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 .
Today we visited the St. James Theater and a tech rehearsal for the "Bring It On - The Musical," at the invitation of designer Jeff Sugg.
[CONSIDERATIONS, OBSERVATIONS + CONJECTURES]
OWS has been characterized as an art medium, and analyzed relative to performance, performance art, relational art and other modalities of staged expression or exchange. Precursors to the Occupation like Zefrey Throwell's naked staged intervention on Wall Street ("Ocularpation: Wall Street") expand the set of considerations, as do the actions of the original Arts & Culture group/gamers and the Aaron Burr Society, suggesting that there is something to it. Many kinds and instances of performance, often involving professional performers, were and continue to be integrated into Occupational activities, such as "The Tax Dodgers," the Brecht performers and so on. One of the most compelling collective circle-discussions hosted by Hrag Vartanian during the Spatial Occupation @Hyperallergic centered on these phenomena. Where does performance (as situated in entertainment or artifice) stop and Occupation-as-performance begin and/or end? Does the conflation of performance and occupation diminish the latter and trivialize it, by compressing the redress of grievances into a modality of coded narrative for desire-satisfaction? Etc. Certainly this is fertile territory for analysis with tactical or strategic implications. [David Graeber has written on this subject relative to protest, police, puppets and media propaganda, which we also attempted to address in SO@H residency reading group. Graeber's text(s) indicated the anarchist's jaundiced and limited vision for art in conjunction with direct action, minimizing art into a protest utility functionary, and redefining it to the extent that art is a fungible creativity applicable to all activities human, an absurdist conjecture ultimately. Is falling down art (if an art does it)? And, if everyone is an artist, is all falling down artistic?
The observation of the "Bring It On" tech rehearsal was profound for this viewer, who has been away from professional theater for the most part for the past decade, with some notable exceptions (Circle X at Ford Theater in LA, and other theatrical entertainments covered elsewhere). The opportunity to assess the evolving role of electronics in the medium led to the formation of some important seams of conjecture, mainly pertaining to the reformation of hierarchies in production, and the staged spaces in which artifacts from old, even ancient, models of dramatic transmission are being fundamentally redesigned, reoriented or constituted as ana-spaces for performance, due to the intervention of computer-sited processes in play-making and/or 4d presentation. Jeff and I briefly discussed these "advances" and related effects, and committed enthusiastically to further explore their significance. The power of theater in revolutionary change cannot be underestimated. These developments potentially point toward new theatrical practice that obviates the insipid corporatized "creative" economic content that passes often for top-shelf theater, now. Like similar spectacle-ism in sports, music, art, political races, war coverage, etc., the need for dimensional veracity for collective sharing of imaginary-real experience as vision is vital in reclaiming a democratic commons for us all. This is a key in expelling propaganda in all its insidious iterations from the field of dimensional perception.
[Session 6]
Art Gatherings, Community, Exchange
SLAG Gallery, Bushwick
Opening for Claudia Chaseling, "Infiltration"
This communique is a stub. The subject is the continuing progressive evolution of Bushwick, Brooklyn as a locus for an international art community and market, and much, much more. [Full disclosure: The author is represented by SLAG] OAS Node #1 will host Bushwick-focused study and celebration of the dimensional "art scene" materializing in the neighborhood, which is our neighborhood. Bushwick's emergence is THE art story of the moment, now. Chronicling its "happening" is vital, and must not be left to the 1% or corporate media. Each OAS Node will be encouraged to analyze and document the art topology(-ies) it inhabits. The accumulation of data drawn from this analysis and documentation we hope will eventually yield a database that in its totality will paint a very different picture than the one(s) that exists now about art, artists and especially art-/artists-in-community.
