01_IN_AAbad_m&a:Maquetación 1
26/6/08
16:30
Página 71
from cafés, debate clubs and newspaper pages to television and computer screens, this modern redefined public space is markedly mediated by the symbolic: images, sounds, texts, multimedia. However, although the modern public arena is fundamentally constituted as a symbolic space or, to be more precise, a media space, this does not make it a mere game of inert and determining signs that have nothing to do with the people to whom they pose questions. In their use, the signs act as mechanisms of enunciation; they are activated by speakers, televisions spectators, specific users. Here, of course, the degree of involvement in the process of the production of meaning comes into play: a process with levels in which we find ourselves subjected (signified) by the signs and levels at which we signify (subject) the signs. In this negotiation with the networks of signification, the process of the affective and dialogic constitution of the public arena is activated. Thus, the public arena can be seen to be constructed simultaneously with the subjects that signify it: subjection and subjectivity go hand in hand. Canal*MOTOBOY set in motion a mechanism of symbolic production that is crucially one of subjective consciousness in the sense that it unleashes a process of agency and enunciation. Canal*MOTOBOY inaugurates ephemeral moments of response and action that do not presuppose an ideal free subject but underscore the conflictive and agonistic nature of the daily existence of its participants, the eternally unfinished condition, always in negotiation, of the subject. From this approach, the community is the field of production for symbolic as well as affective bonds in a process that runs parallel to capitalism’s immaterial modes of production. In selecting and sending visual or audio material, in their meetings and discussions about the group strategies for continuing with their work, they dismantle and divert the economic object of