Strategie of Dissent

The videos in Strategies of Dissent stand for individual and collective activities (usually situated on the verge of illegality) that attack existing copyrights, question claims to domination, and in the process develop a broad range of creative forms. Following the practice of cultural jamming Todesboten (1994), Infinite Justice (2003) and L' Axe du Mal (2003) appropriate clichéd fragments of pop and mainstream culture. Commercial 1 (2003), Cop Watch (2003), Nichts ist mehr sicher (2001) and Retag: Retroactive Logo Distribution (2001) fake – partly in parodistic ways – capitalistic structures and techniques of surveillance in order to mediate critical contents. New ways of distributing information and street happenings are presented in Retooling Dissent (2002) and Catch us! if you can (2003), while the anarchistic music video 'Copyright Slavery' (2004) opposes the privatisation of intellectual property. By utilizing the format of cinema and TV advertisments, Adbusters, ATTAC and a-clips establish self-organised distribution channels. Even if some of these strategies may originate in the childlike joy of deviance, they are nevertheless (or precisely for this reason) relevant and subversive modules in the battle against the increasing attempts to strictly regulate, monopolise and exploit cultural and natural resources. P.Z.