Today we will begin both a conversion and/or "point of origin" phase of OwA/OAS. This post will be added to for the next several days (once installed in this illustrated text, click "READ MORE" link to stay up-to-date on changes, as a bug in Squarespace causes edits to not appear in truncated main page blog posts), to reflect, summarize or represent the organizational trends and features our node has been developing over the past several months, leading to our OAS Node #1 launch. Many exchanges of many types have been undertaken in or through both actual and virtual environments to shape our platform, including conversations, exhibits, performances, data transmissions, shared archives or links. Our process has been informed by research, experience and theoretical positions. Input has come from many sources. The methodology has been "open disciplinary." Several texts have been offered as precursors [See "Soul of Occupy" and "Enough" series, as well as essays for OwA projects "Wall Street to Main Street," "Low Lives: Occupy!" and "CO-OP/Occuburbs"]. The Spatial Occupation @Hyperallergic residency was extremely helpful at a critical time in facilitating key emergent connections among some players in or of our OAS Node #1. Some explanation of how our node has formed will inevitably occur as we move forward, since the mode of the node will consist in part of a (transparent, apparent) practicum. OAS is emerging from OWS and OwA, and our relationship to the movement is fairly complex. As we begin, OAS is situated as an iteration and rejection of OWS arts & culture trajectories, simultaneously. We hope to offer some dimensional solutions to perceived or perceptual problems that OWS A&C exposed, derived of mainly ideological frames [IMHO-pjm] that may or may not, or should or should not apply to Occupational Art as we commence to conceive and manifest it. There are many, and multi-directional, oppositions to our undertaking. Fortunately and/or unfortunately, art and artists, we can see, prove that difficult creative environments are not always effective in crushing free expression.
Short description: Artist-directed guided tour of "Hologalactic," followed by discussion and pizza at John's of Bleecker Street with Eric and Samuel. The talk covered a range of topics, including Eric's doing an OAS workshop on holography, and Samuel doing an essay and presentation on the subject of the art and the spiritual, as reflected in the programming at All Things Project, plus an exploration of the history of the Neighborhood Church.
Session Two
An OAS planning session with Jeremy Bold [original OWS Arts & Culture, Revolutionary Games, Novads, etc.]
Topics included:
Jez's forming OAS Node 0
A networked performance of his moving images later this month
4D digital imaging and painting
Potential affiliations with other "schools" emerging from OWS, such as Freedom University
Visionary praxis
Usage of online tools for creating a content network
The Holodeck Prototype
Exhibit opportunities in conjunction with "Time Is the Only Object" at SLAG
Exploration of new street art in Bushwick
Economic models, alternatives
[Image by Jez Bold]
[NOTES]:
Two weeks ago, at the end of June, I sent this out to a short list of friends/collaborators/occupiers to invite their participation in an informal email/phone-enabled "vision/mission" session. Here is the text:
Hey all, this is my starter transmission for the rebooting of Occupy with Art, after we celebrated our nine-month birthday...
it's a kind of vision statement
I would like to convert OwA and our website into a node for the Occupational Art School. It's my idea that I will start to form "classes" here in Bushwick in July. I see the conversion to be
a grassroots artist organizing tool
a means by which OwA can become sustainable
a way for us to collectively and individually develop means to support our work/networks
the establishment of a production collective for generating shows, "games," actions/interventions, documents, archives, etc
an inside>outside interface for revolutionary, democratic and dimensional art
a means by which we can promote ideals and principles for art/artists/artistic purpose that we can believe in
more.
At this point we have an extensive set of potential participants. we have learned that people (including ourselves) have varying degrees of ability for participating... this project will provide a way for us to mobilize people at their own levels; be a source of info on what those are; and produce clear results (art & art events, etc) that are attractive
I would suggest we platform OAS on
spirit-mechanics
dimensional vision (4d)
compassion and care for each other
respect
kindness
fierce determination
endurance
It seems obvious that the nature [topography/culture/people] of this project to begin with will be international and local.
The operational start-concept is that each of us is a lead-artist of our own collectives. As a meta-collective, we will seek ways to provide support for each other in our various endeavors; in a slight adjustment of mission, OwA will serve as facilitator for our network'd & solo productions; document our progress; share our experiments and ideas; invite others to join; be a clearinghouse for technique and theory.
