Tactical Archives Cartography

Two Decades of Tactical Media and Art in Brazil Enhancing a Feminist Perspective

Abstract

This article narrates our work through archive and cartography to discuss a body of research that runs throughout our lives - as producers, developers, non-artists, artists, archivists, researchers. We have been engaging in networks that develop the internet, tactical media, and free knowledge since the beginning of 2000 in Brazil, in a series of festivals, projects, platforms and other forms of gatherings. A lot of this history is lost in databases and we have been putting our efforts together to bring this digital and material archive together, republishing, editing and re activating it. At the same time, it is inevitable that we bring our own perspective to building the archive, what we identify as a feminist perspective, a weaving of histories (reinventeceduras) and modes of production that are also a “maintenance” of technical infrastructure as a practice of care, connected to the reproduction of our own lives. Cartography is a concept and tool that allows for the gathering of the polyphony of the voices engaged, a cartography that is not total, opening up for collective analysis and for the intervention in the present and future.