Watching TV online

The snow in New York is heavy and persistent. The zine “House Magic” #2 is in the hands of the designer. I called it for “winter,” but now maybe better call it “Spring 2010” since it will not be PDF’d until next month. I am hopeful, but uncertain where the project goes from here. As a traveling exhibition, it is much to bear, and my resources are thinning. Still, I have been digging, digging in the subject, and will start more to present my findings here.
I watched another part of “In Between the Movements,” the video project by Martin Krenn, which is online. This was the discussion between Gerald Raunig and Krenn at WUK in Vienna, 2008, in German subtitled in English. (From the WUK website: “The autonomous cultural center WUK (short for Werkstätten- und Kulturhaus) in Vienna,” one of the biggest in Europe, “is rooted in the ideas and demands of the ‘70s for spaces to enable contemporary cultural activities.”) It begins with the a primer on Félix Guattari’s idea of transversality, which arose out of his observations on the structure of power in his mental clinic. Specifically, the concept seeks to identify a flow of power outside of vertical hierarchies and horizontal forces. (Are those charismas? Let’s face it, I still don’t get it.) Then Gerald and Martin trot through the free school of WUK, talking about the way that school worked democratically between the interests of teachers, parents and students.
From the contradictions of this school, Raunig talks then of the “rule of forced self-administration” – in order to participate, one must attend the meetings where decisions are made. This is a key part of “instituent practice,” the arising of movement-based institutions. He notes the divide between two Vienna squats, the autonomous Ernst Kirchweger Haus and the institutionalized WUK. These two are antagonists: one is “good” since it accords with revolutionary principles, whereas the other is “bad” since it accords with neo-liberal civic transformations. (And, in other contexts, e.g., Zurich, one is “good” because it plays by the rules, and the other is “bad” because it’s illegal, and therefore subject to state repression.)
Raunig wants to dissolve this dichotomy, to reconcile the two positions, so that both are seen as movements, as part of the “machinization” of Deleuze and Guattari. Good luck. The radical anarchist “position,” that “a movement without institutionalization exists,” is not really at odds with the position that small scale “civil society institutions” could exist, and then create the “big Other of institutions.” Rebels will always need lawyers. And without direct action, we wouldn’t have any autonomous spaces to embrace or resist institutionalization.
In other news, I learned via Krax of the Ljubljana OSC Metelkova Mesto, which is thoroughly integrated into the youth tourist infrastructure of clubs and hostels. (City Mine(d) plans a conference there.) Rozbrat in Poznan, Poland is facing mid-March sale of the land their OSC stands on after 16 years renovating and enlivening “wasteland” in that gentrifying city. And I stumbled upon the first 2007 issue of a Canadian e-zine called “Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action,” which has articles on queer autonomous spaces, radical world building, Italy's Social Centers (by Steve Wright), Argentina’s worker-recovered enterprises movement, Zapatistismo in the U.S., and much more.

Martin Krenn, “In Between the Movements”
http://www.in-between-the-movements.net/

WUK
http://www.wuk.at/language/en-us/wuk

Rozbrat stays!
http://www.rozbrat.org/news-in-english

Affinities: Theory Culture and Action
http://journals.sfu.ca/affinities/index.php/affinities/index

Continental Drift jibber-jabber in L.A.

