Events

oct 17, sf, “Teaching Rebellion”, Stories from the Grassroots Mobilizations in Oaxaca

brianwhitener — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:58:32 -0400

ARCO and Radio Zapatista presents: “Teaching Rebellion”, Stories from the Grassroots Mobilizations in Oaxaca, edited by Diana Denham and CASA: Support, Solidarity and Action collective. Friday, 17th of October, 7pm 1919 Market Street Oakland, (large grey building, between 19 and 20th st, directions below) Suggested Donation: $5 or more 7pm Music, food, drinks, and tabeling by Radio Zapatista and other groups. 8pm short documentary on Oaxaca's popular rebellions, followed by: Photojournalist Gustavo Vilchis, (present during the 2006-7 massive popular uprisings in Oaxaca), will join us from Mexico to speak about the book, present art and photography from Oaxaca to promote discussion and reflection on the former and current political climate in Oaxaca and its relevance to everyone organizing in their own communities. (All entrance donations will help cover the costs of CASA's book tour, (http://www.chiapaspeacehouse.org/en), all left over from the tour will go to benefit the critical organizing work done by VOCAL. Collections from the drinks/food will support the following local Collective Action and Resistance, (ARCO) benefits to help free political prisoners in November, (more info at: lists.riseup.net/www/info/arco-announce). info: 510-292-9643 / 415 912 8913 arco@riseup.net Please bring friends, family, classmates and co-conspirators! Hope to see you there! ^o^ Directions for 1919 Market St, Oakland: Taking BART: Exit: 12th St. Oakland City Center (On 12st and Broadway, take the #88 bus towards North Berkeley, exit on Market and 18th and walk towards 19th on Market) Driving: I-80 E toward Oakland Slight right at CA-880 S (signs for San Jose/I-880 S/Alameda) Take the Maritime St exit toward W Grand Ave Continue straight Continue straight onto W Grand Ave Turn right at Market St ************************************************** Porfavor ayuda sacar la vos, gracias! ^o^

artivistic call

brianwhitener — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:34:08 -0400

all for participation TURN*ON Artivistic 2009 (Fall) Montreal, Canada http://artivistic.org/ The world to come is so sexy. We are unstoppable for we are fueled with an incredible urge to embrace the pleasure provided by difference, exchange and freedom. Our actions today are charged with an energy that is animated by the rise of change and a movement that is simply irresistible. New movements are arising at the intersections of sex, politics and technology. These movements are inspired by, as well as critical of, the long traditions of struggle they stem from, remixing gender bending, sex work (and play), and media activism. From body hacking to the implosion of the service economy, where are we today and what new possibilities can we envision and nurture? For its upcoming fourth edition, Artivistic is going sexy. Discussing, questioning, and imagining the past, present, future, and infinite possibilities of sex. While keeping issues of power and control in question, we want to turn to the potency of pleasure, curiosity, humor, and desire in order to TURN*ON that which has yet to be thought and experienced differently. Building on previous generations of gatherings, Artivistic 2009 asks the following questions: * What kind of world is worth fantasizing about? How can imagination act as a productive tool to think sex with and beyond the body? Fantasy always plays a role in political projects when we imagine the "world we want", but how does that fantasy become reality? Where does the line blur? What feedback loops are created between what we desire and the lives we live everyday? * What actually makes resistance irresistible? The different notions of sex, gender and sexuality draw our attention to the task of naming. That task can be appropriated in liberating ways. How do we move away from tired and troublesome terminology in order to create

Vanishing Detroit

Lee Azus — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:45:38 -0400

Start: 10/07/2008 - 19:00

End: 10/07/2008 - 20:00

Timezone: America/Los_Angeles

In the 1950’s Detroit was an economic powerhouse, the Silicon Valley of its day. It was one of the 10 wealthiest cities in the world with a population approaching 2 million. Today, having lost over one million people since its peak, many of the city’s monumental buildings, mighty industrial complexes and grand residential neighborhoods have been abandoned and are falling into ruin. There is more farmland within the city limits today than in 1900. While Detroit is not on many top tourist destination lists, its ruins make for a unique sort of modern deindustrialized and depopulated landscape. Join architect Robin Levitt, a former Detroiter, on a fascinating and disturbing tour of the City’s great architecture and fabulous ruins. He’ll show images of its glorious past and continuing demise.

