OAS Node #1 [11/24]: Side Effecting/PlayLab @chashama

Documentation by Jenjoy Roybal

OASN1: PLAYLAB [TNE] @chashama

Side Effecting

“It is a safe guess that not more than one human in 10 million is conceptually familiar with and sensorially comprehending of the principle of ‘precession’ [orthogonal side effects].”

—Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path

Kinesthetics of Precession

Set 1 | Play Lab

A play/work/lab on how to feel, recognize, pick up, and send spinning, the ripple effects of artistic endeavor through movement, theory, and drawing. Gain a working, sensory facility with the potency of side effects, and join us in envisioning the collective effects of coming together as part of the Occupational Art School.

What are the ways in which an experience of precession can generate an immediate effect? Say through a movement exploration that then translates into a sketching process of precessional effects themselves. Feel precession in movement, and then, while it is happening, touch charcoal to paper. This would be one level of resolution, coupled with a documentary effect. Or drawing as a trace of precessional awareness.

Relational Drawing

November 24^th, 1-4pm. Movement, charcoal, words.

∞

Variations on Spin.

Set 2 | Temporary Formation

And then you keep it going… Infinitely resolvable, it is something to be continually set in motion. One can set it back out into the world, as a ripple effect, seeing how this appreciation would effect art works and movement to come. The collective traces can be gathered into an exhibit, a temporary formation, a rippling rather than traveling show. At another level of resolvability, we can begin to play with the collective formation itself. How can we image different organizational axes for precessional effects? What is the precessional effect of art-production, of occupation, of schooling, of architecture?

November 30^th, [TBD]: A showing of traces, and talk on the occupation of art.

@Art House | chashama [Hosted by Christopher Trujillo]

Chris Moffett and Blake Seidenshaw collectively assemble, on occasion, as The New Ergonomics (thenewergonomics.com) only to collaborate in turn with other assemblages, reworking the nature of work.

Blake Seidenshaw

Blake is a contributing editor at ecogradients.com, an online journal of interdisciplinary culture and education. A ceramicist and a musician, he is a cofounder of the Ashtanga Yoga Outreach network. Also: interdisciplinary edutecture; the history and practice of philosophy and the natural sciences; and contemporary (cosmo)political (ethno)ecology.

Chris Moffett

Chris engages the imagery, philosophy and architecture of education, the way we image forming and being formed by our environments. Sitting in a chair, or refusing to sit still, becomes a form of art making. A nomad scholar and movement educator, Chris is also a founding member of the artist collective ARE (aestheticrelationalexercises.com).

[Facebook Event]



OAS Node #1 & Chashama present PLAYLAB [Side Effecting] with The New Ergonomics

This Week [w1] at Occupational Art School

Jeff Sugg at OASN1@Bat Haus on Wednesday, August 22, from 7-9pm. FREE. Click on the image to visit Jeff's website.

OAS seminars commence on Wednesday, August 22nd, from 7-9pm. Through the end of October, we will present a series of fun and compelling expositions that explore perception in time, of space, for being. Classes will be held on Wednesdays and Fridays, from 7-9pm. Additionally, OAS Node 1 will host two or three events per month, featuring performance and exhibition, the types of programming that bring the weekly courses to a visceral point of experience.

AWS Fabrication at OASN1@Bat Haus on Friday, August 24, from 7-9pm. Click on image to visit AWS Fabrication Tumblr.[OASN1@Bat Haus Gift Program]:

• FIRST CLASS IS FREE!
• Each student will be offered pay plans and options.
• Bat Haus members will receive 20% discounts for classes.
• Each class will be retailed at a $10 value.
• Package plans will be offered at a 20% discount.
• The undiscounted retail value of attending all classes (through the end of October) is $168.
• So, a free pass/full OAS package to attend all classes will be $135 and will allow the student to attend all OAS events for free, as an added bonus!
• Plus, any OAS student with a free pass & all Bat Haus members will receive a 20% discount on any item sold in any of our exhibits and performances! Wowsa! 
• And, to make it an even sweeter deal, we will post a list of barter items (using a variation of the OurGoods system of Have/Needs, and the system we tested for Ingrid Burrington's solo expo at SO@Hyperallergic) that student can exchange in lieu of cash!*

*Events will give us a chance to test other exchange models, including the shareware approach. Events pricing will vary, ranging from $5-10 or $20 retail value.

