Move! Guerilla Films, Collaborative Modes, and the Tactics of Radical Media Making
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RICE UNIVERSITY Move! Guerilla Films, Collaborative Modes, and the Tactics of Radical Media Making by Tish Stringer A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE D octor of Philosophy APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE: (Teorge Marcus', Professor Anthropology Istopher Kelty, Kelty, AssistantQjri^topher AssistantProfessor Anthropology Hamid Nafijcy, Professor Art History / HOUSTON, TEXAS M ay 2006 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOTE TO USERS Page(s) missing in number only; text follows. Page(s) were scanned as received. 254 This reproduction is the best copy available. ® UMI Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3216785 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 3216785 Copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT Move! Guerrilla Films, Collaborative Modes, and the Tactics of Radical Media Making by Tish Stringer This dissertation is an ethnography of video activists with the Independent Media Center (also known as IMC or indymedia) creating collectively made videos aimed at affecting political change. I explore the larger Independent Media Center Network, beginning in the Zapatista Encuentros of the late Nineties, the “trial run” in Seattle during the meeting of the World Trade Organization in 1999 and the subsequent growth into a world wide network with almost 200 local collectives producing radical news and providing distribution outlets for media makers. Indymedia is situated within a social movement, commonly known as anti-globalization, but more properly termed the global justice movement. I investigate indymedia videos as insider media; videos that come out of are circulated within and support the social movement. Indymedia videos are political interventions, but they also constitute a social intervention as IMC videographers make politically informed choices to shape the filmmaking process itself. Social movement based media is not a new phenomena, and as part of this dissertation, I Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. explore several examples of other radical film collectives operating in different historical periods with different technological apparatuses. I treat the complication of being a group committed to openness and democracy in an environment of political repression and surveillance. Finally, I discuss doing contemporary experimental ethnography within this complex environment and my role as both an activist and an academic. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my family, my parents and my daughter, Iris for their support of my scholarly pursuits. I would like to thank my committee for their encouragements and advice. I would further like to thank every one who provided interviews to me during my research, these people were often not just interview subjects, but collaborators, commentators, conspirators and confidants and I honor their trust. ISG- You may not have always wanted to, but you have been so thoughtful and great about me following my dreams to have my own career. I’m a better person for it and I thank you for your understanding. DG- Every moment I spent on this work was possible because you are a supportive friend and father. Thank you. CK - What would this project be if we never crossed paths? Your humor, belief in me and embarrassing brilliance humble me and make me laugh. You are a great mentor even if, to my dismay, we are the same age. Thank you. MP- You always gave me something to try and keep up with. Thank you for all those lunches at Valhalla, in many ways they were my most salient community of academic dialogue. RF- You are the most solid and truly helpful person I know. Thank you for sharing that with me. EN - 1 would not be where I am today if not for you. Thank you for doing things with me no one believes I have done. DH - My tactical advisor and confidant. Thank you for helping me learn so much by never just doing it for me. It has never been amateur hour. GR- Quick and charismatic, you made it impossible for me to write this, and helped me keep my faith to do it. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One - Introduction 1 Intersection One - The Fourth World War 35 Chapter Two - (((i ))) indymedia 52 Intersection Two - Trading Freedom: The Secret Life of the FTAA 85 Chapter Three - This Is What Democracy Looks Like 92 Intersection Three - Off The Pig 117 Chapter Four - Guerrilla Media 123 Intersection Four - 79 Primaveras 156 Chapter Five - Transparency and Anonymity in a Surveillance Economy 163 Intersection Five - i: The Film 192 Chapter Six - Clandestino 200 Intersection Six - We Interrupt This Empire... 231 Chapter Seven - Epilogue 238 Notes 248 Bibliography 255 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 Chapter One Introduction A tour, even if it is merely expository, of the different resistances in a nation or on the planet, is not just an inventory. There one can divine, even more than the present, the future. Those who are part of that tour, and those who make the inventory, can discover things that those who add and subtract in the armchairs of the social sciences cannot manage to see. To wit, that the traveler and his path matter, yes, but what matters above all is the path, the direction, the tendency. In noting and analyzing, in discussing and arguing, we are doing so not only in order to know what is happening and to understand it, but also, and above all, in order to try and transform it. -Subcomandante Marcos1 In March of 2005, an international symposium was held in Cologne entitled, “Camcorder Revolution: Video activists, Politically Committed Documentaries and an International Public.” On the opening night of this conference a screening was held of a new, made-for-television film, Seeing is Believing, a documentary about video activism around the world. The film’s directors casually declare, “Video technology is changing the world.” Is the availability of the camcorder to a mass market a revolution? Have thousands of citizens hitting the streets armed with video cameras changed the way we see the world, or how we think about filmmaking? Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The “camcorder revolution” is typically considered to have begun in 1991 with the broadcast of a video showing members of the Los Angeles Police Department beating Rodney King, shot by bystander George Holliday. The national broadcast of this tape was America’s first real look at the power of witness video. Ordinary citizens armed with inexpensive camcorders could monitor their own communities. Using the Rodney King affair as a point of origin for this revolution suggests that it was not the technology that sparked the change, but rather what people did with the technology. This dissertation is an ethnography of video activists with the Independent Media Center (also known as IMC or indymedia) creating collectively made videos aimed at affecting political change. Indymedia is situated within a social movement, commonly known as anti-globalization, but more properly termed the global justice movement.21 investigate indymedia videos as insider media; videos that come out of and are circulated within and support the social movement. Indymedia videos are political interventions, but they also constitute a social intervention as IMC videographers make politically informed choices to shape the filmmaking process itself. Social movement based media is not a new phenomena, and as part of this dissertation, I explore several examples of other radical film collectives operating in different historical periods with different technological apparatuses. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 As with the King example, it is not the availability of video technology that created indymedia video activism, but rather how people use the technology that makes for a radical change. Arguably, video is not actually the appropriate central technological figure to connect with the history of indymedia. It was not the advent of the portable video camera that coincides with the rise of the indymedia network, but rather the consumer availability of digital media of all forms. Indymedia