What Is the Soul of Occupy? [Draft/BETA][Introduction Notes; Section II, Part 1]

[revGames]

What Is the Soul of Occupy [Draft/BETA][Introduction Notes; Section II, Part 1]
By Paul McLean

Shane Kennedy [The Thomas Kinkade Experience]

>>
..."I know where I am, but I don't feel that I am where I am." The cognitive experience of the space in which the body moves is detached from the actual movement of the body in that space. It relates to mapping the potentially confusing transformations of a body in non-Euclidean topologies that are not as predictable as table architectures are supposed to be. What Caillois referred to here was some kind of "technology of movement" different from that of Euclidean space.

Caillois's reference to Saint Anthony reveals the "I" is dispersed into a depersonalized matter "whatsoever."
<<
- Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology, Jussi Parikka (p. 99)

[Ambrose Curry]

surfing postures are primal

the triggers to remind us we should be surfing

are everywhere.The real fact remains 

we are interstellar beings and surfing is the link

to our primordial /molecular memory...

- Ambrose Curry

[NOTES: The chronology of the text is not linear, but dimensional. On Saturday at BRIK Gallery in Catskill, Danny Bryck performed his play, "No Room for Wishing," a moving series of documentary soliloquies derived from interviews he conducted on site at Occupy Boston. I realized that the structure I'm aspiring to in the Soul of Occupy sequence of briefs is in some ways a correlation to the relational dynamics one might find on any given day at OWS, with the interplay of elements (time, images, texts, subjects, etc.) not necessarily existing compatibly, but simultaneously existing in proximity, at least temporarily. One medium for the co-existence of disparate parts in such scenarios is personal memory, and also other kinds of memory, such as history documentation or memory, also contiguous, if not exactly mutually ratifying. The record does not necessarily reinforce the individual recollection, which is probably a function of divergent emphases. Without going further, although there is much to explore here, the construct is dimensional, and one that I have attempted to represent in art arenas and other texts, as have others. So, for the reader the suggestion is that she suspend the desire to "get it," meaning the point of the text, for the purposes of recursion, since the text, which is actually more than a progressive series, although that is the case, too, will evade that play. In this realization, I recognized a significant flaw in the society, as it is moving, towards a test-based self-education programming format, in which answers are inevitably dispensed to students prior to the test. In such a flow, the student will feel entitled to the answer, even prior to the question being asked. When confronted with situations that do not or refuse to conform to that model, the student will usually feel offended, and critical of the test-giver. But what if the exchange has nothing at all to do with the test, the Bell Curve or some other scheme for distinguishing success and failure or mediocrity? The implications for a democratic society that reduces its educational complex to a recursive test-based system - in which all students (and this is wrong anyway) will receive the solutions prior to any other exploration - is significant, and significantly negative, for a number of reasons, which I won't list here. What I will say is that I refuse to participate with a system so organized, since in my assessment, it tends to subvert free thought. Such a system of answer-before-question is conducive to pre-determinism, and a certain disability of the adventurous mind. Understandably, for those who find comfort in routinely possessing answers to problems before they arise, without having to earn those answers per se, or practice solutions as proofs to assert correctness over falsity, a dimensional narrative architecture can be frustrating. Unfortunately for them, our future will not play along with the old answers. The future is [4] dimensional.]

Click to read more ...

Occupy Memorial Day 2012

[Photo of a veteran at OWS by Monty Stilson; click to see the gallery]

Worth remembering.

[Photo from Ted Hamm, who's occupying Rockaway today.]

Occufest, Part II: Spread the News

By Christopher Moylan

The contraction of Occupy Wall Street after the police stormed Liberty Square was to be expected, but with the return of longer days and warmer weather something peculiar happened. The movement remained in a dark chill while everyone else walked about in shorts and short sleeves complaining of the unnatural heat. Activists came back to the streets, the energy at demonstrations returned, yet little of this was reported in the news. For all anyone in the greater world knew, Occupy was dead.

