Occupy Sotheby's!

Rally at Sotheby’s Thursday, Oct. 20 @ 1:30pm 1334 York Ave (b/w 71st & 72nd)
6 train to 68th St.-Hunter College
Leave directly from #OccupyWallSt!
Buses depart from Liberty Pl b/w Trinity and Broadway at 1 PM!

Things are peachy for the 1%. Sotheby’s made $680 million in 2010 and gave their CEO a 125% raise—he makes $60,000 a day. 

Not so for the 99%. Sotheby’s demanded concessions from their workers and then locked them out of work. The workers have been locked out for 11 weeks.

Come support the locked-out workers.
Tell the 1%: STOP CORPORATE GREED
Keep in touch with our campaign. Text 917-657-7890 with your email to get added to our mailing list and receive updates on where the campaign is going. 
Sponsored by OWS Labor Committee: owsnyclabor@gmail.com



OCCUPY MUSEUMS!

The game is up: we see through the pyramid schemes of the temples of cultural elitism controlled by the 1%. No longer will we, the artists of the 99%, allow ourselves to be tricked into accepting a corrupt hierarchical system based on false scarcity and propaganda concerning absurd elevation of one individual genius over another human being for the monetary gain of the elitest of elite. For the past decade and more, artists and art lovers have been the victims of the intense commercialization and co-optation or art. We recognize that art is for everyone, across all classes and cultures and communities. We believe that the Occupy Wall Street Movement will awaken a consciousness that art can bring people together rather than divide them apart as the art world does in our current time…

Let’s be clear. Recently, we have witnessed the absolute equation of art with capital. The members of museum boards mount shows by living or dead artists whom they collect like bundles of packaged debt. Shows mounted by museums are meant to inflate these markets. They are playing with the fire of the art historical cannon while seeing only dancing dollar signs. The wide acceptance of cultural authority of leading museums have made these beloved institutions into corrupt ratings agencies or investment banking houses- stamping their authority and approval on flimsy corporate art and fraudulent deals.

For the last few decades, voices of dissent have been silenced by a fearful survivalist atmosphere and the hush hush of BIG money. To really critique institutions, to raise one’s voice about the disgusting excessive parties and spectacularly out of touch auctions of the art world while the rest of the country suffers and tightens its belt was widely considered to be bitter, angry, uncool. Such a critic was a sore loser. It is time to end that silence not in bitterness, but in strength and love! Because the occupation has already begun and the creativity and power of the people has awoken! The Occupywallstreet Movement will bring forth an era of new art, true experimentation outside the narrow parameters set by the market. Museums, open your mind and your heart! Art is for everyone! The people are at your door!

Dear Occupiers,

Since I posted Occupy Museums yesterday on FB, it's going quite viral on the internet. There is lots of discussion about what it means, whether it's a good idea what museums are doing for the 99% and the 1%.

These discussions, I feel, are really good ones to be having in the context of Occupy Wall Street, because this movement is about changing how we do things in this country from finance to culture- moving away from a culture that mainly benefits the 1%

I'll need help in planning this action tomorrow. Since it was supported by the A & C, I'd like to make sure that this action comes from the heart of our movement. Who would like to be a part of the historic first Occupation of MoMA of 2011?

My idea is that artist and everyone occupies museums together, bringing your artworks as well as OWS signs in protest. I'll bring my coin mask for example. We meet at 3:00 at 60 wall street for a short teach-in, then head over to touch base with the park, maybe doing a people's mic to get more peopleto join us.  Once at the Museums, we'll have a short GA with an opening statement, then people can get on stack and speak out their mind using people's mic.

Here are things we'll need:

-a one page info sheet about how museums generally and the ones we are going to specifically are pyramid schemes of the 1%  Paul- you wrote an email that has lots of info..I have turned it into a shared google Doc called Occupy Museums-someone to handle the twitter feed-OWS press -everyone bring a piece of their art to proudly display

Day 1: Revised  Schedule:

3:00 Meet at Liberty Park

Teach-in about the museums we are going to occupy

4:30 Livestream- read document in front of 5000 viewers.

