Originally published by Austin Autonomedia
Strolling down the thumping, plastered downtown streets that SXSW treat as its campus, you are likely to have a free can of “C4” shoved in your face. This energy drink named after an explosive is the perfect symbol of what the festival-conference has to offer: a cloying and too seamless blend of brand consciousness, work cultism, consumerist reverie, and militarism. The can is a bomb lobbed at you– but one you are meant to gleefully let blow you up to improve your status and efficacy within the capitalist-imperialist project.
Watching Southby’s lanyard wearing throng drink down these noxious narratives left us with a seething desire to knock the can out of their hands, to shout the truth to the heavens, to shake some sense into the world around us. And so we did.
Whether answering SmashXSmashWest’s call for Divestment and Disruption or following their own paths, autonomous crews of protesters, revolutionaries, and hooligans made their presence known downtown last week, ripping through layers of self-congratulatory spectacle to reveal the conference’s deep cynicism, moral bankruptcy, and harmful consequences within Austin and far beyond. Here are the interventions we know about.
Continue reading “Goodbye Southby: The 1st Annual SmashXSmashWest in Review”