Tale of the tape: David Joselit on Radical Software - periodical of media criticism

ArtForum, May, 2002 by David Joselit

Radical Software's utopian placement of video may seem quaint in 2002, but there are good reasons for revisiting it. First, the journal's embrace of art and activism under a single umbrella offers a refreshing corrective to the repressive disciplinary boundaries that structure current discussions of visuality in both the academy and the art world. Art historians and critics have sorted those Raindance affiliates who were identified as artists into one category and put activists into another. The freewheeling potential of video is thereby neutralized by confining it within a medium. This process of codification suggests the second rationale for looking again at Radical Software: It affords a cautionary tale regarding the Internet's claims as a site for radical democracy. Just as cable TV was once hailed as a new democratic forum, so the Internet is praised for its networked communities. The commercialization of this space, like cable before it, is already abundantly apparent, but an acknowledgment of the histo ry of various mediums' assimilation into commerce will help to ground and direct strategies for maintaining spaces for open interchange. Finally, Radical Software is worth reading because the fundamental tactic it elaborates--feedback--still works. Think of the grassroots groups that came together to disrupt the meetings of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 by creatively and exuberantly seizing public space. They constituted a visually savvy direct-action rebellion conceived and coordinated largely through the Internet, and they put into practice the dual dimensions of feedback--as interference or "noise," and as communication. True to the tradition of Radical Software, these activists jammed the mutually imbricated systems of city streets and global capital. In short, they talked back.

David Joselit is associate professor of art history at the University of California, Irvine.

In this occasional series, Artforum looks back on alternative magazines and journals whose importance for contemporary art--whether in introducing a new discourse or galvanizing scene--is often matched by the brevity of their life span.