Sunday (Part II) -- How I made Barack Obama my English Teacher -- Fadi Toufiq - 11.02.08

CONTENTS:
1. About this Sunday (Part II)
2. About Fadi Toufiq
3. Links to talks on Obama (Critchley + Angela Davis)
4. *

http://www.16beavergroup.org/monday

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1. About this Sunday (Part II)

When: Sunday, November 2, 8pm
What: "How I made Barack Obama my English Teacher"
Where: 16 Beaver Street 4th Floor
Who: All are welcome

This event / performance came about accidentally. It came from concurrent and parallel discussions as is often the case with friendship. They ranged from the political situation in Lebanon to the ubiquity of youtube* in social circumstances and to the political context here in the U.S.A, including the upcoming elections.

So "who is Obama?" was not exactly at the beginning of our discussions with Fadi. However, his growing fascination and his concurrent
descriptions of his forays into youtube to discover more, made us even more curious - to see this perspective: of someone who is coming from Lebanon, who lived through the civil war and the current upheavals there, who is a writer, a filmmaker, has published in papers and written plays, as someone who is not satisfied with simple answers, nor is fooled by the theatrical rhetoric of politicians.

The allure of Obama for Fadi was two-fold we learned, as our conversations proceeded. We learned that Barack Hussein Obama had also become Fadi's English teacher. Hence the title of Sunday night's performance.

We appreciate the attempts of Simon Critchley at unmasking some of the rhetorics behind this question of 'Who is Obama?' We were also impressed with the attempts made by Angela Davis, who spoke this thursday at cooper union, to affirm the arrival of Obama not as that of a messianic figure, but rather a consequence of a great deal of collective struggle waged in the last two centuries. How to retain our proximity to the names and bodies we will never see or hear, she asked. The point made by Davis: the struggle is a long one, and a collective one, so let's take to the streets the day after the elections, no matter who wins!

Our event, is a compliment to these two talks and to our sunday afternoon conversation concerning democracy (PART I).

It will be a sketch of Fadi Toufiq's "How I made Barack Obama my English Teacher."

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2. About Fadi Toufiq

Fadi Toufiq has studied sociology and political science in the Lebanese university of Beirut, and graduated with MA in sociology and BA in political science, since then he has been publishing articles concerning, politics, urban culture, media, and modernity in several newspapers, magazines and other publications. Some of his articles have been
translated and republished in various magazines and websites abroad such as le courier international, bablemed and documenta magazine. HIs most recent works include:

'The Narrow Land of God' (2005) - book
'Master of the Wall' (2005) - photograpy and text about beiruti graffiti trying to interpret its meaning within the context of political and religious divisions in the city of Beirut.
'The Sky is always Above' (2006) - documentary film in collaboration with the Lebanese filmmaker Mohamed sweid
'How Nancy Wished that Everything was an April Fool Joke' (2007) - play co-authored with Rabieh Mroue

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3. Links to talks on Obama (Critchley + Angela Davis)

Talk by Simon Critchley

http://fora.tv/2008/09/18/Branding_Democracy_Barack_Obama_and_the_American_Void

Talk by Angela Davis
http://www.sduk.us/noise/angeladavis103008.mp3

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4. *

The emergence of youtube and other shared content sites ("web 2.0") present serious questions for cultural producers today. Within a single instant, one is able to both:
- comprehend the explosive potential of collective and cooperative activity
- decry the ease with which this collectivity and seemingly common effort is privately owned/mobilized.

In his book, A Hacker Manifesto, Ken Wark speaks about a vectoralist class. While "information wants to be free but is everywhere in chains," Wark argues that there is a class which retains control of the channels/vectors of distribution. Keeps information in bondage.

Platforms, such as youtube, at first sight, present complications; because they appear anarchic, informal, even self-organized. There SEEMS to be no rhythm or rhyme, no clear strategy for organizing content or information, and thus give the user the experience of horizontality. Moreover, since the material appears freely given and freely received by users, it is hard to argue that "information is in chains". The effect of youtube or even Google APPEARS as a part of a process of 'democratization' rather than of restricting or controlling information. But the fact that one private corporation runs these two entities reveals that the struggle for freeing information has a long way to go.

Given the immense questions that these various entities present, one could think of a series of events which could take something like youtube both as a source and subject matter, inviting cultural producers to engage with it as a phenomenon, as a tool, as a strange memory-device, a proto-factory, as a symptom, as a strategy of managed cooperation, as a new form of privately owned-appearing-to-be-public-space.

However, politically, for us, it seems more important to validate and reinforce truly collective and freely cooperative platforms, public and common. The point is not to frown upon the millions of people who collectively contribute to such platforms, but instead invent and support the new platforms which will be truly cooperative, genuinely public.

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