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

Dry Fears for Fate of Marvels

I joined a group of volunteers at the weekly bar at Seco SC in Madrid last night. They were trying to karaoke, but the software was not cooperating. Earlier in the evening, there had been an assembly meeting at the SC Patio Maravillas (really a “CSO” for “Centro Sociale Okupado”; Seco is legalized). El Patio is under an order of eviction, which could come any day. They were discussing what to do. Earlier in the year, the authorities had announced the time of eviction, so hundreds of people were able to assemble. This time the cops are being more cagey. So tactics were discussed… Let’s just say at this point that an innovative use of technology is planned by the “hacktivists” of the place. Stay tuned to the website!
Ironically, Patio was criticized for negotiating with the authorities. This SC was hoping to legalize itself. Other squatters criticized this position, arguing that if one group negotiates, the state can more easily criminalize the other groups. The argument became incendiary, when some people planted a bomb in the door of Patio. The explosion blew out the door. Still, the incident was not reported, the perpetrators were suspected. A family argument? Perhaps…
Some at Seco expressed bewilderment about the younger squatters in Madrid. To these older social center volunteers, these youth seem “identitarian,” overly immersed in their sullen, conformist subcultures to be doing any useful political work. (I remembered the man outside Joe’s Garage in Amsterdam earlier this year, who told me that the place was “a social center for squatters”!) I suggested this might be after-effect from the Copenhagen “Youth House” eviction, in which the forces of the right pretty much rubbed young peoples’ noses in the facts of their powerlessness. Kids from all over Europe converged to fuck up the streets, and a new wave of squatting was born. I am told now it has even spread to super-sedate Munich.
Tonight in Madrid there is a party at a squatted social center in an old building inside a cemetery in the La Elipa neighborhood. This will be a very late night hardcore goth and rap scene, so again this old man won’t go. The motto of this squat, I’m told, is: “Dando vida en espacios muerte” – Bringing life to dead spaces.

The Big Political Show

It’s over now, the Creative Time “Summit” last weekend – a great hit, with many folks in town chatting up the work so far – that is, political art in its new formations. The Yesmen took the “prize,” since, indeed there was one. An award ceremony I missed, since the show at New York Public Library was sold out. I came later Saturday (pretending to be on my way to do research very overdue in that library), and managed to sneak into the shindig, thanks to a friend from Baltimore Development Cooperative.
The procession of artists with great schemes was consistent throughout the day. Then the presenters went upstairs to a conversation room for closer discussions. I heard of the terrible cost young people have paid for taking part in “pirate radio” projects in Mexico, pursued by corporatist death squads, and learned more of the harrowing conditions of prisoners forgotten in the U.S. in SuperMax prisons (TAMs movement). At the same conference, a rich artist spoke of his work portraying some of the poorest of the poor in Rio, then leveraging the money raised from the artworks to help create a cooperative enterprise that employed tens of thousands. It was an incredible story Vik Muniz told, and I’d really like to know more details about how it was managed. Mel Chin, another famous artist there, spoke of his project with schoolchildren to produce handmade hundred dollar bills – “fundreds” – in the amount needed to clean up the lead pollution in New Orleans’ soil ($300 million). Of course the famous were not the big story of this event. (But hey, it’s New York, so of course it will be.) Creative Time is very good about making their proceedings public, so I look forward to the DVD or whatever they choose to release about this stimulating convention.
In a party afterwards Jos of Bikvanderpol tipped me to the existence of two major catalogues of exhibitions which surveyed the Dutch squatter movement of the 1970s. I look forward to learning more. The question of how artists represent their squatting experience is at the heart of this project. I wrote of this in a text about Andrew Castrucci’s Bullet Space squatted art gallery project for which he is preparing a 25-year show. (It is posted at post.thing.net; URL below.)
The first Public School lecture class on the social centers movement went well. (It was a lecture only because time was short; another meeting is scheduled for November 22 at the Van Allen Institute.) The very day of the class, Miguel Martinez sent me the manifesto of a group of scholars studying social centers. They ask a host of good questions. Their third meeting is scheduled for June, 2010 in London.
While I confess I was making fun of these guys earlier, the Berlin-based An Architektur group is swinging into action here with a conference, “Ten Days for Oppositional Architecture: Towards Post-Capitalist Spaces” in Brooklyn, November 12-21. They have lined up a good bunch of speakers, including Neil Smith and David Harvey from NYC, Teddy Cruz from San Diego, Brett Bloom from Urbana, Max Rameau from Miami, and Peter Linebaugh from Toledo, Ohio. Many other great people are involved, and although I will miss this conference, I am hoping to locate the “House Magic” library of social center books and films in their “reading corner.”

