At Le Potage De Madame Zazouf (Space Is Not Territory)

Space Is Not Territory 

Now that some have found a way to territorialize their concept of 'fight' with the hectic maneuvering of a closed group, and call social space the property of a door that allows them to determine who is in and who is out. Now that the only concern remains the never-ending search for new issues and new topics of investigation creating an eternal state of non-action; the question is if there comes a time when territories are created only to be immediately deterritorialized and reterritorialized, and if there will be moments where space expands beyond the determination of a life-style.  

As if we talk too much but we don't do much. 

We talk about life, our own life, and how to organize with others, and the talking somehow always starts with the question of the value of our own life but not with the question of how the decision to live our life can change others’ way of living. 

Can life be livable? 

One’s decision to live is not at issue here or even the starting point of this text. I would rather bring attention to the ambitious drive of inhabiting a space for it to become livable, through unpredictable ways of being, using, resourcing, and varieties of gatherings, all hubs without having to incorporate the Cartesian duality of an inside and outside.

Can we get unconcerned with the out or in?  

Walking on the same street with others next to us doesn't make us listen to them. To find a place to gather doesn't mean we found each other. It is as if our relationship we foster with history is merely accumulative, and that this suffices in a city that legitimizes any action, but if legitimization is actually chained to specific action, then all we have is absence. A formulaic distancing is occurring that is nothing else but a mere coincidence. Very selectively we have studied the struggles of others, and we seek to find refuge in the generic specificity of a history of images, opinions and comments by ignoring to consider the significance of experiences, our own experiences and how to talk about them. Isn't it the discourse with others that creates language? How can we create language when we communicate our thoughts only based on what is already written and what we have already seen? Why do we always assume that every time we talk we communicate language or make something visible? The denial of the vulnerability of speech is the very process to pacification. The continuation of conferences, events, and screenings within the institutional frameworks and under the conditions we are opposed to but insist not to speak out against is part of a process of social mutation. To be the constant spectators of the history we create is the most painful of all. Is this a form of self-policing? 

Is form self-policing?

To walk and be conscious of others walking with you and to do moments of living is resistance. Action is when bodies self-govern to be present and to communicate, sliding beyond the urgencies to either create or to be allowed to use fixated territories in totalitarian capitalism. When we act in disregard of any feeling of professional responsibility or entitlement, ignoring the predetermined sense of knowing the one and only truth, then we meet, and then we talk, and then we have space. 

Georgia Sagri 

New York, Spring, 2013 

For Cara Benedetto, Diego Singh, Whitney Claflin and

Pati Hertling at "Le Potage de Madame Zazouf". 

Greetings From the Mouth, CIRCUS, Berlin

OWEN at the Arnolfini Bristol on the 17th and the 20th of January 2013.

OWEN is a sniper's text who fought in Iraq, wish to become an invitation to be listened in public, spoken in the space by mouths, heard in time by ears. OWEN is the detailed elements of a presentation, the performance's steps come from Beckett’s play Footfalls, offering a rhythmical, more of a metronomic aspect to the duration of the piece. The performer learns the text by heart through the help of the passers. When the text is learned and spoken a few times by only the performer, without the adding of words or possible corrections of linguistic errors from the passers that moment marks the end of the performance. The repetitive reciting of each word, sentence and paragraph which is spoken by the passers who sit on the benches and read again and again to the performer creates a module where the text is heard many times in various ways by many different people. The people engage to the words than what is the performer's representational accomplishment to the role of the sniper. Instead we look each others position in speaking and listening the sniper's words. The passers read and speak the words, look how and in which way the words that the performer speaks are correct and even allowing some errors to exist. This whole process produces, how I call it an oral-monument. When I hear the word monument it comes to mind a stable, fixed representation, a resolved event of the past. Through this piece I'm trying to make a monument that creates history, through a text from the past. History can't be only representations from the past which we suppose to mimic, but words, actions which we learn to share and translate to each other we perhaps allow history to be created, a history of our own in the present moment. When the piece is taking place the performer is one of the elements, she/he is amongst the participants to the piece and not the only one to be exposed or to present something. The performer is not the virtuoso but creates one variation of the piece. OWEN is an object standing on a shelf, a record that includes the script, the plan that is the formation of the benches in which the performance is taking place and the contract that describes it and enables everyone to do it- to learn the text by heart with the help of others. The record was made through the expertise of typographers and bookbinders from Athens. Without their work the record wouldn’t be made. OWEN then is a chain of relationships; exchanges of thoughts, ideas, associations and those are not limited only to the moment of the performance. Previous relationships constituted the piece and the ones to come is the reason to do it, to do the performance, nothing else.

