The Occupy with Art blog provides updates on projects in progress, opinion articles about art-related issues and OWS, useful tools built by artists for the movement, new features on the website, and requests for assistance. To submit a post, contact us at occupationalartschool(at)gmail(dot)com .
Occupational Art School Node 1 @Bat Haus is pleased to host an evening of conversation with New Media phenom Amelia Winger-Bearskin on Wednesday, October 3 from 7-9PM. She will performing in the OASN1@BH event STARR STREET SLAM. For our Wednesday night discussion with Amelia, we hope to discuss Open Source Performance Art, time-based media, and Winger-Bearskin's continent-hopping artist practice.
"Flowers," performed in Manila City, Philippines [2010]
[ABOUT AMELIA WINGER-BEARSKIN]:
Amelia Winger-Bearskin is an assistant professor of Art and Film at Vanderbilt University in the area of Time Based Media Arts and Performance. She works with 'models' (as defined by agent-based computer programming) as a conceptual prompt in her performance work. She has developed a concept of Open Source Performance Art (OSPA) and has spoken about OSPA at various academic conferences and performance festivals since 2010. She performed at the 10th Annual OPEN ART Performance Art festival in Beijing, China, The Performance Art Network PANAsia '09 in Seoul, South Korea, and the TAMA TUPADA 2010 Media and Performance festival in the Philippines. Winger-Bearskin recently spent a month in Sao Paulo, Brazil performing at the Verbo Performance Art Festival (the first American performance artist to be invited to do so), through an international scholar exchange sponsored by University of Sao Paulo and Vanderbilt University VIO and Art Department. She was an Artist in residence at the University of Tasmania (Australia) school of Visual and Performing arts. Other recent performance credits include the Gwangju Biennial [three events: 1) main pavilion; 2) the Lotte Gallery Media and Performance Festival; and 3) the Women's Biennial in Seoul, Korea].
Currently, she is presenting a sound installation throughout the Nashville International Airport, and in Fall 2012 will be speaking about her work and OSPA as a visiting artist at universities in Portland, OR; Chicago, IL; and New York City, NY.
"Crying on Cue;" for the Performance Art Network PAN ASIA Performance Art Festival in Seoul, Korea [2009]
[ABOUT AMELIA'S UPCOMING PERFORMANCE AT STARR STREET SLAM]:
Vocal Performance
Amelia Winger-Bearskin was classically trained at the Eastman Conservatory of Music in Vocal Performance, she has worked in theatre and opera both as a performer and a composer since 1997. Her pieces are a fusion between punk, electro, opera and dark wave, with a heavy dose of performance art and interactivity as well. This work, Vocal Performance, requires only two things, an audience and darkness (or the absence of any artificial light).
Occupational Art School Node 1 at Bat Haus is pleased to present an evening with David Spaner, who is visiting New York City to talk about his book SHOOT IT! Hollywood Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film. Friday from 7-9PM, David Spaner will read a few passages from SHOOT IT! and engage in an open forum on the global corporate movie industry and its positive and negative effects on burgeoning alt.cinema. Copies of SHOOT IT! will be available for purchase and signing. Event is free for first-time visitors to OASN1@Bat Haus. Barter-gifts can arranged with OASN1 for returnees.
CONTACT: OAS co-organizer Paul McLean artforhumans [at] gmail [dot] com
David Spaner has worked as a movie critic, feature writer, reporter, and editor for numerous newspapers and magazines. Spaner's writings about culture (mostly film) and politics have appeared in alternative (The Open Road, Yipster Times, Georgia Straight) and mainstream publications (Vancouver Sun, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Magazine). His movie coverage and other cultural writing was featured in the Vancouver Province daily newspaper from 1999 to 2008, and won the Publishers Award for best feature writing in the paper. Spaner's column on independent film, "Indie City," also appeared in the newspaper.
