Guerrilla Networks: An Anarchaeology of 1970s Radical Media Ecologies

The radical youth movements of the 1960s and ’70s gave rise to both militant political groups—ranging from urban guerrilla groups to autonomist counterculture—and radical media, including radio, music, film, video, and television. This book is concerned with both of those tendencies considered as bifurcations of radical media ecologies in the 1970s. While some of the forms of media creativity and invention that mapped here, such as militant film and video, pirate radi,o and guerrilla television, fit within conventional definitions of media, others, such as urban guerrilla groups, do not. Nevertheless what was at stake in all these ventures was the use of available means of expression in order to produce transformative effects, and they were all in different ways responding to ideas and practices of guerrilla struggle and specifically of guerrilla media. This book examines these radical media ecologies as guerrilla networks, emphasizing the proximity and inseparability of radical media and political practices.