The e(n)ducation or e(n+1)ducational structure will encourage mentoring, mediums skill or craft, use of all available technologies, dedication to good assessment of progress and potential "success" on the basis of helping any "student"|"teacher"
to find her or his "best" artistic gift
making space where that person can apply the gift successfully
account for both history & creation (that one needs a bit of clarification; basically respect for one's particular background/vision/skills/craft/traditions > support for invention/genius
rational progressive development attaching to more responsibilities through the process (sound expectations)
I'm going to stop there - just to open it up to feedback... In a fairly short period of time I would like to open this up to a bigger set of perspectives and contributions.
I personally have almost no interest in using any GA processes in this effort, based on my experience over the past 9 months with them. Over the past 30 years I've worked out very effective systems for generating highest quality art outcomes. I think all of you can say the same, relative to your own stuff. I say that based on watching you do what you do.
Much respect
The reach-out garnered a couple dozen replies, some of which were profound. Jez Bold's in particular - outlining his ideas for OAS Node #0, pointed the discussion in radical directions in terms of media and imagination, relative to time and experience. Chris Moylan and James Andrews provided a degree of pragmatism that afforded our brainstorming with a good foundation of realism, addressing not only organizational and economic concerns, but also useful references to other successful and sustainable models already operating in the domain.
The importance of the archive to our undertaking was in short order reinforced by JB:
I believe that beginning with specially designated activities (for example, the philosophical/political/literary discussion sessions that Richard and I have experience designing and hosting) we could scale up the activities of these archival spaces into a network that I would be proud to call the Anarchives: an exploratory archive that any person of any ability is invited to participate in, consisting of a networked collection of people and artifacts that are free to interact with each other. This node would be a community archive for anyone in the area who wants to contribute to documenting the life, activities, thoughts and art of people in the local area. And it would be linked to the network of nodes through the Occupy With Art/Occupational Art School website, the Occupy Map, and other metadata resources that can help document and connect each node (person, space, activity).
As was the question of siting the program. The consensus seemed to point to a virtual/actual configuration or array. I pointed out that we already had online components in place. Both the OwA nexus site and the Occupational Art School Tumblr established for the Co-Lab (Austin) project were pegged to locate some of the essential activity getting started.
Chris and others suggested disciplines and media (like the graphic novel medium) that had been under-supported by Occupy in reaching demographics vital to the expansion of the movement going forward. Big Ideas like JB/Richard's "Sensatorium" and "Holodeck Prototype" seemed ideally suited to collaborative or collective production. Naturally, a number of voices brought up the question of funding for these projects and initiatives. At this early stage, those concerns were set aside, although the alt.economy for art and artists being developed through the CO-OP project was mentioned.
Several successful types of alt-schools are now emerging as viable and promising in the domain. James pointed to Trade School, but the spectrum of nodal or franchise or subscription education architectures is broadening at an amazing pace. Starting with say, Mark Allen's immensely successful Machine Project as a point of reference, we can also look to programs such as 3rd Ward, Intercourse, the OWS Summer Disobedience School, Freedom University and many others that are demonstrating that many approaches are possible for serving a wide range of "students" and "teachers" who are finding it more and more difficult or untenable to commit to the establishment academic tracks, for a variety of reasons, from the ideological to the economic.
Alex and others who provided exemplar inputs, like Shane Kennedy and Ambrose Curry and the Revolutionary Gamers in general, showed that liberated actions and activities, barely recognizable as "teaching," might function as the "best practices" for our school design. The DisciplineAriel project and others, like Mark Skwarek's Augmented Reality combines, suggest that modular production enabled by network tech/electronics offers those tracking collaborations or participating as open-invite new-users in collective projects a means of learning that's low-impact, and fun/easy.
Repeatedly, conversations touched on the principles of openness and mobility, but also on exciting dynamics with respect to immediate reach among potential collaborators, teachers, students and content developers of all creative flavors. Social media tools plus additive (n+1) tools like WIKI, CMS, fast dispersion -servs like REDDIT, elegant whiteboards like Pinterest, and other share-utilities offer a rich platform of options for us to sample, explore and apply.
