Secretary Delivers Speech @ Zero Hour

US Department of Art & Technology
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
[email protected]
Washington, DC

Press Secretary
For Immediate Release: March 12, 2003


Secretary Packer Delivers Speech @ Zero Hour

WASHINGTON, DC - On March 10, 7:14 PM (EST) Secretary Randall M.
Packer of the US Department of Art & Technology continued his
nationwide tour at New York University to deliver the Speech @ Zero
Hour, announcing the activation of the Experimental Party, and its
latest initiative, "10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation" - an urgent
call-to-action in these extraordinary times of crisis.

In his first New York address since taking office, Secretary Packer
called on artists to serve their nation - in celebration of the
universal spirit of collective expression, by joining the
Experimental Party. The Experimental Party intends to recruit,
support, and coordinate viable artists to help speak oracular truths
and the most radically liberating critique of reason, and to engage
students in acts of appropriation through art and polemic, manifesto
and demonstration, love and politics.

The following is the transcript:

Speech by Randall M. Packer
Secretary, US Department of Art & Technology
New York University, New York City
presented by Alex Galloway of NYU Media Ecology

March 10, 2003

****

THE SECRETARY: Thank you, Under Secretary of the Bureau for
Rhizomatics, Community & Generative Data, Alex Galloway, and thank
you, Director of the Office of Emerging Technologies & Digital
Aesthetics, Mark Tribe, Director of Communications and Chief
Information Officer, Ken Jordan, Under Secretary of the Bureau for
the Reproduction of Contemporary Social Events as Artistic Phenomena,
Doron Golan, Under Secretary of the Bureau for the Transformation and
Radicalization of Corporate Culture and Militarism, Andy Deck, and
Director of the Office of Political and Economic Insecurity, Abe
Golam, thank you, faculty and students of New York University,
distinguished artists: It is a great honor to meet with you here in
this room at this hour in history to consider the dangerous state of
humanity. We gather together deeply aware of decisive days that are
now upon us.

As artists, we can serve our country in this time of great
consequence. We have a duty to protect millions from a terrible and
deep anxiety resulting from self-created and deadly dangers that are
growing beyond our control. We will answer every danger, every enemy,
every forbidden realm, and every government official who threatens
our effort to call forth a spirit of change and participation that
speaks for a free and experimental society.

In this hour of war cries and religious crusades, which now appear to
be leading us quickly and inevitably down the path to the day of
reckoning - the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepare
themselves to sound. In a whirlwind of madness and horror, terror and
peril, hail and fire, our faith is sure, our resolve is firm, and our
artistic union is strong.

Tonight I ask you, along with all the artists of our nation,
including the young and disenfranchised, to join me in the next bold
steps to carry out 10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation, in defense of
humanity.

*****

Today, the gravest danger we face, the gravest danger facing America
and the world, is the existential darkness that has possessed our
government, that grips its soul. Out of fear of the unknown, pain,
and death - the Gods, surfacing from the immemorial depths of time
and space - they could use their lethal weapons to bring down fire
from the heavens, death and destruction that devours us all.

This threat is not new; the artist's duty is all too familiar.
Throughout the 20th century, the avant-garde has attempted to
construct temporary settings of life and their transformation into a
higher passionate nature. In each case, the only valid experimental
approach is one based on the uncompromising critique of existing
conditions and their conscious intervention.

Once again, artists are all that stand between a world at peace, and
a world of chaos and constant risk resulting from the threat of our
government-in-action. Once again, we are called to defend the
principles of humanity, and the hopes of all mankind. And we accept
this responsibility: with humility, honor and compassion.

*****

The US Department of Art & Technology is making a broad and
determined effort to confront these dangers. We have called on our
staff to fulfill its mission and stand by our Joint Resolution, US
DAT J. RES. 1, "To Authorize the Use of Acts of Artistic Mediation,"
which I announced at the US Capitol in Washington, DC just four
months ago.