Occupy the 4 train

5:00 Occupy MoMA

hours: 10:30-5:30

11 W 53^rd street New York, NY

Occupy the M3 Bus

6:00 Occupy Frick Collection

hours: 10:00-6 PM       

1 East 70th Street, New York, NY

Occupy the 6 train

7:00 Occupy New Museum

Thursdays 6-8 free 

235 bowery



Common Ground

hi all, had a really interesting conversation today on the subway home as I was leaving OWS with a woman who worked for a bank on wall st. and she was open to having a dialogue, but really felt like she and her co-workers were taking the hit for the 1% even tho she was a divorced mom who had to work her way up from nothing. We tried to explain to her not to take it personally, that it was the structure of the system that was the issue but people of her ilk are very goal oriented and really was hoping to hear our demands and proposed solutions. I invited her down there to discuss and told her how important it was that she participates in the process and see for herself what is happening, rather than taking what the media says at face value....anyway, its just these types of dialogues that I think is what's best about this movement. It was an uplifting moment for all of us just to communicate.

In other news, my friend in Canada posted this amazing poem/song on facebook, and I told her there was a web archive for poetry, so Paul, or someone else out there if u have a spare moment, can you upload this, and maybe send me a link, so I can tell her it on line?

Thanks so much!
O

>

Zipporah Lomax :

The world is stirring...history unfolding beneath our feet, before our eyes.

 

Inspired by the OWS movement, I started writing a song. It quickly became more of a poem...a poetic commentary...my take on the issues we face.

 

I'd like to share it as my small contribution on this day of solidarity...

 

**************************************************************

'Common Ground'

by Zipporah Lomax

 

everything has gone awry

a great divide has grown

between the hands that hoard the pie

and the measly crumbs we're thrown

 

they enjoy their privileged lives

while our homes are foreclosed

they're keeping us in line

with all the wealth that they withhold

 

they profit off our ignorance

expecting us to play the part 

of obedient indifference

robots, with shopping carts

 

well-designed to distract

and keep us misinformed

the media's been hijacked

by those who bank offshore

 

they've poisoned our sea and sky

through oil-driven greed

they contaminate our food supply

with their modified seeds

 

they've stolen our autonomy

and our right to choose

they perpetuate inequality

through narrow-minded rules

 

they've made health a business

selling pills to those in need

they benefit from illness

growing rich off our disease

 

we know it won't be long

before they try to buy our souls

before our lives have been withdrawn

exchanged, for fool's gold

 

they've kept us on our knees

believing change would never come

but down on wall street

the revolution's just begun

 

we're waking from our slumber

it's time to stand up strong

take back what they have plundered

we've held our tongues too long

 

we'll shout until our cause is heard the whole world 'round...

they may tie our hands, but our voices cannot be bound...

something's gotta give...the wall has gotta come down...

...we all deserve to live on common ground...

 

**************************************************************



Occupy Times Square

 Hopefully the movement has gained too much momentum to stop, and Times Square was an unbelievable testament to what is going on. It was packed from top to bottom, side to side, spirits were high, and the larger movements happening around the world were felt due to the huge tickers and tv screens brazenly surrounding us with messages and scenes of change, but also subtly by the sense of camaraderie and unity as people took the streets together and socially networked for the common good in flesh and blood for the first time in what seems like a decade. It was a moment I will never forget, and hopefully one that I will be proud to tell my grandchildren that I was present for. I was at the 46th st corner where things went sour, but I have to say that even there things went without major incident regarding the scope of what was happening. I would like to commend the officers in the NYPD who have been serving the 99% and are supportive, nice, and courteous. Those serving other interests will get what they deserve ultimately. The people united will never be defeated! 

OCCUPY EVERYTHING.

-Shane Kennedy

#OWS at Living as Form

September 24–October 16
Thursday–Sunday, 12–8 PM
The Historic Essex Street Market
80 Essex Street
Southeast corner of Essex and Delancey Streets, NYC

Click to read more ...

