New Formats For Our E-stranged Times
by The XLterrestrials
SOLIDARITY DON’T STOP !
Since the beginning of the pandemic closures and lockdowns last March (2020), our Globalista Radio Kit ( GRK ) project began streaming online programs, as a means to stay connected with friends, comrades, community, culture and Kiez. Also with a new health crisis on top of all the other social ills and planetary crises, this felt like an urgent + crucial moment to put a bunch of previous experiences with media, activism and the arts into a new level + format of action !
Now is NOT the time to isolate, to retreat, nor go deeper down those cybernetic rabbit holes, otherwise known as … Digital Culture. We CAN be cautious AND continue to organize and mobilize. Solidarity is needed more than ever ! Defense of cultural + public space, livelihoods, local territories, housing struggles and Wohnraum are going to need to be part of a central thread in whatever topics and themes we present and discuss in a media program.
In February, we began streaming GRK from the Regengogenfabrik ! We are now every Friday night in the cafe, so that the project can be visible from the street. Because a big part of our GRK concept is to explore what we can do to create an „expanded radio“ – a channel or medium or resource – that can go beyond the frame of tech tools + devices, and become a PLACE for the neighborhood residents to also share their voices, needs and concerns. Some of these ideas have been inspired by the self-determination and autonomy (zones) achieved by the Zapatistas in Mexico. And by their holistic, „intergalactic“ + political maneuvers. But we will have to come back to that topic later. ( Part 2 ? )
Of course within the contexts of an european domain, incorporated EU states AND the highly unusual predicaments created by the health crisis, this is all a new challenge. But we are super excited to have the Regenbogen as a resource, host and experienced team player in (local) community building !
THE CURRENT TECHNO-ILLOGICAL LANDSCAPES
From our perspective, doing ever more stuff on the machines and more streaming content online, just as the Zoom-i-fication of communications and social interaction was about to erupt on our screens, our media action was going to need to be created with a healthy and vigilant dose of critical analysis. And some very deep thinking in regards to strategies of resistance. And somehow create a local neighborhood presence, i.e. with our Kiez Feet on the ground !
For us, THE NET in many ways had *already* become a massive hazard area, like the site of a big oil spill, a transnational or uber-National(-ist) trainwreck, or a whole next level of corporate and military industrial complex dilemmas ( as in nuclear power ); This industrial digital wave is a still-dripping wet techno-colonial crime scene that had contaminated our being as humans, as organisms, as physical embodied terrestrial creatures. As we inhabit both a fragile social fabric and an interconnected biological web, the technosphere may currently be interpreted as a predatory and invasive species. Another kind of virus ?
It should be no surprise that our latest threat to our social well-being entails also a molecular biological disorder… We are out of balance far beyond what is visible to both the naked eye, and certainly to all eyes that are now glued to the ubiquitous always-on flickering screens.
IS THERE A NEW EMBODIED „TACTICAL MEDIA“ ?!
So making “radio“ now in all of these contexts and in our newly forming e-stranged bubbles is a very weird situation.
Technically, we aren’t radio. We are not “on the air“ – FM signal transmission. Not yet anyway. We are in the digital streams. And while we would love to step back into the days of community + pirate radio, not only are the regulations and penalties far stricter, the chances of developing a meaningful audience on those old localized receiving tools is perhaps too limited. Plus, in an online ocean of everyone under the sun „making media“… we are all pretty much Zoom-fatigued. Ironically, there are now even Zoom conferences discussing this very problem. But we would go further in our analysis and say we were already struggling in pre-Corona times with our lives in a disembodied mousetrap. A Cybernetic Regime. The XLterrestrials call this „The Hyper-Industrial Hamster Cage Complex“. We are Cubicle-ized. Hijacked. Fragmented. Disconnected. Overconnected. Distracted. Disrupted. Manipulated. Captured. Weaponized. Used. Abused. Crapitalized. Paralyzed. And Shock Doctrined.
Take note the latest news of a Silicon *Psycho* Valley whistleblower Sophie Zhang （张学菲）. She just revealed : a very specific Facebook loophole that lets authoritarian govts. + despots „deceive and harass their citizens“. The details of her leak are not nearly enough (i.e. it doesnt even describe „Surveillance Capitalism“ as the root driver of FB’s exploits), but still intense. And perhaps very useable in courts around the world. For more see: @szhang_ds
In other words: this aint no fucking rose garden of enlightened communications for the people ! But of course there is more to the tech world than all these miserable M.I.C. and corporate platforms.
The XLterrestrials have been analyzing and writing about our tech + media environments for some time. We find incredible inspiration from many things that come out of the hacker scenes, hacklabs, tech activism, DIY media + cinema, pirates, etc. And we find events like Chaos Communications Congress one of the most up-to-speed gatherings to try and grapple with our techno-dystopian afflictions ! We also have been active in alot of the „tactical media“ work that grew out of the anti-globalization struggles in the 90s, which led to the Indymedia network. And before that there was culture jamming, and the situationists, media theory, Chomsky’s manufacturing consent, etc, etc. So we try to put all these perspectives into our GRK format, news and analysis.
In short all these struggles are still playing out, with new layers. And the digital realms have an all new cast of mediating and meddling monsterhood ! All new kinds of Goliaths and Davinas ! New dangers may require new comrades, and new manifestations of rebellion ! It’s always a big mountain to climb, but we still think that creating some form of „Interactive Kiez Media“ and a DIY „Emergency Broadcast Network“ is an absolutely necessary community-thinking thing for our imperiled and troubled times.
RADICAL BEATS FOR ANOTHER POSSIBLE KIEZ !
At this point, you may be asking…
WHO and WHAT are the XLterrestrials ?!
That’s complicated to answer in an online text… and in the scope of a blog post… and in the panopticon webz !
But a few things we can say that may give you a better idea, and an introductory glimpse:
1. We often communicate in the form of a collectively conscious „ALIEN WE“ , in radical opposition to „royal we(s)“. And because in the midst of techno-colonialism and the dark digital age of de-culturings, as we described to some extent above re: the techno-illogical landscapes, we prefer to operate as a semi-anonymous, semi-permanent, abstract, fluid and imaginary, poetic and chaotic, always evolving and revolving, and as a loosely-based collective force, with multiple bodies, nodes and bases.
2. MUSIC is most definitely one of our favorite and tactical languages !
3. We welcome all friendly organisms
4. You may already be one of us.
5. You may have heard of CiTiZEN KiNO, that was us. ( in hiatus, until Kinos re-open )
6. We have come to decolonize our planet !
If this text + imagery + tone resonates with you and you want to tune in and listen in to our GRK programs, join us, team up, contribute, collaborate, make stuff with us!
The XLt + GRK look foward to hearing from you !
*Globalista*Radio*Kit*
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Live interactive Kiez media on the interwebz
https://globalista.openradio.in/
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Now every Friday nite from Regenbogenfabrik
Check our Chaos Pad for updates + contact info:
https://pads.ccc.de/grk
And on the frackybook + tweetz:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/943417582460036/
@podrescu O~~~~0————o
regenbogenfabrik 40 