Temporary Autonomous Zone

Participants in the IT Department TAZ

The announcing of a Temporary Autonomous Zone is a breach of discipline, an act of resistance, not a major one perhaps – and one that as its name implies temporary; but it is an extension of one that we engage in frequently. By wasting time reading blogs at work, by taking longer than is strictly necessary for a cigarette break and countless other minor acts we disrupt the smooth running of the machine.

However the breach that the Temporary Autonomous Zone makes functions in two ways; firstly it is public and secondly it is territorial. It is these things that move it beyond the private act of defiance and into something that has the potential to alter our conditions.

The act of declaring the IT Department Temporary Autonomous Zone was a compromise; on one side the desire to express the Zone publicly on the other the requirement to remain in employment.

Here are some images from the declaration of a Temporary Autonomous Zone at the IT department of a UK university.

IT Dapartment TAZ

IT Department TAZ