Happy Birthday, Malcolm X!

Today I went along to a demonstration for Picture the Homeless in Brook Park in the South Bronx, NYC. It was really charming, a lovely place, little grove of trees, broad sunny area for plots of vegetables, and Mexican dancing group and singing group performing. Rebel Diaz arts collective also, rapping about the banks. PtH is moving on some vacant properties -- dropping banners on them, calling for their occupation by homeless families. I was up to their HQ earlier working on one of the banners. I did the sketch for the one with the words "BLOOM BERG" on it! (From an idea by a young woman, painting by many kids, and letters by Seth Tobocman, a great political artist.) Sebastian was there with his camera interviewing, and mentioned the strike in Puerto Rico at the university there. This news is BLACKED OUT in North America, but looks like it's building to an island-wide general strike... (I am embedding the links as an experiment, now -- the English sources on this story are Occupyca blog and Studentactivism.net.) Me and Matt Metzgar of the Loswer East Side Squatter Archive project and artist Carla Cubit are going to Philadelphia on May 29th, to talk at Wooden Shoe Books about political squatting. It's a roundtable, organized with Basekamp. Drop by if you are in town! We need to hear about the Philly story...

"House Magic" zine catalogue #2 PDF is online at last

It is right here.

Falling in Spring

The 4th Anarchist Book Fair at Judson Memorial Church was a bucket of fun. All the oldtime radical geeks from NYC were there, and scads of anarchist travelers crouched on the sidewalks outside, dressed in colorful shades of black. The “House Magic” wallpaper went up in the hallways, and after the fair it was rolled up and taken away to the offices of Picture the Homeless. We even had a little Keystone Kops action, as local police with federal handlers raided a center in Brooklyn at 13 Thames Street, arresting members of the Independent Anarchist Media (I AM) collective as they were preparing to decamp to Manhattan to mount the film screenings for the book fair. This bit of foolishness was blasted all over the web – the blog Animal pegged it: “Anarchist Film Fest Gets Free Promo from NYPD.” It seems the police walked in without a warrant to enter, the probable cause being that the door of the place was open, and they thought it was a squat. A couple were arrested; judges the next morning dismissed all charges. The place is Surreal Estate, which I gotta visit, since it’s an active little joint. I don’t get over to Brooklyn much… But, as the U.S. Social Forum approaches in late June, I want to chat with local folks who are going. And they are.
At the ABF I flogged the “House Magic” zine. The proof of number two is finally at Bluestockings (still not on the web, sorry!). I’ve been striving to get HM#2 online, but at the fair I found out many people don’t really see online zines. The Affinities journal issue from Canada, the Monster Institutions issue of Transversal, and the fabulous UK compendium of social centres called What's This Place don’t seem to be as well known as they deserve. At ABC No Rio, the House Magic display featured a number of photocopied tape-bound copies of these online texts, and they sold (for copying costs). At the NYC ABF, I traded some of these for books I wanted. I saw a lot of retro stuff at the ABF – manuals of Zerzanesque neoprimitivism, of course, which appeal to my love of Ovidian Golden Age nostalgia (the New Suburbanism), and a charming richly made zine from Portland “Communicating Vessels” which proudly announces “no website”: CV, P.O. Box 83408, Portland OR 97283. Illustrations by Valloton, texts about Rexroth and Surrealism in the Arab world? This is modernist anarchism in the sense that Allan Antliff means it. Also out of Portland, “At Daggers Drawn,” a translation of a dark and brilliant Italian text of romantic incitement printed in silver ink on black paper (so it can’t be photocopied) in 500 copies. The IWW had lots of new merch and an online store! Zapatista merch was also on display. I have a doll, so I bought a scarf. There were lots more booths and texts of interest, like the Aftershock Action Alliance, taking off on Naomi Klein’s notions of solidarity in the face of crisis capitalism; prole.info’s lovely zine on food service shitwork (also a download) “Abolish Restaurants”; and an important tip to the South African zabalaza.net, which is dizzyingly international. I also traded for the chubby 2007 centennial edition of “Solidaridad Obrera,” the voice of the Spanish CNT.
So it was inspiring… Like that oh-so-68 picture up top. It's from an especially fetching collection, the newsprinted “After the Fall, Communiqués from Occupied California,” which collects “the major statements from the recent wave of occupations” in the public universities of California in advance of the March 4th mobilization. This mobe was more effective against the Bologna Process in Europe, I believe, than here in the U.S.. The full impact hasn’t really registered on U.S. students, or, rather, it is doing so unevenly. A key point in the “After” text is how the the growth and even continuance of the California public higher education system is collateralized against the fees students pay. A burden of crushing debt on students is thus augmented by the state’s incentive to constantly raise those fees… It’s a subtle point, but it is of such oppressive taxes, no matter how cleverly they made be hidden, that revolutions are made.

