In early-1990s Amsterdam and Rotterdam, TV and radio pirates, hackers, and experimental media artists joined to initiate The Next 5 Minutes, a series of international festivals under the rubric of “Tactical Media.” This new and unstable “compound” occupied the no man’s land connecting art, political activism, and experimental media. The festival fused campaigning tactics with critiques of representation, and a new awareness of the importance of infrastructure, at the birth of the internet as a transformative mass medium. This documentation, consisting of videos and print materials assembled by Tactical Media Files (David Garcia and Eric Kluitenberg) captures the excitement of the festivals and looks back to the spirit of the times.

With the support of the Creative Industries Fund NL.