IT'S TIME

PAUL McLEAN

CLICK THE IMAGE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OCCUPENNIAL OCCU-GANDA.

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THIS POSTER FREE HERE.

BUSINESS SUIT

Paul McLean

CALLING OCCUPANT PHOTOGRAPHERS!

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO LEARN HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR PHOTOS TO THE OCCUPENNIAL OCCUPATION PHOTO ARCHIVE.

THIS GRAPHIC IS FREE FOR DOWNLOAD IN THE OCCU-GANDA NEXUS.

The New NYC General Assembly Site

The NYC General Assembly is composed of dozens of groups working together to organize and set the vision for the #occupywallstreet movement. This is our official website. 

A Note from Jason Flores-Williams

....I'll never forget yesterday at OWS long as I live. Such a privilege to be around it. For me, nothing shows how things could be versus how they are, than to spend a day in the cool humanness of Zucotti Park, then to walk a block over to Wall Street and feel like the guy next to you wants to stick a knife in your neck. For what..I don't know. Maybe the wrong shoes.

Today Times Square 5:00 pm EST. 

Tomorrow, doing a reading with a bunch of cool writers - Ina P, Ted H, Mark, Paul, Brenda - at the Bowery Poetry Club 3 to 4 pm. The gig is in 110 percent solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, requested donation of five bucks that will go directly to the cause. Food, clean, up, socks - all the sort of essentials required to mount an occupation. 

Bowery Poetry Club 3 to 4 pm tomorrow. Sunday.  

No doubt this will roll into something Kesey-ish.



Paintings by Alex Powers

Occupy Wall Street,

 

Attached are 5 JPegs of paintings that express what OWS is doing politically. Use the JPegs in any way that is helpful.  Maybe post them on your website. I will donate the original paintings if you can sell/auction them.  I do not want anything for myself. I am not looking for publicity.  I want to help. There are 10 paintings total. I will send them in 3 emails. I have other paintings with similar expressions if you could use more.

 

I admire what you are doing. It is an issue that has been dear to my heart for decades.

 

Alex Powers

Myrtle Beach, SC

AlxPwrs@yahoo.com

www.AlexPowersArt.com

Occupy Museums!

On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 1:15 PM, Noah Fischer <fischer.noah@gmail.com> wrote:

Occupy Museums!

Let’s dance in front of the Cannons

and tell the cultural pyramids:

You are NOT our MoMA!

I know that many people have been thinking in this direction and I’d like to add my voice.  It just might be time to band together And do some museum hopping! We'll state loud and clear and publically that the game is up: we see through the pyramid schemes that museums have set up whereby the 1% sit on boards and presume to speak with cultural authority while increasing the profit margins of their private collections. They have disempowering the hundreds of thousands of living artists - the 99% through rarified gatekeeping that has directly equated art with Wall Street capital- with all of the same shady business and BS hierarchy!!!  

As long as we accept the authority of these oppressive cannons, I’m not sure we can move forward with new aesthetics and movements:  art that is truly by and for everyone!  Art that isn’t rehashed and boring and pre-packaged and dead on arrival! Art that is alive! Art that is powerful! I think it would be wonderful to give the museums notice of the impending paradigm shift. Some serious truth to power, playfulness, and mockery is in order!

-Explaining Art to a Dead Museum.

-Reading the GA statement or A & C statement or autonomous statements in front of the Frick, using people’s mic.

-etc etc.

-etc. 

There are many museum nights in New York with long lines, which may be fruitful audiences. We can also go inside and play.

So I propose Occupy Museums next week- Thursday afternoon and evening. I’ll bring this up at an A & C meeting beforehand.

A couple Museums to Occupy:

-New Museum: Showcased Dakis Joannou’s personal collection, bumping up auction prices: use and abuse of the whole concept of “public” for personal profits. Dis-gusting!

-Frick Collection: dedicated to a long term PR campaign for the one of the “Worst American CEOs of All time.” Whose draconian policies included murdering workers striking against unhuman working conditions. We say- what the Frick is going on here! 