Creative Time “Revolutions in Public Practice”
http://www.creativetime.org/email/Summit.pdf
my text, “Bullet Soaked in Piss” – about the Bullet Space gallery in NYC
http://post.thing.net/node/2872
“Ten Days for Oppositional Architecture”
www.oppositionalarchitecture.com

Deadlines, Falling Leaves

Rolling forward on the project -- end of year events, May 2010 for version 2. Just a quick note to let you know I am presenting the “House Magic” project on European squatted social centers as part of the Public School (Architecture) Tuesday, 10/20 at 4pm at the Center for Architecture on LaGuardia Place. This is a part lecture, part round table to consider how best to represent this movement based on the first “House Magic” as an object of critique.
536 Laguardia Place between West 3rd St. & Bleecker
Public School for Architecture website: http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/
(see below for session title, details)
We will look at Dara Greenwald’s “Tactical Tourist” (2007; 15 min.), a video of a trip to Barceona to visit Milles Flores and Can Masdeu SCs, then discuss the recent “House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence” shows at ABC No Rio and Sculpture Center as part of the University of Trash. Virginia Villardi will present on her work with ESC Atelier in Rome.
(Dara's great video is online here: http://www.daragreenwald.com/ )
Related news:
I plan to produce a second incarnation of the “House Magic” exhibit project in May of 2010. There is as yet no venue and no budget. Any suggestions are welcome. The project is invited to Baltimore in December. We will also likely visit in Philadelphia during the winter months. I will be in Madrid for a week or so during early November.
The “House Magic” zine catalogue #2 deadline closes December 1st, 2009. There are a number of texts based on presentations at ABC and in Queens that are going into the zine, but your experiences and reflections on the social center movement are also very welcome. The deadline is hard; production begins on that date.
BTW: Thanks to the Solo Foundation for a grant to assist with printing for the first zine catalogue, and the purchase of a video camera.
The “course” is titled:
“Representing the Social Center Movement”
The squatted social center has been an important movement globally, and especially in Europe, since the late 1970s. The life cycle of these "monster institutions" (coinage by Universidad Nomada in Transversal) reveals a lot about autonomous political intitiatives and state responses. This course considers the movement, and seeks new strategies to represent it to a general audience. An earlier effort, "House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence," will serve as a case study and object of critique.
http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/class/1584

Getting Schoolish

The Public School project from Los Angeles is doing a "public school" here in New York. I have proposed a "class" on the social center exhibition project, and a few people are interested. The title and description is as follows: "Representing the Social Center Movement: The squatted social center has been an important movement globally, and especially in Europe, since the late 1970s. The life cycle of these "monster institutions" (coinage by Universidad Nomada in Transversal) reveals a lot about autonomous political intitiatives and state responses. This course considers the movement, and seeks new strategies to represent it to a general audience. An earlier effort, "House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence," will serve as a case study and object of critique."I put this in quotes because my intention is to present the information I have gathered and the project so far, and open the question of representation up to discussion. I invite all who are around -- and even some who are not -- to join us when the meetings are finally scheduled. (Who knows when that will be? Soon, I hope.) I want to do the next events in May of 2010. If you want to attend meetings, go to the website -- http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/ -- "browse classes" and sign up for this class, or express interest. You will be contacted when the meetings are arranged. The fund raising effort is slowly beginning... Solo Foundation gave $1,000!
Speaking of schools -- be sure to check out the occupation underway in University of California's idyllic Santa Cruz campus -- http://likelostchildren.blogspot.com/. It is really inspiring -- like a movie. As our Spanish friends say, occupying spaces produces subjectivity. You don't know what it feels like until you do it.