In all these efforts, however, our purpose is more than to follow a
process - it is to achieve a result: we must introduce everywhere a
revolutionary alternative to the ruling culture; we must orchestrate
- through criticism and propaganda, illusion as a revolutionary
weapon - the most progressive artists and intellectuals of all
nations must put an end to these terrible threats endangering the
civilized world. All artists have a stake in preventing sudden and
catastrophic attacks. And we're asking them to join us, and many are
doing so.

The course of our Resolution does not depend on the decisions of
others. Whatever action is required, whatever artistic mediation is
necessary: scramble your fabricated news in with actual news
broadcasts, use cut/up techniques that could swamp the mass media
with total illusion.

*****

Twelve years ago, George the 1st faced the prospect of being the last
casualty in a war he had gambled on to win re-election. To spare
himself from defeat, he tried to disarm Iraq of all weapons of mass
destruction. For the next 12 years, Saddam Hussein has systematically
made a complete fool of three administrations.

Four months ago, the US Department of Art & Technology along with the
Global Virtualization Council - whose mandate is to mobilize and
coordinate artistic forces of virtualization internationally - gave
George the 2nd his final chance to give up trying to stop Saddam
through military action.

Bush has revealed instead, the principles of arrogance, abuse of
power, personal gain and a frightening lack of charisma, through his
contempt for the opinion of the world.

*****

Our job as artists is to ensure that the Bush Regime is disarming. It
is up to the Administration to show exactly where it is storing its
weapons, lay those weapons out for the world to see, and destroy them
as directed. Nothing like this has ever happened before.

According to intelligence reports, the US Department of Art &
Technology has concluded that George W. Bush has somewhere in the
vicinity of the Persian Gulf, 500 Air Force attack, radar-jamming and
support planes sufficient to unleash 3,000 precision guided bombs and
missiles, enough to topple a nation in shock.

Intelligence also concludes that George W. Bush has high-powered
microwave weapons that could flash millions of watts of electricity
to cripple Iraqi computers and equipment, sufficient to shut down
city services, like water and electricity, and enough to subject
millions of people to water poisoning and electrocution.

Department intelligence estimates that George W. Bush has the
capability to fly troops in, drop on, and attack dozens of separate
targets simultaneously, and then chew his way through Baghdad, mile
by mile, inch by inch.

In the opening hours of the campaign, Navy and Air Force jets,
including b-2 stealth bombers, each carrying 16 one-ton
satellite-guided bombs, and B-1 bombers, each carrying 24 one-ton
bombs, would attack a vast range of targets.

Exclaimed one unidentified Pentagon official, "this is not going to
be your daddy's Persian Gulf War."

And finally, what makes this picture significant is that we have
human sources on the ground who have corroborated that movement of
weapons of mass destruction occurred at this site here in Washington,
DC. So it's not just the photo, and it not just individuals seeing
the photo. It's the photo and then the knowledge of individuals being
brought together, that make our case.

*****

Clearly, the President of the United States is not disarming. To the
contrary; he is applying brutal diplomacy and systems of espionage to
achieve his aim to liberate the world from the forces of evil and
darkness. From our intelligence files we know, for instance, that
while Secretary of State Colin Powell is appealing to the UN Security
Council to pass a resolution to go to war, the director of the CIA
and the US Ambassador to the UN accompany the Secretary in order to
intimidate him.

The administration is betting that its contempt for the will of the
international community is stronger than the collective resolve of
the Security Council to impose its will.

Year after year, George the 1st and George the 2nd have gone to
elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build
and maintain countless weapons to destroy Saddam. But why?

With a full arsenal of weapons, George W. Bush will fulfill his
family's ambition of conquest in the Middle East - creating deadly
havoc in the region.

And the American people must recognize another threat, perhaps the
most deadly threat of all. Evidence from intelligence sources and
secret communications, none of which we can reveal, contain
statements by people who are now suggesting that George W. Bush has
indulged in fantasies while viewing classified tapes of atomic
explosions, which we fear might culminate in execution, orgasm, and
nuclear holocaust.

*****

Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that George W.
Bush could be contained. But the exploitation of death, fear, and
destruction is not easily contained. Imagine those satellite-guided
missiles with nuclear warheads - now aimed by George W. Bush. It
would take one soldier, one finger, one button, one missile fired
into Baghdad to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.