Shoot It! is a revealing history of how Hollywood, with its eye on the bottom line, arguably lost its ability to support the work of creative filmmakers; it is also a passionate portrait of the independent filmmakers around the world who have risen up to fill the void.
While the studios envisage a generic universe, repressing local film cultures along the way, talented independents continue to tell local stories with universal appeal. This book is a celebration of those determined filmmakers who, despite it all, overcome every obstacle and just shoot it!
During the summer of 2012 Audrey Snyder and Joe Riley traveled through landscapes of abandoned railroads in California and Oregon atop bicycles adapted to run on railroad tracks. The railbikes were devised as a way to re-activate the railroads now lying in disuse in both rural and metropolitan areas of these western states. On Friday, September 14 from 7-9, Occupational Art School Node 1 at Bat Haus will host Audrey and Joe to share their amazing story.
[PROJECT SUMMARY]: The project first emerged about a year and a half ago when Joe and Audrey became interested in exploring the parallel histories of the American railroads and the demise of commercial printing, specifically its shift from handset type to mechanized linotype and eventually to digital printing. A nearly forgotten – perhaps even abandoned – point of convergence for the histories of the railroad and printing lies in the Tramp Printers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Tramp Printers were itinerant printers who hopped trains across America to set type in the publishing houses and newspapers that had sprung up alongside the railroads. Inspired by the legacy and tradition of the tramp printers they restored a 3” by 5” Kelsey Excelsior hand operated letterpress that they will use to publish a chronicle of their travel in the forgotten right-of-way. Through Parallel Cases, they endeavored to take up the methods and means of the tramp printers as a way to both collect and distribute their findings.
The Occupational Art School Node 1 at Bat Haus is pleased to present an evening with Liv Mette Larsen, accomplished Norwegian-born painter based in Bushwick and Berlin. From 7-9PM on Wednesday, September 12, 2012, OASN1@BH will host a casual conversation with the artist and introduction to her Scrap Metal series, which is inspired by the scenes she has encountered during her recent stints working and living in Bushwick/Brooklyn/NYC.
Painting by Liv Mette Larsen
Download a 2011 catalog of Liv Mette Larsen’s “Scrap Metal” series HERE.
Photo by Paul McLean
[Catalog Essay]:
LIV METTE LARSEN: SCRAP METAL [NEW YORK PAINTINGS]
In a career spanning more than thirty years, Larsen’s intuitive paintings, watercolors and drawings establish an energetic dialogue about perception and the transitory moments of life. Working primarily in monochrome silhouettes, she employs alternating scales to reconstruct the subjective realities of her narratives. Instead she proposes an inductive perspective, abstracting people and things from her daily encounters that reflect the circumstances of Larsen’s practice. Her paintings dissolve the boundaries between figuration and abstraction, with objects transforming fluidly into organic geometric forms. She paints with densely applied egg tempera to create the illusion of volume to allow isolated elements to become vivid archetypal forms and graphic signs.
Throughout her recent works, urban space and the ways in which people engage with it have been a primary concern. Drawing inspiration from the fleeting moments of everyday life, figures are devoid of context, either standing alone or with blocks of color. In Big Men (2011), heavily bundled men isolated against the canvas appear to be engaged in a ritualistic dance, alternately moving closer and further away. Likewise in Berlin Blue Abstract Walking (2010), an unknown woman, identifiable only by her profile, poses in each canvas. Reduced to strictly physical cues, each stance ranges from contemplative to interrogative. This series takes its title from a specific blue that was discovered by eighteenth-century alchemists working in the Prussian capital.
From anonymous figures to pared-down industrial environments, she seeks to integrate the identifying characteristics of her location with her works. Larsen approaches the subway as a linear system reminiscent of Mondrian’s urban grids while in Scrap Metal and Scrap Metal Heap (2011) Larsen records the scrap metal heaps that were immediately outside of the window of her Brooklyn studio. Reduced to abstract swathes of bright yellow, blue, orange, and green, the utility of each jagged piece dissolves into an amoeboid shape. In Smith Street (2011), the blurred relationship between figure and ground disorients perspective. Although Larsen makes reference to a specific location, her paintings examine the fundamental relationships between people and their surroundings, preserving initial observations and glimpses to allow for prolonged reflection.
