Introduction to Revolt
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The world is in turmoil, and so are we. We feel a deep unease—a mix of fear and confusion. Fear at the violent, reactionary forces rising around us, echoing some of history’s darkest times. And confusion as we witness the global spread of a new form of capitalism—financialised, neoliberal, and expanding the colonial project to its extreme limits.
In a world where wars and genocides turn human lives into statistics and byte sized imagery which can be ‘swiped’ away —technology has built an unimaginable reality that feels increasingly disconnected. Grass roots organisations, community led initiatives, and new wave revolutionaries are challenging how we see, how we engage with these images, and how we can unlearn the colonial mindsets we’ve been taught.
To quote Félix Guattari “We focus our attention on impending catastrophes, while the true catastrophes are already here, under our noses, with the degeneration of social practices …with the mass media's numbing effect, with a collective will blinded by the ideology of the 'market', in other words, succumbing to the law of the masses”
After large-scale, media-covered protests around the world, more people are witnessing political unrest from afar. Images of protests and revolts are spread quickly and widely. Social media and traditional media are playing a bigger role in these uprisings, becoming part of both the event and how it's shown.
This edition looks at the role of spectators, questioning their agency in events they only witness from afar. How are we implicated in this distant relationship? In a world where mediation shapes political life, how does it affect what we see and how we react? Is spectatorship passive and voyeuristic, or can it be a tool for change?
We seek to ask questions about how technology mediates politics today, challenging the ideas of distance versus involvement, watching versus acting, and seeing versus doing.