Interview with Ricardo Dominguez
Networking the Streets
I interviewed Ricardo Dominguez, founding member of the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), on March 21st. of 2003, two days after the beginning of the war [The United States declares the war in Irak.] I began with a very open question (that Ricardo read from the paper I had with all my questions) related to his current EDT’s activities. Through email, I told Ricardo that I planned this interview to address a Latin American audience. One of the questions dealt with the issue of the application of on line activism to Latin American politics. Is online activism transferrable to different contexts? How may people used to protest in public spaces embrace a resource that while facilitating international intervention implies remote presence, one that we cannot see or appreciate immediately?
Ricardo Dominguez: […] I think mobilization in the streets is like the primary issue in terms of what on line communication can do and I think we have seen that layer, you know, begin to articulate itself on a global level and it’ s built upon the infrastructure that the counter globalization community has established, you know, with Seattle, Geneva all that kind of communication system, and then, you know, previously to that, the Zapatistas and Act Up. I mean there is all this generational stuff that is happening. And I think what has occurred was the networking of the streets which have always been electronic disturbances, electronic disturbance theaters, one of its projects in terms of how do you leverage all of this and make the streets meaningful again - not that they ever lost their meaning- but in a more political trajectory. And so I think it’ s been built up and I think the difference between the counter globalization movement was that the counter globalization movement comes from a kind of long- term analysis of certain kinds of economic questions, Neoliberalism, the relationship to IMF, NAFTA, so that the issues are somewhat complicated for mid- western hard land, and so you get a certain kind of grouping around it but with the Peace Movement you get a multi- generational gathering, to a certain extend, because at all the protests that I ‘ve been so far, I mean, there has been elderly ladies in furs to little kids, it’ s been fairly, for these kind of actions, fairly multiracial, fairly distinct kind of quadrands of ideology, you know, left, centered left, even some right wing communities have certainly participated. So I see this multi- generational, I see it as giving people a much clear idea of what the complicated issues in terms of Neoliberalism and IMF and counter globalization were about but in the most unfortunate of the circumstances it is in a very clear condition of an empire gone mad, in which you have in the streets not just activists or (unintelligible) but you have chancellors you have prime ministers, foreign service people, you know, “people in the know” and in the correct function of world politics themselves saying that something is right something is wrong and whether we agree with Toni Negri and Hardt about empire and where is established we certainly see that maybe there is not an immaterial empire as yet but there is certainly a thing that is happening with the war that is allowing people to see that the US has become, if not an empire, a super state, a super state that functions under this new ideology that’ s been established for the new American century, you know, from Cheney, Rumsfeld all those people, which is to reassert a super state in terms of militarization, I mean, as simple as that, it’ s not even about some [lowers his voice] you know I don’ t know it’ s, I mean, there are a lot of underlying subtexts for all of this. But I think people in a wide strip of sociological spaces understand that something of militarization and the super state has emerged.
Marcela Fuentes: But what about the …. do you see that the other struggles, like the Zapatistas or other causes are slipping, are going also there?, because I think that these days we are seeing like a call to oppose war, but the other issues seem to be not for this moment, people are really concentrated on that issue and it seems that the other causes are kind of like little consequences or little other symptoms of this same thing, but as if people were just like, we want focus now. Do you think that we can see in rallies or in marches other like, “Okay, we are also protesting against this other related issue”?
R.D: Well, at least at the marches that I’ ve been to- and we’ ll see about the march tomorrow- the gatherings do make themselves felt in terms of what organizations they represent, that is, the Palestinian resistance community, I’ve seen Argentinean communities, I’ ve seen Zapatistas, and I agree with you, I mean, one of the consequences of this super state militarization is that it has shifted the kind of considered questioning of Neoliberal globalization which comes out of what is happening locally in Argentina, in Chiapas, in very distinct zones and I think it can get lost, you know, my hope out of all of this is that whenever you do this kind of actions you hope that two percent of the people who got involved over a specific issue become more long- term in terms of being active about these other issues and even since 9/11 when I’ ve gone to tactical media conferences I still feel that there are people out there who are working on specific questions in the wider arena and I think the important element is to try to, you know, have those groups whether they’ re working on issues on the maquiladoras [sweat shops] and free trade zones, like Factor X in Tijuana, that they somehow are able to share the information they have gathered, the documentation, because the thing is that, for instance, obviously the Argentinean community here in the US, I mean, they are the ones that are keeping track of who is who, what are the historical frames that I don‘t think you can expect everybody to know as intimately but what’ s important out of all this is that people start having a sense of where the kind of more considered information is coming from and I think that’ s something that, you know, even with this, the war, two percent of that community- which is fairly large on a global scale, I mean if you consider that maybe ten million people protested in just the last few days, two percent of that it’ s a very substantial bit of mind power.