I have to post this. I am a fan... And this looks like a hardcore egghead slam jam on the Left Coast.
Continental Drift; Control Society/Metamorphosis with Brian Holmes
at the Public School in Los Angeles February 27 and 28th
http://occupyeverything.com/events/continental-drift/
Come down and participate in a two-day theory convergence, a “Continental Drift” seminar with the Paris and Chicago based theorist, Brian Holmes.
Though this Drift is situated on the West Coast in a time of University of California occupations and walkouts, it is connected to the budget cuts and "crisis" brought on by changing economies around the world and the emergence of a neoliberal control society over the past few decades. This drift aims to trace these situation and find ways for liberatory culture to supercede the moment.
++++
1. The Continental Drift; Control Society/Metamorphosis
2. On Brian Holmes and the Drift
3. UC Strikes and Beyond
++++
1. The Continental Drift; Control Society/Metamorphosis
Saturday, February 27 –Sunday, Feb. 28
@The Public School 951 Chung King Rd., Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Join us for a mostly horizontal seminar conversation with Brian Holmes, UC strike Organizers and Academics and independent intellectuals.
day 1. 2/27- control society
12 pm: disassociation (psychological effects/desire)
facilitators: Liz Glynn and Marc Herbst
2 pm: financialization & the UC crisis
facilitators: Aaron Benanav and Zen Dochterman
4 pm occupation/ collective speech
facilitators: Cara Baldwin, Nathan Brown, Maya Gonzalez, Evan Calder Williams
7 pm: discussion day one
facilitators: Brian Holmes, Solomon Bothwell
day 2. 2/28- metamorphosis
12pm: Autonomous Space
facilitators: Hector Gallegos, Robby Herbst
2 pm:. Precarity
facilitators: Christina Ulke, Sean Dockray
4 pm: Brian Holmes Lecture
7pm: Sharable Territories/ Bifurcation
facilitators: Jason Smith, Ava Bromberg
occupyeverything.com/events/continental-drift
Note: This is a collaboratively organized event. Organizers include Zen Doctherman, Cara Baldwin, Jason Smith, Sean Dockray, Liz Glynn, Solomon Bothwell, Christina Ulke, Marc Herbst, Robby Herbst.
++++
2. On Brian Holmes and the Drift
Brian Holmes is an art critic, cultural theorist and activist, particularly involved with the mapping of contemporary capitalism.
An article Brian wrote that he asked to read in preparation for the drift:
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/guattaris-schizoanalytic-cartographies/#sdfootnote10sym
Holmes on the UC Strikes:
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/the-u-c-strike/
Journal interview we did with him from issue 4:
http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/4/holmes.html
Some publications by or with Brian Holmes:
http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?S=R&wauth=Brian+Holmes&siteID=1JSk6CbYEf0-bBxS9UMaaFGtIjUV42joJA
The Drift has taken a variety of forms in its manifestations at 16 Beaver (2004-2006) in New York, through the Midwest’s Radical Culture Corridor (2008) and in Zagreb Croatia (2008)
Here is An interview with Brian Holmes from the first continental drift in NYC in 2004.
http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001168.php
++++
3. UC Strikes and Beyond
The Drift was independently organized though occurs in coordination with the
Beyond the UC Strikes working group.
The working group occured when folks who were participating in the strikes and talking about them
decided to meet up the the Los Angeles Public School to see what could be done.
We are promoting these linked events.
http://joaap.org/other/drift/BeyondtheUCStrikes.html
http://occupyeverything.com/
These are not specifically Journal events. The working group includes Organizers include Cara Baldwin, Solomon Bothwell, Micha Cardenas/Adzel Slade, Zen Dochterman, Sean Dockray, Ben Ehrenreich, Ken Ehrlich, Liz Glynn, Marc Herbst, Robby Herbst, Elle Mehrmand, Marko Peljhan, Kenneth Rogers, Jason Smith, Cybelle Tondu, Christina Ulke, Caleb Waldorf, Michael Wilson and Kim Yasuda.

Chicago Town

I am writing in the palatial Hostel International in Chicago,and the annual College Art Association conference is over. This is a great city, but the conference was strange. It is, as always, a heterodox assembly of artists and art historians, from the reddest revolutionary (intellectual, to be sure), to the most unreflexive treasurers of cultural capital. The latter have the upper hand, since those who honor the legacy of 19th and early 20th century scholar-dealer Bernard Berenson have all the money. (Berenson was an assiduous student of the Morellian method. Evolved as a means of identifying criminals and criminal “types,” Berenson used it to recognize the authorship of medieval and Renaissance painters. [I'm wrong on this: thinking of Cesare Lombroso; but the very adaptable Morellian method was linked to detective work.]) So we all wander around the Hyatt Hotel here, a giant, incomprehensibly mazelike, interconnected complex.
Chicago, though, is the locus of numerous significant political cultural projects, and the gang rallied around this year, producing a number of talking events inside and outside the convention. At the thick of it was the group Temporary Services, and the north Chicago space Mess Hall.
I was snowed into New York and so missed the “shadow session” In fact, I missed my own session on autonomous education initiatives and their relation to art institutions. My co-chair had to fill in. Everything went well, they say. I hope so. It was arduous getting here (late), and I have been basically exhausted for days… But for me these conventions are always fun. And, since I am teaching art history again, they are a source of renewal of that basic disciplinary intelligence, such as it is.
Meanwhile, the “House Magic” zine catalogue is in proof – although we bound it backwards, so the first run is pretty unimpressive! Maybe it will be a collectible someday.
The table of contents is as follows: 1) Introduction – More “House Magic” Tricks; 2) Reflecting on the “House Magic” Project; 3) Barcelona: Fighting for “Thousands of Homes”; 4) Michel Chevalier at ABC No Rio, 2; 5) Last Call Hamburg in New York (Frise Kunsthaus); 6) Vincent Boschma, The Autonomous Zone/de Vrije Ruimte (Amsterdam); 7) Bullet Space: “The Perfect Crime” (NYC); 8) Telestreet: Pirate Proxivision (Italy); 9) El Patio Maravillas Turns a Corner (Madrid); 10) Christiania: Survival of the Interesting; 11) Christiania: How They Do It and for How Long; 12) Scandinavian Bulletins; 13) NYC’s Picture the Homeless Goes to Budapest; 14) AK57, Budapest; 15) The Story of Villa Milada, Prague; 16) Rozbrat Squat, Poland; 17) Greek Bulletins; 18) rampART, London; 19) SQEK: Squatting Europe Research Agenda; 20) Andre Mesquita, Real-Time Action in Brazil.
I hope to have it printed by the end of the month. It may still happen – there is nothing much more to do but pay for it. Pretty much the same day it goes to press, the PDF will go online at the HM:BFC website. The archive show remains up at Basekamp in Philadephia (see previous post). No events are yet scheduled.
picture: the "key" in the Reuben Kincaid Realty office window, Bridgeport, Chicago, 5/09 (pic by me)