DisciplineAriel at OASN1@Bat Haus, Saturday, August 25, 7-9PM. Click image to visit the DisciplineAriel Tumblr.

[OASN1@Bat Haus Course Description][BETA/Draft 2.0]: 

We have given ourselves permissions to establish a neo-pedagogy. The protocols are emergent, inspired by Novads, rooted in the pre-figuration praxis of the Anarchives, in the spirit of Revolutionary Games. Our modus operandi is dimensional. The Occupational Art School Node 1 is an iteration of Vo-Tech. We are committed to discovering our calling(s), our vocation(s), and willing to delve into technology, as such, to implement vision now. OASN1 is residential and commercial, just like Starr Street, where our host is located in Bushwick. We are zoned as hybrid. The discovery of the formula for our educational and artistic discipline is a direct action as alchemy, an accident, like the invention of Holography. Our goal is to move from occupation to Stage 1 Civilization. OAS assumes sufficient power in the present, assumes we can simply access all we need in the existence in which we are currently situated. Our art is multidisciplinary. It is convergent and multivalent. The space we inhabit is in flux, and we are adapting to conditions as they are and as they evolve or progress. The world is our studio. The OAS student body is not pre-defined. It is self-selected, a phenomenon of free radicalism. The approach we encourage among you is scientific, of curiosity, of wonder. Illumination is a function of collective movement, in our case, a systematic swarming that generates a glow, a flow. Through this creation-dance in the commons, we find ourselves, each one of us, in possession of a gift and, for want of a better word, a "SOUL." In this immaterial nature, we work with materials, tangible, Real. Thus, Occupational Art School is practical. It is Boolean. It is AND/OR and/or not or NOT. We are, in short, dimensional. 

Is this enough? OAS suggests that we will find out, in Time. The Occupational Art School's luminous faculty and staff, all artists and practitioners, themselves, will engage in transmissions with the student body and with the world beyond our classroom walls, utilizing virtual media and actual (p2p, f2f), documented vocalic, aural interpretive exchange, the feedback loop,[+] as our universal transportation-vehicles. It is a question of temporary bands and bandwidth. OAS views this all-directional sensory scenario as a philosophic opportunity, during residency, to test the dynamics of the Media Equation and the Hermeneutic Circle (or spiral). FYI: Teachers are invited to switch and become students, from one class to the next, for instance, either online or in real life (IRL). Our methodology is DIY, together. Our suspicion, based on observation, is that our best students have already settled the argument once and for all, through [r]evolutionary means.

MTS: Talk about Hyperreal! [...]

• occupationalartschool.com
• occupationalartschool.tumblr.com
• batha.us

[CONTACT]: artforhumans [at] gmail [dot] com

Photo by Paul McLean

OAS Node #1 [July 14]

Alternate Economies (Barter)

[Session 7]

• Workshop: Barter: Theory and Practice with Caroline Woolard of OurGoods.org
• Hosted by EYEBEAM

[NOTES]: I took a page-and-a-half of notes during the two-hour seminar, which I would be happy to share. Caroline said she would follow-up by sharing her booklist on barter and alt.economies (gift/barter/market) and the slideshow she created for the presentation. The workshop provided participants an opportunity to examine our existing notions about barter, gifting and these non-monetary systems' place in society and markets. We examined anthropological work on the subject, including Graeber's from Debt. Caroline cited the work of Caroline Humphrey on the nomadic Lohmi traders of Tibet as a prime influence, and also works by Allan Fiske and Marshall Sahlins. I think Louise Ma of Trade School was one of the attendees of our workshop; OurGoods and Trade School are I gather operating on a mutual aid basis, with some core members (like Caroline Woolard) in both orgs. Caroline also gave examples of barter models, from ancient Greece to the local present, to expand our understanding of how barter has worked or can work in different kinds of situations and societies, and what limitations or hazards apply to barter in practice, rather than theory or analytics. Participants shared food and drink, engaged in a barter game/team session and at the end of the workshop shared "haves" and "needs" in the format of OurGoods.