Event location:

Get Lost Travel Books
1825 Market St. (at Guerrero)
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-437-0529

A Conversation at 16 Beaver (NYC)

Thom Donovan — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:23:58 -0400

NYC nonsiters... come discourse this Sunday from 12-5 at 16 Beaver *** CONTENTS: 1. Introduction 2. Thematics 3. How to Participate ________________________________ 1. Introduction What: Conversation When: Sunday, 12:00 - 5:00 Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor Who: All are welcome This Sunday we would like to invite friends, colleagues, interested parties (i.e., you) to take part in a conversation. The conversation will be initiated by some opening questions and prepared statements. The event will be videotaped with the specific desire to produce a political document of our present moment and to open up our conversations to a wider public. Rather than stream this event live (as we have with all other editions of Continental Drift), we are looking to edit a version that will be available for broadcast on alternative television networks and for download after the event. It is open to anyone interested. We will briefly outline some themes below. You are invited, if you like, to select one of them and prepare questions or a brief statement (0-4 minutes). ________________________________ 2. Marking The Turning Point or Holding the Baby? Sudden changes in the social and political spheres have painted question marks all over the future. On the American streets the Democratic and Republican conventions just saw a new militarization of public space, with preemptive raids on the alternative media, intimidation of citizens exercising their rights to free speech and above all, mass arrests, in some cases with charges of "conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism" (according to Minnesota's homespun version of the Patriot Act). What will come of this rising authoritarianism? In the corporate media sphere where such abuse is considered normal, the presidential campaign has lurched over into the worst kind of populism, with the Republicans posing as the unbridled candidates of war, ecological rape and yet more

HOW WE FIGHT: Conscripts, Mecenaries, Terrorists and Peacekeepers - kino21 film series

Konrad Steiner — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:18:10 -0400

Start: 09/25/2008 - 20:00

End: 09/25/2008 - 22:00

Timezone: Etc/GMT-7

This is a series of five programs on the experience and testimony of those who fight in armed conflicts around the globe. The series is called "How We Fight" as a reference to the original WWII era Frank Capra motivation/propaganda series "Why We Fight" which was produced to win over American public sentiment towards entry into the war.

We replace "why" with "how," meaning how do they get along, make do, struggle with their roles and actions, rationalize or question themselves. As noncombatants we struggle to find rhetoric and action which will influence policy positively and progressively. At the same time we want to learn about the experience and thinking of combatants of all sides. We also wish to question the categories that create false images of actual people.

From Sept 25 thru Nov 23 five programs take place at
Artists' Television Access
992 Valencia
San Francisco, CA

for film descriptions please visit http://www.atasite.org/

schedule as follows

THU Sept 25th
HOW WE FIGHT Program 1: Iraqi Short Films
Iraqi Short Films by Mauro Andrizzi (Argentina, 2008, 94 min)

THU Oct 9th
HOW WE FIGHT Program 2: Conscripts
Interviews with My Lai Veterans by Joseph Strick, (USA, 1971, 22 minutes)
Clean Thursday by Aleksandr Rastorguev (Russia, 2002, 45 minutes)

THU Oct 30th
HOW WE FIGHT Program 3: Terrorists
Notes of a Kurdish Rebel by Stefano Savona (France, 2005, 78 minutes)
November by Hito Steyerl (Germany, 2004, 24 minutes)

SUN Nov 9th
HOW WE FIGHT Program 4: Peacekeepers
Crazy by Hedy Honigmann (Holland, 1999, 97 minutes)

and pending confirmation from the distributor
SUN Nov 23
HOW WE FIGHT PROGRAM 5: Mercenaries
Warheads Romuald Karmaker, (Germany, 1992, 182 minutes)

"Art and Organizing Prevention Justice" Ultra-red at Critical Resistance 10

Rob Halpern — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 19:21:56 -0400

Start: 09/27/2008 - 14:00

End: 09/27/2008 - 16:00

Timezone: Etc/GMT-7

Audio activists Ultra-red present strategy session "Art and Organizing Prevention Justice" and screen their recent video "Untitled (for six voices)" as part of performance series at the Tenth Anniversary gathering of Critical Resistance.

Critical Resistance 10
Saturday, 27 September 2008, 2:00- 4:00 pm
Oakland, California

Lighthouse Charter School
900 Fallon Street
"Watson Room"
There is no door fee and all are welcome.

The audio activist collective Ultra-red are proud to be participating in the Tenth Anniversary convergence of Critical Resistance. CR10 brings together activists and organizers from around the U.S. to strategize and share experiences in the struggle against the prison industrial complex. Ultra-red will present their recent work in the "Untitled" series, an on-going investigation into the potential links between AIDS activism and prison justice. Collective members will screen a single-channel version of our video, "Untitled (for six voices)" and then facilitate an open strategy-session with participants in the project together with movement activists and organizers. We invite everyone in the Bay Area to join us for CR10 and the Ultra-red workshop.

Since 2005, the collective Ultra-red has been involved in an extensive militant investigation into the present conditions of the AIDS crisis in North America and globally. Conceptually rooted in Paulo Freire's radical pedagogy, Ultra-red have developed a series of performances and installations that engage audiences in analyzing the conditions of poverty, racism, and homophobia in the perpetuation of the epidemic. In this workshop, Ultra-red will introduce their work and their partnerships with community organizations including the national organization CHAMP (Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project) whose Project UNSHACKLE has informed Ultra-red's approach to AIDS cultural analysis, prevention justice and prison abolition.

