No one, not even the women who point out the historic achievements of the grandmothers of the movement seems to see the pattern. No one gets angry when this ritual of self humiliation is demanded. Often one sees predisposed obedience.

I agree that the word “feminism” shouldn’t be used to label the movement. My reasoning is entirely different though: It is unwise to use it, not because of negative associations, and because it reminds of the early activists whose public image was largely shaped by sexist propaganda. But using an ism-word for activists who fight for what can only be seen as the natural way of organizing society suggests that they are the extremists. Ism-words should be used for the true extremists: Sexists and racists. People who fight for equality and an inclusive society are equality activists.

The pioneers of the movement deserve respect for taking risks and thinking outside of the accepted frame of their times. Their ideas and concepts must be challenged like all concepts, but no one should feel embarrassed about the history of the movement. That only sabotages a project that is far from being completed.

Unlike other artists and activists before him, Tobias does not claim to start his own state and his critique is not aimed at the state as such, but at what he believes may replace the state some time soon: Facebook

In order to get an ID, a Facebook Account is required. It then shows the holder’s FB user name, photo and the date he/she joined the social network.

The fascination (sometimes as fear, sometimes as hope) that the state may get replaced has been around for a while. In Snowcrash, Corporations that run gated communities with their own police take over some of the typical tasks of the state. In the late 90s Sealand made it on the cover of Wired when investors thought a micro state on a Maunsell Sea Fort would make a perfect base for hosting internet sites outside the reach of state legislation. Later MMOs emerged, some of them with veritable economies. In 1997 players of Ultima Online staged a protest in front of Lord Britsh’s castle.

Unlike these examples, Facebook, if it became a state, were not a micro, but, with close to a billion users, a macro state. Facebook’s stateliness derives from the knowledge it has about the it’s users. Thinking of Facebook as a state is therefore in the best tradition of big brother paranoia and it seems like the artist himself was a bit paranoid about the capabilities and the power of Facebook. In the last moment Leingruber decided to change the title from “Facebook ID” to “Social Network ID”, because he was afraid of getting into trouble and facing lawsuits. The fact that Facebook does not yet have it’s own legislation and courts was apparently not reassuring. Unfortunately the otherwise smart intervention unnecessarily suffered form the artist’s confused anticipatory obedience to a degree that almost makes it worthless as a work of art and quite useless as a form of activism.

1. In case of a law suite the amount of dispute after handing out 100 free ID cards with a Facebook Logo would be quite low (certainly lower than the sum sympathizers would donate within hours after such a lawsuit becomes public)

2. The intervention took place in Germany. Place of jurisdiction is therefore Germany.

3. According to German law, it should be very difficult for Facebook to claim violation of intellectual property, let alone damage of reputation, because artistic freedom to address a topic of public interest will certainly be valued higher than Facebook’s claims.

4. If Facebook was stupid enough to sue the organizer of such an intervention, it would create the kind of publicity artists and activists can only hope for.

Update: Whether the cease-of-desist letter that Facebook allegedly sent Leingruber is a hoax or not makes little difference. If Facebook actually sent the letter, it just shows that Leingruber got enough attention for Facebook to hear about it (and of course that FB’s lawyers are clueless). If it’s a hoax, it is only an attempt to make the best of the situations as it is now, but it is besides the point and dilutes what could have been an elegant piece.

Note: The space of LoBe is actually not rented but privately owned and–while probably very welcome–not funded or aided by the neighborhood management.

In his work “Google by Johannes P Osterhoff” he documents all his Google search queries between January 1 and December 31, 2011 on a website. He is probably not the first person to do that and maybe not even the first person to do that as an artistic project. But there is more to it.

1. He does not simply list the query string and links them to the result page, but he actually displays each query string in an input field that is designed after Google’s search field. To see the result one can click the search button. After all Osterhoff is an interface artist.

2. Each search field is accompanied by a Paypal donate button and by a Flattr button along with the Flattr Counter.

3. At the top of the page one sees the latest query in Google design (including Google’s logo) followed by a word cloud of the most recent search terms and a brief mission statement

On a formal level the page is a collage of design elements that we all see many times a day. It is actually quite beautiful in its own purist and repetitive way. Of course it also looks like an official Google Site, but confusing people about that is certainly not the point here. It’s not a hoax.

Unlike in earlier works in which Osterhoff usually stripped off function of the GUI elements he used, this time all GUI elements are fully functional. One can actually pay him via Paypal or Flattr for each of his queries. By combining Google queries with with Paypal and Flattr donations and a word cloud that make the project even more exhibitionist he implicitly asks questions about ownership on the web. One thing to keep in mind here that Google has even better means than word clouds to drill into it’s users interests and habits. Google lets us graze in order to milk us. By adding donate buttons Osterhoff proposes to milk Google in return by letting others graze. This of course means that he voluntarily compromises his own privacy quite bit and Google’s privacy a tiny bit.

The work is also a performance and in the best tradition of the genre based on exhibitionism and self inflicted pain. Additionally there is the element of collecting or even exemplary consumption.  After all using Google is not free, there is always a transaction of which currencies are privacy and attention. As Boris Groys pointed out somewhere, the contemporary artist is exemplary consumer rather than an individual creator (I forgot where exactly he said that, but since most of Groys’ books seem to consist of only a few resampled lectures, one should come across it very quickly when scanning one of them). Staging his exemplary consumption on Google and making his own stream of thought public to a large degree and proposing an actual business model is a truly elegant operation which creates a multilevel feedback loop. IT ROCKS!

At a Pecha Kucha Night in Berlin in 2006 Sascha Pohflepp presented his first prototype of a device that takes photos from Flickr which were uploaded the exact moment one pushed the button on the device. It was called Blinks & Buttons and resembled a compact camera from the 70s without lense and with a big orange button. As a hardware device it was an art oddity, but very visionary.

Time: Sep 18, 2010, 00:53h

Now Pohflepp published Buttons.app with the help of Electric Mobile. It’s great. A switch allows choosing whether you want a picture that was taken at the same time or one that was taken at the same location. You can set the radius. Especially photos taken at the same location may be quite revealing and actually useful. I like that what you get is not alway a photo (see below)

One feature I miss is a function that adds coordinates and timestamp to the filename when saving or, better even, a full fledged archive with time a and coordinates.

Location: Hansaviertel Berlin, Radius: 2km

Location: Tiergarten Berlin, Radius: 2km

Recorded during Ars Electronica 2010 at the old tabaco factory in Linz. The factory was in use until 2009.

Aram Barthol showed internet art in an internet café at Kottbusser Damm in Berlin. The concept is simple: Rent all computers and set the homepage on each computer to one of the featured art projects. For convenience distribute sheets with artist info and an exhibition map (most internet café have xerox machines and the workstations have numbers). Cheap wine and beer for the opening can be bought directly from the counter. As a side effect two cultures and very different urban communities is are brought together – after all this is not St. Oberholz where the frontal lobe of the digital bohème resides in a latte machiato rich bring-your-own-laptop-environment.

The way the staff at Kottbusser Damm 103 adjusted to the new clientele was the an art experience in itself. Of course the internet art was great too. Here are some links:

Dragan Espenschied / Education of the Noobz

Tobias Leingruber / Webmarker

Recorded at Tempelhof Airport – until recently the airport closest to the city center of Berlin. The building is known as one of the first modern airports. The architecture is typical for the Nazi era and admittedly impressive. Today the building is used for fares and large events. The airfield is publicly accessible and used as a park.