Tactical Media is a term popularized by Geert Lovink and David Garcia in the mid 1990s. It refers to media art activism that makes use of popular media forms and distribution platforms to convey messages of critique or intervention in a wide range of social issues, political issues, any kind of perceived injustices or unethical, unacceptable behavior. Originally termed ‘Tactical Television’, it was an attempt to categorise the use of new media technologies as a means of protest and intervention – alternative media practices such as pirate TV stations, pirate radio, underground newsletters, flyers, video cassette recordings etc. You would need to consider Tactical Media in relation to the entire history of media, media theory, culture (media and cultural studies) to gain a full and complete understanding of what we’re talking about here. The term Tactical Media became a necessary label, as a dramatic increase in the production of this kind of work became apparent as the 1990s unfolded. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a dramatic drop in the cost of media production technologies. Why? Video cameras, microphones, recording equipment, TVs, monitors, editing software, computers – the digitization of media made if at once more affordable and more accessible to a greater number of people than ever before, as well as more malleable.
Where does the ‘Tactical’ come into it? An academic angle in terms of tactics and strategies, military discourse – Clauswitz – it was felt that Tactical Media works were short-term, short form, reactionary, almost like Guerilla warfare – observe an attack, react by attacking with stealth and then disappear into the night without a trace. Many Tactical Media interventions took this form – from Electronic Civil Disobedience, where thousands of users would access a website simultaneously in order to overload its servers, to the kind of temporary deceptions instigated by the likes of the Yes Men – fake websites, fake lectures, speeches, interviews, videos, etc. all designed in the semiotic language of popular mainstream media, to make them appear indistinguishable from so-called ‘real’media. This is a key point. What can we truly believe? How much of what the media says is actually ‘true’? In most cases, Tactical Media seeks to expose hidden truths – to unravel complex lies woven by politicians, corporations and mainstream media, advertising and authoritative journalism. Tactical Media evolved with the technology and eventually became a parody of itself, hijacked by art galleries, sponsored by multinational corporations – a cynical attempt to appear edgy and to appeal to the emerging market demographic of rebellious prosumers / produsers.