Unmaking: 5 Anxieties

In postmedia times, when media are ingrained into almost every pore of society, what was once known as “media activism” has evolved and transgressed into something else. Changed along with it is the old idea and context of “media intervention,” whether conceptualized as tactical media or otherwise.

Today the promise of emancipatory media trembles between revolts and revolutions amplified by social media, temptations to "go dark" and "log off" in the post­-Snowden era, and impulses to build archipelagos of (semi-)autonomous media infrastructures. With media literally in the hands of everyone, networked publics are re­submitting the idea of “the public” (read: mediatized public) to renewed questioning—while network capitalism has already mastered and recuperated the aesthetics and languages of revolution. In this situation, what constitutes a critical media act?