Liv Mette Larsen was born in Oslo, Norway in 1952 and attended the Oslo SHKS School of Art and Crafts. From 1978-84 she studied at the Berlin Hochschule für Künste (UDK). In 1992 she won Berlin’s Senate Cultural Affairs Department Grant and Norway’s Vederlagsfondet Grant in 1994, 1996, 1997 and 2006. She received additional grants from the Norwegian Cultural Council in 2000, 2004 and 2006. Recent solo exhibitions include Literaturhaus, Salzburg, Austria (2006), Galerie Kai Hilgemann, Berlin, Germany (2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012), Galeria Fruela, Madrid, Spain (2008) and Helac Fine Art, New York, USA (2011).
She has exhibited internationally for over three decades and her work is included in major public and private collections.
Clif Hawkins. Click the image to visit Clif's Tumblr.
Some reflections on Clif Hawkins' visit to Occupational Art School.
By Paul McLean
Friday night, and the Bushwick sidewalk and street outside Bat Haus are quiet. We haven't really got a handle on the traffic flow in the neighborhood, yet. The conversation around it reminds me of gallery talk in Santa Fe, which relies, or did when I was there, on a significant walk-in demographic. Gallerinas and -rinos would pass the time conjecturing on what might responsible for a slow spell, and what the duration might be. I thought of it as an equivalent to dowsing. The lights in BH are low. It's an altogether pleasant moment. Clif and I and some friends sat in the ergonomic office chairs and carried on a relaxed conversation.
First, Clif passed me the obituary for Manning Williams. Clif apprenticed with Manning, who became a lifelong inspiration, mentor and friend to Clif. The first lesson in Clif's "Neighborhood Metal" teach-in is the value of the community artist. We go through photos on the laptop, briefly summarizing a life of art and culture. While scrolling quickly through images, Hawkins quietly interjects anecdotes about Williams, what his studio looked like, the kinds of tasks Clif would carry out for him. Eventually, a picture begins to emerge of an exchange that over years helped Clif shape his relationship to art, craft and the artist's life.
Clif enjoyed describing his first metalwork occupations, which he took in his teens. Now Hawkins reached into a beautiful leather bag and produced several portfolios. We leafed through them, stopping at this or that print for my questions or compliments. Clif shares very quickly a progression through his past creations, and after a few minutes of this, it's clear that by his late 20s he had amassed an impressive catalogue of pieces, created for many applications, from stage sets to puppet shows, architectural conservation to sculpture, his own and others'.
We covered territory that for a mid-career artisan, artist, craftsman, tradesman is fairly common, especially after the gloss and ambitions of youth-driven desire for recognition has settled into a programmatic endurance. Again, the discussion revolves around examples of experiences, changing ideas about the fields and options available to a technician, the effect of the economy on culture. It isn't a philosophical talk, as such. It isn't about theory. Clif talks about making things, about people and projects, and the social currents that flow through a life in materials, a life in the shop, a life of manifesting ideas as things.
One can sense respect for fine work, and a keen limit for bullshit, particularly the sort that derives from a desire for great output unaccompanied by recognition of its real cost. It's clear Clif doesn't begrudge a haggler. It's more than this. The sensibility is attached somehow to Clif's willingness, even pride in being a neighborhood shop guy. Ash, his partner at AWS shares this local boy headset. I can verify on my account, having stopped in a time or two with little jobs that Clif and Ash have attended to. Neither one grew up in Brooklyn, but both spend time and energy serving the community.