∞

Authorship & Appropriation in Contemporary Art

[Session 8]

• Printed Matter, Inc. (Chelsea)
• The opening of HELP/LESS
• Organized by artist Chris Habib

[NOTES]: (This entry is a stub/communique) Leaving EYEBEAM and the OurGoods workshop, I noticed a cool-looking artist happening on 21st... Turned the corner and noticed Max Schumann outside Printed Matter on 10th. He told me about the ambitious Printed Matter summer project HELP/LESS. Max invited me into the bustling artist bookstore, to check out the opening night's happ'nin's, which were awesome. Click on the image above for more details and the calendar of events. I think Max explained that the interactive art event I'd passed was connected to the opening, which made sense. Every time I visit PM, my respect for Max and this venerable Chelsea art-org grows. HELP/LESS is a compelling, must-see/-play exhibit cum program, diving into the murky swampwaters of art- and intellectual property-ism, post-web, post-modernism, post-reproduction/mechanical age, post-Dispersion, post-4chan, pre-image Apocalypse. The crush of content in the PM shop is introduced by a storefront (the same one we Occupied last fall) that appears to present art star worx that actually are derivatives or outright replicants. PM has fearlessly confronted in Habib's HELP/LESS the copyright (or -wrong) regime of idea ownership and originality/original-ism that besets the culture at every turn, from Tumblr to tee shirts to texts to the YouTube-infected art haus. Speaking of tee shirts, Max said I could score a Yoko Ono tee in exchange for a great idea at PM (quantities while they last, I presume)... Max is going to be busy for the next few months (he always is) - working on a CoLab book, co-ordinating the string of in-store and online events for HELP/LESS, and, we hope, finally getting to give us an Occupational Art lesson on artist books - the one we tried to do at the Spatial Occupation @Hyperallergic, but which didn't pan out for that residency. 

∞

[Follow-up]: Met Cody and Natalie at Bat Haus; we are making progress on our discussion about OAS siting there... STAY TUNED!

A photo from Bat Haus member & stylist Falosha Martin's shoot on location @BH. (click BH's blog link for more 411)

WS2MS: Our Final Weekend's Programming

OCCUPIED REAL ESTATE @EXIT ART

Not An Alternative is pleased to participate in Collective/Performative, the final exhibition of Exit Art’s influential 30 years as a non-profit gallery and cultural center. Please join us May 8th -12th for Occupied Real Estate, an installation and series of workshops.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Occupied Real Estate
Tuesday May 8 - Saturday May 12
@ Exit Art
475 10th Avenue
New York, New York
...
Installation: 10am-6pm daily

Click to read more ...

WS2MS: April 28-9

This project would not be possible without the support of the Catskill Arts Initiative.  Thank you to the participating artists for their powerful work. Thank you to Catskill's generous building owners, merchants, the Village of Catskill, artists and neighbors. Immense thanks to the Hudson Valley's best digital printers; Frank Cuthbert, BRIK Gallery; Richard Edelman for Woodstock Graphics Studio; Chad Kleitsch Rhinecliff Printing Studio; Danette Koke Fine Art; Gilbert Plantinga Photo Graphics.  Thanks to the hardworking Jane Toby, Jenjoy Roybal, Ruth Leonard, Kico Govantes, Taha Awadallah, Adam Price, Sarah Barker and Paul Smart. Endless gratitude to interns, Chris Lannes, Sarah Brady and Kathleen Mentzer. The "It Takes a Village" prize goes to Pat Ruck, Laura Morgan, Nina Sklansky, Norma Tan, Ann Forbes Cooper and David Chmura.  We are grateful for grants from Art Is My Occupation and the Puffin Foundation. 

Extra special super duper thanks to the Wall Street to Main Street curators Geno Rodriguez, Paul McLean, Fawn Potash, Kate Menconeri, Jacqueline Weaver, Imani Brown, Boo Lynn Walsh, Sam Truitt and Arthur Polendo. 

Click here for a preview of next week's events...

Curators are available for group tours and special appointments.  Call Fawn Potash, Director, Masters on Main Street to reserve at 518/943-3400.

