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"These
computers come from a dumpster in the Bay Area," says artist Praba Pilar.
"And these are just a single-day load," she says.
The
garbage pile is part of "Putografia Virtual," an exhibit at San Francisco's
Galeria de la Raza, where Pilar's group of artists, Los Cybrids, is launching
a crusade against technological optimism from the very heart of the silicon
empire.
Los
Cybrids, formed by Monica Praba Pilar, John J. Leaños and Rene
Garcia, are "a junta of polyethnic cultural diggers of the Latino sort
dedicated to the critique of cyber-cultural negotiation via artistic activity,"
according to their manifesto.
"Putografia
Virtual" can be translated as "Virtual Whoreography."
"We
are all whores, selling ourselves to technology," Garcia says.
The
exhibit is a battle cry against technology and information society. "We're
against the fervor of the digital revolution," says Leaños, referring
to the promises of prosperity, equality, direct democracy and multi-culturalism
heralded by the Internet gurus of the last decade. "The Net is controlled
by the military and the multinationals. They are the ones who benefit."
At
the heart of the exhibit is "Tech-TV," a mock Latino-themed tech-news broadcast
that includes a TV game show called "NASDAQuina." The show awards humongous
prizes to large corporations and displays video excerpts of people hooking
serial cables into their arms as if they were heroin fixes.
As
a mock-TV reporter, Garcia incites Latinos to "get those brown fingers
clicking" and ends with a harangue for spending money on schools instead
of on computers.
"The
Internet has a democratic potential, but it turns out to be a centralizing
media," Pilar said.
According
to the Cybrids, the Net is where global capitalism has flourished the fastest
and benefited the most, thanks to its newly acquired ability to spy on
users. The new economy doesn't solve inequalities, but rather perpetuates
them along the lines of racial divide.
"They
train Latinos to fix computers or (do) low-wage labor," Pilar said. "They'll
be making the same $10 an hour."
Latinos
and people of color may be on the wrong side of the digital divide, but
that doesn't mean they're not getting their share of the problems caused
by information technology.
"You
don't have to be connected to be affected," Pilar said.
The
presence of technology comes through policing, surveillance, INS databases
and all kinds of information collected to maintain control over citizens,
especially those of color, according to Pilar. "Privacy is not an individual,
but a social problem," she says.
What
is the solution, then?
"It's
easy. Downgrade," Leaños said.
Others
don't agree with Los Cybrids' controversial positions. "It's a simplistic
reasoning that stems from the fact that the digital divide is a real problem,"
says Francis Pisani, director of LatinoTek.
"If Latinos don't do anything, it can certainly happen."
Pisani
said that nowadays, networking social structures can make a better use
of the Web than can hierarchical institutions such as the police. "The
people at Seattle did it," he said, referring to the WTO protests more
than a year ago.
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