Allegories of Disablement (Talk)

Thom Donovan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:34:39 -0400

Here is a written version of my talk from last Wednesday. Thanks to Rob and Lee for hosting, and to all in attendance. It is great to see responses from Amber and Chris (at Nonsite), and John Sakkis at his blog. If anyone has any pics from the event (Lee? John?) and could put them up here it wld be great to have some visual documents. I will be putting the talk and ensuing conversation up in an audio form just as soon as I'm back in New York with the proper tech support.... Thom *** Allegories of Disablement: some consequences of form towards potential bodies Wandering the artist’s monographs at a University of Maryland library in the spring of 2006, I came across the following: Possibly, in earlier pieces, I used the body as a proof that "I" was there—the way a person might talk to himself in the dark. So, with that assumption—that the body was analogous to a word-system as a placement device—there was an attempt made to "parse" the body: it could be the subject of an action, or it could be the receiver, the object (it should be noted that most of the earlier pieces were kinds of reflexive sentences: "I" acted on "me." This initial fragment, from a monograph of Vito Acconci’s work, among other materials I’ve gathered in the past few years, has led me to a prospectus of sorts, if not an inchoate essay on what may be called “disability” in relation to practices in poetics, architecture, design, “live art,” and movement research. What interests me about the Acconci quotation, is how it may encapsulate a larger discourse occurring in the late 60s and early 70s. This discourse, I believe, concerns the constitution of subjects as they are extended in space by movement, language and image; it also concerns what I will call, after a remark by Martha Rosler conveyed to me by a student of hers in conversation, the performance of the body mediated by the imminent threat of harm.

NONSITE || "Allegories of Disablement"

Rob Halpern — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:46:27 -0400

Start: 07/23/2008 - 18:30

End: 07/23/2008 - 22:00

Timezone: Etc/GMT-7

SF Bay Area:

Come out for a potluck dinner followed by a talk and discussion facilitated by Thom Donovan.

Wednesday, July 23
Dinner at 6:30
Talk at 7:30
Rob and Lee’s home in SF Mission district
email for address and directions:
rob[dot]halpern AT gmail[dot]com

Thom’s talk will pertain to the recent discussion on the website around disability and poetics, while considering work by Brenda Iijima and Robert Kocik.

“How might an art of ‘disability’ potentialize the body under threat of harm, erasure and (mis)representation? I believe this question addresses relations between poetics, performance, movement study, architecture/design. How might the poem itself be a site for recomposing (or ‘remembering’) the body thru ‘disability’ — a term which implies for me not the opposite of capability or ability, but its inverse counterpart? How also can language sites, like poems, offer tools for disability, just as disablement reveals sites of potential conceived as virtual power, or powers yet-to-be. And how, through, disablement, may we gain keener insights into what a ‘body can do’ as a means of ‘overcoming fitness’ (Kocik)?”

— Thom Donovan

Found in Translation // Trachtenberg and Anderson

Rob Halpern — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:19:03 -0400

Start: 07/08/2008 - 05:13

Timezone: Etc/GMT-7

Amy Trachtenberg and Elliot Anderson will discuss practices of translation with respect to landscapes and their inherent social ecologies.

Thursday night, at SF Camerawork. See events.

Elliot Anderson: GreenhouseElliot Anderson // Average Landscape: "Average Greenwood Lake"Found in Translation: Photo by Amy Trachtenberg

Peace On A presents: Power & Performance (NYC)

Thom Donovan — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:50:14 -0400

Despite my affinity for the term relationality, we may need other language to approach the issue that concerns us, a way of thinking about how we are not only constituted by our relations but also dispossessed by them as well. ~ Judith Butler Peace On A presents Power & Performance featuring presentations by David Buuck, Julie Patton, and Chen Tamir Sunday, June 8th 2008 6PM BYOB & donation: $5 hosted by Thom Donovan at: 166 Avenue A, Apartment #2 New York, NY 10009 about the readers: David Buuck lives in Oakland, where he organizes BARGE, the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics. He is a contributing editor for Artweek, and teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute. I had disembarked at the Embarcadero, platforming myself into some semblance of public figuration. The bay area rapidly tranced it, from the resident base camps to the clamor and throng. Up and out into the punctuated street-sprawl, shadowed by the public directives. Heaved out then into the scablands, street-rocks popping against the undercarriage of the survival carts. Billboards tower as trees might shadow that. The turn lanes apropos of the new gold rush. Steetside is saddle leather, limbered for the pickets. 425,258 a day, fro and bending to it. ~ from Electricworks Julie Patton extends her pulpoethic strategies into collaborative spaces via anyone willing to hand-dance—recent activities include stirring up an ArtScience mecca in Cleveland's inner city, "A Roon for Opal" art installation as part of the Olin Art Museum's (Lewiston, Maine) "Green Horizons" exhibition. "Using Blue to Get Black," an extended argument about the color blue forthcoming in Crayon Magazine. The rest is herstory. riff off of "Using Blue to Get Black" (for my mo' there mudder) blah blah blew light be lack beat subject leadible huge margins lake back eerie bl accents reeking scalp blue hung er un speak a bruised surf faces mean blood ism