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of activism--as in "tactical media"--and often provided sophisticated politicalanalysis, available online, of course. ("The revolution will be webcast!" writesGeert Lovink.) Activists and hacktivists have stepped into the space vacated byvideo, whose expansively utopian and activist potential has been depoliticized,

as "video art," much like photography before it, was removed from wide publicaddress by its incarceration in museum mausoleums and collectors' cabinets.

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In the present context, the political work of the late '60s through '70s--nowpurged of exigency and brought out of the closet by the market--may beevaluated differently. This work may be tinged with nostalgia to young artistslikely to have encountered it in art-history classes, but it offers a starting pointand a history to connect with, an ur-moment that all trends in art like to locate.What initially seemed attractive for its look becomes more compelling for itscommitment.

At its best, Conceptual and other post-Pop forms of art led to a tremendouslyproductive encounter between artists and the "life world," providing a space fordeduction, exposition, and insight, as well as self-revelation and play. Play,including (postmodern) irony and parody and a subversion of officialdom,becomes more evident the closer one gets to the present--though it started withyippie guerrilla performances, as well as with musical groups like the Mothersof Invention, the Fugs, and Country Joe & the Fish. Artists' groups of the '60sand '70s were organized mostly around public actions, adopting the proteststyle of the day. West Coast women such as Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitzor the Waitresses were more likely to engage in civic-square performances.Many of the '80s collectives in New York set up ad hoc shadow commercial-

gallery structures, while others like PAD/D, REPOhistory, and Group Materialwere operating here and there within established institutions and more publicvenues. Groups bridging different times and practices range from the Bread &Puppet Theater and the Zapatistas (not an art group, of course) to the GuerrillaGirls and Critical Art Ensemble (now caught in the Orwellian web of thePatriot Act). Among the more recent examples are ATTAC, Ne Pas Plier, LasAgencias, subRosa, the Yes Men, [R][TM] ark, Boat-People.org,Disobbedienti/Tute Bianche, and others operating as the dark matter of thecounterpublic sphere, in the words of artist Greg Sholette. Media collectivesinclude the long-lived Paper Tiger and Deep Dish and newer ones such as

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Whispered Media and the post-'99 Indymedias around the world, as well aspirate radio. (I am leaving out the robust community and public art movementsin the US that have little interest in joining the more mandarin art world that,say, follows Artforum and does not accommodate their public actions and

spectacles.) The practices of many such collectives--most of which wouldrefuse the artist label--range from left-wing pranks to strategically deployedvandalism and criminality (such as Yomango's choreographed shoplifting). Theglobalization of the social-justice movement, the diffuse sites of social labor,and new communication technologies have helped create communities thatexist primarily through Listservs but finally wind up with feet on streets.

The question, then, is not, Is it art? but Whose art is it? And art for whom? Thequestion is, What is art? If one is to believe, as I do, that art provides a different

frame for interpreting experience (although clobbered in its reach by corporatemedia) and offers the possibility of intelligible political engagement, then theflattening of political art by trendiness or vital but short-term politicalexigencies is a missed opportunity. The new turn to Kantian aestheticsemanates mostly from people seeking to renovate a decrepit aestheticism andquash unruly "politicized" practices, but some writers, such as SusanBuck-Morss, seem to be looking to Kant, as Adorno did, to support aconviction that it offers a different way of knowing. I am no Kantian, so far.Adorno's brief for an art of imminent critique, of open-ended criticality, cannotfully define artists' practice. In a moment of unmistakable crisis in all

dimensions, cultural, political, and economic, in the US and the rest of theworld, artists once again, in all self-aggrandizement, seek to reorient theiraudiences, forming them into public constituencies. Let us try to figure outwhat art is beyond what the art world's present regression suggests.

Martha Rosler is an artist based in New York. (See Contributors.)

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