It’s easy to do research on these museums and who is standing behind them:

http://www.moma.org/about/trustees

Noah



dOCUMENTA (13) / AND AND AND (w/#OWS)

dOCUMENTA (13)  GEHE ZUR DEUTSCHEN VERSION
newsletter@documenta.de

AND AND AND / Event 10 / Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street / New
York / Occupation began September 17, 2011 – ongoing

 dOCUMENTA (13)

The big island formed a kind of alien territory – you might say that
its chief function was to serve as generator of synthetic desire.

AND AND AND is an artist run initiative, which will use the time
between now and dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012 to consider with individuals
and groups across the world the role art and culture can play today
and the constituent publics or communities which could be addressed.
The series of interventions, situations, and occurrences entitled AND
AND AND are part of dOCUMENTA (13) and will compose a map of emergent
positions, concerns, and possible points of solidarity.

For the tenth event, AND AND AND returns to the United States in
solidarity with the Occupation of Wall Street.

As a part of their effort to interrogate and diversify the mode of
communication of the dOCUMENTA (13) press office, they have asked us
to post below their letter to the General Assembly and Affinity Groups
of Occupy Wall Street.

Date: Occupation Began September 17, 2011 – ongoing
Country: U.S.A.
City: New York
Location: 40° 42'34" N, 74° 00'41" W
Address: Liberty Plaza (For further information contact
projects@andandand.org )

dOCUMENTA (13) is not responsible for the views or factual claims
expressed by the artists and artworks it presents.

www.nycga.cc

www.documenta.de

www.andandand.org

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

To the General Assembly and Affinity Groups of Occupy Wall Street,

14 months ago, a group based in New York, on Beaver Street, a few
blocks south of your occupation sought inspiration and new cultural
forms by visiting the US Social Forum. This trip into one of the nodes
of contemporary social movements was not just symbolic. Pulsing
through this journey to Detroit, a site which encapsulates the
apocalypse and abandonment awaiting anyone who believes capitalism and
our planet can both survive this crisis, was a question which asked
where does and how can art reside within social movements.

2011 has brought us into a new era and we have tried to look around
us. Those who believed that change will only come from without have
been shown that even those working inside this machine are ready to
revolt. How better to understand phenomena such as Wikileaks and all
of those who have risked their lives to reveal that at many scales,
the systems we inhabit are corrupt. Then the revolutions in Tunisia
and Egypt were a call that we have truly entered another epoch. And
those who stand against the emancipatory struggles resisting a global
mafia, that has sought to privatize and financialize everything from
our homes to the wheat in our bread, stand against history.

Left to a previous era are the suicides of 'martyrdom' operations
which revealed their impotency (in confronting racism, poverty,
inequality and new enclosures) by only emboldening a worldwide
security state, armed and ready to build new walls and designate any
resistance to its rule as terrorism. This era has brought us the
convergence of bodies that fight not in the name of any afterlife, but
for life here and now. What else could one expect when the basic
subsistence of millions is daily exposed to the fate of a senseless
pseudo-market, which has become the playpen of bloated vampires who go
by names like 'hedge fund manager' 'billionaire investor' or 'chief
executive officer.’

Those same vampires have held up an untenable equation to us:
Privatize gains yet socialize losses.

A revolutionary wild fire has spread from Libya, Syria, Bahrain,
Yemen, Jordan, Occupied Palestine, even to Israel. The sparks have
spread to Portugal, Greece, Spain, back to Greece again and to the
streets of London. Now they have landed in yet another one of the
capitals of capital, maybe THE symbolic capital of this financial
mafia, Wall Street. In all of these sites, we have heard different
variations of ENOUGH.

And you have put a number to this: ‘We are the 99%.’ And you have put
a number on this: the ‘the 1%.’ You have used every means available to
find a language to utter these words in a process that gives potential
meaning to democracy. As opposed to the false oppositions between
parties who vie for the power to govern how the ship should sink or
the train should crash: you are asking to stop the train or bring the
ship to shore. We need to change our coordinates: the numbers don’t
add up, and the equations seem to always miss the most elemental of
things.