"House Magic" is up near Independence Hall

I wrote this while training out of Philadelphia last week. The railscape is what you usually see in a decaying U.S. city: scrap yards of twisted rusting metal, empty factories with busted windows and walls broken open, junkyards, trash dumps and spills, vacant houses. Then there are odd, inexplicable spots. The newly roofed geodesic dome in an industrial park. A train caboose standing in a field, with washing hung on a line behind it. A community garden, and beyond it a couple of low-rising row houses with bright murals rising up their three story heights. The long strips of spray-painted names on parked railroad cars, factory walls.
Like so many other U.S. cities, Philadelphia is a place that has forgotten itself. Its rich have moved out, building their corporate monuments somewhere else, and letting the old city – the city of the 20th century and before – sink quietly into the ooze of time. Basekamp hosted the “House Magic” show in their space located only a few blocks from the historic city center. The famous 18th century revolutionary Benjamin Franklin’s house was here, and his visage and silhouette is everywhere. But it seems a quarter of the stores and buildings are empty. Lovely 19th century constructions, some very fancy, are shuttered. Many have been disfigured with “modern” style storefronts, blank, cheap attempts to clean them up at the street level. The impression of dereliction, misuse and abandonment is strong. Coffeeshop proprietors look glum. Their shops are empty at mid-morning. Again and again I am the only customer. Somewhere rich people are hustling and bustling and spending their money, building new prosperity somewhere else, and electing politicians who promise to keep their money out of public hands. But in downtown Philadelphia, there is depression, many ragged poor and beggars.
“House Magic” went up on the wall at Basekamp, where it will remain for some while (not sure how long exactly). It is part of the series “Plausible Artworlds,” a year-long project Scott Rigby has been percolating for some time now. Last week the Library of Radiant Optimism was set up with a little alcove for their “book of the month club” project, and The Public School open self-education franchise was launched in Philadelphia. So “House Magic” is in good company. Last Tuesday was the conversation, an online and in-person discussion of the social center movement that was dense and interesting. I look forward to receiving the audio and email transcript of the HM:BFC installment of this regular series so that I can post it on the “House Magic” website.
Albon Jeavon showed up at the talk from the Wooden Shoe anarchist bookstore, and spoke a little about the squatting movement in Philadelphia past. One of the leaders, it seems, was elected mayor! Then he sold out the movement. His brother was recently imprisoned for fraud. There are numerous squats in this city, but this was not a research trip so I did not investigate. Albon told us of LAVA, the activist-owned place that runs many programs similar to those in OSCs (occupied social centers). It is described as a “media center,” and its occupants publish the Philadelphia anarchist newspaper The Defenestrator. Hopefully Basekamp and Wooden Shoe will do more projects together. It seems like a good direction as the political landscape in the U.S. begins to darken once again. The hope invested in Obama's presidency is starting to turn sour, and the reactionaries are once again emboldened to lead the people on in their selfish, destructive course.
Things around the “House Magic” project became clearer at Basekamp, the first unpacking of the developed out-of-town suitcase version of the HM:BFC project. (Chicago was a modest trial run.)
The zine catalogue #2, which was ready at the Basekamp show as a proof, includes a good deal of NYC material, trying to draw out some connections between that well-known (if under-published) squatting scene of the 1980s and '90s and the European social center movement. They are really separated in time, the new wave of activism in EU and the long-ago bravado of the nascent U.S. anarchist movement.
Upon arriving and unpacking the “suitcase,” I discovered that I did not have the clipboard materials that go on the boards, that is, the dossiers we had laboriously assembled by downloading and translated material from OSC websites. What to do, what to do? I lost sleep Monday night. On Tuesday, I started out to remake the clipboards. In a few hours I had pretty much succeeded! And I think the material is somehow less opaque and more engaging than the “original” research materials we assembled in the spring of '09. It is certainly more current. And in doing this I realized again the nature of the HM:BFC project – it is a process exhibition, not a finished art object. I was reifying the old clipboards, even though in truth they were only a beginning of an on-going research project that is only real, only living insofar as it is continued, or even, as I had to, begun anew.
The ideal “suitcase” setup, I think, would include a workstation with an online computer and a printer so that visitor/participants could download and print out their own researches and add them to the dossiers or start new ones. Each “suitcase” show should build the whole, accreting the record of the many experiences of doing bottom-up, grassroots, disobedient, radiantly optimistic urban development using creativity and labor rather than capital. These stories are all remarkable and we need them badly.
“House Magic” will live at Basekamp for a while, and hopefully there will be film screenings and discussions around the questions that will continue and generate more material. The next “suitcase” will be in Baltimore -- probably more like March than February, since everything is moving more slowly than I thought, and now I have to go back to work. But with any luck, we will snowball out of Philly to Crab City, Baltimore, and from there build movement towards the Detroit U.S. Social Forum in June. By then I hope we have assembled also numerous U.S. dossiers reporting on the American versions of the European OSCs. They are more numerous than I think we all realize.

