D&C: How do you feel about ‘viral activism’ online as successors to the posters in Paris that kept people informed of protests and gathered support?
Johan Kugelberg: Online political activism, I fear, is 60 per cent luxury consumption. They sound like this: ‘Oh boy, that’s a nasty politician, I’m going to go home and write something about them on my blog!’ That is obviously a facsimile. This is Debordian: ‘Everything that was directly lived has receded into representation.’ Nothing on a screen is directly lived. It is a representation. That means that every aspect of political activism becomes defined by the medium that it uses because the medium is ultimately the message. And if the way that you communicate costs £600, requires a socket and software made by corporations using an email system created by a nasty-ass company... well, my friend, beware the Ides of March.
Read more: Kugelberg complete interview