Your lack of demands acknowledges the multiplicity of demands and
commands that our imaginaries yield to daily. Your lack of demands
leaves space for a discussion to emerge and for ideas to grow through
a common time. Your lack of demands refuse to recognize that there is
anyone manning the ship other than abstract algorithms and economic
laws which miraculously always seem to benefit only the 1%.

Thus your hand-made placards, your communiqué's, and pamphlets are not
simply a call to a sovereign pleading for new privileges, rights or
protections. They are beacons of hope, of love, of refusal, of
solidarity, poetry for a multitude to construct a common space in one
of the centers of Empire and to rethink what a common horizon could
become. Our forests, our water, our air, our soil, our seas are our
commons. Our labor, our ideas, our words, our relations are our
commons. These cannot belong either to a state or to private
enterprise, as they cannot be contained by any border nor controlled
by any single entity; they are the basic components of life. Yet, what
we have been asked to accept as our common destiny has been toxic debt
and toxic waste.

Joseph Beuys once claimed that everyone is an artist. And Robert
Filliou once asserted that art is that which makes life more
interesting than art. In these and many other terms, we can understand
you as artists. But we would like to add another proposition to these
statements: art can also be that burst of creation which does not
properly belong inside the domain in which it first emerges. And
though we are clear that, what you and the millions behind you and
with you, from Tunis to Cairo from Athens to Madrid, are doing is
politics; we also see these actions as a deterritorialization of the
politics we knew over these last decades.

We have heard of efforts to bring artists to Wall Street in the name
of an Occupenial. While we support all efforts to bring attention and
legitimate your undertaking, we believe that we must not miss this
opportunity to recognize the artists and artistry within this emergent
movement. Art is not outside or separate from this movement, it is
taking place each day you persist to build this common space/time.

We should not abandon or overlook what this moment of history calls
from us. We don't need recognizable artistic names to add legitimacy
to this movement, we need the multitudes, the whatever singularities,
the dark matter, the hackers, the day laborers, the 'service
providers', the precariat, the cognitariat, the caretakers, the
general intelligence that is and has been cultivated across multiple
virtual, material and invisible networks- to translate their specific
know-how and know-what into political action.

How to translate this massive collective and common intelligence into
political action? This has been a critical question of this young
century. The nascent processes taking shape globally, which you are a
part of, are an attempt at an answer. The art that aspires to become
political, especially in moments of upheaval, must have the capacity,
awareness and grace to become imperceptible, become part of a
movement.

In a lecture on February 22, 1969 Michel Foucault, concluded his
remarks on the ‘Author Function’ by speculating that at the very
moment when our society would be in the process of changing, the
author function would disappear, and invoking Samuel Beckett,
concluded by asking “What difference does it make who is speaking?”

Today anonymity calls us out of a tyranny of naming, which runs the
risk of subsuming every political action or statement into someone’s
property or a spectacular game for attention. And all of you, who have
anonymously and collectively plastered with texts and occupied the
streets of Tunis, Athens, Madrid, Cairo, London, New York and beyond
have introduced a new game to politics. No authors for this movement
and no leaders. And whatever new rules belong to this game remain to
be explored. Certainly, the old tricks of trying to subsume or reduce
molecular processes to individuals or parties will have no place here.

This is not solely a game of appearances, but also of consequences.
And the most significant political actors as well as artists of this
new century recognize this fact. The fate of a planet and all forms of
life and culture which inhabit it, hang in the balance.

We remain inspired by your ability to spread across continents and
build up the consistency of a new socio-cultural-political movement.
And if politics has an aesthetics then you are the aestheticians of an
emergent politics. And thus, a potent contributor to an emergent force
not only in the politics, but also the political art of this new
century.

In solidarity and singularity and multiplicity,

and … and … and …



We are the 99%

[Submitted by Julie Harrison]

They were in error.