Basekamp
http://basekamp.com/

The Library of Radiant Optimism for Let's Re-Make the World
http://www.letsremake.info/

The Public School
http://all.thepublicschool.org/

Wooden Shoe Books
http://www.woodenshoebooks.org/

LAVA, the Lancaster Avenue Autonomous Zone
http://www.lavazone.org/

Chicago February 10: Autonomous U

So behind here! Much action -- Philly coming up. But here's this now, for those traveling to the chilly northern midwest next month:
"Pedagogy of the Periphery" CAA Shadow Session
Wed., Feb. 10, 4-8pm, at Three Walls (119 n. peoria #2d, http://www.three-walls.org/ )
A workshop-style event on the history, practice, and theory of experimental pedagogy inside and outside institutions, in conjunction with AREA Chicago’s issue #9 (Peripheral Vision), the Open Practice Committee, the Emma Goldman Center for the Study and Practice of Creative Anarchosyndicalism, and the Radical Caucus for Art’s Autonomizing Practices panel at the College Art Association meeting. Educators and students discuss pedagogical practices, broadly defined—with their optimism, obstacles, methods, pleasures, and frustrations—with short informal presentations and time for large- and small-group discussion, including questions submitted for discussion in advance by students and flexibility to address current events as needed (such as events in the campus uprisings happening in California, Europe, and elsewhere). This free event allows people not attending the conference to benefit from a sampling of visiting speakers and Chicago teachers. It is not conceived as anti-CAA, but happens alongside the conference to illustrate the fact that some conversations are easier to hold outside the professional machine.
Tentative Program:
4:00 meet and greet
4:30 Panel I: Greg Sholette / Dara Greenwald / Liz Mason-Deese and Tim Stallmann
5:45 Panel II: Eve Ewing / Nicole Marroquin / Bert Stabler
7:00 Small group discussions / report back from small groups
wrap up

Recommended readings:
From Occupied Berkeley
http://anticapitalprojects.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/necrosocial5.pdf
From AREA Chicago
http://www.areachicago.org/p/issues/peripheral-vision/please-bring-your-cell-phone-art-class/
http://www.areachicago.org/p/issues/6808/educating-68/
http://www.areachicago.org/p/issues/peripheral-vision/relative-freedom/
Questions and discussion:
Students and others are invited to send questions in advance that will be compiled and distributed for discussion in small groups of no more than 8 to be facilitated by the speakers. These might be responses to the readings, burning questions about your education, things you want to discuss. There will be time for discussion of the speakers' presentations, but this allows everyone in the room an opportunity to help set the agenda for discussion.
Send proposed questions (and any requests for information about the event) to youngjkwak@gmail.com. pLease also indicate if you would like to register to participate in a small group discussion. The event is free and open to all but there are limited spaces in discussion groups. Anyone can also start their own small group discussion at the event.

"Climate Bottom" at Christiania

What do I know?, I'm sitting in New York. But Thursday is the Radical Urbanism conference at the Grad Center here, and Jordan Zinovich will talk about Christiania there -- and I see that Interactivist.net bears this interesting post about the "Climate Bottom," a summit, or rather anti-summit taking place simultaneous with the muck-a-mucks' one in Copenhagen. Christiania, despite their troubles, is a place unafraid to host activists during the global summits of the rulers. As one of the greenest and most sustainable places on the planet since the 1970s -- (a friend of mine insisted that it wasn't "hypocrisy" to repress them during the summit, only "a paradox") -- this community is a beacon to the world... our world... the world of the future. Make noise -- be seen -- tell all the party people what you mean!