Diana Very Dog

                              Diana Very Dog                                                                                                                               

  

                                                                                                                                                                               

November 29th, 2012-February 20, 2013 / Opening reception Thursday 29th, 2012. From 12-9 pm.CENTRAL FINE presents its inaugural exhibition program with Diana Very Dog, a solo project by Georgia Sagri.

Diana belonging to the Roman Pantheon of deities poses a question here. One cannot help to wander why Sagri invokes her name rather than the Greek goddess Artemis.  May be that Diana, belonged to a model, such as the Roman one? And maybe Sagri, an Athenian, is purposefully advocating for a repulse of her national deities, by choosing a 'newer' and more 'arrow-minded' version of Artemis? Is Sagri observing the mandate of not using Artemis name in vain? Or is it that Sagri is interested in the meteoric trajectory of Diana's arrow and that her name starts with a D, such as Dog or Diogenes' School of Cynics?
 

Diana has the capacity to speak to animals and she is also an accomplished hunter, qualities that Sagri is after, as seen in her video piece where dogs bark, her wall text or her photos as a naked nymph with a Rimbaudian haircut; Sagri speaks a speech that seems delivered by a person with a triple Id: Action & Action & Action. Such a triple Id subject is, surprisingly, in total consciousness and control over the notion of own-her-ship. And let's be clear here, rather than being spoken, Sagri speaks to It, first and foremost to herself, and later to us with a present and yet ancient own-her-ship.

She navigates the streets/ while delivering a voice/ that tongue/ that form of speech outside the limitations of the History of Speech/ that shadow of mystery daily embodied and experienced by herself.

Sometimes one thinks that she is made or built by phrases that carry within themselves the problem of force. In that unstable ground, Sagri as a topos where one can load content hunts for titles, for sounds, for forms that direct her trajectory-the structure of action. On ACTION-PLACE-SPEECH we observe an interest in links and hyper abstraction while participating. A Chorus in the broadcasting of the destabilizing omnipresence: SAGRI HERE, SAGRI WHERE, VERY SAGRI, DIANA VERY DOG.

EMBROS OCCUPATION in Athens

With the dynamic action of groups and individuals the EMBROS opened a year ago and still operates as an occupation until today despite the pressures and obstacles of the so called protectors of the state wealth and culture.  We at EMBROS want to learn what is culture through every day actions. Culture is a common. Art is not a product and cannot belong only to the few. The creative and artistic work in extend cannot be part of the ideals of an oligarchic system of values in which the person suppose to simply produce, consume and shut up. EMBROS is an open, self-organized, cultural, political and social space.  It is the initiative of individuals and collectives from the arts, theory, and the sciences.  The space which is shaped through relationships, solidarity and openness, asks everyone to participate, to create, organize and dip reality to the dream.  By our continues effort we suggest ways of life and creation for social inspiration, transformation and empowerment, with a clear revolutionary vision: a society without passive viewers but active free organisms.  
We invite artists, visionaries, educators, theorists, travelers, groups and individuals without the need of identification, without any perceptible or aesthetic criteria of difference to be in EMBROS.

For events check:
http://www.facebook.com/embrostheater
(some of the posts are in Greek and in English)
email: embrostheater@gmail.com

The Desiring Subject

“In the very moment when he digests the object, the artist is digested by the society that has already found a title and a bureaucratic occupation for him: he will be the future engineer of entertainment, an activity that has no effect whatsoever on the equilibrium of social structures. The only way for the artist to escape co-optation is to succeed in unleashing a general creativity, without any psychological or social limits. This creativity will be expressed in lived experience.” Lygia Clark

