Between digital art and political activism

Experiments of electronic sociability during Neoliberal Mexico (1994-2018)

Abstract

Since the Zapatista uprising in Mexico in 1994, some digital practices have tested forms of sociability in which the distinctions between digital art and political activism are blurred. In this article, we will focus on notoriously different cases, such as Mejor Vida Corp. (1998), sitio*TAXI (2004), El Rancho Electrónico (2013) or Telecomunica-ciones Indígenas Comunitarias (2016), that during the rise of Neoliberalism in Mexico and its trend towards privatizing telecommunications, have engaged in specific ways of producing forms of sociability digitally mediated. We propose the commons as a key concept for understanding the singularity of these processes of sociability, which allows us to describe how experimental social relations are produced and maintained in the midst of market capitalism. As a conclusion, we will underline that, in these processes of digital communicating community is not assumed as a presupposition, but rather as an uncertain result of digital mediations.