edited by Garnet Hertz  – Disobedient Electronics

disobedient-electronics

DIY, English, 59 pages, 2017, USA

After his famous series of ‘Critical Making’ zines, Garnet Hertz has produced another publication about critical technologies, called ‘Disobedient Electronics’, in his trademarked sophisticated zine style. He’s back with a single instalment (for now) gathering twenty-four political art and design projects, briefly presented over one or more spreads by the respective authors. They are the result of a call for projects, and in this slim format, a small ‘family’ of artists can be recognised. Their political attitude is quite explicit, although the author manages to extend his selection to both historical works and to less known current ones. The need to be critical and ‘actionable’ is articulated in his introduction, where he also enlists the sources of inspirations. Altogether they already constitute a small manual of inventive technical guerrilla, with a series of excellent cases. The tangible protest value is expressed as an emergent need, and a possible shared line of thought and action amongst the editor, the artists and the lucky receivers. In fact Hertz applies another clever distribution scheme: three hundred copies have been distributed for free to people just asking for them through his website form, while the stocks lasts. Six months after that he’ll upload a freely downloadable pdf, which might also turn into a sellable book. Still the current form of a numbered limited edition zine, looks itself like a serial artwork, and thanks to its dynamic content, another ‘actionable’ one.

Check bibliographic details on Neural Archive!
 

Disobedient Electronics: Protest (Hertz, 2017)