Photo: Students occupying Wheeler Hall, University of California Berkeley, from the “After the Fall” book.

NYC Anarchist Book Fair
http://anarchistbookfair.net/

Police raid on Anarchist Film Festival group
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2010/04/110357.shtml
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/film-fest-is-on-police-radar-anarchists-say/

Promo for the film fest
http://www.nyanarchistfilmfest.org/

Surreal Estate
http://www.myspace.com/surrealestatenyc

Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action
http://journals.sfu.ca/affinities/index.php/affinities

Monster Institutions issue of Transversal
http://eipcp.net/transversal/0508

What's This Place
http://socialcentrestories.wordpress.com/

Daggers Drawn
http://www.eberhardtpress.org/catalog/daggers.php

IWW online merch store
http://store.iww.org

“After the Fall” download
http://afterthefallcommuniques.info/

HM#2 on Display, but Still Unripe...

Why so mute? Angst, I guess. But it’s been rolling, for real. "House Magic" zine number 2 has been beautifully designed and photocopied, and a few issues have trickled out (Bluestockings, Printed Matter). Yes, it was in proof in January for Philadelphia, and now it is spring -- but there remain still some problems, and some of it must be amputated. The pdf will be online in two weeks, for certain. (Contact me directly and I'll send you the current version.) Meanwhile, HM#2 was displayed in a nice display rack in the zine library at ABC No Rio for the Ides of March show this month. That show closes on Friday (4-9, 7pm), and zines related to the OSC movement will be sold for cost of copying. We will also sell “moonshine” made by the Aaron Burr Society. Next stop, the 4th Annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair at Judson Church (4-17, 11am-7pm), where the project will have a table display. Come on by and see, say "hi!", and talk about your experiences with the OSC movement for the record. Over the break – I am struggling with teaching early modern art history – I was in Madrid to talk at the new Patio Maravillas at Calle Pez 21. I was supposed to talk at La Macula, but they were evicted a few days before. The talk took me by surprise, so I rambled on, mostly about New York City. Miguel Martinez invited me: he has posted his SQEK group’s research agenda now, and is planning an international meeting in London in later June. I want to be there, after (even overlapping) the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit. Thereafter Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Berlin. A leisurely summer is in prospect. BTW: A nasty situation developing in San Diego for Ricardo Dominguez because of his group's work on behalf of migrants. Read and support: http://bang.calit2.net/

ABC No Rio “Ides of March” show:
http://www.abcnorio.org/events/ides2010.html

Aaron Burr Society:
http://aaronburrsociety.org/aaron_burr_society_home.html

4th Annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair:
http://anarchistbookfair.net/

the new Patio Maravillas:
http://defiendelo.patiomaravillas.net/

the defunct La Macula:
http://www.lamacula.org/

The SQEK: Squatting Europe Research Agenda:
www.miguelangelmartinez.net/IMG/pdf/2009_SQEK__7_Dec_.pdf

photo: The wall at the new Patio Maravillas cafe

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.
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1. The Continental Drift; Control Society/Metamorphosis
2. On Brian Holmes and the Drift
3. UC Strikes and Beyond
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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.
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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
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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)