CM raised questions about our attenuation to OWS. Currently, given the nebulous but still potent if mysteriously individuated (if not in some aspects invisible) mass of Occupy, we have to suspend the definition of our relation with the movement, not because that is desirable, but because it is determined by the dynamics of the movement itself. Issues of identity and our interface with media (and potential participants/users) therefore for now remains in flux. For our BETA phase, this may serve to our advantage, by not limiting our developmental parameters. For those of us who were more or less integrated into OWS over the past 9 months, detachment from certain programmatic constraints feels refreshing, if bittersweetly so.
To wrap up this section of the notes, let's look at JB's vision for Node 0:
I'm so glad this pluralogue is going on. Maybe we could plan a meeting when I can plan a Skype/in-person in where we can come together on some of these ideas.
I don't think I can help answer the question of how to locate OAS, except perhaps to say that I would it to operate on a decentralized basis, but one in which we maintain some conections digitally, and some network of names. (Does the network of networks itself need a name? I dunno. Maybe just call it The World...hahah). I assume we'll be operating kind of using our own expenses, tho it might be a nice model to practice tracking our use of funds publicly, which will be especially necessary if we want to get grants.
How do krystal-images relate to Occupy? The following is an excerpt from a longer piece that I hope should succeed in bridging the K-scope Xp-eriments to Occupy more generally:
...I want to live in the upper levels of human dimensions! Crystals awoke my eyes to unseen possibilities, new-found opportunities, beautiful visions of alternate realities. How can we understand Liberty Plaza without it?
This place was a giant crystal monad through which thousands of visions of society were compacted. And over 2 months, this process produced a group of people so dense and massive, that they turned the world upside down. What was impossible was suddenly very very real! And the people who looked thru that K(aleidoscope)-scope had their entire worlds un-adjusted.
It was tough, awkward at times, but we all learned a lot thru this experience. And the only way it will live on is if we tell this story. And even the stories are starting to revolve around the same points now. Why else would we still be interested in talking to each other about it? It's like we discovered that we all had a secret affinity for something that we didn't really know was possible before...
ENOUGH! [BASTA][Draft/BETA][Introduction] By Paul McLean
[NOTE]: The following text is the next installment of the series ENOUGH! - which is being developed as a resource for CO-OP/Occuburbs, an OwA production for Huntington, LI. This draft is open to revision, refinement and is introduced for the purposes of community review.
Humanity? Yes, it's OK – some great talks, some great arts. Concrete people? No, 99% are boring idiots.
The feeling of humiliation is nothing but the feeling of being an object. Once understood as such, it becomes the basis for a combative lucidity in which the critique of the organization of life cannot be separated from the immediate inception of the project of living differently. Construction can begin only on the foundation of individual despair and its transcendence; the efforts made to disguise this despair and pass it off under another wrapper are proof enough of this, if proof were needed. What is the illusion which stops us seeing the disintegration of values, the ruin of the world, inauthenticity, non-totality?
- Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life ("Humiliation," p. 21)
To all those who still wish to talk about man, about his reign or his liberation, to all those who still ask themselves questions about what man is in his essence, to all those who wish to take him as their starting-point in their attempts to reach the truth, to all those who, on the other hand, refer all knowledge back to the truths of man himself, to all those who refuse to formalize without anthropologizing, who refuse to mythologize without demystifying, who refuse to think without immediately thinking that it is man who is thinking, to all these warped and twisted forms of reflection we can answer only with a philosophical laugh - which means, to a certain extent, a silent one.
- Michel Foucault, LES MOTS ET LES CHOSES [Trans., The Order of Things, ("Man and His Doubles," p. 343)]
Why do critics thus periodically proclaim their helplessness or their lack of understanding? It is certainly not out of modesty...All this means in fact that one believes oneself to have such sureness of intelligence that acknowledging an inability to understand calls in question the clarity of the author and not that of one's own mind. One mimics silliness in order to make the public protest in one's favour, and thus carry it along advantageously from complicity in helplessness to complicity in intelligence.
- Roland Barthes, Mythologies ("Blind and Dumb Criticism," p. 34)
Ambrose in his shop.
thank you.
I am a fan of never leaving a stone unturned.
after gluing and shaping three boards
I just couldn't in all concience finish
with glass withoutgetting the weight down.