How is to unleash a general creativity, forces which they could by definition, by character, by semotics slip beyond the capitalist paradigm? It is hard for us to sense that a lived experience it is the presence of bodies who touch, listen, hear and feel one another. The effort of a revolutionary today shouldn't be the production/consumption of the object, the text, the term, the idea that will only criticize the existing system, but the realization of the paradigm's shift, its possible existence in the present moment in her life. It is by the micro-revolutions: at her working place, with her family, her friends, at her neighborhood, by manifesting her need to speak, to listen, to create relationships, links, to refuse the bureaucratic scheme of a certain form and to be vulnerable. Always starting at the present moment beyond psychological and social limits: the shift then comes unexpectedly and it is not from the perspective of the what was and what it will be but the how it is now. It is more of a time declaration than a spacial one. [ When a child plays, when a lover courts, when an artist creates, they are not transmitting information but creating “a richly expressive situation in which a whole series of semiotic components are involved”*, temporarily freeing themselves from systems of expression that are founded upon the principle of individuation. Capitalism refuses to acknowledge the existence of these semiotic components, refuses to accept a mode of communication whose essence is desire. Instead, it wants, it requires people to express themselves in ways that are in accordance with the division of labor and only tolerates expressions of desire that the system can recuperate; capitalism demands that desire be “linearized, quantified in systems of production” and this is because “the best way for capitalism to insure semiotic subjugation is to encode desire in a linear way” In any given workplace, for example, workers are forced to abandon “the totality of what they are”, they must leave their desires and problems at the door. One’s desires and emotional life are completely ignored; workers are asked to work, not to be a desiring subject. Capitalism forces us all to suppress what we feel, and it refuses to acknowledge our “entire perceptive semiotics” in the name of productivity and profit. Capitalism forces us to take up a kind of identity which propagates the stultifying forms of social stratification that keep the bureaucratic-institutional machine in operation.] Revolutionaries today are those who create and who confront the institutional machine because they still claim the existence of communications whose essence is desire, ever thinking in terms of reaction but those of action. 
[..] : segment from 'this is not a blog',  microfascism, semiotic subjugation and collective arrangements of enunciation, posted on December 6, 2010 
*quotes are from the 'A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

A cat only with a head

We embody the cliches of our societies. The point is how to break the clishes by realizing how we are being our own cliches and that won't happen if we are always adding the critique to the discussion but by accepting the fact of not being in the position of the Other not because we don't accept the Other but because we won't ever be the Other.

And when I say ourselves I mean our bodies, our desires, attractions, tensions, fears, celebrations, intentions and those are not a social construction and contract but an emotional force that I find stronger and more relevant to work upon. All the forms, texts, lines, tactics of acceptance and embrace of the Other by and through the critique, through the creation of terms like homophobia, racism and feminism is for vomit the same as how easy the Other can get exorcised by laws, behaviors, salaries that have no terms, language and 'proofs' to define them.

I see that we can only be reactionaries just because it is easier and it doesn't take us anywhere. I mean it doesn't make us to confront our own selves and our own limitations.

Can we start making and doing what we want and not what we are, what we are named of by the Other or for the Other?

It is like we are a cat chasing our tail but the only thing we have is a head.

                    All Kinds of Mountains Inside a Bowl

SALOON IN THE CLOSET with Fia Backstrom and Kostas Saxpazis, SAT 7/28/12, 8pm

The world's most famous equation
C-M-C : M-C-M
The closest i can come to 'doing nothing'
building piles of dirt in the woods before heavy rain.
Set the alarm
Etcetera
Someone ought to tell them there's no where to go.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
food for delivery 
 

woman-woman

Do you have any money?

Can you leave me here?

Car is passing

Dog is laughing

Cat is mumbling cat’s alphabet

She is out of the bed she walks at the kitchen naked.

She puts water in a glass

Her nakedness is thin. Contrast light blocked on white cotton curtains.

She leans on the table to write a note.

“I woke up early

and here is your credit card “

the credit card is on the table

There are oranges in the fridge, half bottle of milk, two slices of bread and a cereal bar. Eat something you look weak and desperate and the color of your lips is grey even when you’re sleeping

I made coffee, have some 

Can you hold on?

I am begging for a powerful golden force when you are asking me to still love you.  Death is around the corner. Every time I pass this damn bridge I check if there is light in your apartment. I can even see the mirror hanging on the wall at the corridor’s side.

Georgia Sagri, Tuesday, January 4, 2011 11:09 AM

April 30th, 2012, 11am OWS Press Conference, Zuccotti Park, New York

As for today, April 30th 2012, 150 cities world wide have called for General Strike on May Day. 

