Olimpias Workshops/Participatory Performance Event: Burning
A Disability Culture Project, led by Petra Kuppers and Neil Marcus
Subterranean Arthouse, Bancroft Ave (between Shattuck and Fulton), Berkeley Wednesdays 8, 15, 22, 29 of July, 7-9 pm,
performance sharing with gallery exhibit: Thursday, July 30th, 7-9 pm

Come and explore with us through movement the fantasies, potentials and tensions of our new Olimpias happening/score/script. Put words in your mouth: what does it feel like to speak of cancer, of leprosy and environmental toxicity? What happens when bodies change, undergo transformation, expose themselves? What happens as you let images and poetry of poison and healing roll down your veins? We have a script, not a linear play -- scenes emerge from it like flowers out of earth.

No experience necessary, we do not require a commitment to come to all workshops or the sharing, we honor all forms of embodiment and identification, and we want to learn about access and respect together.

Space rental donation suggestion: $10, no one turned away for lack of funds.

www.olimpias.org
http://subterraneanarthouse.org

Rob Halpern will read from his new book of poetry, Disaster Suites, on Thursday, July 9th at Modern Times Bookstore (888 Valencia). The reading begins at 7pm, and as most of you know, Rob's readings are always incredibly engaged and impassioned. If you've yet to hear the new book in realtime, here's your chance! Hope to see you all there...

For those of you in the Bay Area, we'll be holding our monthly meeting at an irregular time this month.

Rather than the last Sunday of the month, we'll meet this Saturday, June 20, at 1 PM, to discuss where the collective is at and where we might be going, perhaps revisiting the draft proposal as a point of departure (see: http://nonsitecollective.org/draft_proposal >> does the vision remain sound? how does it accord with current projects and aims? does the document need revision? could it benefit from an accompanying glossary of "keywords" as we originally imagined in the interest of pressuring and/or unpacking some of its propositions and concepts?), and then we'll move from there.

The collective will be 2 years old this month, and we've just completed a sequence of events; so it seems like a good moment to take this sort of pause, etc.

A location for the meeting is still to be determined, and will depend on response.

If you think you might like to attend, and we hope you will, please RSVP to:

info [at] nonsitecollective.org

by Friday afternoon, and you'll receive precise location information by Friday evening.

http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=756

Shaviro begins with a review of Peter Ward's The Medea Hypothesis, which argues that "life on earth is doomed" due to positive feedback mechanisms driving seemingly self-regulating systems to unsustainable extremes, and he moves toward a more generic critique of autopoiesis by way of a heuristic comparison between neoliberal faith in the market and anarchistic faith in antagonistic forms of self-organization, that is, between Goldman Sachs and anti-WTO protestors in Seattle. He ends his post by proposing an "aesthetics of decision": "What we need is an aesthetics of decision, instead of our current metaphysics of emergence [...] and we cannot characterize decision in 'voluntaristic' terms [...]".

Implications for self-organized pedagogy, and Nonsite's organization more generally?

As a continuation of the Nonsite Collective’s discussions of the poetics of disability/disablement, and the fourth in a series of events in the Aesthetics as Somatic Practice series, we are pleased to host an afternoon of talks and discussion with Michael Davidson and Sue Schweik:

June 6, 2009, 3:30pm
935 Natoma, btwn 10th and 11th,
and btwn Mission and Howard
Close to Van Ness and Market (Muni)
or Civic Center BART

(Event space is wheelchair accessible. On-site bathrooms are accessible to wheelchair entry but not fully ADA-compliant due to lack of handrails).

For a range of resources, discussions, keywords, or to participate in the developing Aesthetics as Somatic Practice collaborative inquiry, please check out the workbook page.

For texts and resources suggested as background to this event, direct your browser to the event resource page. Read more