SMF2
THE TACTICS OF INTERFERENCE
1994-2003, Various Directors, USA, ca. 115 min.


THE TACTICS OF INTERFERENCE
still from: BLO Nightly News

The program highlights recent documents of tactical media and culture jamming actions with a specific political, social, or cultural agenda. From Electronic Direct Action to protest fashion to smart-mobbing, these projects represent an important thread in communicating cultural interference. The program includes:

BLO NIGHTLY NEWS
1994, Igor Vamos, USA, 28 min.
In this new form of subversive media terrorism, BLO operatives purchased talking Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls, both of which are programmed to speak crude cultural clichés. The dolls were then taken to the BLO headquarters where "corrective surgery" was performed: switching the dolls' voice boxes. The dolls were then placed back on the store shelves in a process of reverse shoplifting-"shopgiving." In the format of a nightly news program, this witty and satiric video documents the activities of the Barbie Liberation Organization, including the "corrective surgery" procedure and the "shopgiving" actions. The tape functions as witness and instruction manual on "cultural jamming"-an interference strategy used by guerrilla art and media activists to expose and undermine the logic and domination of corporate-controlled media and capitalist culture. - Video Data Bank

CONTESTATIONAL ROBOTICS
1999, Institute of Applied Autonomy (IAA), USA, 5 min.
The Institute for Applied Autonomy is an anonymous research collective dedicated to developing technologies that extend the autonomy of human activists. This video documents the first completed projects in this initiative: an ultra-cute robot designed for targeted distribution of subversive literature and a small tele-operated robot designed for high-speed graffiti deployment from a remote location.

STREETWRITER
2001, Institute For Applied Autonomy (IAA), USA, 5 min.
Streetwriter expands on lessons learned from the Robotic GraffitiWriter project. A modified cargo van spray paints 6 foot tall text messages onto the road while driving.

I-SEE
2001, Institute For Applied Autonomy, USA, 5 min.
The project called I-See is a web-based navigation service that allows users to avoid surveillance altogether by providing them with the path of least surveillance to their destination.

COPWATCH
2002, Guerrilla News Network, USA, 5 min.
CopWatch is a journey into the dangerous world of community police oversight as epitomized by pioneer activists Andrea Pritchett and Jacob Crawford. Founded in 1990, the Berkeley chapter of CopWatch sought to revitalize the Sixties-era initiative originally conceived by the Black Panthers. Over the past twelve years, CopWatch chapters have begun to spring up across the United States. With the recent high-profile cases of police brutality and fears of a looming police state, they might be just in time. - GNN

HOW TO BUILD A BOMB
2002, Carbon Defense League (CDL), USA, 6 min.
Certainly an activity that will arouse suspicians.

ENRON AD
2000, CELLmedia, USA, 30 sec.
This advertisement was a part of Enrons Ask Why? campaign which ran during the Winter prior to the California energy crisis when the energy deregulation policys that Enron had lobbied for were beginning to bear fruit. This was also the season campaigning during which Enron was a primary sponsor of the Bush presidential campaign. There are four such advertisements that were aquired from the Enron website just hours before the company pulled them off the Internet following its collapse.

SIX CORNERS
2003, Ray Pride, USA 10 min.
On Thursday March 20, 2003. 10,000 protestors jammed Chicago's Lakeshore Drive at rush hour. But Friday night, at 11 pm A different crossroads, a different demo. A dance to life at Wicker Park's North, Damen and Milwaukee "Six Corners" intersection.

WAR ON U.S. SOIL
2003, 4N6, 15 min.
The near future is a Kraft-ed biologically modified food protest.

Recode.com INFORMATIONAL COMMERCIAL
2003, Conglomco, USA, 15 min.
Re-Code.com was a web site that allowed users to enter information about products they purchased into a database that was then publicly searchable. This information included, name, brand, store, UPC ID number, price, and packaging material. It used the UPC number of the product to generate a representative bar code in real time on the user's screen. The web site itself was made to look very similar to Priceline.com. A step through visual guide and a commercial that dramatized the act of switching UPC bar codes were shown on the site. This video cchronicles the project and the media virus that followed.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25 | Gene Siskel Film Center | 8:00pm