 

It is not a matter of whether all of those involved in the General Strike can or even should come together under some ephemeral political umbrella to plot a shared course with clear, concise goals and agreed-upon demands. The truth of the matter is that the General Strike needs no demands. In fact, ideally it would abhor such a configuration, insofar as those of us striking out know full well that our own angers and desires far exceed any demands, or set of demands, that might be made. No laundry list of fucked up conditions, or of alternatives or solutions (which always precede, assume, and ultimately fail to attack the injustices they seek to address) can even begin to exhaust the range and scope of our rage.

Likewise, the Occupy movement, more and more openly transforms the tiring effects of excessively passive petition drives, letter writing campaigns, and permitted marches and rallies where professional activists are both literally and figuratively penned in, separated not only from their ostensible targets, but from one another as well.

We are the 99% therefore we need to creatively rethink what a General Strike means for us in 2012.

It means that:  

 

- We act collectively to establish new and inspiring forms of mutual aid and solidarity.

- We imagine how we go against effectively to the systems of racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, economic, political, and police oppression that are virtually indistinguishable from one another.

- We realize that many of us live in a “stop-and-frisk” world within which everyone is illegal (although some certainly more than others), and terms such as “police brutality” are increasingly recognized as redundant.

-We govern ourselves is acting upon social problems by our presence, commitment and by sharing the commons. We are open and public and we are not afraid to speak and act.

- We create new ways of being and living together, outside of wage and property relations; this especially means that we are thinking of ways to support those we work with, rather than those we work for or profit from.

- We start learning how to develop the strength and courage to view and treat our lives as they truly are: NOT NEGOTIABLE!

Most importantly General Strike calls for Infinite Strike and not just for a day of action because it calls for a social change. It calls for transformation and it is for each one of us to make that transformation possible on the streets, in public. We stick with each other and we do not compromise anymore on symbolic gestures but actual actions that promote and sprung our efforts. We make the city our playground and we abandon the places that oppresses us. We enjoy, we share, we change ourselves and others. We move forward.
 

This General Strike then calls for life and only by envisioning how our lives should be we can build this global General Strike.

From the May Day struggle that brought the 8 hour work day, to the people who want it all for all– 

EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE! GENERAL STRIKE!!

NO WORK! NO SCHOOL! NO SHOPPING! NO BORDERS! TAKE THE STREETS!

The jacket I put on ( naked as I am )

Δουλεύοντας τη μη δουλειά / Working the No Work
Currently on view at the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, New York

All kinds of gazes ( the paper made glasses)

Just the gesture
saying with the foot
stepping with the voice
All kinds of devices
the pleasure of doing

WELCOME TO THE NEW PARADIGM or THE CRISIS OF EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE A midwinter retreat, a modular molecular seminar with Everyone

the distructive character

Note (replying to a mailing list)

If the seriousness of the situation is not clear then a shift of one word can't change anything. What is important for a bunch of us is to understand that we don't want to replace the union leaders, or the expertize organizers, the "makers" of the student movement. What it is great and what we see every day in every corner of the world is that people are aware of the political and economic games played on their back. They recognize that the political situation-either called democracy, dictatorship, oligarchy etc- is all the way fabricated for the favor of capitalism's monstrosity and its expansion to every inch, every pore of our lives. Privatization expands to the calculation of our lives only perceived as numbers, the same with water, plants, seeds, animals and the DNA; if we are not able to talk about those issues in connection to the humiliation of the worker, the student and every profession then how we can expand our understanding of work without the power relations that entails? If we can't speak about the demolishing of money then how we are able to speak about life than survival? Words come only from the place of negotiation, manipulation when we call people "broader" audience, this is something that politicians always do, lawyers do, bureaucrats do, managers do, unions and organizers do; but our words must come from our mouths who we are amongst the people we are writing our texts- not for them but with them- and Seize the Empty Words and Speak about Life than Death.

