OCCUPIED BLUESTOCKINGS

OCCUPIED:  AN OCCUPY MOVEMENT GROUP SHOW
EXHIBITION: NOVEMBER 14TH THROUGH DECEMBER 8TH
OPENING RECEPTION: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14TH, 7-10PM

OCCUPIED, is an art show and events series inspired by the evolution of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, hosted by BLUESTOCKINGS.  Over 30 artists from around the world contributed posters, prints, signs, photographs, drawings/works on paper, and multimedia installations.  The show opens Monday NOV 14th and runs through DEC 8th, 2011.  The show and events series is intended as a "cultural benefit" for OWS Arts&Culture and BLUESTOCKINGS. It will be a vehicle through which to engage in dialogue and contemplation of the OWS movement thus far.

Come out to BLUESTOCKINGS this MON NOV 14th @ 7PM to celebrate the opening night of OCCUPIED featuring artwork inspired by, and from artists working with the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Tonight’s program also includes performance, music, food, drink and discussion. The exhibition will be up through Thursday, December 8th.

OCCUPIED: AN OCCUPY MOVEMENT GROUP SHOW runs November 14th thru December 8th at Bluestockings 172 Allen St, NYC, NY (1 blk south of Houston St @ Stanton, 2nd Ave stop on the F train).  The opening party is Monday November 14th, 7 to 10pm, is free and open to the public.  For more information contact Bluestockings at 212-777-6028 or art@bluestockings.com. www.bluestockings.com, http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=154380834660987, http://www.facebook.com/bluestockingsnyc

BLUESTOCKINGS is a volunteer powered and collectively owned radical bookstore, fair trade cafe, and activist center in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Through words, art, food, activism, education, and community, we strive to create a space that welcomes and empowers all people. We actively support movements that challenge hierarchy and all systems of oppression, including but not limited to patriarchy, heterosexism, the gender binary, white supremacy and classism, within society as well as our own movements. We seek to make our space and resources available to such movements for meetings, events, and research. Additionally, we offer educational programming that promotes centered, strategic, and visionary thinking, towards the realization of a society that is infinitely creative, truly democratic, equitable, ecological, and free.



Intervention at #OccupyOakland

Liesa Lietzke performed an intervention during #OccupyOakland:

"I started this work by pondering how to fit sculpture to the topography of Frank Ogawa Plaza, the city center of Oakland. My purpose, as always, was an aesthetic intervention that introduced playful absurdity into the everyday setting. When I heard that #OccupyOakland was going to happen in the plaza, I thought how much more fun it would be to install the work as a launch for the Oakland Occupennial (The first occupennial was organized by #OccupyWallStreet--the word references biennial art fairs). Being a lone rogue artist is, after all, a tired trope.

I installed the work before the first event on 10/10 and watched as people gathered over the course of the afternoon to fill the plaza, the space itself renamed by a large banner reading "Welcome to Oscar Grant Plaza--on Ohlone land."

The work was completed by people's participation. Some examined and squeezed the sculptures. One piece was labeled with a sign reading "Octopi Oakland." Looking at the same multi-legged piece, another occupier commented, "I don't get it. Is it making the point that suits are dicks?""