I interviewed Ricardo Dominguez, founding member of the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), on March 21st. of 2003, two days after the beginning of the war [The United States declares the war in Irak.] I began with a very open question (that Ricardo read from the paper I had with all my questions) related to his current EDT’s activities. Through email, I told Ricardo that I planned this interview to address a Latin American audience. One of the questions dealt with the issue of the application of on line activism to Latin American politics. Is online activism transferrable to different contexts? How may people used to protest in public spaces embrace a resource that while facilitating international intervention implies remote presence, one that we cannot see or appreciate immediately?
Ricardo Dominguez: […] I think mobilization in the streets is like the primary issue in terms of what on line communication can do and I think we have seen that layer, you know, begin to articulate itself on a global level and it’ s built upon the infrastructure that the counter globalization community has established, you know, with Seattle, Geneva all that kind of communication system, and then, you know, previously to that, the Zapatistas and Act Up. I mean there is all this generational stuff that is happening. And I think what has occurred was the networking of the streets which have always been electronic disturbances, electronic disturbance theaters, one of its projects in terms of how do you leverage all of this and make the streets meaningful again - not that they ever lost their meaning- but in a more political trajectory. And so I think it’ s been built up and I think the difference between the counter globalization movement was that the counter globalization movement comes from a kind of long- term analysis of certain kinds of economic questions, Neoliberalism, the relationship to IMF, NAFTA, so that the issues are somewhat complicated for mid- western hard land, and so you get a certain kind of grouping around it but with the Peace Movement you get a multi- generational gathering, to a certain extend, because at all the protests that I ‘ve been so far, I mean, there has been elderly ladies in furs to little kids, it’ s been fairly, for these kind of actions, fairly multiracial, fairly distinct kind of quadrands of ideology, you know, left, centered left, even some right wing communities have certainly participated. So I see this multi- generational, I see it as giving people a much clear idea of what the complicated issues in terms of Neoliberalism and IMF and counter globalization were about but in the most unfortunate of the circumstances it is in a very clear condition of an empire gone mad, in which you have in the streets not just activists or (unintelligible) but you have chancellors you have prime ministers, foreign service people, you know, “people in the know” and in the correct function of world politics themselves saying that something is right something is wrong and whether we agree with Toni Negri and Hardt about empire and where is established we certainly see that maybe there is not an immaterial empire as yet but there is certainly a thing that is happening with the war that is allowing people to see that the US has become, if not an empire, a super state, a super state that functions under this new ideology that’ s been established for the new American century, you know, from Cheney, Rumsfeld all those people, which is to reassert a super state in terms of militarization, I mean, as simple as that, it’ s not even about some [lowers his voice] you know I don’ t know it’ s, I mean, there are a lot of underlying subtexts for all of this. But I think people in a wide strip of sociological spaces understand that something of militarization and the super state has emerged.
Marcela Fuentes: But what about the …. do you see that the other struggles, like the Zapatistas or other causes are slipping, are going also there?, because I think that these days we are seeing like a call to oppose war, but the other issues seem to be not for this moment, people are really concentrated on that issue and it seems that the other causes are kind of like little consequences or little other symptoms of this same thing, but as if people were just like, we want focus now. Do you think that we can see in rallies or in marches other like, “Okay, we are also protesting against this other related issue”?
R.D: Well, at least at the marches that I’ ve been to- and we’ ll see about the march tomorrow- the gatherings do make themselves felt in terms of what organizations they represent, that is, the Palestinian resistance community, I’ve seen Argentinean communities, I’ ve seen Zapatistas, and I agree with you, I mean, one of the consequences of this super state militarization is that it has shifted the kind of considered questioning of Neoliberal globalization which comes out of what is happening locally in Argentina, in Chiapas, in very distinct zones and I think it can get lost, you know, my hope out of all of this is that whenever you do this kind of actions you hope that two percent of the people who got involved over a specific issue become more long- term in terms of being active about these other issues and even since 9/11 when I’ ve gone to tactical media conferences I still feel that there are people out there who are working on specific questions in the wider arena and I think the important element is to try to, you know, have those groups whether they’ re working on issues on the maquiladoras [sweat shops] and free trade zones, like Factor X in Tijuana, that they somehow are able to share the information they have gathered, the documentation, because the thing is that, for instance, obviously the Argentinean community here in the US, I mean, they are the ones that are keeping track of who is who, what are the historical frames that I don‘t think you can expect everybody to know as intimately but what’ s important out of all this is that people start having a sense of where the kind of more considered information is coming from and I think that’ s something that, you know, even with this, the war, two percent of that community- which is fairly large on a global scale, I mean if you consider that maybe ten million people protested in just the last few days, two percent of that it’ s a very substantial bit of mind power.
Discussion of "Interview with Ricardo Dominguez"
Add your voice to this discussion.
Checking your signed in status ...