ASSEMBLY
ASSEMBLY was a project initiated by artist collaborative The Jogging (Brad Troemel and Lauren Christiansen), which facilitated a distributed denial of service attack upon the website of a collectively chosen target. The target selected was Rhizome.org.
Chronology of events:
1. October 19: ASSEMBLY is posted to JstChillin.org as part of the website’s ongoing artists’ projects series
a. Assembly mobilizes the combined efforts of digital peers to critique an institution/individual/network’s website through the oppositional use of bandwidth squatting. For 13 days, participants vote to decide what institution/individual/network’s website will be the subject of this act. On the 14th day of Assembly– November 1st – Jstchillin.org will be replaced by a single page that features 25 iFrames constantly reloading the democratically decided website of political opposition. To drain the maximum amount of bandwidth or potentially freeze the website to a standstill, on November 1st we encourage you to open as many tabs of Jstchillin.org as possible and leave them open all day. In doing so, participants may group together to temporarily remove this website’s existence on the internet, putting a halt to its undesired effects on our community and the world at large. Bandwidth squatting is a method of protest, a tool historically linked with the Civil Rights Movement’s sit ins of the 1960’s. Through their undesired mass presence, protesters are able to disrupt the informational function of the website they are intervening on– a detournement of digital visitation.
a. Assembly mobilizes the combined efforts of digital peers in tributary celebration of an institution/individual/network’s website through a symbolicly supportive digital mass pilgrimage. For 13 days, participants vote to decide what institution/individual/network’s website will be the subject of this act. On the 14th day of Assembly– November 1– Jstchillin.org will be replaced by a single page that features 25 iFrames constantly reloading the democratically decided website of tributary celebration. To maximize the symbolic support for the decided website, on November 1st we encourage you to open as many tabs of Jstchillin.org as possible and leave them open all day. In doing so, participants may group together to create an honorific swell of attention, a mass of support for the legacy of the website’s effects on our community and the world at large. Digital mass pilgrimage is a method of praise that makes use of the fact that there is no such thing as negative attention online. Through bringing the website to a halt, tributary participants pose the undesired possibility of a world without the website– an eye-opening and appreciation-building event not unlike guardian angel Clarence Odbody’s intervention into George Bailey’s state of affairs in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life.
2. October 21: Dreamhost deletes JstChillin for hosting ASSEMBLY
3. October 22: ASSEMBLY moves to Jogging
4. October 22: Tumblr officials give Jogging a 3-day ultimatum to delete the project or be removed from their service
5. October 22: Jogging holds a poll to decide what to do in response to Tumblr
6. October 25: The poll closes, voters choose to leave the project up and face the consequences
7. October 25: Jogging is deleted by Tumblr
8. October 28: ASSEMBLY is re-opened at http://assembly.typepad.com/, and NOTES ON ASSEMBLY is distributed
9. Rhizome.org is selected as the chosen target