Something like a great burning mountain thrown into the sea, turned
to blood, followed by thunder, lightening and earthquakes.

We will do everything in our power to make sure that day never comes.

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. If this
threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all
words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the
sanity and restraint of George W. Bush is not a strategy, and it is
not an option.

And today I have a message for the citizens of America: Your
government is not ruling your country – your government is
surrounding the globe. And the day Bush and his regime are no longer
in power will be the day of your liberation.

If ever there was a time for our great nation to get down on its
knees and pray, there is no question in my mind that that time is
right now. I would like to introduce our Under Secretary for Homeland
and Economic Insecurity, Abe Golam: Abe?

"Mr. Secretary, I propose that what comes after nations, what comes
after borders, is something we are only beginning to understand in a
political, economic, and social context. For what comes next, Mr.
Secretary, is Empire."

I would like to send out Abe's prayers to our nation while pointing
to a future world with no borders. Here then is an excerpt from Abe
Golam's "Prayer for Empire:"

Our Father Utopia and Our Forever Deceased God,

We praise You for Your goodness to our nation, giving us the
appearance of Empire. With Empire we can turn sugar water into
profits and software into gross national product. With Empire, we can
turn soft core beauty porn into commercial advertisements and yet
still claim the moral high ground for our economic production.

With Empire, we can infiltrate the bowels of the Everyman and insert
a laxative of pseudo-leisure so that we may play the stock market and
eat our mad cows with drooling rapture.

With Empire we can rid the world of nations and institutionalize a
social bureaucracy of networked alliances determined to rid the world
of borders.

Finally, with Empire, we can transmit our radioactive waves into the
atmosphere of whatever geopolitical location that dares threaten the
economic prosperity of our People as it attempts to annihilate
whatever social difference there may be among us.

We need not practice what we preach. We need only preach what we want
the television to transmit to our robotic brethren. For it is our
nation of robot worshippers that reigns supreme.

Our operating system is sanctioned by the One God of Code,

YOUR one code of greed and material lust, salivating Lord. Amen.

*****

But let there be no misunderstanding: For the safety of our people
and for the peace of the world, we will recruit members to the
Experimental Party's USA Exquisite Corpse Volunteer Network to
participate directly in creative acts of freedom of association and
the transformational properties of the ceremonies of art. We will
lead a coalition of the willing to stage 10,000 Acts of Artistic
Mediation.

Sending artists into battle is the most profound decision a Secretary
can make. The technologies of art have changed; the risks and
suffering of art have not.

Today I have a message for the men and women who will keep the peace,
members of the nation's and world's artists: Many of you are
assembling in your studios and lofts, and some crucial hours may lay
ahead. In those hours, the success of our cause will depend on you.
Your training has prepared you. Your aesthetics will guide you. You
believe in a model of society where free and experimental modes of
conduct will prevail, and yes, we will prevail.

*****

The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is the
artist's gift to humanity - of the promise of the utopian aspirations
of the avant-garde. We must advance experimental behavior,
hyper-political propaganda, and the construction of new environments.

May the artist guide us now through 10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation
across the nation and around the world.

And may we continue to intervene in the actions of the United States
Government, through nothing less than the power of virtualization and
the suspension of disbelief.

Weapons that change consciousness could call the war game in question.

For according to Andre Breton, "perhaps the imagination is on the
verge of recovering its rights."

Thank you.

*****

Contact: Press Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology
[email protected]

The Experimental Party
http://www.experimentalparty.org

The Experimental Party - the "party of experimentation" - is an
artist-based political party that has been formed to activate
citizens across the country in an effort to bring the artists'
message to center stage of the political process. This is a political
awakening, 'representation through virtualization' is the major
political thrust of the Experimental Party, it is the driving force.

The US Department of Art & Technology
http://www.usdept-arttech.net

The US Department of Art and Technology is the United States
principal conduit for facilitating the artist's need to extend
aesthetic inquiry into the broader culture where ideas become real
action. It also serves the psychological and spiritual well-being of
all Americans by supporting cultural efforts that provide immunity
from the extension of new media technologies into the social sphere.

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