[From Joseph Nechvatal, in support of #OWS]

multi-agent excitatiOn anusmOs

Joseph Nechvatal 2011

They tried to keep us sated on vapid movies and television shows. They cut us off from the deep pleasure of historical education and fed our brain candy colored crap. They ignored our experimental weird music and gave us top ten pop. They cut down our visionary art and replaced it with endless neo-pop and art reality shows for us to plug our desires into, hoping we would sit quietly by as they ran the world. I think they thought we were too dumb to notice. They were in error.

 

 [Click HERE to read Joseph's most recent book, Immersion Into Noise, in the Occupennial Library.]

http://www.nechvatal.net

blog: http://post.thing.net/blog/244

OCCUPY THE CULTURE

Jason Flores-Williams will be in NYC this week doing occupant interventions, including a reading at Bowery Poetry Club & Cafe. Here's an excerpt from the text Jason will be reading from (originally published in Brooklyn Rail):

Now here was the vision: truth has a way of being relentless. Truth has a way of refusing to die. There will be many people who read this and see it as an overly sincere and melodramatic piece of crap, but there are those who will recognize it as one loser’s agonized attempt to get at the heart of the matter. And for those people, i.e. you and me, this game isn’t over. You can say that truth is going to use us for something, or maybe we’re braver than we think we are, or maybe that the bullshit volume of misery is going to get turned up so high that ultimately we’ll have no choice but to say fuck it and take a stand, but something is going to happen here. We will not go gently. I can see it in the eyes and on the faces: the desperate realization that five years of something beautiful is infinitely better than 30 more years of lies. We may go down, but we will go down swinging. The final act of this generation has yet to be staged.

The reading is from 3 to 4 pm this Sunday the 16th of October, and will also feature Ted Hamm, editor of Brooklyn Rail, and the Occupennial's Paul McLean.

"Jason Flores-Williams is a literary force of a nature...A train wreck of genius." San Francisco Chronicle.

"Jason Flores-Williams is the king of American protest literature." The Yellow Rake.

“Smash the Bull, Distribute the Candy”

From Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung:

“Smash the Bull, Distribute the Candy”

An email exchange with Creative Time’s Nato Thompson, regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement resulted in this image. Please feel free to download, distribute and remix the image in any form you like.

Here is a brief description of the piece:

“The Charging Bull sculpture” by Arturo Di Modica is suspended in the air by iron chains. The chains are held by the work, “Integrity Protecting the Works of Man”, a high-relief sculpture placed atop the front of the NYSE building by John Quincy Adams Ward with the collaboration of Paul Wayland Bartlett, and carved by the Piccirilli Brothers.

Lady Liberty is dressed as a commoner and swinging a “Tax the Rich” baseball bat, smashing the Charging Bull in order to redistribute the cash it has been holding. Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street protesters are watching the action while Black Spiderman, donning a 1% labeled top hat, is observing the revolution.

Several sizes of the poster are available for download:

    * Original: 18 in x 24 in (with 1/8″ bleed), 300 dpi (18mb)
    * Large: 12in x 15.95 in, 300 dpi (9.1mb)
    * Medium: 8.28 in x 11 in, , 300dpi, fit in a Letter Size Paper(4.9mb)
    * Online: 1200 px x 1595 px,  72 dpi

Thank You for the Occupiers in demonstrating the truest form of democracy! Power to the People!

[Click HERE to visit Kenneth's site an download the poster.]

No Comment and Strong Decisions - Artists Occupy Wall Street

[Originally published on Huffington Post HERE.]

BY CATHERINE SPAETH

On Saturday night I attended the exhibit No Comment, held in what used to be the offices of JP Morgan, located on Wall Street. For blocks around, the police had barricaded the sidewalks, and so getting there was a roundabout effort. Perhaps for this reason there was not a crowd, maybe only a few more than a dozen hanging around outside the door; one of which was a woman having her body painted from head to toe -- inside I later saw her posing her body on a sphere, not far from a fellow making giant soap bubbles.