To those who took part in the Million Hoodie March or the demonstration against police brutality, it was obvious that this media silence resulted from the collusion of forces more imposing than those of the editorial staff of Eyewitness News or, for that matter, The New York Times.  The police mobilizations at each protest were too large, the disruptions of traffic and business the protesters caused were too widespread and dramatic, the arrests too violent and arbitrary for all this to be too trivial for comment. If thousands marching down Fifth Avenue on a Tuesday evening rush hour could not draw attention, then what would it take?



Perhaps this is the wrong question. For one thing, it is obvious what it would take to grab the attention of corporate news: mass arrests, violence, smashed shop windows and burning cars. If Occupy activists allow the police and their corporate/political sponsors to write the narrative that would discredit the movement, then the narrative would receive plenty of attention. That could happen, but let’s hope it doesn’t.  So, isn’t this the question; if one could write an Occupy-related lead story for The Times, what would it say? Better yet, if it were possible to hold the attention of one disinterested person for a while—half an hour or an hour—what would one say? What would one hope to accomplish?

Click to read more ...

WS2MS: Co-organizer's "End" Notes

Catskill Chocolate Shop

WS2MS Closing Weekend
A Note from OwA Co-organizer Paul McLean

...Can one ask questions about the strange fact that, after several revolutions and century or two of political apprenticeship, in spite of the newspapers, the trade unions, the parties, the intellectuals and all the energy put into educating and mobilising the people, there are still (and it will be exactly the same in ten or twenty years) a thousand persons who stand up and twenty million who remain "passive" - and not only passive, but who, in all good faith and with glee and without even asking themselves why, frankly prefer a football match to a human and political drama? It is curious that this proven fact has never succeeded in making political analysis shift ground, but on the contrary reinforces it in its vision of an omnipotent, manipulatory power, and a mass prostrate in an unintelligible coma. Now none of this is true, and both the above are a deception: power manipulates nothing, the masses are neither mislead nor mystified. Power is only too happy to make football bear a facile responsibility for stupefying the masses. This comforts it in its illusion of being power, and leads away from the much more dangerous fact that this indifference of the masses is their true, their only practice, that there is no other ideal of them to imagine, nothing in this to deplore, but everything to analyse as the brute fact of a collective retaliation and of a refusal to participate in the recommended ideals, however enlightened.

- Jean Baudrillard, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities

Berlin, Germany ["We the People" at Brik Gallery]

Dear friends,

On March 17, 2012, Wall Street to Main Street launched in Catskill, NY. Since then, Occupy with Art's partnership with Greene Arts/Masters on Main Street has offered the community a diverse program of exhibits, installations, performances, readings, demonstrations, workshops, seminars, and more. We even had our own single edition newspaper! Participants have ranged from celebrated (or controversial) artists with art-world-recognizable names like Andres Serrano, to locally- (and internationally-) recognizable artists like Matt Bua, to collectives like Bread & Puppet Theater and abcdefgCORPS, to poet/writers, like Sparrow, who spans the spheres of Occupy and the Hudson River region, to those folks who brought pieces for the absolutely inclusive "People's Collection," whose participation required no artistic self-definition at all. From the beginning our objectives included generating a rich sample of Occupy arts, commingled with works originating from the region's impressive artist base. In some fair measure, that goal was attained, although to what extent the potential interchange was tapped is an open question. Estimating the populations of possible collaborators versus actual ones won't permit us to congratulate ourselves too much.

Click to read more ...

WS2MS: Our Final Weekend's Programming

From Ale

"The revolutionary question became much more a musical one" - Tiqqun

What Is the "Soul of Occupy?" II [Draft/BETA][Preface]

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

the future seems dreadful

©1986 r.stevie moore

[PREFACE]: ...Pondering the soul of Occupy, considering art and spirit, reflecting on the "American Spring."

Click to read more ...

WS2MS: Franc Palaia's Bottle Bulb Demo

[Covered by WiThePeople]:

The Amazing Bottle Bulb
A Demonstration by Franc Palaia

Talk about sustainability.  