Download your Catskill Main Street Tour here or pick one up at the GCCA Catskill Gallery, 398 Main Street.

Check out the Wall Street to Main Street Message, a news guide to exhibits and events.

Check out our photo album.



WS2MS: Stage 2 [Press Release]

PRESS RELEASE

For Release in All Media

April 18, 2012

WALL STREET TO MAIN STREET
STAGE 2

Catskill, New York – The second stage of the landmark exhibition cycle Wall Street to Main Street [WS2MS] commences in April and continues through the end of May 2012. WS2MS will offer a variety of creative, fun and educational opportunities for the communities of OWS and the Hudson River region to explore, evaluate and imagine 99% alternatives to the status quo.

Installations along Catskill’s Main Street have sparked sometimes-intense responses from the town’s citizens, since the festival opened here on March 17. The programming of WS2MS demonstrates the organizers’ and artists’ sustained commitment to establishing common ground for lively and spirited exchange. Our goal is to encourage democratic art and free speech. To that end we are trying to be responsive and responsible to our generous hosts, the people of Catskill.

The art in Wall Street to Main Street communicates the amazing breadth of emotion, vision, and drama that is Occupy, which Naomi Klein characterized as “the most important thing in the world now.” Art and artists have been central to OWS since the occupation of Liberty Plaza in the financial district of Manhattan on September 17, 2011. WS2MS offers viewers a window into the ideas, dreams and inspirations arising from the movement that has spread across the globe.

In Stage 2 of WS2MS, we will engage in skill-sharing workshops, demonstrations, performances, discussions, panels, tours and more.  Almost all the WS2MS Stage 2 events are being offered for free. As the program evolves through April and May, WS2MS, like OWS, will continually evolve and re-shape. That means more art exhibits, concerts and events will be launched over the remaining weeks in our schedule. See the WS2MS sampler listings below for details, or visit www.greenearts.org/ws2ms for the complete, up-to-date calendar.

• WS2MS is proud to present the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s presentations “Practice Where You Occupy” with the Mobile Design Lab team discussing their water, food and energy solutions for Zucotti Park from 11am-1pm and “Solution Sets for Main Street” from 2-4PM (April 21, 408 Main Street).
• The following Saturday, April 28, will feature “Change Is in the Air,” a seminar with Glenn Leisching based on our relationship with nature and familial ancestral heritage.
• If you’re interested in making art, sign up for Emily Bruenig’s free screen printing and bookmaking workshop (462 Main Street on April 29 from 1-3PM).
• If you’re just out for a walk and a great overview of WS2MS, join New York based artist and educator Ellen Levy and Occupy with Art organizer Paul McLean for a walking salon tour of the gallery and window spaces of WS2MS. The tour meets at the arts council, 398 Main Street, on Sunday May 6 at 11AM.
• Green workshops include Franc Palaia’s Eco-Bulb demo/class, a 100% solar option for sheds and other buildings (May 12 from 1-3PM, 408 Main Street).
• Canadian artist Joel Richardson will offer a two-day stencil painting workshop to help you create your own designs and a custom Suitman illustrating Catskill’s economic history (May 12 and 13, 10AM-2 PM, 473 Main Street - $50, with advance registration). 
• For the literary crowd, on May 12 the poet Sparrow will host “Speaking to the Gods,” a reading and conversation about our relationship to the great poets at Occupy Books, 450 Main Street from 4-6PM. He will also host “Silence Poetry”  from 2-4PM.
• “Awaken the Dreamer/Changing the Dream” on May 13 (10 AM-3 PM, 344 Main Street) will present a vision for an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on earth.
• Poet, author and educator Sam Truitt will lead a day of panel discussions and workshops at Occupy Books on Saturday May 19 from 11 AM-4PM and with a reception from 5-7pm (details TBA on the GCAC website and here, closer to the launch date). 
• Community artist extraordinaire Matt Bua will teach a sustainable living/drawing workshop, envisioning life off-the-grid (May 26 from 4-6pm).
  