My self-assigned job was to take a picture of one thing interesting. There were only these few hours, and I assumed the artists would likely be people that I had never heard of, or at least not recognizable to me, and that if I took a picture it would at least be a place to begin. Perhaps I was drawn to the discursive commentary that on the face of it this work provides, I'm not sure, but in what follows below are the photos that I took, in order, of a single work.

Abraham Lubelski, 250,000 works on paper, 1991-present

It was not until I got home and did some research that I had any idea at all who the artist was. I discovered that in the late '60s Abraham Lubelski exhibited at the now closed Chelsea National Bank a piece called Paper Money Made Into Art You Can Bank On.

This was $250,000.00 in bills tied up in bales and displayed in the bank itself, on exhibit for five days and costing the artist $300.00 in interest. It is difficult to imagine the effect of this piece, exhibited in the bank and visible only to those who are banking. An amused and coveting desire? Fear for one's safety?

More legible might be that the installation of 250,000 drawings pictured here was also in the previous exhibit in the JP Morgan building, XI/II: A Tribute to 9/11. In that context -- the same space, same installation, just prior to No Comment -- the drawings were being offered for free. And so there is an economy of the gift, drawing on the by now well worn motif of papers drifting down the streets of New York. Themed on 9/11 the original exhibit was intended for those who work in the financial district of New York -- that would be the top one percent. For a long time now much of the artworld has been pitching its wares to, if not actively run by, the "non-profiteering" pump and dump collectors who are the one percent. Because of its location, this exhibit was one of them.

A significant difference between the previous installation and the current one, however, is that in No Comment there is a suggested donation of $30 for each drawing. Granted, the first exhibit lost some money because of the demonstrations, and has since tried to collaborate with artists of Occupy Wall Street in order to recover their losses and to provide a space for activist artists to show their work, and studio space to make it. I don't close out the thought that this can be a beneficial relationship, but it should not be an uncritical one. For example, in a public forum about the upcoming exhibit "Aristedes" writes of the No Comment auction as "A Landmark, Historic, most important ART AUCTION of the year!... This show will be remembered for years into the future & can only grow in stature!." But the auction is where the power of the one per centers lies -- a price at auction is now all it takes to count as art history in that art world.

With regard to 250,000 Drawings, two different things occur that strongly effect the speculative value of art: first, there is an easy art historical narrative ready to hand, and second, there is in this as well an appreciation of the hand made, and of free-hand drawing in particular as an expressive freedom. These appeal to both the discursive side and that of the immersive direct experience, and that there is excessive and measurable labor involved (250,000) underscores the surplus value of both. In On (Surplus) Value in Art Diedrich Diederichsen explains that these two sides are dependent on one another in the current art market. The art world has come to depend on anecdotes and punch lines in its discourse, a discourse that keeps things moving, however more sales will occur of works that require no justification. He writes:

Of course, all of the works of this type -- the ones that require no justification -- are actually indirectly justified by other art works. They are, as it were, instances of a legitimation that has congealed and become unobtrusive. They are able to forego justifications and give off the heavy scent of immanence, in which the business of art is so fond of steeping... It is works of this kind that finance the everyday operations of the art industry. They circulate throughout the world, and images of them fill the catalogues and art magazines. Yet it is only works of the first type - those that are openly in need of legitimation -- that keep the discourse alive.*

Given this dependence of objects that ask for no justification upon the discursive works that keep things mobilizing, most interesting of all is that Abraham Lubelski is the owner of a number of arts enterprises, among them NY Arts Magazine and the Broadway Gallery, a magazine and a gallery enterprise where writers are unpaid and artists are aggressively solicited to pay to play. Vanity galleries are less known for sales and cultivating a reputation than for the amount of artists swinging through the doors, that is where the money is for them. There are many discontented artists describing these practices on websites. More favorable and by one of his own past writers, Charles Giuliano writes that upon inviting Lubelski to the New England School of Art and Design at Suffolk University to exhibit, Lubelski was not forthcoming as to what this might be and only shortly beforehand gave him the title, The Show Has Been Cancelled, for a piece in which the artist sat on a sofa and chatted people up. Writes Giuliano:

So I view him as the Pied Piper of the art world. Luring us out of the city while dancing to his merry tune. Leading us on to what and where? It is about desperation, the need to be loved and accepted. To get published, seen, endorsed and recognized. Abraham is a conveyor of hope for many. With him anything is possible. He says, "I keep trying, putting ideas out there, engaging in dialogue."

