Re-Adapting Radical Forms of Expression in the Digital Era - Investigating New Aspects of Recuperation

Undoubtedly all past media forms held possibilities for alternative communications but most of the times commodification degenerated such options and tuned everything into ‘spectacle’. Even some of the most experimental forms of painting, photography, music or moving images after all, removed far away from the original frames in which they were initially created and got absorbed by the mainstream cultural industry. In fact, some forms of alternative media such as underground music, street graffiti or tattoos were used actually to express distinctive youth cultural scenes or counter-movements that were challenging the dominant culture. Nevertheless, nowadays all those radical expressions are getting into mainstream circulation for commercial purposes and they are exploited by the very culture which they intended to challenge. In this sense the transformative power of mainstream media visual encounters ‘cultivates’ mimicry and converts ideologies and myths into commercial fashion. The investigation of the cases mentioned above will also take under consideration that perhaps we are marching through the final stage of a complicated recuperation process: the social media era. Is this the dawn of an open and horizontal communication era that abolishes hierarchal authorities, promoting progressive ideas at the service of social communities; or is it the ‘Empire’, that strikes back supported by the ensemble of all media forms aspiring to take control over existence? This work has been partly supported by the University of Piraeus Research Center