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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
November 15, 2002
Secretary
Announces Passage
of Joint Resolution
"To Authorize the Use of
Artistic Acts of Mediation"
National Mall, US Capitol, Washington DC
12:30 P.M. EST
THE
SECRETARY: Thank you all. Good Afternoon. Welcome to the US Capitol. I
want to thank the President and the First Lady, and members of my Staff
who have joined us. I want to thank the members of Congress who are hard
at work behind me. I'm honored and humbled to have you here.
With the Resolution just passed, we have met important responsibilities, upheld our principles and given clear and fair notice to the Bush Regime of our intent to authorize the use of artistic acts of mediation in these apocalyptic times of crisis. He must submit to any and all methodologies to verify his compliance. His cooperation must be prompt and unconditional, or he will face the severest consequences.
This is among the most serious and difficult artistic decisions we can face. Staff of the US Department of Art and Technology and the Artist-Ambassadors of the Global Virtualization Council, along with members of the Joint Committee on Cultural Transformation and Paradigmatic Shifts, have deliberated with care, and they have spoken with clarity on behalf of all artists around the world. We will face our dangers squarely, and we will face them unafraid.
We have now come together to announce that the outlaw regime in our nation's capital will no longer be permitted to irrevocably engulf us all in hopeless despair, through a system extolling exploitation, consumption, corruption, and greed, and that the extreme magnitude of harm that would result from such an atrocity, combine to justify action to defend humanity.
That
is the judgment of the US Department of Art & Technology, that is
the judgment of the Global Virtualization Council. With this Joint Resolution,
we have now authorized the use of artistic force. Though I have not yet
ordered the use of force, confronting the threat posed by the Bush Regime
is necessary, by whatever means required. Either the Bush regime will
cease to demonstrate its continuing hostility, inventing self-created
and deadly dangers that are growing beyond our control, colliding with
the forces of chaos, or, for the sake of peace, we will lead a global
coalition of artists to virtualize that regime. If any doubt our resolve,
our determination, they would be unwise to test it.
The Bush Regime is a serious and growing threat to peace. Operating on the commands of right wing ideologues and military-religious zealots, the Regime is in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to conspire with corporations, CEO's, military officials, and the oil-garchy to carry out its heinous acts, actively plotting to deconstruct our civil liberties through the USA Patriot Act, and supporting and harboring the "Christian" elite bent on prying into the personal lives of non-Christian-believing-Liberals.
If the Bush Regime gains even greater destructive power, nations around the world would face blackmail, intimidation or attack. Chaos in the world would be felt in the Middle East, Europe, and beyond. And the Bush Regime's capability and willingness to transmit radioactive waves into the atmosphere of whatever geopolitical location that dares threaten the economic prosperity of its people, as it attempts to annihilate whatever social difference there may be among us, undermines the peace and security of many nations. Those who choose to live in denial may eventually be forced to live in fear.
Every artist who believes in the power of virtualization and the suspension of disbelief, also shares in the duty to take appropriate action, in accordance with their compassion for critical insight, the spectacle, and distaste for the status quo, to change ineffective paradigms, to change the world. The time has arrived for the US Department of Art & Technology and the Global Virtualization Council to live up to the purposes of its founding to protect the revolutionary aspirations of the avant-garde. The time has arrived once again for the world's artists to face up to our global responsibilities and confront a gathering danger.
The
resolution approved today, "To Authorize the Use of Artistic Acts
of Mediation," presents the Bush Regime with a test - a final test.
They must now, without delay or negotiations, fully comply with the intent
of all artists, men and women, from all nations large and small, and welcome
the tremendous power of virtualization, to take the necessary action to
break out of this horrible shell of reality to bring about the rebirth
of society through the union of all artistic media and its potentialities.
We will be making only one determination: is the Bush Regime meeting the terms of the Joint Resolution or not. The US Department of Art & Technology has agreed to discuss any material breach with the Global Virtualization Council, but without jeopardizing our freedom of action to defend our beliefs and carry out our acts of mediation. If the Bush Regime fails to fully comply, we will enforce all relevant resolutions regarding our authority to promote the transformation and dissolution of hierarchical and bureaucratic systems as achieved through appropriation and virtualization.