The last thing I'll mention about "Neighborhood Metal" are Clif's closing thoughts. He seemed genuinely to have enjoyed the evening. I asked him why. He told me that the kind of talk we had seems lost in today's wired world of ever-texting creative classers barhopping and posting about it on Twitter in real time.
Image by Paul McLeanCO-OP at b.j. spoke gallery by Paul McLean Co-organizer, Occupy with Art
1
A half-block from the intersection of Wall Street and Main Street in Huntington, Long Island, you'll find b.j. spoke gallery. Here's its history, from the gallery website:
>> b. j. spoke gallery, incorporated and not-for-profit, is an artist-run gallery of professional artists with a broad diversification of styles and media.
April 1990 marked the inaugural show of two newly merged Long Island cooperative galleries, Northport Galleries and B. J. Spoke Gallery.
Spoke Gallery began in 1976 at a Port Washington site and later moved to neighboring Sea Cliff, New York. In 1980 Northport Galleries was established in Northport and seven years later moved to Huntington, NY.
Because of the ongoing friendship of the two galleries, the idea of a merger was enthusiastically accepted in 1990 by both memberships. <<
2
b.j. spoke is divided into three areas. Occupy with Art in September of 2012 will present CO-OP in b.j. spokes' central gallery. Our location within the brackets of the other two galleries, which will show member artists, reflects OwA's desire to support the mission of this important Long Island art organization, which has long advocated partnership between the artist and public as an "essential relationship."
Since the first exhibit OwA facilitated, "Occupy Printed Matter," in 2011, Occupy with Art has sought to establish bridges between Occupy Wall Street's artist activism and the artist activism that has emerged since the 70s in New York, and around the world. In "Wall Street to Main Street," for example, we partnered with renowned curator Geno Rodriquez, founder and former director of the Alternative Museum. OwA worked with Yoko Ono to manifest her project in support of OWS, "Wish Tree for Zuccotti Park." Now, with CO-OP, we are calling attention to the important contributions of artist-operated non-profits like b.j. spoke in providing important venues for underserved artist communities in areas outside major retail art markets. b.j. spoke and galleries like it have done great service to the 99% art world and the people for whom art is more than a luxury item or vehicle for speculation.
3
CO-OP is a dimensional art project. CO-OP is first and foremost a small collective show, an exhibit, as such. It is a template or model for occupational art practice, demonstrating one way that Occupy artists can partner with pre-existing arts organizations as an expression of solidarity. among 99% artists and our communities. CO-OP is a conceptual project, in which we will link co-operative food networks and artists within the medium of gift exchange for mutual aid and benefits.
4
Conceptual art typically requires an explanation for the viewer to engage the artwork or process fully. Concept, or idea art, is often meant to start conversations. OWS, which has started or re-started many important conversations, has itself been described in terms of art. CO-OP is meant to start conversations about sustainable art and artist economies for the 99%. OwA co-organizers are drawing on the successful history of co-operative food networks, as inspiration for propositions about new methods of exchange for art.
To summarize what has been a discussion spanning many months, OwA will partner with the Huntington food co-op (OwA co-organizer and Huntington resident Chris Moylan is one of the owners) to intertwine the exchange of art for co-op members, with the exchange of food for artists (or money, as a default or swap). Our art for food exchange, in this initial attempt, is rudimentary: the values are based on 1 to 1 ratios. An artwork valued at $20 can be exchanged for $20 worth of food. Huntington co-op members will be invited to select art and the artists will select food items for straight barter.
We will consider variations on the exchange (enthusiastically). The paper bags installed in the space with the art work are included primarily as symbols and signs of our micro-economy. CO-OP permits contemporary art to enter the consumer portable sector of the cultural economy, for which the brown paper bag has long been a staple. However, you'll see that our shopping bags are not exactly like those branded types a shopper fills with goods in SOHO, for example.