Climate Bottom info
http://climatebottom.dk/en/

That It Was...

Back in NYC after my little jaunt to Madrid. Before I left, Jay entertained me at his squat in Tetuán. It is in a very old building, of which there are a number abandoned in advance of new construction of apartment houses. Now, with the crisis, the construction is stalled, so some of the deserted houses are being used. We also visited a new social center in the district, across from a mosque. It is run, Jay said, by Zapatistists, and is a local social center as opposed to say, Patio Maravillas or Malaya (closed), which are open SCs located in the central city. The local SCs are just that -- dedicated to the concerns of the community in which they are located. The open ones are more public, and, like Patio, may be more culturally oriented. Jay is a member of the media group SinAntena, which made a documentary "Lavapiés: 18 años de okupación." [URL below] I dropped back into NYC just in time to catch the very end of the An Architektur group's sympsium, "Ten Days for Oppositional Architecture: Towards Post-Capitalist Spaces," in a storefront in Dumbo, Brooklyn. This was an ambitious event, produced by a Berlin collective which publishes a journal of the same name. It was part of a performance art festival called Performa, and was held in a space donated by a real estate group (naturally). (Further evidence, of course, that Stefan Dillemuth's prediction of "corporate rococo" is coming true; "post-capitalist" in this instance having perhaps another stopping point than socialism!) A number of the presentations are on their website in audio form, including the sessions on decommodification of housing, the prospects of planning, and the commons: taking versus granting rights. I made it to the wrapping up session, with invited guest Damon Rich. Rich works as a planner in Newark, and is a founder of CUP (Center for Urban Pedagogy). This group is committed to education, and to "making policy public." On that website, they have posted a PDF of "Predatory Equity: The Survival Guide." It describes the cycle of speculation in property that destroys low and middle income housing in the USA. This is the cycle, said planner Peter Marcuse in a session last night, that must end. Why is land a commodity?, he asks. It's a natural resource. Housing tends to be a monopoly, with a largely fixed supply. A rise in rents does not lead to an increase of units, just more profits for the owners. In this panel, sponsored by the CUNY Center for Place, Culture and Politics (run by Neil Smith & David Harvey), Rob Robinson of Picture the Homeless and Max Rameau of Take Back the Land called for a nationwide land and housing direct action initiative, to reclaim TARP properties (that is the U.S. "Troubled Asset Relief Program," under which defaulted home mortgages were bought by the government.)
These houses are held off the market so that the price of the remaining supply may rise. To assert the moral right of persons to be housed -- to argue that "housing is a human right" -- is an argument that these activists feel can now be made. PtH has been meeting with the visiting United Nations special rapporteur on adequate housing.
This is clearly important stuff. And a nationwide campaign is needed before the government decides to bulldoze
the nation's cities where it is possible for poor folk to find housing. PtH organizer Frank brought this up rather quickly, but it's a bombshell. As the UK Telegraph reported in June, "“Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic `shrink to survive' proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline." This story is being followed by rightwing blogs. There is a restatement on a site called "Inhabitat" with the motto "design will save the world." They seem pleased that the plan would be "big news for environmentalists," since the poor districts would be replaced by parks and forests. Again, Werner Von Delmont would approve. Fox hunting anyone?
While I have been dabbling in the discourse of planning and finance as it has been purveyed in NYC lectures and symposia on the crisis this year, I continue to investigate the social center movement, and collective forms of disobedient direct action in the cities of the world. This Sunday (12-6-09) I will lead a second conversation about European squatted social centers as part of the Public School for Architecture produced by the Common Room group. The talk will take place at 3pm in Brownie's Cafe in the basement of Avery Hall (the Graduate School of Architecture building) on the Columbia University campus. The second issue of the catalogue of the “House Magic” project will be produced this month. Texts and images are invited by the closing date of December 15th of this year. Please send to awm13579[at]gmail.com, and include in the subject line: “HM2”.

see the film "Lavapiés: 18 años de okupación":
http://sinantena.net/mov/18_anos_okupacion_en_lavapies.mov

An Architektur event:
http://www.oppositionalarchitecture.com/

CUP
http://www.anothercupdevelopment.org/

"Making Policy Public" Predatory Equity Survival Guide:
http://www.makingpolicypublic.net/index.php?page=predatory-equity

Photo by Brett Weinstein from inhabitat.com