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Anyone who has looked at the activist videos from Seattle to Prague to Göteburg and Salzburg (there was an opportunity to do so at the Diagonale in Graz this year), will repeatedly find the same images recalled: the dancing crowd in pink and silver, figures dressed in black costumes following the ironically martial Infernal Noise Brigade, white overalls, young faces in the sun-drenched demo parade, colorful banners. Then the turnaround-robocops marching out in full force, rubbish bins turned into barricades, orgies of beatings. It is rare that the viewer gets an insight into the preparations for these large-scale protests, whether on site or in the various scenes in cities all over Europe. There is the impression of a movement, whose expressions have merged into a unified protest culture, regardless of the specific social structures of their regions of origin from North America to southern Spain-a form of expression that can be employed in front of the scenery of North American Seattle, the old central European city of Prague and southern Genoa equally well. Expression of a globalized activism in a globalized world, expression of a nomadic movement that can dispense with ties to a real social location?

The appearance of a flood of images that always look the same is deceptive. The example of the form of action" Reclaim the Streets" that emerged in London in the early 90s shows the close ties between a tactic that has since been successfully employed around the world, and the concrete local circumstances, from which it initially developed.