Gallery visitors are welcome to purchase art exhibited by CO-OP artists at full retail prices. b.j. spoke artists' work will not be included in this iteration of CO-OP, which is being conducted as a test of the process, essentially. CO-OP is also meant to raise awareness of local alternatives to the global art markets of Chelsea, for example, or the international art fair circuits.
We hope you enjoy CO-OP. Please don't hesitate to contact us with questions or feedback.
From the notes of Jez Bold[NOTE]: The Occupational Art School Node #1 will launch its 3-month residency at Bat Haus in Bushwick (Brooklyn, NYC) with multi-faceted dimensional ana-event conducted by the incomparable Jez Bold, titled "Time in the Mind of the Anarchives." Below is the ana-press release #Jez3Prez has composed for #TITMOTA.]
Axioms:
#TITMOTA is a show otherwise known as "Time in the Mind of the Anarchives"
#TITMOTA has at least 2 parts, Part 1: Presentation/Performance and Part 2: Potluck & Potlache
You don't need to come to both (or either) to understand the #Anarchives, but you may get a better idea of what we're talking about.
Have you ever seen a work of art change over time? Or watched a complex idea emerge from many unintentional steps? For the Anarchives, process is product is process: each recorded moment brings a new iteration in an evolving work of art. History itself is changing over time and each documented moment is an opportunity for a new interpretation.
Would you like to understand more?
Join Bold Jez, anarchivist, at the opening of the newly founded Occupational Art School for his 1st solo show called "TIME IN THE MIND OF THE ANARCHIVES." Examine a collection of strange and familiar objects. Discover what the universe looks like when refracted through the infinite panels of the K(rystalleido)scope. Join him for a performance-presentation "Recording Future History: Activist archivism in Occupy Wall Street" to learn more about how the Anarchives altered recent history and informed the origins of OWS.
As stated by #Jez3Prez, anarchist candidate for Prezident, "In order to radically change our history, we must revolutionize our concept of time." The site of historical struggle can begin anywhere, and here it begins by infiltrating the archive.
Magic Mountain
*Time in the Mind of the Anarchives, Pt 1 [#TITMOTA][August 9, 2012 at OAS Node #1][BAT HAUS, Bushwick]
7 pm
Wander/wonder/wait/explore (discover drawings inside of journals, find movies inside books, look for scenes on the ceiling)
*Time in the Mind of the Anarchives Pt 2 [#TITMOTA2]: Potluck/Potlache
Revolutionary Games, in collaboration with the Occupational Art School, invites you to the latest in its series of salons: the #TITMOTA2 Potluck & Potlache will be a free space to participate in an art exchange and give away of recipes, books, media, art...whatever items of substance that you want to send out into the world. This event is a community BBQ and potluck, a review & replay of the first #TITMOTA, and a playground for games, music, and memees; bring things to share with everyone. #OASNode0 invites you to a potlache of orphan works that we commit the annals of the Anarchives by documenting their current presence and sending them into the world with new stewards (who collect, care for, & document the item's changes over time). YOU could already be the new host of an item from the Anarchives! We invite you to bring something to send out as well, something of your own to share with the world through the collection of this revolutionary community archive. As with any valuable experience, expect to come away with more than you came...
Occupy with Art and Cinema Arts Center present a selection of short films by Liza Bear, + an evening of discussion, poetry, music and more -- to kick off CO-OP/Occuburbs in Huntington, Long Island.