One of the most innovative and practical exhibitions I discovered at Catskill’s Wall Street to Main Street art opening in March was the solar bottle bulb.  With water and a little chlorine bleach, the plastic bottle bulb can provide as much light as a standard light bulb.  Extremely impressed, I went back two months later to watch the scheduled demonstration.

The artist, Franc Palaia, explained that the size of the bottle determines the amount of light provided, so that the larger the bottle the greater the “wattage,” or its chlorinated equivalent.  He said the simple and very effective idea was first discovered in Brazil by Alfredo Moser in 2002.  Palaia calls the solar bottle bulb a “low tech way of making light with practically nothing.”

It works like this:

For the portable display, Palaia used a plain cardboard box to simulate a darkened room.  He placed a plastic one-liter bottle filled with water and a few drops of chlorine bleach (to prevent algae growth) in the ceiling of the box and sealed it with strong tape.  The bottles can be used on corrugated roofs, flat roofs, or any roof, Palaia said.

Once installed, the sunlight reaches the bottle, goes through the water, is diffused and then spreads out into the darkened space, creating a beautiful, warm glowing light.  According to Palaia, many people in third world countries who don’t have electricity use solar bottle bulbs, and he said it’s helping to improve their lives.

Although glass bottles can be used, Palaia recommends plastic because it’s easier to use and more accessible.  He said another benefit of using plastic is that it “gets rid of a lot of empty bottles that are all over the place.”  So using plastic, Palaia quipped, “is sort of killing two birds with one bottle.”

[revgames] Dandelions on Fire

[From Alex]:

This is what DHS and police do when they repress free speech and collective liberation:

Update on Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 10:42PM by admin

Hundreds Arrested In Massive Crackdown on #Blockupy

May 19, 2012 By Jérôme E. Roos

Jérôme E. Roos's ZSpace Page / ZSpace

Frankfurt on lock-down as over 5.000 police are deployed in an unprecedented operation to keep protesters out of the city and away from the banks.

 

The atmosphere here in Frankfurt is tense. The police are omnipresent. The sound of sirens permeates the city streets.

As I write this, some thousands of protesters are huddled together at the university, pitching tents or simply squatting a place on the ground to try and catch some sleep before tomorrow’s big actions. But as the activists here prepare to physically block the headquarters of the European Central Bank, the police already seem to have done the job for them.

The entire city is on lock-down. Roadblocks sever the main traffic arteries going into the city center. Everywhere, small squads of riot police patrol the streets looking for anyone who looks “suspicious” (i.e., like a potential Leftist). Shops and banks downtown have barricaded their windows with wooden planks, and at almost any random corner you will find a line of police vans, sometimes as many as 50 or 60 parked in a row. It feels like Frankfurt is preparing for civil war.

A few times today, small groups of people tried to make their voices heard by protesting or camping in one of the city’s squares. At some point, over 1,000 gathered in the central square, while later a small tent camp was set up elsewhere. Yet on every single occasion, the protesters were met with thousands of police who quickly cordoned off the squares, forced those present to identify themselves, and then continued by dragging them away one by one.

While German media report at least 150 arrests so far, the actual numbers are likely to be much higher. We have seen dozens of people arrested for “offenses” as simple as being in the wrong place at the wrong time; or carrying around a sleeping bag into the city center. The Italian newspaper Repubblica reports that 100 Italians alone have been arrested; leaving aside the Germans, Greeks, French, and countless other nationalities who have descended upon the city.

 

The Blockupy actions, scheduled to culminate in a large demonstration on Saturday, have already been banned by authorities (a ban that was, bizarrely enough, upheld by the country’s highest constitutional court). In an attempt to enforce this absurd ban, over 5,000 police have been drawn in from across the country. So far, it seems that there are at least 2.5 policemen to every protester in the city. The overreaction of the authorities is truly staggering.

This morning, as we walked towards the central station with four friends, we were stopped by a group of eight riot police who took our IDs, searched our bags and bodies and, after not finding anything suspicious, threatened us with immediate arrest if they found us in the city center again. In other words, not only does the state rudely violate the constitutional right to assembly; it also denies average citizens and independent journalists access to public spaces.