And so we have some pictures of a single work, and some information surrounding it. I know very little and yet what investigating this one object suggests to me is that how artists participate in institutional spaces -- as artists -- and who they share it with might be more important than the artists of Occupy Wall Street seem at this point -- in inclusiveness, the defense of free speech, and desire for visibility -- ready to make any strong decisions about. Coverage such as the recent New York Times post is valuable for drawing attention to the spatial detournement of occupying J.P Morgan, but it seems to me that there is more at stake than symbolic space. Abraham Lubelski has now begun an fundraising exhibit to raise funds for Occupy Wall Street, at his Broadway Gallery. More and more "artist activist entrepreneurs" are arriving on the scene, here for example is a link to Revolution Art Magazine, complete with pinups and product. The question of art and money as it relates to Wall Street has been haunting the art world for some time now -- what "alternatives" are you willing to settle for?

* Diedrich Diederichsen, On (Surplus) Value in Art, Reflections 01, Sternberg Press and Witte de With Publishers, 2011, p. 29.



The Skadden Protest - The Beef

Your Name: Jason Flores-Williams
Your Email: Jasonflores_williams@hotmail.com
Subject: The Skadden Protest - The Beef
Message: Hi - I'm seeking artists to help me with visuals on this. Thanks, Jason

I'm closing down the law firm here in Santa Fe for a week and flying out to NYC on Thursday the 13th to sleep five days at Z park and write about Occupy Wall Street for the Brooklyn Rail.

I won't describe the following as a "protest" as much as it is a Personal Beef. But it's got to get done. Basically, we're gonna get it on cuz we don't get along.

The one group that's gotten a free pass in all of this is the corporate lawyers. These bastards made billions of dollars in billable hours off the direct infliction on pain, suffering and humiliation of the middle classes and the working poor. These guys were the true bullies. I saw it day after day in court - these lawyers pounding people into the ground with incompreheinsible motions, arguments, legal tricks without any concern for the ethics, morality or basic human decency. They were arrogant while they took people's homes, destroyed families and ripped apart lives. I wrote an article about it that ran here in SF and in the Rail and in a couple other spots:

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/LocalColumnsViewpoints/My-View--Jason-Flores-Williams-Law-firms-took-advantage-of-hous

And of all the law firms in American who act as the thug enforcers for Wall Street, it is Skadden Arps in Manhattan that is the ne plus ultra of nerd bullydom. I have friends from law school who work there who are nice people one on one, but who in the end are part of a legal machine that destroys human beings and maintains a system of sickening injustice.

I have duked it out with these bastards again and again, trying to keep people from being thrown out onto the streets. But in the end, when BofA is paying these guys $650 an hour to drown the court in paperwork and I'm standing there for free, there's just no way to keep up. It's starting off the game down 55 to nothing.

So, on Friday the 14th at 11:00 am, I am going to the Skadden Arps headquarters in Times Square and let me them know that one little small timer from NM knows how disgusting they are. I'm going to read a variation of that piece, another piece, and then deliver the closing argument that I always wanted to hit them with, but could never get to because they would always win on procedural grounds and summary judgment. I'm going to stand in front of their main doors and let them have it, then get back to Z Park. Here's where they are:

http://www.skadden.com/index.cfm?contentID=49&officeID=1

If you can make it, it's always better to be with people - and we'll go for scones after.

Jason Flores-Williams, Esq.

Nb. I wrote this in the past tense, but the foreclosures and insane debt collections and law suits for attorneys fees are happening with even greater ferocity today.



RISE UP

From Lopi