CHArt Twenty-Second Annual Conference

Electronic Civil Disobedience: The SWARM case
Fidele Vlavo, London South Bank University, London, UK

‘As far as power is concerned, the streets are dead capital!’ ¹

In the early 1990s, Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an American group of artists and political activists developed the concept of Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD), a radical form of active resistance designed to transfigure social-political activism. In a series of contentious writings, CAE exposed its account of nomadic power and governance relocation, arguing for the development of a new political opposition in cyberspace.

As a result, US militant artist groups embarked on the coordination of virtual blockades and online sit-ins in an attempt to confront governing bodies in their so-called virtual locations. Since then, recent changes in Internet and digital communications such as national governments’ policies and corporation control are affecting the evolution of web-based disruptive movements exposing the latent tensions between ECD theory and practice.

This paper will examine the case of Electronic Disturbance Theatre and its SWARM project, the first known case of electronic civil disobedience and online protest, presented during the 1998 Ars Electronica Festival. For the project, members of EDT created a piece of software designed to disrupt targeted websites (in this case the Mexican and American governments' websites) in support of the Chiapas Zapatista movement. Placing the SWARM case in the context of online activism and current cyberspace politics, the paper will consider the potential discordance between Electronic Civil Disobedience praxis and contemporary art practice.

1. Electronic Civil Disobedience, 1994:11,<http://www.critical-art.net/books/ecd/ecd2.pdf>

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