ourselves: What does no satisfaction mean? No laughing, noenthusiasm? Rather not that: laughing and enthusiasm, but withthe disgusting feeling of shit coming out of your neck. (Andimmediately a shout and aack.) is feeling was describedby Bataille in Literature and Evil. e political equivalent of

this feeling: Contra-Aack against your own post-bourgeoisfatness. Anti-technologies are convulsive contra-aacks againstthe fascism of your own machine-body.

7. Refusal of normative documentation. A typical means to col-lect fat around your hips is to document your own works. Anti-technologies entail refusing the principle ofdocumentation. Doc-umentation is the main way to archive hegemonic cultural mem-

ory. Documentation is the liberal form of social consensus, iron-ically making fun of the conservative term masterpiece. Doc-umentation is todays whiny form of recognition, begging forcritical revisionism. Dont document and exchange informationbut think! And every thought must find its own specific andmortal (political) form.

8. Non-originality. Originality is the crumpled, roing intellectualfruit of old shit-preservers like Jrgen Harten and Kasper Knig.Puffed up experts talk about originality, while they are disgust-ing non-original functionaries. Originality is the commercialsuccess and mass-medial triumph of some obedient bodies overothers-nothing more. In a political field, efforts are the onlyreality of resistance-culture! Non-originality means adoptingradical-democratic principles in a cultural, social and political

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Our short theses about anti-technologies of resistance are con-nected with the actual political situation in the modern age of glob-alized capitalism. e noticeable repoliticization of social groups(youth, immigrant, trade-unions, different social movements) in

many parts of the raises the specter of local and specific struggleagainst various enemies: neo-liberalism, conservatism, the newrights, racism, cultural populism, subtle sexism, various progres-sive institutions, serving the interest of political and social elites.Micro resistance is necessary to combat the expansion ofcapitalistinstincts and orders in every direction, every place, all bodies, alldiscourses, all objects. Struggle at the level of elementary particles

of thoughts and activities. Start with yourself, with your own con-text, your professional field. Re-view theoretical approaches; giveup using current discourses, contemporary formulas, fashionabletechnologies. Speed, imposed by modern culture, is just the speed ofcapital. It is necessary to brake sharply, to stop and slow down. It isnecessary to carry out what Foucault called a return to: If we return,it is because of a basic and constructive omission, an omission that isnot the result of accident or incomprehension. . . is non-accidental

omission must be regulated by precise operations that can be situ-ated, analyzed, and reduced in a return to the act of initiation. Boththe cause of the barrier and the means for its removal, this omission also responsible for the obstacles that prevent returning to the actof initiation can only be resolved by return. . . It follows naturallythat this return. . . is not a historical supplement that would come tofix itselfupon the primary discursivity and redouble it in the form

ofan ornament. . .

Rather, it is an effective and necessary means oftransforming discursive practice. (What is an Author?)A basic and constructive institutional omission of resistance-

culture (the culture of Mary Richardson, Arthur Cravan, AntoninArtaud, Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Gustav Metzger, Jack Smith. . .)has already taken place. About a return, so far, we dont have tospeak.

Austria/Russia, 2000


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April 30, 2011

Alexander Brener and Barbara SchurzAnti-Technologies of Resistance

2000

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alexander brener and barbara schurz anti-technologies of resistance letter

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