A caravan of three buses coming from Berlin was stopped before even arriving in Frankfurt, and directed straight back to Berlin under police escort. A kettling operation at the train station this morning ensured that those arriving by train could not join others gathering in the city center. Anywhere we tried to go, we literally had to keep an eye out not to run into more riot police and risk being arrested simply for walking in the street. It truly looks like a police state here.

Indeed, in Frankfurt, the financial capital of continental Europe, it feels like democracy has temporarily been put on halt. In the process, the state once again reveals its true nature. In an attempt to protect the city’s powerful banks, millions of euros are expended and basic constitutional rights suspended just to maintain a degree of control over the situation. Yet the intensity of the repression is only likely to further stir frustration among the protesters here.

In the most bizarre twist of all, the German and international media do not appear to be reporting on this extreme situation at all. When hundreds of peaceful protesters are arrested in Russia, our leaders and newspapers are quick to denounce Putin for being a dictator. Yet when it happens in a civilized society and advanced economy like Germany, the peaceful protesters are suddenly denounced as violent criminals — or simply not spoken about at all.

 

Tomorrow we will not only take the struggle to the ECB; we will also fight for our right to protest peacefully, publicly and passionately. We will not be intimidated. We will not be crushed. And most certainly, we will not back down. And even if they crack down on us again — which they will — let it be known that our aims have already been achieved: the financial epicenter of eurocapitalism is completely blocked. And the authorities were kind enough to do it for us. 

WS2MS: Reading @Occupy Books + Dinner [#M21, 6-8PM]

Monday, May 21, 6-8 PM, stop by for a pop-up night of poetry and prose from OCCUPY BOOKS, the literary heart of the Wall Street to Main Street project at 450 Main Street in Catskill, NY.

Sander Hicks new book, Slingshot to the Juggernaut

Meet the writers at OCCUPY BOOKS for a short reading followed by pay-for-yourself dinner at Wasana’s Thai Restaurant, 336 Main Street.

Rebecca Wolff

The event will be hosted by Fence editor Rebecca Wolff. The reading is headlined by Sander Hicks, author of Slingshot to the Juggernaut: Total Resistance to the Death Machine Means Complete Love of the Truth, just out from Soft Skull Press.

Sam Truitt's Street Mete

Hicks is joined by beloved [Occupy] poet Sparrow, who will present on the power of silence. Sam Truitt will read poems from Vertical Elegies- Street Mete. Rebecca Wolff will share some of her new poetry, as well.

Sparrow, from his 2008 Presidential campaign

This promises to be a wonderful night, occupied by great people, verse, food and fun. Don't miss it!

http://www.facebook.com/events/103822953089752/

WS2MS: Occupy the Landscape

Each alone, each part of another
Your steps shall ring
Shall raise the cloud...
-Patti Smith

[From Josh]:

Just wanting to share this with everyone.

Infographics on Derivatives (& More) @Demonocracy

[NOTE]: Demon•cracy presents some brilliant data visualization on the threat posed to all of us by the global financial giants, like JP Morgan Chase, who are gambling with complex instruments, like derivatives, that could destroy the world economy, are distorting democratic society in brutal, ugly ways, and necessitating horrible policies like austerity and endless war. Below are a couple of sample graphics + texts (on bank exposure due to derivatives), but click HERE to view the informative - and terrifying - facts.

9 Biggest Banks' Derivative Exposure - $228.72 Trillion

Note the little man standing in front of white house. The little worm next to last football field is a truck with $2 billion dollars. There is no government in the world that has this kind of money. This is roughly 3 times the entire world economy. The unregulated market presents a massive financial risk. The corruption and immorality of the banks makes the situation worse. If you don't want to bank with these banks, but want to have access to free ATM's anywhere-- most Credit Unions in USA are in the CO-OP ATM network, where all ATM's are free to any COOP CU member and most support depositing checks. The Credit Unions are like banks, but invest all their profits to give members lower rates and better service. They don't have shareholders to worry about or have derivatives to purchase and sell. Keep an eye out in the news for "derivative crisis", as the crisis is inevitable with current falling value of most real assets. Derivative Data Source: ZeroHedge