  

For more info, contact:

• Fawn Potash: fawn@greenearts.org
• Paul McLean: artforhumans@gmail.com

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Visionary Design & Nonviolent Civil Protest #2: Outreach

Dear friends,
Following up on the first iteration of Visionary Design and Non-Violent
Civil Protest at the MAD Museum last month, we are continuing the series,
this time focusing on the theme of "Outreach".

This topic is based on the notes and ideas generated at the last meeting.

Following this, we will launch a wiki where these insights can be further
developed. The full schedule is below. You may join us for the full event
from 3 to 7pm or just for the think tanking segment from 4-6pm. There will
be readings and materials available for inspection prior to the formal
think tank. In addition to the barter items listed on the trade school
website, feel free to bring some flowers in honor of it being earth day on
Sunday.

We look forward to seeing you on Sunday.
School of the Future & Nsumi Collective

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012
139 Norfolk Street, NYC
Between Rivington & Stanton

Hosted by Trade School

3pm: doors open, informal reception, readings available
4pm: Formal think tank process
6pm: Post event reception, informal discussions

To register:
http://tradeschool.coop/newyork/class/#263

Visionary Design & Nonviolent Civil Protest

Visionary Design and Non-Violent Civil Protest Organized by Nsumi Collective and School of the Future Presented by Trade School and the Museum of Art and Design, NYC http://madmuseum.org/ http://tradeschool.ourgoods.org/ The traditional techniques of non-violent civil protest have been practiced by people around th...e world in response to oppressive states, policies and proxies, going back as far as BCE 470–391 in China, when the Mohist philosophical school--who disapproved of war--cultivated the science of fortification. Today, the Occupy movement brings together multiple struggles and concerns under a common name, inciting new practices of collaboration and coordination. People are fighting against inequality, privatization, and exclusion and working to create alternatives to corporate control, the loss of public space, and the privilege of the one percent. With bold tactics and artistic innovations, Occupy has incited the global imagination. At the same time, and not surprisingly, it doesn't employ formal design processes. Also lacking are formal feedback systems, techniques of self-correction, and the formal rigor underpinning the best scientific and social research. Likewise, while the confluence of many different voices, subcultures and micro-communities collaborating together creates unique social opportunities and perceptions, a culture of “radical design innovation” has yet to surface. This workshop will examine these deficits as opportunities for growth. We will brainstorm new protest processes and systems, design tools, strategies, and techniques, based on feedback collected from Occupy meeting notes and from Occupiers and working groups from several cities. These challenges will be presented to workshop attendees, a group of self-selected designers, Occupiers, artists, scientists, engineers, activists, and researchers, who will collectively respond with new ideas and approaches.

Squatting Europe Collective, New York City, February 23-27, 2012

[From Alan]

Yes, the Squatting Europe Kollective is meeting in New York this month. We're hoping it to be historic.
The schedule is posted at: http://sites.google.com/site/housemagicbfc/sqek-nyc-feb-12-schedule
And pasted here:

Squatting Europe Collective, New York City, February 23-27, 2012

1. Press release
2. Reception, Thursday 2/23 at ABC No Rio, 7-10pm
3. AAG sessions, Friday 2/24 at Hilton Hotel, 2nd floor Nassau Room
4. Saturday, February 25th, afternoon/evening – Public presentation: “Squatting in Europe: Prospects and Perspectives” at Living Theatre, 5-7pm; ends sharp
5. Sunday, February 26th – brunch meeting at 16 Beaver Group 12-4pm // meet with O4O group at 7pm
6. Monday, February 27th – Public meetings with activists TBA // Presentation at CUNY-GC 6:30-8:30pm
7. SQEK “Living Library” at Interference Archive, Brooklyn
8. AAG session description (theoretical questions around militant research)

Click to read more ...

16 Beaver Group's Midwinter Retreat

[NOTE: 16 Beaver conducted a forum from January 7-15. Below is an excerpt. To review the propositions, click HERE.]

