These projects are a small but representative sample of CAE’s use of the Tactical Media model. Tactical Media is situational, ephemeral, and self-terminating. It encourages the use of any media that will engage a particular socio-political context in order to create molecular interventions and semiotic shocks that collectively could diminish the rising intensity of authoritarian culture.

Radiation Burn, 2010
Werkleitz Festival, Halle, Germany This project concerned itself with the myth of the radioactive “dirty bomb” and its use in state propaganda. CAE recreates the hype of a bomb, complete with an explosion, police, emergency services, and radiation investigators. After the blast, a nuclear physicist stands at ground zero and explains why this scenario is exceptionally unlikely ever to occur. As he speaks, Hazmat-suited investigators tracking the trajectory of the simulated radioactive cloud rope off the ground around him, separating him from the audience. In this theater of Spectacle Versus Reason, reason has a very difficult day.

Concerned Citizens of Kyoto, 2010
National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan CAE notices that the museum is underused if not completely unrecognized by the majority of the city’s population. In order to change perceptions, CAE initiates a campaign to give away free beer and cigarettes. When a diverse range of people come to the museum for beer, they also receive a counterfeit invitation to the Gala Opening for donors and friends of the museum.

Peep Under the Elbe, 2008
Peep unbder the Elbe was a project on water quality in the forgotten neighborhood of Wilhelmsburg in Hamburg. The city had given up monitoring the canals and wetterns in this area. Wilhelmsburg is an island neighborhood of immigrants and German working poor, that is criss-crossed with polluted waterways.CAE attempted to find where the safest places were for the popular pastimes of swimming and fishing (often as a way to get fish a person could not otherwise afford), and where the most dangerous places were.

Tactical Media Workshop, 2002
Eyebeam, New York City, CAE and Beatriz da Costa

Link to project original website » .

"Renaming Project." Victoria Square, Adelaide, South Australia 2002
Local citizens had been requesting/demanding that the city council dual-name Victoria Square with its local aboriginal counterpart "Tarndanyungga." (Dual naming has recently become a fairly standard Australian social policy). The council neither refused nor consented. Frustrated by this situation, it was decided by the tribal Elders, local activists, and a variety of concerned parties that the square would be renamed by direct action. Street signs reading "Tarndanyungga" were contracted and made by the same company that manufactured the signs for the city of Adelaide, and the Public Art Action Coalition (PAAC ) was formed. The group changed 10 of the 20 signs marking Victoria Square, thus dual-naming it. A press release was sent to the local newspaper explaining the position of PAAC, which was cheerfully printed. Public response was mostly positive. However, the council had the signs removed, and left blank the wood plaques to which the signs were fixed. Eventually, the old Victoria Square signs were returned to their original site. However, for an unknown reason, the square was officially dual-named just a couple of months after the action. PAAC likes to believe that it had some influence over this sudden change of policy.

Halifax Begs Your Pardon!, Halifax Nova Scotia, Tactical Media Workshop, 2002
CAE and Beatriz da Costa, in collaboration with local activists and artists

Link to project original website »

Child as Audience, 2001
Child as Audience was done in collaboration with Creation is Crucifixion and the Carbon Defense League. This package, designed primarily for teenage boys, offers a host of radical software, instructions on how to hack a GameBoy, a hard core CD, and a pamphlet on the oppression of youth.

Radio Bikes, 2000
esc Gallery, Graz. CAE, Paul Vanouse, and Faith Wilding, in collaboration with local activists and artists, created bikes designed for nomadic broadcast. Broadcasts were detournements of fascist news items.

The International Campaign for Free Alcohol and Tobacco for the Unemployed, Sheffield, 1998
An action designed to create a sense of what public space could be when not dominated by the commodity.

Looks Different Tastes the Same, 1992
Freedom of Expression Show and Auction. Metro Pictures, NYC,

Diseases of Consciousness, 1997
Diseases of Consciousness is a human scale web presentation designed as an equivalent to easel painting and opposing the predominant monumental web work. The project constitutes a mini encyclopedia of case histories of the many new afflictions and pathologies that can strike consciousness in the world of global capital.

A Public Misery Message, 1990
A Public Misery Message is a largely unrealized project. In 1990 CAE completed a preliminary study on a monument to economic inequality in the US. The initial banner was 18 feet tall, but demonstrating proportionally the separation between the wealth of the top economic quintile and that of everyone else would require a 550 foot tall banner (and that was 1990s dollars!). To give people an idea how high that was, CAE sent balloons 550 feet into the air. They appeared as tiny dots in the sky. Police shut down the project 24 hours later. Being across the street from a bank and one block from the Florida Governor's Mansion was too much for the authorities to take. CAE still hopes some day to realize the banner at its full size.