I've got the band saw. I need to re-split the boards
had I comitted to chambering at the outset,yes,
life would be a whole lot different... and easier.
when I get more wood I will be more coherent.
no greater learning than doing things the hard way.
...ambrose...
now I will check c-list for the beam saw...
- ambrose m.curry III
ENOUGH! [BASTA!] 1 Derivatives Illusion Corruption 2 Origins Truth Innocence
[INTRODUCTION]: When art is called "derivative" as a critique, the artwork so labeled is generally not being complemented. The term can migrate and serve as a label for an artist, again, as a pejorative. The critic is usually pointing out where in a vertical hierarchy, usually tied to chronology, an artwork or artist fits on the basis of originality. Anti-originality, keep in mind, has been a darling of the anti-art factions for nearly a century. The "traditional" art world is keen on its own version of "trickle down theory," elevating inventors and innovators to the pinnacles of a creative pyramid schema. It's a fairly pervasive formula for assigning value in crafts, like fashion. Think of the scene in "The Devil Wears Prada," when Meryl Streep's character credits herself with playing a big part in determining the outfit the young heroine of the movie is wearing. Each iteration removed from the original is thought to be corrupted by being so situated, but the architecture is holistically maintained as a given, and relies on the B, C, D+ lines for the legitimacy of the top end. Such is the realm of Style, and it is an appendix of the Courts (the regal ones, not the judicial kind).
Updated on Friday, May 25, 2012 at 12:18PM by
admin
[Video link to US Military propaganda exercise sent by Jez]
What Is the Soul of Occupy? By Paul McLean
II
Robert Henri: Snow in New York, 1902 Source: Artcyclopedia; photograph by Michael Weinberg
>> Do some great work, Son! Don't try to paint *good landscapes*. Try to paint canvases that will show how interesting landscape looks to you - your pleasure in the thing. Wit.
There are lots of people who can make sweet colors, nice tones, nice shapes of landscape, all done in nice broad and intelligent-looking brushwork. <<
- Robert Henri, The Art Spirit
>> America is one of the few countries where May Day, the International Workers' Day, is not even a holiday – ironically enough, considering the fact the date was chosen to commemorate events that occurred in Chicago, during the struggle for the 8-hour day in 1886. During the cold war, the idea of unions signing on to a statement like this would have been inconceivable: in the 1960s, unionized workers were known to physically attack Wall Street protestors in the name of patriotic anti-communism. But the collapse of state socialism has made new alliances possible, and, in making common cause with occupiers, and the immigrant groups that first turned May Day into a national day of action in 2006, working-class organizations are also beginning to return to their roots—up to and including, the ideas and visions of the Haymarket martyrs themselves.
[Later, in May, in Chicago]
The words might be diplomatically chosen, but there's no mistaking what tradition is being invoked here. In endorsing a vision of universal equality, of the dissolution of national borders, and democratic self-governing communities, nurses, bus drivers, and construction workers at the heart of America's greatest capitalist metropolis are signing on to the vision, if not the tactics, of revolutionary anarchism. << - David Graeber, "Occupy's Liberation from Liberalism; the real meaning of May Day"
BACK IN TIME
there's such a feeling in my room it's like i'm in another calendar year
the future seems dreadful it's obvious to all the times have changed no more we are certain to fall
the future seems worthless society to blame the price is out of reach american con-game
there's such a pattern of thought here it's like i'm just another rock 'n roll fool
i want to go back in time i want to go back in time
the future seems dismal for us in mid-thirties the general opinion never escapes gerdes
there's such a feeling in my room it's like i'm in another part of the crowd
the future r.stevie may well give up the fight i want to go back in time i want to go back in time
the future seems dreadful it's obvious to me the times have changed no moore we can certainly see
there's such a lack of emotion it's like i'm justanotherrock'nrollfool
Wall Street to Main Street [pre-publication draft] By Paul McLean
"Americans don’t really think that other places are as real as America." [1]
"It is more and more difficult for us to imagine the real, History, the depth of time, or three-dimensional space, just as before it was difficult, from our real world perspective, to imagine a virtual universe or the fourth dimension [la quatrieme dimension]." [2]
Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more - Bruce Springsteen, "My Hometown"
1
In my hometown of Beckley, West Virginia’s downtown, “Main Street” is several streets coursing square-wise through Beckley’s nucleus. One of the streets is Main Street. Downtown for me was an afterschool and weekend destination, and I was willing to draw a few dollars from my dad’s wallet and dodge bands of hellions to get a burger at Fred Yost’s diner, comics and candy at the newsstand, or window-shop for guns and knives at the pawn shop. After I moved away Richard Haas was commissioned to do a trompe l'oeil painting on one side of the Federal building there. Like the Peck Slip one between Front and South streets here. I interviewed Richard once for an art radio program I hosted in Nashville. He talked about artists “looking at the same thing we’re all looking at, but looking at it so differently.”