Call for an open GA for ALL, Friday 11/11/2011, 7pm, Liberty Square

Call for an open GA for ALL, Friday 11/11/2011, 7pm, Liberty Square

The past weeks OWS has witnessed rapid bureaucratization and centralization of the GA. Specific working groups, most dramatically in the context of the Operations Spokes Council, have authorized themselves as the ritual keepers (via dogmatic facilitation/process/structure rules) of the movement. This has created confusion and ambiguity in the public discourse. It has prevented each individual from empowering himself/herself to create or act in the GA without being identified as a professional participant. We have seen money issues and organizational questions ruling most of the General Assemblies, while putting aside the reasons and frustrations that led to the occupation movement. This, inevitably, means schism between the ones who authorize and the ones who are here to participate.
We call for an open General Assembly for all.
We don’t ask permission from anyone to be imbued with that authority. We continue to learn from each other the possibilities of Direct Democracy.
Theses on Direct Democracy (open document):
Direct Democracy comes as a necessary imperative act that puts priority for a radical overthrow of the system of political representation, the State and the commercialization of everything. This social organism does not leave space for any kind of hierarchies, leaders, governors and political parties. It gives space to every individual to experience and practice politics and at the same time to be transformed within it. It is for all people, who experience the joy of personal initiative, of collective try, of solidarity, as well as, of love. All resources of our common life and the means to satisfy our common needs, cannot be but common, into the hands of society itself, which, with no need of any kind of mediation, decides an equal distribution of them, for all.
1. All space is open to everyone’s participation and it belongs to everybody.
2. The equal participation of everyone shapes the making of decisions, as well as the control of their application, both in the political and the economy field.
3. All necessary representations have strictly coordinating or executive nature and not mediating, representative or decisive character.
4. The existence of many local assemblies (in neighborhoods, municipalities, workplaces, schools of education, etc.) that communicate is the cornerstone of Direct Democracy. Participation in these assemblies is not occasional, but it is as responsible and regular as possible.
5. Communication between local assemblies creates a horizontal (non-hierarchical) network, which serves to coordinate the required theses and acts.
We want everything for everyone. We are history in motion.
Now is the time to overthrow all forms of authority.

Announcement Text on November 2nd, 2011 / Direct Democracy Working Group of OWS

Direct Democracy Working Group of OWS

Announcement Text on November 2nd, 2011

Direct democracy is used to describe the process and the unique character of our movement but we haven’t had any time to create substantive thoughts in that direction. The flux and the intensities of events have not allowed us a space, for thoughtful deliberative thinking on the importance of direct democracy.
There have been lots of actions but maybe we also need to think and shape future manifestations and activities of direct democracy.
Working groups in OWS are developing further the concepts of direct democracy without being able to expand our experience and knowledge of what that means, although practicing it.
What we create here in this square and in many other squares around the world is not just an ephemeral experiment. What we do today is the birth of direct political participation, passion for social engagement and happiness, passion for direct involvement to the commons. It is clear that political representatives are not anymore capable to create the political circumstances and to make decisions in our account. It is obvious that they make decisions for the benefit of the 1%.
All of us with our every day life interactions we demand direct democracy and we establish ourselves together as one person beside another person in political participation. This is a historical moment not only because it is beyond leaders and flags, but because we revolutionize our understandings of what politics is and what it can be.
Direct democracy takes democracy out of the corporate offices and the economic negotiations and political elites and brings it back to our lives and engagement. It is up to us then to direct it.
Direct democracy working group invites everyone to direct the participation process and allow its further continuation and growth. Through connection and communication with other international working groups (for example Syntagma square in Athens and Indignados in Spain) who are also discussing the concepts and understandings of direct democracy, we will expand our collective practices together.

1st NYC Anti-Authoritarian, Anarchists, Autonomists

1st NYC Anti-authoritarian, Anarchists, Autonomists
OPEN ASSEMBLY

Tuesday, November 8 at 8:00pm - November 9 at 4:00am


This is an open call for everyone that feels an affinity for this Assembly

* Oakland (report back?)
* Nov 10th West Goes Inside
* Nov 17th Call for General Strike


Points of conversation:

- Spreading different forms of occupations (how?)
- Mapping the city to our advantage
- Tactical coherence
- Towards the de-census of every GA
- Distribution of communication (twitter, facebook) and its conflicts
- Media and Livestream problematics
- Future events and calls


no journalists / no cops

NYC GA / Wall street Occupation

NYC GENERAL ASSEMBLY, WALL STREET OCCUPATION

NYC General Assemblies are an open participatory and horizontally organized process through
which we are building the capacity to constitute ourselves in public as autonomous collective
forces within and against representative politics, cultural death and the crisis of our times. NYC General Assemblies are a gathering of individuals, coming from various political, economical, ideological, cultural backgrounds. With our voices and our presence we share our problems, fears, ideas, dreams. The General Assembly is not a group. General Assemblies break through the idea of the political group by bringing together a variety of ideological patterns, old political procedures and test them in public, expose them, act upon them and transform them.There is no leadership, no representation, and no authority. We become political beings through our participation to the commons.