JP MORGAN CHASE

JP Morgan Chase has a derivative exposure of $70.151 Trillion dollars. $70 Trillion is roughly the size of the entire world's economy. The $1 Trillion dollar towers are double-stacked @ 930 feet (248 m). JP Morgan is rumored to hold 50->80% of the copper market, and manipulated the market by massive purchases. JP Morgan (JPM) is also guilty of manipulating the silver market to make billions. In 2010 JP Morgan had 3 perfect trading quarters and only lost money on 8 days. Lawsuits on home foreclosures have been filed against JP Morgan. Aluminum price is manipulated by JP Morgan through large physical ownership of material and creating bottlenecks during transport. JP Morgan was among the banks involved in the seizure of $620 million in assets for alleged fraud linked to derivatives. JP Morgan got $25 billion taxpayer in bailout money. It has no intention of using the money to lend to customers, but instead will use it to drive out competition. The bank is also the largest owner of BP - the oil spill company. During the oil spill the bank said that the oil spill is good for the economy. JP Morgan Chase also received a SECRET $391 billion dollar bailout from the Federal Reserve. In 2012, JP Morgan (JPM) took a $2 billion loss on "Poorly Executed" Derivative Bets. Click the image above to read about it.

What Is the "Soul of Occupy?" [Draft/BETA][Pt.3-2, 4+5 & Endnotes]

Updated on Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 05:25AM by admin

3 continues

Bruce Sterling at the European Graduate School, 2010; Photo ©Hendrick Speck & Paul McLean

>>
An intellectually honest New Aesthetic would have wider horizons than a glitch-hunt. It would manifest a friendlier attitude toward non-artistic creatives and their works. It would be kinder with non-artists, at ease with them, helpful to them, inclusive of them, of service to them. It’s not enough to adopt a grabbier attitude toward the inanimate products of their engineering.

I see some daylight in the general cultural situation. I was happy about the [SXSW] New Aesthetic panel, because it revealed things I had never seen. It was exciting because it touched something new, true and real.

Lysenko speaking at the Kremlin in 1935. Behind him are (left to right) Stanislav Kosior, Anastas Mikoyan, Andrei Andreev and Joseph Stalin.

The arts and sciences are, clearly, almost equally bewildered by their hardware now. The antique culture-rift of C. P. Snow doesn’t make much sense five decades later — not when sciences and the fine arts are getting identical public beatings from Lysenkoist know-nothings. Those abject talking-heads, abandoning charge of their machine-crazed economy.… Come home, artists and scientists; all is forgiven!
<<
- Bruce Sterling, "An Essay on the New Aesthetic" ( http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2012/04/an-essay-on-the-new-aesthetic/ )

∞

>>
The Zuccotti Park occupation was a dismal failure. The functioning of Wall Street was not disrupted. Occupy Wall Street never occupied Wall Street. Even Zuccotti Park was “occupied” only with the consent of the mayor of New York City, and it was cleared out the moment he withdrew that consent. In the end, no autonomous space was reclaimed. The effort to remake society by multiplying and weaving together autonomous spaces is back to Square One. Even worse, precious little progress was made during the occupation in articulating and working out what the movement is for, or how to solve the serious social and economic problems we now confront.

In light of these failures, it would be a grave mistake to try to glide unreflectively into a “Phase II” of Occupy Wall Street. It is time to think seriously about what went wrong and why it went wrong, in order not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Above all, I am concerned here to make clear the difference between “prefigurative politics” in the proper sense of the term and what Graeber uses the term “direct action” to mean: “acting as if you were already free” (see below). In the proper sense of the term, “prefigurative politics” refers to practices that foreshadow and anticipate a different world, a world that does not exist. “Direct action” in Graeber’s sense refers to practices that make believe that this different world already exists in embryo within the existing one. The latter notion is the one that was tested at Zuccotti Park and that failed the test.