I would suggest that American artists look at Main Street, the same way you look at a sunset.
Profanity and the Financial Markets A User’s Guide to Closing the Casino
[Excerpt]:
These are tremendous changes with respect to Keynesian Fordism. But one could go further and show how the cybernetic calculus of finance operates as a coordinating rationality for just-in-time production, distribution and sales. When the G-20 finance ministers strive to forestall a transnational credit crunch, it is this just-in-time system that they are serving. The rhythms of finance have come to govern the entire circulation system of the world economy.16 However, if we want to understand how the social relations of the trading floor have spilled over to reshape contemporary culture – through a “functional overdetermination” of the financial apparatus – then we will have to turn back to the micro level, and look more closely at what actually happens inside the casino.
Among the most widespread and enduring forms of progressive organization in the suburbs are environmental groups, food co-ops, and politically oriented arts groups and small galleries. These work with the domestic ethos of home and garden rather than against it, and they do a lot of good. They support open space preservation and local farms, particularly organic farms, and establish neighborly micro-economies as alternatives to the mall and highway hegemony.
Much of what the Occupy Wall Street movement advocates in the way of human-scale, participatory, and sustainable social organization already exists amidst the country clubs and ranch houses of the suburbs. It is small in scale and particular organizations tend to struggle with the attrition of a difficult economy and, alongside that, the general drift toward the preoccupied life; people have kids to take care of, things to do. Nonetheless, the alternative economy persists, resistance is fed in the most seductive way by local honey, herbs, cheese, beer and vegetables, and in a more spiritual sense by local art, music, and poetry. Seduction is not revolution, clearly, but it is something not to be scorned.
In thinking about Occupying culture in the suburbs, then, the coop and the alternative arts space came to mind as institutions to enlist. The challenge is to introduce the dynamic of a vanguard social movement, Occupy Wall Street, into these institutions and, beyond that, to determine a format that would best encourage a creative exchange of ideas and approaches among the participants in a given project. This is partly a matter of striking a balance between contributions from local artists and those based outside the area. It wouldn’t do simply to install an exhibition of Occupy-related work from downtown Manhattan in a suburban gallery; this would run the risk of being a show rather than an action. Similarly, one would hope that any event would advance the principles of the movement rather than support or illustrate them.
Occupy Wall Street is inherently transformative; it arose, and continues to arise outside of and in contradistinction to the parameters of party politics, class and social divisions, established forms of mobilization and resistance; it is a profoundly cohesive and inclusive civil rights movement, civil rights understood in terms of economic as well as political enfranchisement. If an expression of art and social activism in the suburbs is to reflect and engage the Occupy movement, it should be internally transformative, not just another cultural event in the suburbs but one that is informed by the questions that have impelled the occupations and street demonstrations worldwide: what does democracy look like? What does art for the ninety-nine per cent look like? Is an occupied suburb possible, an occupied suburban culture and social expression?
Occupy Theory has been manifested as a new theory publication tidal. It’s fantastic! The first issue even includes an essay by Judith Butler. You can read it all for free online by going here. Or, at the very least read the first article “Communique 1“. It’s a feast and feat of language and pretty much says it all! The People’s Library loves the geniuses behind tidal! And they’re looking for work for future issues so sit down and start theorizing! Occupy Wall St is your movement!
Saturday, July 14, 2012 at 08:46AM 
