Through
its mobile agencies, Blast aims to identify and employ critical artistic
strategies in the global communications network -- strategies that, whether
found or intentionally produced, counter the normative programming and "lifestyling"
of the globalized culture industry. Historically-engaged and literate in media
techniques, these strategic practices seek to prompt awareness of the techniques
used in the deployment of images and the importance of political economy as
a means of understanding their forms and developments. Resisting ideologies
of seamless, utopic connectivity, Blast politicizes the state of representation
within the network, positioning the net as a field of complex struggles for
the terms of communication and materialization.
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To this end, Blast has abandoned the standard, instrumental editorial
approach in the search of an alternate procedural relationship to its object
of study. It is no longer structured as a series of sequential "issues" following
the conventions of print media; instead, it adopts a flexible, multi-channel
format that is more adequate to the simultaneous, overlapping formations of
digital culture. It scatters into an array of devices and procedures that are
grouped together in alternate ways. Becoming small, situational, and highly
mobile, Blast assumes the form of a catalyzing agent, allying itself
with various organizations and groups in order to accomplish highly specific
tasks. Through temporary coalitions and precise, strategic interventions, it
builds communicative alliances, opens critical spaces, and develops new interpretation-formats.