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Part II MA. Why have you positioned yourself as an artist emulating government systems by creating a virtual agency? Is this not a sell-out? RP: Not at all. I am interesting in revealing the blurry edges between the artist and the politician, both of whom engage in illusion and spectacle. The main difference is that the artist admits to using these tactics. Through the creation of the US Department of Art & Technology, I have inserted my entire being as an artist directly into the "machine" itself, as an act of artistic mediation, so as to observe its machinations from the inside out. I am the Government, the Government is me. Once inserted, we are difficult to remove. Why? Because a seed of an idea has been planted, a model that can now be visualized. That is, a role for the artist, for culture, for critical analysis emanating from within the system, infiltrating, spreading its tentacles and replicating itself like a virus. For example, a May 1, 2003 article in the Washington Post, entitled "Political Art Creates A Shadow Government," (Dawson, 2003) described the strategies of US DAT and was most likely distributed throughout the White House by its press staff since the President's name appeared in the article. On August 14, 2003, US DAT opened an information center for an exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which is two blocks from the White House. Information is being distributed to ordinary citizens visiting the nation's capital our presence is being felt, we can't be ignored. We are operating as a lens, an observer, an imitator, a parasite, sometimes even a clown (who laughs and mocks), in order to reveal how the "suspension of disbelief" the illusion, the spectacle, the performance underlies our relationship to and perception of politics and government. MA: Why the US Department of Art and Technology now? RP: We are now faced with a machine that has embraced the spectacle like no other. On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush made a grand entrance in flight gear, aboard a Navy shuttle plane, greeted by homesick troops, on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. This Hollywood-style production, designed by the President's media producers, intensified the public's perception that a victory had been won in Iraq. The Bush machine is operating on a scale never before imagined. Without conscience, without respect for international law, and with utter contempt for all Americans who observe their performances with the fascination of a Hollywood action movie, or perhaps a bad Western, the Bush machine is riding the tidal wave of 9-11. We have never needed a Department of Art & Technology as much as we do now. For according to Wyndham Lewis, "The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present." The artist (or anyone engaged in artistic activity) is perhaps the only one capable of reversing the veil of the aesthetic spectacle (holding it up as a mirror) as it reigns over America and the world. MA: What is the Media Deconstruction Kit? RP: The US Department of Art & Technology, responding to the gravity of the current political situation, is collaborating with artists and engineers “to discover new tactics which stand at the cradle of art and science,” as Malevich said in his Suprematist Mirror (Malevich 1923). US DAT intends to distribute the Media Deconstruction Kit among performance artists throughout the nation, who will manipulate media coverage of the national election beginning with the Washington primary in January of 2004. By providing instantaneous access to live, broadcast media - and the ability to act upon it - the Media Deconstruction Kit transforms the one-way paradigm of broadcast media into many-to-many forms of interaction by leveling the playing field between medium and viewer. The MDK will enable artists to remix live news stories, TV plays, stock market quotations, manifestos, advertising, scramble fabricated news in with actual news broadcasts and put the altered matter out on the Net as a revolutionary weapon. The Department believes these techniques could swamp the mass media with total illusion in 2004. The Media Deconstruction Kit is part of a long trajectory of cultural appropriation and remixing as practiced by the Dadaists (Simultaneity and photomontage), Surrealists (Exquisite Corpse and other games), Situationists (détournement), Fluxus (constructions), John Cage (chance and indeterminacy), Pop Art (collage and combines), etc. What is new about the Media Deconstruction Kit is that in the age of global electronic media, satellites, the Internet, etc., the appropriation of material and its reconstruction is carried out live. As the election season ramps up, MDK software will be distributed among artists, dj's, vj's, and others who will “appropriate with magisterial fearlessness,” transforming CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News into magical images, and bring about the systematic reordering of the senses through the deconstruction of live, broadcast media. MA: What is the 10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation and how did you come up with that title? RP: The purpose of 10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation is to “inspire other artists into action by undergoing aesthetic operation as a form of magic designed as a mediation between our strange hostile world and the human spirit.” It is a call-to-action that reaches out to encourage artists across the nation to insert themselves into social and political situations. It is critical that artists position themselves and their work in the larger socio-political context, particularly in these times of crisis. With the tools of mass media at our disposal, and the ability to act upon them, never before has today's artist had a better opportunity to fulfill the prior ambitions of the historical avant-garde to cross the divide between art and life and to distribute their ideas to a global audience. Following intensive discussions in the US Department of Art & Technology, the Global Virtualization Council, and our Joint Committee on Cultural Transformation and Paradigmatic Shifts, in November of 2002 I led the adoption of a bold, powerful resolution "To Authorize the Use of Artistic Acts of Mediation," (Packer, 2002) in light of actions of the Bush Administration to undermine the United Nations and international law. We believe that virtually every problem in America and the world can be resolved through the reflections, ideas, sensibilities and abilities of the artist. There are already countless artistic initiatives working successfully to subvert the status quo. However, these successful initiatives are too often isolated and unknown to others. These initiatives must be replicated over and over and over again by artists and art collectives until everyone is connected to someone many-to-many, peer-to-peer. MA: In your “Speech For the End of Time” (Packer, 2003) you refer to a “deep fear that has been instilled in the American psyche” as a result of the propaganda hype being generated by the current administration and their multi-national, corporate media mouthpieces. You then go on to say that “[w]e now set about to resurrect the belief that general revolution will originate in the appropriation and alteration of the medial environment and its space.” Is media deconstruction the best way to realize the revolutionary aims of your project? And why revolution which to many seems so outmoded a concept that it almost sounds meaningless. Where’s the pleasure in the Expermental Party? RP: To further the ideas and words of Situationist Guy Debord, “we must promote forms of hyper-political propaganda and experimental behavior” in the dark times that have prevailed since 9-11. Artists must insert themselves critically, aesthetically, and politically in the fundamentalist war that rages between the far-right Christian Elite and the Islamic Jihad. These are dark times indeed and we must not sit idle while the Government promotes the spectacle of a religious war. We must achieve the total deconstruction of media in order to build new formations, and we will advance this transformation we’ve created for purposes of propaganda and fantasy. And we will prevail.
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