ITA ENG

PolyVocal Remix: An InterView / InterVene

by Mark Amerika (aka Abe Golam) and Randall Packer

Department's Headquarters, Washington, DC. Here in the nation's capital, and all around Washington, DC, are emerging signs of the artistic achievements of the US Department of Art & Technology. (photo by Randall Packer)

(Mark Amerika is Director of the Office of Freedom of Speech of the US Department of Art & Technology (aka Abe Golam is Director of the Office of Homeland and Economic Insecurity) and Randall Packer is Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology)

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

“Over the past century, a long-standing tradition of digital cultural resistance has emerged that has used recombinant methods in the various forms of combines, sampling, pan gender performance, bricolage, detournement, readymades, appropriation, plagiarism, theater of everyday life, constellations, and so on." (Critical Art Ensemble, 2001) ­ Critical Art Ensemble

The opportunities for artistic mediation and political expression through hactivist strategies have increased exponentially with the emergence of the global medium of the World Wide Web. According to Peter Weibel from the 1999 exhibition Net_Condition, “The socially revolutionary utopias of the historic avant-garde, movements of enlightenment, such as freedom of contract, equal opportunities and intercultural emancipation are now to be implemented by technology." (Weibel, 1999)

Recombinatory techniques have expanded throughout the 20th century with new opportunities for remixing, appropriation, shredding, etc in electronic and digital media. Today’s new media artists ­ more than anyone can possibly count ­ are now making extensive use of these techniques in an endless of array of on-line projects. These artists extend the technique of collage borrowed from their ancestral avant-garde to freely re-contextualize cultural artifacts appropriated from the Internet.

An ongoing writing and multimedia project of Mark Amerika and Randall Packer, PolyVocal Remix, began in 2001 and has evolved as a method for reciprocally remixing text, sound and media, blurring authorial lines, as well as the line between author and character, art and politics, art and life.

The central protagonist of the project, Abe Golam, is the “legendary info-shaman of the Electrosphere” from Mark Amerika’s hypertext novel Grammatron from 1997. (Amerika, 1997) Golam was subsequently recruited in 2002 by Randall Packer and appointed Director of the Office for Homeland and Economic Insecurity for the recently activated US Department of Art & Technology (Packer, 2001). As stated in the Department press release (Packer, 2001) this piece is a stylistic remix of White House news announcements, story-line from Grammatron, etc.:

WASHINGTON, DC - Responding to criticism of the Bush Administration's handling of national security in its recent proposal to create the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Randall M. Packer has called for the creation of the Office of Political and Economic Insecurity within the Department of Art & Technology, to confront rising insecurity in the nation and around the world as a result of the administration's plan to restructure the US government. The Secretary has appointed Abe Golam, legendary info-shaman, cracker of the sorcerer-code and creator of Nanoscript, as its Director.

Abe Golam then issued a series of urgent memoranda to the Secretary, responding to the recently ratified Patriot Act,” with texts appropriated from a variety of Government departments Websites including the Justice Department, FBI, etc.: (Amerika, 2002)

MEMORANDUM

To: Randall M. Packer, Secretary From: Abe Golam, Director of the Office of Political and Economic Insecurity Re: Knock Knock Knockin' On Heaven's Door: Why Are We Scared To/Of Death?

As we know, the President's most important job is to protect himself while appearing to defend the American people. Since September 11, all levels of government have been pointing fingers like never before while our airports become Keystone cop scenarios and our border security remains a farce. We are in the process of producing and stockpiling more medicines to treat the disillusioned masses whose retirement plans have been plundered by the reigning oil-garchy now in power, those stupid white men and women who are still trying to regain their balance after having been knocked over by a ten-ton intelligence failure like none ever experienced in postmodern times. Even as they pretend to be taking steps toward improving information sharing among our intelligence agencies, and suggest in their media-manipulated spin doctoring that we are beginning to deploy more resources and personnel to protect our critical infrastructure, our federal investigators are still working with computer technology manufactured in the dark ages. Our children have access to better technology than our federal intelligence agents.

Abe Golam clearly had political ambitions that went well beyond his Departmental position. By May of 2003, the info-shaman formed an exploratory committee to run for President of the United States as an independent candidate of the Department’s newly formed Experimental Party (Packer, 2002). The Party then issued the following announcement, a remix of presidential candidate John Edwards release which ran in the Washington Post, Golam memoranda, etc.: (Packer, 2002)

1 2 3 4 5 6 of >> 7