Tactics

Michel de Certeau describes in his book The Practise of Everyday Life how public spaces are governed by unseen authorities by deployment of  ’strategies’. These strategies are sets of rules that are superimposed on the space and which the individual user of the space has to obey. He also says that these rules cannot be broken by the  individual but can be temporarily altered or circumvented. This bending of the laws inside the public domain he calls tactics.

Tactics are temporary, flexible, inventive and sometimes desperate actions taken by everyday people, that break into or pervert the written or unwritten “laws” of a space.

On this page I will keep a record of all instances of this form of silent urban resistance against the control apparatus I come across.

Date: 24/8/2010

Place: Gäddan, 3rd floor on the toilet door,  Malmö, Sweden

Date: 17/7/2010

Place: Krutmeijersgatan, Malmö, Sweden

Date: 18/6/2010

Place: Media & Design Academy building, C-Mine 5, Genk

This rather unsavory surprise was stuck to one of the tables near the cantina area in the MDA. Artistic statement or just a common prank, who can tell..

Date: 10/5/2010

Place: Media & Design Academy building, C-Mine 5, Genk

The addition IN NATURA (in kind)  has been scrawled on a piece of paper with a general informative text: GELIEVE ZO VLUG MOGELIJK UW BORG TE BETALEN (Please pay your deposit as soon as possible) which gives the message a whole new connotation. I found this message at the audio/video equipment loan-out desk in the basement of the MDA building.

Date: 10/5/2010

Place: Media & Design Academy building, C-Mine 5, Genk

I found this text on the can dispenser of the Coke vending machine in the cantina at the MDA. At first glance it looks rather playful and innocent, the pink text decorated by small ‘x’ symbols which are usually found in pubescent love letters. The message itself is in it’s meaning rather provocative though. It stands in sharp contrast with it’s design and within the context it resides in.