Occupy: Corporations Can’t Cry
Date:
July 25, 2012
Showtime
Wednesday, July 25 at 7:30pm
Film / Discussion / Public Forum / Music / Poetry Co-Presented by Occupy with Art and Cinema Arts Center
Join us for a lively and illuminating evening about Occupy Wall Street, featuring the films of Liza Béar (who has been at OWS since the first day of the occupation), music, poetry, and information about numerous Long Island activist organizations
In Person: Filmmaker Liza Béar
Music by Brian O’Haire
Poetry by Christopher Moylan
$10 Members / $15 Public (includes reception) Tickets also available by calling 800-838-3006, or at the CAC Box Office Scholarship Tickets are available for those unable to pay – Contact Charlotte Sky at 631-423-7610 x22
Since Day One, September 17, 2011, Liza Béar has filmed the modus operandi of Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park and at other New York locales. Shot over a 7 month period, these 65 minidocs or situationist videos combine dialogue between–and with—an eclectic range of OWS participants, members of the community and the security forces. The style is a mixture of verité filmmaking and a more proactive, direct cinema approach. The aim has been to dispel mass media stereotyping and facile judgments. To be screened tonight: OWS Day 5: “Corporations Can’t Cry”; “Zuccotti Gets Surreal”; “Occupy the SEC: Enforce the Volcker Rule,” “Occupy the Courts: Foley Square Rally to End Corporate Personhood”; OWSJ29: “Murder By SpreadSheet; Health Care for the 99%”; OWS M28 “The Trap of Violence” and others.
Liza Béar is a New York-based writer, filmmaker and media activist. After arriving in New York in 1968, she cofounded the avant-garde artists’ magazine Avalanche 1970-1976 with Willoughby Sharp and was a co-producer of Communications Update, a public access artists’ tv show that also dealt with information politics. Her films have been shown at The Museum of Modern Art, the Edinburgh Film Festival, the Sao Paulo Biennial, and most recently at Torpedo Kunsthalle, Oslo, Macka Art Gallery, Istanbul and the ICA London. She is the author of “Beyond the Frame: Dialogues with World Filmmakers” (Praeger, 2007). Learn more at http://lizabearmakingbook.blogspot.com and http://communicationsupdate.blogspot.com
OWS activist handing out fliers in the Bedford Avenue L station on October 28, 2011. (photo by the author)
Please join us for a discussion about performance art and Occupy Wall Street. From the early days of OWS performance art and artists have played a pivotal role in raising awareness about OWS and its importance.
This Wednesday, March 28, starting at 7:30pm until 9pm, we will explore the topic with artists, critics and OWS activists to better understand what it means and what role performance art plays in activism today.
The event will be at Hyperallergic HQ, which is located at 181 N 11th Street, Suite 302, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
If you have any questions about the event, feel free to reach out here.
Occupy Wall Street is four months old. We don't live in a park anymore, but we're still here, and we're still fighting for economic justice. Now, OWS is coming to a neighborhood near you. Over the next few months, mobile, daytime occupations, called Occupy Town Squares, will be held in parks and other public spaces, indoor and outdoor, around New York City. For a few hours a week, these events will recreate the essence of the Zuccotti Park Occupation. There will be info tables, teach-ins, trainings, and political discussions.
Whether you consider yourself a supporter of the movement or not, we want to meet you: come share your ideas and stories, learn about the movement, argue with us, debate with us, collaborate with us. If you're already active in OWS, this is a chance to exchange information, to coordinate between working groups, and to get to know our brothers and sisters in the movement.
Two treats for you: an all-star revolutionary panel this evening (Thursday), and hilarious clown fun this Saturday.
1. This Saturday evening, come prepare fun, funny, and media-savvy actions for F29 with Occupy's newest venture, the +Brigades. BYOB. Beware of clowns. Spread the word!
Date: Saturday, Feb. 25, 7pm
Where: Judson Church (Thompson St. entrance), New York City
Very Special Events happening tonight at The Living Theatre!
"Political Origins of The Living Theatre"
Today, Wednesday February 22nd: come see Paul Goodman Changed My Life by Jonathan Lee, about the man who made anarchists out of Judith Malina and Julian Beck. 9:45pm start time after the play, and talkback featuring Judith and Paul McLean from Occupy With Art. Learn more at http://www.paulgoodmanfilm.com/
If any of you will be at College Art Association in Los Angeles this week, I'll be chairing a panel on Saturday, Feb 25th at 2:30p.
