Search results for 'ecology'

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Oct. 29 #RobinHood Global March 

"We take from the rich and give to the poor.

Alright you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

We're living through a magical moment ... #OCCUPYWALLSTREET has catalyzed into an international insurgency for democracy ...  the mood at our assemblies is electric ... people who go there are drawn into a Gandhian spirit of camaraderie and hope for a new kind of future. Across the globe the 99% are marching! You have inspired more than you know."

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Escaping Assad and Revolution in Rojava 

An interview with a Syrian activist in exile, code-named Sami, published by Occupy.com draws attenton once more to the radical experiment in real-life bottom-up matriarchal democratic design unfolding  against all odds in the autonomous Kurdish region of Rojava in Northern Syria. We are republishing two short texts here on this subject matter to speculate about the question if 'Rojava' could offer a repeatable model for post-governmental political design?

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PGO - The Post-Governmental Organisation 

One of the four main themes of the N5M3 is the 'Post-Governmental Organisation', a title that is meant more polemically than descriptively. The 'PGO' label raises the question of the practical, political and ethical impli cations of strong, potentially global, independent organisations. The theme will be approached from different critical, analytical and ironic perspectives in a public debate, and the PGO Design-Show ("Get Organised!").

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The Concept of Tactical Media 

Tactical Media emerged when the modest goals of media artists and media activists were transformed into a movement that challenged everyone to produce their own media in support of their own political struggles. This "new media" activism was based on the insight that the long-held distinction between the 'street' (reality) and the 'media' (representation) could no longer be upheld. On the contrary, the media had come to infuse all of society.

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#OCCUPYWALLSTREET 

A shift in revolutionary tactics.

Alright you 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future. The spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain, is captured in this quote:

"The antiglobalization movement was the first step on the road. Back then our model was to attack the system like a pack of wolves. There was an alpha male, a wolf who led the pack, and those who followed behind. Now the model has evolved. Today we are one big swarm of people."
- Raimundo Viejo, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain

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What is Mental Environmentalism? 

A brief history of "The Journal of the Mental Environment."

The core idea behind Adbusters, the essential critique that motivates our struggle against consumer society, is mental environmentalism. And for seventeen years, since the seventh issue of Adbusters was published in 1993, the subtitle of the magazine has been "The Journal of the Mental Environment". But, what exactly is mental environmentalism?

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Absorption and Exposure 

I am interested in a certain sense of wanting to be "in" something: to participate in it, to connect with it, to synchronize with it, to be caught up with it, rather than to visually possess it. The desire to be attuned to something that is happening, or that might happen at any moment -- not necessarily as a conscious thought, but as a vaguely felt expectation. The desire to move toward something that is (or might be) happening, in order to absorb its force, touch it, taste it, surrender to it -- rather than simply to observe it.

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Art and the Human 

The punk band Pussy Riot, which I belong to, is a musical group that conducts unexpected performances in different urban spaces. Pussy Riot's songs address topical political issues. The interests of the group members are: political activism, ecology, and the elimination of authoritarian tendencies in the Russian state system through the creation of the civil society.

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Mediate YourSelf! 

At the end of the third 'Next 5 Minutes' conference on tactical media (March 1999) in Amsterdam, an interesting discussion emerged around the question of how the minor media practices elaborated and highlighted in this vibrant event would ever reach a wider audience for lack of being covered by any mainstream outlet. At one point, some people from the back of the room (unfortunately I don't know anymore who exactly, I believe an Italian group), shouted: 'We don't want to be mediated - we mediate ourselves!'

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Art and the Paradoxical Citizen 

To the Arts, Citizens: it's a fantastic title. Hearing it, anyone who's been involved in political activism will probably think: "At last we're getting somewhere." The idea that art is part of citizenship, that there is a democratic exercise of the arts within the framework of public life, and that this appeal to the citizen-artist can be supported by a major cultural institution, is about as progressive as you could get today. Especially since this is a direct echo of the French republican tradition, where the phrase, Aux armes citoyens, is nothing less than a call to rise up and institute democracy against tyranny ? in other words, a call to revolution. The Portuguese know the meaning of this revolutionary call to arms from decisive historical events that are still in living memory. So one can imagine that the organizers of this exhibition did not take their title lightly.

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Looking into the practice within the labs 

To talk about the Cybermohalla project is to talk about concrete practices and how they relate to forms of knowledge. This is essential when we reflect on being producers of knowledge. What we are trying to follow and understand is the intricate web of processes involved in the development of a group - not just an aggregate of specialised selves. We also try to follow how this group generates within it a capacity for self recognition, for intersubjective recognition, for understanding the social biography of the neighbourhood and for developing a sense of and addressing diverse publics.

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    Unknown Quantity - Foreword 

    "Contemporary civilization differs in one particularly distinctive feature from those which preceded it: speed. The change has come about within a generation," noted the historian Marc Bloch, writing in the nineteen-thirties. This situation brings in its wake a second feature: the accident. The progressive spread of catastrophic events do not just affect current reality, but produce anxiety and anguish for coming generations.

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    The Information war 

    Humanity has always invested heavily in any scheme that offers escape from the body. And why not? Material reality is such a mess. Some of the earliest "religious" artefacts, such as Neanderthal ochre burials, already suggest a belief in immortality. All modern (i.e. post-paleolithic) religions contain the "Gnostic trace" of distrust or even outright hostility to the body and the "created" world. Contemporary "primitive" tribes and even peasant-pagans have a concept of immortality and of going-outside-the-body (ec-stasy) without necessarily exhibiting any excessive body-hatred. The Gnostic Trace accumulates very gradually (like mercury poisoning) till eventually it turns pathological. Gnostic dualism exemplifies the extreme position of this disgust by shifting all value from body to "spirit". This idea characterizes what we call "civilization".

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