Wednesday Night -- 04.24.13 -- Occupied Political Imaginaries -- A screening with Oliver Ressler

Contents:
1. About Wednesday Night
2. About Take The Square

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1. About Wednesday Night

What: Screening and Discussion with Oliver Ressler
When: Wednesday April 24th 7:00pm
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
Who: Free and open to all

Over the course of the last years, we have been exploring the different conjunctions and overlaps between the political struggles unfolding in different contexts from New York to Japan.

And a part of these struggles has been waged at the level of imaginaries, both the imaginaries of the groups involved actively in these fields of struggle, as well as those taking a less active role. How have the dominant forms and channels of media representation determined the experience of struggles like Occupy Wall Street? And how have those sympathetic to or active in these struggles responded in their own efforts to construct alternatives? To what degree has the limitation of these struggles also been a reflection of the limitations of political imaginaries? And to what degree have those limitations played out in their respective representations?

This Wednesday, we organize a screening and discussion of a video by Oliver Ressler, which is one effort at an alternative approach to these questions. Working with different individuals involved in struggles in Athens, Madrid, and New York, this video is an attempt to share a process of political story-telling with a few participants through dialogical processes. It also takes the strategy of building the inter-relations we have been exploring in discussions at the space onto the screen - putting into dialogue the linkages and potential differences between three of the sites of struggle: Athens, Madrid, and New York. (please see full description below)

Any video or film has different propensities for different publics. In this context, given the fact that some will be quite familiar with these three contexts and struggles, we are hopeful that the screening may open up different concerns or questions that this document may raise for those who have been involved or taken an interest.

We hope the screening may open up a space of reflection on how these movements have worked with various media in sharing and constructing political concerns and potential narratives. Of course, we will be open to explore the fissures and differences that may exist between us through viewing this document.

Oliver will also be present at the screening, giving us an opportunity to think together about different efforts and strategies to struggle at the level of the image, representation, and narrative in contemporary political struggles.

As we saw in the context of Occupy as well as the recent events unfolding in the Boston and Cambridge area, the question of the consolidation of political consensus and thus power through media representation remains a central field of confrontation and questioning in our contemporary political struggles. What strategies and circuits we employ to take flight from or challenge those consolidations could be one basis of this evenings discussion. We are sure everyone will also bring additional questions and frames to animate the evening.

We will attempt to begin the film on time, so there will be sufficient time for discussion.

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2. About Take The Square

A film by Oliver Ressler
89 min., 2012

The emergence of the movements of the squares and the Occupy movement in 2011 can be seen as a reaction by people who opposed and began to fight the massive increase in social inequality and the dismantling of democracy in times of global financial and economic crisis. The movements of the squares are non-hierarchical and reject representation; direct democracy shapes their activities. The occupation of public places serves as a catalyst to develop demonstrations, general strikes, meetings and working groups on different focal points. Successful site occupancies in one place often inspire occupations in other cities, without a linear relationship.

The film “Take The Square” is based on discussions conducted with activists from 15M in Madrid, the Syntagma Square movement in Athens and Occupy Wall Street in New York. Re-enacting the format of the working groups of the protest movements, four to six activists discuss with each other as a group in front of a camera. The discussions cover issues of organization, horizontal decision-making processes, the importance and function of occupying public spaces and how social change can occur. The films were shot in the spring of 2012 in those places used by the movements of the squares for meetings and working groups: the Plaza de Pontejos, a quiet square in the immediate vicinity of the central Puerta del Sol in Madrid; at Plaza de la Corrala, a meeting place for the neighborhood assemblies of Lavapiès in Madrid; in Syntagma Square, the central assembly and demonstration point in front of the Parliament in Athens; and in Central Park in New York, where Occupy Wall Street held the “Spring Awakening 2012”.

The film brings together activists from three cities central to the movement. “I consider inclusiveness and respect used as a means to build horizontality and recover our power without the need to have somebody representing us very powerful,“ says Ayelén from the Collective Thinking Work Group in Madrid. This rejection of representation also generally includes the parliaments; people should be politicized and invited to take their fate into their own hands. Babis Magoulas of the square movement in Athens says: “It’s the political process, the one that creates the man who is concerned with the commons, who participates and doesn’t allow the political to be taken over by the ‘experts’ whether they are syndicates or political parties. That’s why I’m saying it’s big. And direct democracy was not imposed; it was applied as the only way to convene. If it wasn’t horizontal, it would have had no meaning.” For Jen Waller of Occupy Wall Street, this has created, “the first people’s movement in this country that has called out the ruling class as the enemy.”
“Take The Square” is trying to contribute to spreading the organizational knowledge of the movements and translate the processes between these places in transition.

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16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th fl.
New York, NY 10004

for directions/subscriptions/info visit:
http://www.16beavergroup.org

TRAINS:
4,5 -- Bowling Green
2,3 -- Wall Street
J,Z -- Broad Street
R -- Whitehall
1 -- South Ferry