I am hoping this panel will provide an entry to 'Occupy" CAA, and open up the very restrictive structure of the conference to create a more equitable platform for discussion.
This panel will be multi-sited, participation-based, and open to students and the general public in conjunction with OTIS College of Art and Design's Re/Locating Learning: Public Practices as Art:
SPATIAL OCCUPATION AT HYPERALLERGIC Reading Group: Session #3 Text: The Many-Headed Hydra, by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh Sections: Introduction/Chapters 1 & 7 Special Spatial Guest: Theodore Hamm, Editor, Brooklyn Rail
Sunday, Feb 19 7pm @hyperallergic
181 N. 11th Street #302 Brooklyn/Williamsburg/NYC/NY/USA [11211]
[Hahaha] ...the Occupy movement IS ABOUT IDEAS; was never meant to be a fixed thing or fixed physical presence. Here's a New York Times article today about the potency of the ideas of the Occupy Movement. The piece is interesting because it looks at Occupy as a sort of social experiment and even the author isn't quite sure what the answers are.
For a righteous analysis applied to the Occupy phenom, pick up a copy of the February issue of Brooklyn Rail at the local coffee house - or online here. It's Chris Moylan's analysis ("A Festival of Reason and the Art of Common Sense"), previously published in a BETA form at OwA (look in the CO-OP section of Active Projects & Proposals), which cuts to the chase and reframes the meaning of Occupy Wall Street and its material artifacts.
The most controversial occupational text of the past week no doubt is Chris Hedge's essay on Black Bloc and the so-called "Diversity of Tactics" euphemism, which concludes: "There is a word for this—'criminal.'” Milo asked in the mdst of the dust-up, "Why be distracted by this sideshow? Why not ask what it will actually require of the 99% to overthrow the 1%? It's been done before, just not thoroughly enough. If America could beat down the Nazis, Communism and colonialism, etc., why not unhinge the 3000 year-old top-down yoke of oppression that is strangling our commonwealth. Who and What's at the rotten roots of this exploitative, democracy-corrupting 1% inhumanity complex? How do we get rid of them - permanently, so we can be free?"
AMT Visiting Artist Lecture Series:Occupy Museums: Imani Brown and Noah Fischer
02/08/2012 6:15 p.m.
The Visiting Artists Lecture Series is sponsored by the School of Art, Media, and Technology (AMT) at Parsons The New School for Design. Organized by Coco Fusco, director of Intermedia Initiatives at AMT, the series invites renowned artists from around the world to give free public presentations each Wednesday.
Occupy Museums is an action group that emerged in October 2011 within the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. The group holds protests as a way to spark discussion of economic injustice and abuse of the public in cultural institutions for the benefit of the 1 percent. The group staged its first action at the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum, holding an OWS-style assembly, reading a manifesto, and discussing injustices in the world of arts and culture using the people’s mic. This action was widely covered in the press and debated in numerous online forums.
Imani Brown at the f5 Spatial Occupation potluck at Hyperallergic (Photo: Paul Talbot)
Location:Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue
Admission:Free; no tickets or reservations required; seating is first-come first-served
PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release February 6, 2012
Hyper-Imaginary [Movie]: A Screening Program for the Spatial Occupation residency at Hyperallergic Tuesdays 7PM, February-March 2012 Start Date: February 7, 2012 (orientation) Contact: ows-arts-and-culture-spaces@googlegroups.com
HYPER-imaginary MOVIE
[SUMMARY]: For February and March of 2012, Hyperallergic has invited the Spatial Team [Occupy Wall Street/NYCGA/Arts & Culture Working Group] to occupy the Hyperallergic office in Williamsburg/Brooklyn/NYC/NY/USA. On Tuesday evenings at 7PM, we will meet to consider the moving image in relation to Occupy Wall Street. We will watch movies, videos, animations and maybe create some of our own. We'll also talk, share ideas, and invite guests to inspire the occupation of the moving image.