pre•fig•u•ra•tion n.
1. The act of representing, suggesting, or imagining in advance.
2. Something that prefigures; a foreshadowing.

make–be•lieve adj.
Imaginary, pretended.
<<
- "The Make-Believe World of David Graeber: Reflections on the Ideology Underlying the Failed Occupation of Zuccotti Park" by Andrew Kliman

Augmented Reality documentation by Mark Skwarek (arOccupyMayDay)

[NOTE]: As I see it, the project of facilitating a new model for artistic enterprise and the phenomenon of Occupy Wall Street can be subjected to a useful mash-up, for considering purpose, application and utility, among other things. The flaws in ideologies that influenced significantly the formation of OWS are worth looking into, and the wave of "What next for Occupy?" exercises are accomplishing this, which is what must first be acknowledged. The first semi-formal evaluation phase of OWS has commenced, almost spontaneously, post-May Day, a direct action that clarifies one of the quandaries faced by Occupy: in the United States, a call for prefigurative direct action emerging from alien cultural envisioning toward manifestation "in the long term" is a doomed proposition.

Click to read more ...

WS2MS: MAY 12 Weekend Happenings

URGENT CALL TO ACTION IN SUPPORT OF LIVING THEATER

[From Aaron Burr Society]:

Donate to the Living Theater

Please forward this message to others who can help.

The Living Theatre is currently in danger of losing their space in a dispute with their landlord.

The Living Theatre is the legendary radical theatrical group founded in 1947. The theater has experimented with different theatrical forms, but it was founded on the principles of a circular integration moving street protests > into the theater > back into the streets.

In 1970 the theater went to Brazil, where they were detained by the government. During the detention, Judith Malina's cell mate was disappeared. The theater company was released after an international campaign by artists, political and cultural figures, including Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Marlon Brando, and Jean Paul Sartre, as well as New York City's Mayor Lindsey.  In 2008, President Lula presented Judith the Ordem de Merito, the highest Brazilian cultural honor. The theater has recently participated in Dilma with the current Brazilian president Rousseff's efforts to locate the bodies of the torture victims from the former regime. The Living Theater efforts include helping to organize street performances, in solidarity with OWS, as part of a national campaign for the families of torture victims.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT TO OCCUPY WALL STREET

The Threatre's history resonates with themes that are directly related to Occupy Wall Street. In April the Living Theatre offered OWS's art groups a residency. The residency involves Occupy art groups creating videos and live performances at the theater. We were working to develop the process when the the issue with the landlord surfaced. While we continue to work together in planning the collaboration, saving the theater is the key to moving forward.

There have been many interviews and articles about OWS, both internally and externally. However, the ability to develop and refine our collective voice on video and on stage would be powerful and has great potential. Once this process has been developed and refined, we will invite other non-artistic working groups to participate.

We realize that many cannot afford to contribute, but please forward this call for help to those who can.

Living Theatre history:

Founded in 1947 as an imaginative alternative to the commercial theater by Judith Malina, the German-born student of Erwin Piscator, and Julian Beck, an abstract expressionist painter of the New York School, The Living Theatre has staged nearly a hundred productions performed in eight languages in 28 countries on five continents – a unique body of work that has influenced theater the world over.

During the 1950′s and early 1960′s in New York, The Living Theatre pioneered the unconventional staging of poetic drama – the plays of American writers like Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Paul Goodman, Kenneth Rexroth and John Ashbery, as well as European writers rarely produced in America, including Cocteau, Lorca, Brecht and Pirandello. Best remembered among these productions, which marked the start of the Off-Broadway movement, were Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Tonight We Improvise, Many Loves, The Connection and The Brig.

for more information go to  http://www.livingtheatre.org/

From Jez: #m8

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 ...

Heads up gamers! Week of actions coming up.

Hey radical gamers, as a heads up there is a week of actions coming up soon. Below is the framework. Feel free to plug in. We definitely need some play all over this thing. The final day we take times square so definitely a good opportunity to make some awesome shit happen.

Click to read more ...