Compliance will begin with an accurate and full and complete accounting of all of corporate-driven America - the media, the CEO's, the politicians, the energy officials, as well as the myriad national and local officials seeking to pummel our so called democratic system. Failure to make such an accounting would be further indication of the Regime's bad faith and aggressive intent. Artists and cultural critics must have unfettered access to any site in America, at any time, without pre-clearance, without delay, without exceptions. We must be permitted to operate under new, effective rules of critique. And the Bush Regime must accept those rules without qualification or negotiation.
I've already met with the head of the Critical Inspections Team. I've assured them that the we will fully support their efforts, including a request for information that can help identify repressive effects of a politics of cynicism that continues to totter against the deathline.
We
takes the resolutions of our staff and artist-ambassadors very seriously.
We urge other artistic movements to do the same. We're working to build
the broadest possible coalition to enforce the demands of the world's
artists. The whole epoch of collective artistic culture rises up in the
tunnel of the doomed Bush Regime.
We recognize what is at stake.
And so we oppose a uniquely dangerous regime - a regime that has harbored those who need only preach what they want the television to transmit to our nation of worshippers, which reigns supreme, its operating system sanctioned by the One God of Code, its one code of greed and material lust, salivating Lord.
We will not live at the mercy of any group or regime that has the motive and seeks to infiltrate the bowels of the Everyman, inserting a laxative of pseudo-leisure so that we may play the stock market and eat our mad cows with drooling rapture. If the Bush Regime is permitted to churn out the propaganda butter while greasing up our virtual asses, dictating the future of a vital region of our collective anatomy, they could resume this pattern of intimidation and conquest.
In confronting this threat, and if artistic action becomes necessary, we will act in the interests of the historical Avant-Garde, to better enable those concerned with the fate of our world to invent explosive material to toss into the political-economic bunkers.
I want to thank the Deputy Secretary Jeff Gates for his leadership, his good work and his determination to help us cope with reality and the complexities of the human condition in a post-apocalyptic 21st century America.
I thank the co-author of the Joint Resolution, Director of the Office of Political and Economic Insecurity, Abe Golam. He actively pursues a shared vision of an artist-driven government in a more just and cultural America. Abe has aspirations to become a candidate of the Experimental Party in 2004, whose virtual identity is guaranteed to stir up controversy in the global computer networks, that "non-place" where the true battle for democracy in America will be fought and won.
I
also thank, standing behind me on the picturesque National Mall: my wife
Phyllis Hecht, Under Secretary of Domestic Affairs; Alice Denney, Chief
of Protocol; Amy Pastan, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau for the Conservation
and Preservation of the Suspension of Disbelief; Richard Dana, Under Secretary
of the Bureau of the Intermedium Between Life and Mortality; William Gilcher,
Envoy Plenipotentiary to the European Union and Latin America; Glenn Marcus,
Director of the Office of the National Regulatory Commission on Fakery
& Illusion; and of course our President and First Lady, Mr. and Mrs.
George W. Bush.
Members of the US Department of Art & Technology and Artist-Ambassadors of the Global Virtualization Council acted with courage and took a principled stand with the passage of this Joint Resolution. They have shown the kind of international leadership that promises to promote the emergence of a new idealism, the internationalism of a new artistic movement, which is constrained by no boundaries, no religion, and no government.
Now comes the hard part.
We must maintain our unity and sense of purpose in order to participate in the jettison of reason and the escape from the clogs of convention in surrender to the unbridled surge of spirit and fantasy.
The outcome of the current crisis is already determined: the authorization and full employment of artistic acts of mediation and international forces of virtualization to bring about a new era of utopian idealism, and an active role for the artist in reshaping our world - particularly in these times of crisis - through nothing less than the appropriation of the US Government.
The only solution for the Bush Regime is compliance. The US Department of Art & Technology and the Global Virtualization Council prefer that the Regime meets its obligations voluntarily, yet we are prepared for the alternative: a commitment to a conception of art revolutionized to such a degree that it becomes a politically productive force, coursing through each person, re-ordering the senses, intoxicating the mind, re-shaping the present.
Thank you, all.
END 12:44 P.M. EST
Contact: Press Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology press@usdept-arttech.net
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