[PROPOSITIONS]: Is a fully occupied life better than any movie? Does a movement have a movie?
When Occupiers appeared as an intervention on the Law & Order: SVU set in December of 2011 did they re-establish actuality to the "Mockupy" scenario made-for-TV, or did something more profound occur? [1] What would Baudrillard say? One sign carried by a protester read, "WE ARE A MOVEMENT - NOT A TV PLOT." Is this true?
How has Occupy Wall Street inspired filmmakers to re-examine cinema as a project? Is filmmaking by consensus possible? Is Hollywood immune to horizontal structures and transparency? Will OWS inspire a 99% cinema? What would that be, and who will produce it? What of the "director," the "actors," the "star," or the "crew?" How does the production praxis of the moving image, and the roles of the players within its context, shift in the 99% movie's creation? How will the final cut be distributed?
Which films would be on a Top Ten Movies of Occupation list?
Regarding online video [2]:
>>In his rather grim assessment of the domain of small screen video in the introduction to Video Vortex II: Moving Images Beyond YouTube, Geert Lovink writes, “The Attention War is real.” [3] Nothing has authenticated Lovink’s claim more profoundly than Occupy Wall Street. Earlier in the short but seminal text, Lovink doggedly propositions us with a sequence of questions about the future of online video, finishing with this one: “Is online video liberating us from anything?”
Post-9-17-2011 (the day OWS materialized as an occupation of Zuccotti Park), we have some new answers about the utilitarian value of online video. I’m not referring to anything remotely art-centric here, yet, with regards small-screen, networked video transmitted on/for/by electronic devices.
I mean moving images that seemingly erupt from the societal margins and shoot into the monopolized global perceptual space, disrupting the placid managed surface of acceptable 1% talking points. I mean movies that project a 99%-oriented iteration of real events into the stream of content wired people access to figure out what’s happening now, and not just what’s happening in one’s particular, preferred info-silo.
Online video has occupied Big Picture reality, finally offering more than laughing babies, cute kitties and bedroom guitar maestros. Online video is maturing as a decentralized syndicate for unmediated transmissions. What OWS has proven is that the “margins” are really the main, and the Dark Matter Greg Sholette describes in his book by the same name, [4] the 99% - is us, to paraphrase Pogo.<< (Paul McLean, “Low Lives: Occupy”)
Will we make our own movie, starring ourselves? Is this a "game" project for the Novads, and what are the stakes?
1. The revolution will be debated - again! This Thursday, and all through the semester, come meet the revolutionaries who have changed or are currently changing the world. The series kicks off this Thursday (at 7pm to 20 Cooper Square, 5th floor) with Carne Ross, the former British diplomat who who resigned in 2004 after giving then-secret evidence to a British inquiry into the Iraq War. He is also the author of the just-published The Leaderless Revolution, and will speak about the future of politics and how ordinary people will shape it. See the Creative Activism Thursdays site for full list of speakers (so far) and locations. Speakers will be added throughout the semester, so stay tuned! (The series is co-sponsored by the NYU Dean for Social Science, the Hemispheric Institute, the Yes Lab, the Humanities Initiative at NYU Working Research Group on Artistic Activism, CAA, and Not an Alternative.)
2. Also, starting next Friday, Feb. 3rd, from 10am to 6pm, come change the world with us during Yes Lab Fridays, a series of weekly brainstorms and trainings to help activist groups and individuals carry out media-getting creative actions focused on their own campaign goals. Participation is easy - just show up Feb. 3 and see how you'd like to plug in. We ask that you email us in advance, at nyu@yeslab.org, so we can give your name to the security guard. (Also feel free to tell us about yourself, your interests, and your skills.)
Tuesday, October 2, 2012 at 01:35PM 
"Flowers," performed in Manila City, Philippines [2010]
"Crying on Cue;" for the Performance Art Network PAN ASIA Performance Art Festival in Seoul, Korea [2009]
