Friday, October 05, 2001 12:20 PM
subject: Activism After September 11
Dear Friends,
This essay was published today in The Nation. It's
an attempt to discuss what the atrocities of September 11 might mean to
those of us who are publicly critical of corporate power and the
current global economic model. There are no easy answers to this
question so the essay is more of a meditation on symbolism and tone
than a political roadmap.
Take care,
Naomi
Overview and manifesto of urban tv movements in Italy
Our ability to move into a collectively imagined future has been trapped in an ever-present now, composed of continually transmitted images. The spectacle accompanies us throughout our lives. News, propaganda, advertising, entertainment and social media present a continuous stream of imagery, projecting a constant justification for how our culture is formulated. When Guy Debord first published The Society of the Spectacle in 1967, the digital revolution was still decades away and the technological capacity to project images into every corner of our lives was far less developed than it is today. The spectacle is no longer simply all of the time; it is also everywhere. More than ever before, Debord's words apply: "Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation."
ReadMcSpotlight.is: "The biggest, loudest, most red, most read Anti-McDonald's extravaganza the world has ever seen."
ReadFrom February 27th to 29th young artists, filmmak- ers, musicians, theorists and activists from all over Europe and many other parts of the world meet at the Muffathalle in Munich for NEURO; a number of events, speeches, discussions, presentations, performances, concerts and actions reflecting the pulse of the age. About two years after the first make-world festival, NEURO will again interface with current debates around migration and mobility, racism and nationalism, civil society and global mobilisation, networking and new technologies, informatisation and precarious labour, education and control society, common organising, and digital culture.
ReadPlease join Not An Alternative, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, and
Upgrade NY! this Thursday, June 10 for the opening of Re:Group: Beyond
Models of Consensus, an exhibition which examines models of
participation and participation as a model in art and activism.
Re:Group proposes that with participation now a dominant paradigm,
structuring social interaction, art, activism, the architecture of the
city, the internet, and the economy, we are all integrated into
participatory structures whether we want to be or not. The exhibition
showcases work that subverts existing systems or envisions new
alternatives to the ways in which individuals can take part, or choose
not to take part, in social and cultural life.
Ibraaz Publishing and I.B. Tauris are pleased to announce the book launch of Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East, edited by Anthony Downey.
ReadThe McLibel Trial is the infamous British court case between McDonald's
and a former postman & a gardener from London (Helen Steel and Dave
Morris). It ran for two and a half years and became the longest ever
English trial. The defendants were denied legal aid and their right to
a jury, so the whole trial was heard by a single Judge, Mr Justice
Bell. He delivered his verdict in June 1997.
Simona Levi is a multidisciplinary artist born in Italy and established in Barcelona since 1990. She is the Director of Conservas, a cultural activity centre. Since 2000, she has directed the arts festival INn MOTION which takes place at the Centre of Contemporary Culture of the city of Barcelona. She is an outstanding activist in European social movements in the area of free circulation of knowledge and the right to housing. She is also involved in several artistic and activist platforms. She is co-founder of EXGAE, a civil organization that defends from the abuses of the cultural industry trade groups.
The global occupy protest movement is proliferating by "contagion, epidemics, battlefields, and catastrophes".[1] Furthermore, it materialises and disperses in multiple ephemeral processes of transformation that construct a common for the multitude of protestors. The common produced by the global occupy movement is not a mutually shared opposition to the capitalist crisis, nor a collective identity (of the "indignados" or of the 99%), nor a consensual political project (for real, authentic democracy). The common does not even embody an identical strategy of occupying public space, but rather to a series of becomings that question established categorizations and taxonomies that normalize the production of subjectivities and the organisation of life.
ReadThe exposure of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy in the eco-activist movement revealed how the state monitors and undermines political activism. This book shows the other grave threat to our political freedoms - undercover activities by corporations.
ReadLaboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination
This guide is not a road map or instruction manual. It's a match struck
in the dark, a homemade multi-tool to help you carve out your own path
through the ruins of the present, warmed by the stories and strategies
of those who took Bertolt Brecht's words to heart: "Art is not a mirror
held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it."
After a one year break the DICTIONARY OF WAR continues with a fifth edition on January 25th and 26th, 2008 in Novi Sad, Serbia. Again 25 new concepts on the topic of war will be presented in alphabetical order by artists, theorists, filmmakers, scientists, researchers. Loosely based on the slogan: "At least, when we create concepts, we are doing something" DICTIONARY OF WAR is a collaborative platform for creating concepts.
Read"At least, when we create concepts, we are doing something"
Read'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.' -Article 19, United Nations Declaration of
Universal Human Rights
For many reasons, the 80's, years of the Mitterand socialist government, were years in which grass roots movements got institutionalized and traditional activism was "out". The logic of the Republic (everybody is equal without distinction) allied with traditional individualism and clanic behaviour ("la guerre des chapelles") forbid the emergence of non dominant/non normalized subjectivities. This tradition is still alive today. The 68 generation didn't feel necessary to pass on their knowledge to younger generations. From their point of view, they created new ways to go about the world by themselves, so should the new generations. The notion of alternative and activism became stigmatized. It wasn't a very tactical in those years to position oneself in terms of an alternative. As a result, by the beginning of the 90, the most visible part of the intellectuals and the grass roots movements seams to be lobotomized.
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