Friday - 10.28.11 – Occupation: Calls and Responses

Contents:
1. About this Friday
2. A call
3. A note on the format
4. Links

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1. About this Friday

What: Presentations and discussion
When: Friday -- 10.28.11 @ 7:00PM
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
Who: Free and open to all

As Occupy Wall Street stretches into its sixth week and spreads across the
globe, a variety of questions have emerged about the directions it can
take.

What are the modes in which artists and cultural workers have contributed
or could imagine contributing to the ongoing occupation(s)? What
situations or processes can be constructed (collectively)?

As people form affinity groups and begin to find experiences of a unitary
time, what new forms of life are potentially emerging? What kinds of
actions and infrastructures could support generalizing and supporting the
reproduction of such forms of life or culture?

If one of the strengths of this emergent movement is its ability to embody
a different politics, what kinds of consequences does it have in the
sphere of culture? How might the know-how and know-what of architects,
artists, filmmakers, writers, thinkers, teachers, and students contribute
toward the development of a new political culture / movement?

We would like to use the space this Friday evening to consider some of
these different approaches and imagine together potential ways in which
these processes can be intensified.

Aside from the risks of any police actions, are the risks of certain
normalizing processes entering, which risk delimiting the potential growth
and experimentation inherent in this process? And at what stage and in
what manner do we implicate (occupy?) the institutions (from universities
to museums) which have assumed (often uncritically) the same neoliberal
values, measures and cultures which have produced this crisis?

Of course, there is already an aesthetic dimension to the ongoing
occupation, one that links bodies laying claim to the space of the street,
with images and sounds of those bodies transmitted across the planet.
Moreover, artists and cultural workers have participated in organization,
planning, logistics, and practice of the occupation in varied ways. From
working inside the various work groups of the general assembly, to others
who have contributed with ‘protest art’ of slogans, chants, signs,
puppets, music, screenings, programming, hacking, diverse interventions,
teach-ins, performances, acts of civil disobedience, and audio-video
documentation of all of the above.

While acknowledging the importance of these manifestations, and wanting to
see and hear more of them, we also wonder what ways can our particular
know-how be elaborated at this juncture? What else can be made visible,
audible, legible?

What we want to do is give space to consider and bring various positions
and proposals together in one room. The hope is to create a space oriented
toward amelioration and development of actions, new uses of this context,
development of new proposals, rather than appearing smart or right or
taking the position of a spectator (however emancipated).

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2. A call

Bring proposals, sketches, ideas for actions, events, words, images,
demonstrations, both possible and impossible. Share reports or
documentation of things that have happened, may have happened, failed, or
could be done.

________________________________________________
3. A note on the format

Everyone is welcome to come and to contribute to discussion.

For those interested in presenting, a computer and projector will be
available to amplify sound and show images. In order to speed up
transitions between presenters, interested contributors are encouraged to
submit materials in advance via file-sharing services (dropbox, yousendit,
etc.). Please send a link to the materials to the following email address:

16beaversubmit@gmail.com

Those who are not able to submit materials in advance are still invited to
bring them on Friday, but also encouraged to arrive a bit early.

Please anticipate short presentations, approximately 5-7 minutes each. We
will try to adjust the timing of the presentations (shorter or longer) to
accommodate the number of respondents.

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4. Links

NYC General Assembly: http://nycga.net/
NYCGA Arts & Culture working group:
http://www.nycga.net/groups/arts-and-culture/
NYCGA Direct Action working group:
http://www.nycga.net/groups/direct-action/
NYCGA Media working group: http://www.nycga.net/groups/media/

Occupy Wall Street: http://occupywallst.org/

Global Revolution: http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

Franco Berardi & Geert Lovink
"A Call to the Army of Love and to the Army of Software"
http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/geert/2011/10/12/franco-berardi-geert-lovink-a-call-to-the-army-of-love-and-to-the-army-of-software/

And And And
"Letter To the General Assembly and Affinity Groups of Occupy Wall Street"
http://andandand.org/event10_letter_to_ows.pdf

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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