WELCOME TO THE NEW PARADIGM
or THE CRISIS OF EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE

A midwinter retreat, a modular molecular seminar
with Everyone

[SAMPLE PROGRAM]

Day 3 : Monday (09.01)

__________________________________________

Body Practices : Spatial Politics

"to attack the body is to attack the right itself, since the right is precisely what is exercised by the body on the street"

The use of Bodies and (in) Space have been two critical elements of the emergent political movements of 2011 (eternal?). This day will be dedicated to thinking about the spatial practices which have emerged over the last year. We would like to invite all those interested in these issues to join us. We will begin with a walk that will enter a kind of taxonomy of the sites and practices which have emerged this last Fall. We also hope the walk will also be a way to activate and enter the conversation which will take place in the evening, oriented toward some questions about the role of space and the use of bodies in liberating spaces, reasserting a common right to the city, and potentially blocking the flow of relentless enclosure.

Pt. 1 (walk) 5:30-7:30PM

Meet at 16 Beaver at 5:00

Pt. 2 (discussion) 8PM

Bodies and Spaces Matter: On Spatial Politics, Spatial Practices and the Performativity of Reclaiming the Common(s)

Squares, parks, streets, bridges, ports, banks, factories, offices, campuses, museums, gardens, farms, forests, rivers, atmospheres, houses, apartments, community centers, neighborhoods, zoning districts, cities, towns, villages, camps... No space is ever neutral; every space is governed in some form or another by various combinations of institutional and economic power at local, national, and planetary scales. In some cases, these spatio-political relationships are brutally evident, while in others they may be obscure, illegible, or simply taken for granted in the course of everyday life. From the encampments of Tahrir Square to the foreclosed homes of East New York and beyond, the movements of the past year have brought questions of spatial politics to the forefront of theory and practice, strategy and tactics.

These movements have involved the performative appropriation and transformation of physical spaces--whether officially designated "public," "private" or something in-between-- for common occupation and use. In doing so they have also necessarily raised questions about what Judith Butler, following Hannah Arendt, has recently called "the space of public appearance": who can appear where and when, doing what, and what are the conditions for this appearance? Social media networks and the spaces they create have clearly been one of the necessary enabling conditions for recent movements; but commentators have sometimes overemphasized the latter at the expense of "real" bodies assembling in physical spaces--and the forms of violence to which these assembling bodies have been subjected by police and security forces.

Given the central role bodies in space have played in the encampments and occupation movements, we thought to begin the weeday discussions with a focused inquiry into new uses of space and our bodies in the context of political struggle inside the city.

The evening will include a performative contribution to the debate by Randy Martin.

Among the questions to be explored this Monday include:

-- Does the meaning of "occupation" necessarily involve physical encampment of the sort that took place at Zuccotti Park?
-- What forms of life are prefigured in such occupations, and how might they relate to the transformation of political and economic life at larger scales?
-- What are some emerging spatio-political possibilities for New York as we enter the new year?
-- What have the spatial practices of these last months of occupy and experiments globally brought to the fore in terms of our thinking around the use of space?
-- How do they relate to or differ from the bodily ‘repertoires’ and spatial practices of past social movements?
-- What qualities do we associate with the postures, gestures, bodily movements we see in these movements?
-- How might techniques of physical occupation – including sleeping, eating, and reproducing life in a specific space – be understood as political speech in its own right?
-- How to understand these encampments both as temporarily ‘utopian’ realized places, where new - and more horizontal - sociabilities and redistribution of labor ‘immediately’ occur and also as sites of resistance, highly mediatized and completely surounded by the police? ...........(i don´t like this formulation but... how can we say something of this kind?)
-- What techniques of resistance and participation are being rehearsed here?
-- What have these processes revealed about the role of our bodies in the space of the city, in the space of political struggle?
--How to address the struggles for and through the use of space and body in light of the force and violence employed by the police body?
-- Is the occupation and liberation of new space in the city critical for sustaining these movements?
-- What kind of small-scale spatial experiments may potentially contribute to longer term goals of the movements?
-- What does it mean to occupy a space (like this), assembling (like this), and moving - or not moving (like this)?
-- What spaces are being contested and which new spaces are being created?
-- What are people fighting for when they struggle for these spaces?
-- How can these bodies -sleeping, eating, occupying … temporarly living there- be understood as signifying or embodying?
-- How is this “being there in person” different from representing …a political party, an agenda, a group of interests?

[REPORT BACKS?]