Truth to tell
In her article on Rumour Clinics Andrea van der Straeten asks whether rumour can be employed as an artistic material. Departing from an activist position one could investigate rumour and gossip as potential strategies to rethink the distribution of messages and counter deceptive media. Can messages which possibly contain truth be used against messages which are likely to be untrue?

Fed by the motivation that information should be free to travel, and not be loaded with economical, political or corporate interests, independent newsgroups such as Indymedia, GNN, Operation Truth and the signatories of the People’s Communication Charter use media for bringing sincere and truthfull information, which often results in first hand observations and direct reports. The PCC states that “commercialization of media and concentration of media ownership erode the public sphere and fail to provide for cultural and information needs, including the plurality of opinions and the diversity of cultural expressions and languages necessary for democracy.” By gathering news themselves experiences and obeservations of reporters become parameters for factual truth.

From a perspective of art as a symbolic system allowing an esthetic understanding of reality, employing rumour as an artistic material might become effective when the rumour machine is perceived as a means of expression rather than a means of transferring a message. Van der Straetens article lacks a solid amount of sources; when reading the article this absence makes the reader believe that writing the article might have been an attempt in itself to launch a rumour about the existence of Rumour Clinics. In this way the research becomes the source of the rumour, like a bacteria which spreads itself via hospitals. The writer takes her public serious in its responsibility to verify the factuality of the written piece, and its ability to interprete the article as a metasign. Truth and meaning are not produced by the article but by the reader.

Meaning means what you think it means
The motto “Niets heeft een betekenis behalve degene die je er aan geeft” (nothing has meaning apart from the one you address to it) is often used by artist and storyteller Willem de Ridder who has been an active producer of underground culture in the Netherlands since the sixties; as a member of Fluxus, initiator of pop and teen -zine Hitweek, and in collaborations with (among many others) cartoonist Peter Pontiac, composer Louis Andriessen and post-porn artist Annie Sprinkle.
Interesting in relation to his storytelling practice is the production of a series of ‘horror radio plays’ which were broadcasted by the VPRO in 1979, and culmulated in a mass performance by listeners to the program. The last episode of the horror story was broadcasted at night, listeners were asked to get in their car for a scary ‘Death-fear escapade’, and follow instructions on their car radio’s. Close to 30.000 listeners were directed to the sleepy town of Woudrichem, where at 3.00 A.M. the final stage of the horror story took place. Next day questions were asked in parliament whether this kind of mass manipulation could be tolerated.
On his website De Ridder favoures the emergence of fanclubs of all sorts and introduces deriviates of eastern and Buddhist spirituality into the flat polders of Holland. His personal interpretative ‘psychology’ system is termed ‘spiegelogie’ (dutch wordplay meaning ‘mirrorology’) and is based on the belief that “everything is energy”. Two great suppositions here: ‘Everything you pay attention to grows’ and ‘Apply your powers to lose power’. These contradictory judo formules express the full mirrorological strength and liberating potential of ‘spiegelogie’.
The idea that nothing has meaning, but all meaning is generated by the perceiver is reminiscent of what Roland Barthes notes to be the essence of myth: a fundamental character of myth is its ability to be appropriated (As quoted in Art of Media Disobedience in the 21st century by Nicholas Ruiz III) since myths construct meaning only when embedded in a context, a group of people or a span of time, myth has no autonomous value; its only meaning is the one we address to it.

Now and then you hear a newsreader’s personal opinion ringing through in a newsbulletin, intertwining message and messenger; reminding us that object and subject, story and storyteller are both part of the message we receive. The aura of authority and higher knowledge attached to reading the news which we so often take for granted dates back to the days of the town crier, who brought essential news and governmental orders to communities absent of printed materials and which were overwhelmed with illiteracy.
This aura of power has transcended to contemporary newsreaders, who now represent the power of globalised newsagencies and broadcast companies.
When Barthes encouriged us to rob myth and ‘steal back what it took away from language’; to create new myths from old forms by remythologising them, and loading them with different connotations, he probably did not expect the Australion Nuclear Disarmement Party to revitalise the figure of the town crier.
The NDP town crier carries out citizen arrests in name of the Australian people of Australian politicians who endanger the worldpeace. Among others, prime minister John Howard has been arrested by the bell ringing, bearded and antiquely dressed public servant. The NDP loads the tradional figure of the town crier with new meaning by swapping his traditional role as ‘public denouncer’ for ‘voice of the public’; the town crier has turned around to bring the opinion of the law obeing masses to the illiterate authorities.

Hearing it through the grapevine
In their paper ‘Knowledge Transfer and Rumour – Have we missed something?’ Martyn Brown en Andrea Napier investigate differences between the perception and valueing of rumour, gossip and informal social networking in social psychological and knowledge management disciplines. Where gossip and rumour in social contexts often have strong negative connotations, there is at least one area which is wellknown for its high appreciation of rumour: the stockmarket. In Wallstreet and economic markets worldwide there’s a strong believe in beating the news by believing rumours you hear. Everyone on Wall Street knows rumours move stocks. The old Wall Street saying, “Buy on the rumour, sell on the news”, is alive and well in the fast paced equity markets. Sign up to be a Premium Member with the Email Upgrade and have the rumors delivered directly to your inbox!”

Also from the angle of managing knowledge in a workplace there are positive views on rumor possible: Rumor can be seen as a self generating mechanism of “the knowledge network updating itself”* Intensive emailtraffic allows rumour to travel fast through an organisation; one person informs the group; the group in return controls, corrects and supplements the information.
In their 1947 publication “The Psychology of Rumour”, Gordon Allport and Leo Postman define rumour as a “social activity of a group that is attempting to construct meaning to a situation”. The activity of rumour is dependent on the uncertainty in a situation, the level of ambiguity and the importance of the information. In an uncertain situation where people are receiving unclear messages there will be an intense rumour traffic.
Secrecy, loyalty, engagement and commitment have become demands from businesses to their workers. By taking part in the company-rumour of the day workers show their engagement to the companies’ working collective, resulting in continuous self-evaluations of the employed community and loads of copied emails which are send around to collegues and supervisors.

A not to be forgotten discipline in which slander and gossip is boiled down to an artform is satire. In the Eighties the venomous dolls of Spitting Image were the most effective criticasters of the conservative Thatcher government. The Underneath Politics journal displays hidden realities of the Bush administration, and shows the effect of US foreign policy on the homeland, in an absurd but hyperrealistic situation sketch. The deceptive nature of these messages are not hidden, but explicitly displayed and extremely overdone, which makes it impossible to accuse satire of disguising lies as truths. In fact underlining the ability of obvious lies to expose a deeper truth satire often does the opposite: it sells truths as lies.
The spreading of rumours can become a self investigative instrument when confined in a collective or organisation. An instrumentalisation of the rumour machine means it is made applicable and consequently: it can be used for many purposes; to inform us on the nature of mediated information, on how messages are being consumed, as a self-evaluating tool for corporations, or as a method to produce artistic meaning.

* Davenport, Thomas and Laurance Prusak (c2000): Working Knowledge: how organisations manage what they know, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.