The process of the GA is already a fundamental action. To be able to make decisions together for a resolution, participation to an action and to have a gathering and a political conversation in the most policed city in the world is itself a political statement. NYC General Assemblies are actions that open space rather than producing polarizations. They create environments for everyone to have a unique and important role.

The General Assemblies is everyone. It is you who sees the limits of the politics of alienation, the cruelty of the economic regimes, cultural hypnosis and the standardization of every form of life for the benefits of the 1%

Who Represents You Replaces You

We are the 99%

On Sept 17th we occupied Wall Street. We have come together and crafted these principles of
solidarity, which are points of unity that include but are not limited to:

* Fighting for social, political economical and cultural FREEDOM & EQUALITY;
* Engaging in direct democracy;
* Exercising personal and collective responsibility;
* Recognizing individuals’ inherent privilege and the influence it has on all interactions;
* Empowering one another against all forms of oppression;
* Redefining how labor is valued;
* The sanctity of individual privacy;
* The belief that education, health care, transportation, culture, technology, information,
housing, nutrition and natural resources cannot be subjects of exploitation; and
* Endeavoring to practice and support wide application of open source.

The Occupation in Wall Street doesn't claim any responsibility or control for the spontaneous
initiatives, practices and direct actions taken by the people in the streets of NY.

The Occupation in Wall Street is not a metaphor. It is the coupling of politics and life that wasn't
even imagined a few months ago.

NYC General Assemblies is not a central political formation. It moves the bodies. Sometimes
gatherings split to exist in smaller units in the spaces of the metropolis and sometimes they
gather together again when it is needed. Who is able to predict what those bodies want and need and when? There can't be any leader or leading idea to this movement but only forces, forces of sentiment.

Coming soon.. in a square near you

Note: For video

• I lost my camera my keys the apartment.
  
• I'm under influential nets and affects.
  
• My phone is off for a week now and I can't find my love my smile and my cry.
  
• Do you like reality tv?
• My dreams are turning gray and green. The fluorescent dreams of a well tuned joy.
• Since I was born after the dictatorship I am searching for the tools to translate how I can place my self and what to do.
  
• Confrontation
• occupation,
  
• a party,
  
• the one to one meetings,
  
• to only take care of you and just forget macro expectations.
  
• It is the impossibility that created us.
  
• Stop work and meet us.
  
• We'll steal the wind and the wine and run to the edges.
  
• I'll meet you in an hour.

Sunday -- 07.31.11 -- For General Assemblies in Every Part of the World

Sunday -- 07.31.11 -- For General Assemblies in Every Part of the World

CONTENTS:
1. About Sunday
2. Some of Sunday's Contributors
3. First Resolution of the Direct Democracy Assembly in Athens
4. Conversation with Participants of the General Assembly in Athens 5. Conversation with Sabu Kohso about a post-Fukushima world
6. Useful Links

_____________________________
1. About Sunday

When: 1:00 pm - 5:00pm
Who: Free and open to all
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor
What: Meeting / Discussion

Attempt 1 : (to summarize this event into one line)
Anti-austerity/pro-democracy groups and individuals meeting at 16Beaver

Attempt 2 : A day devoted to exploring the inter-relations of recent global/local struggles through first-hand accounts

Attempt 3 : A day dedicated to create short-circuits in our imaginaries

Attempt 4 : (breaking the one line rule)

To attempt to recount the signs and cracks that have appeared over the last decade in the facade of the worlds of power would require a book length introduction. But one senses that in the midst of a crisis that has called into question the last 20 years of post-historical and
post-political proclamations, the last 7 months have catapulted humanity back into a global dimension of struggle and revolt.

One senses that at this juncture, in the midst of the revolutionary struggles across North Africa, the Middle East, and now the Mediterranean, there is renewed understanding of what non-representative politics can look like.

What does a democratic multitude look like? And how does it invent a new vocabulary for praxis? How does this general intellect, that has
strengthened over the last few decades, transform into political action?

On what grounds can this emergent politics be conjoined across disparate sites and struggles? How does one express solidarity with the events in Tunisia or Egypt, for example? How do those struggles and approaches get translated elsewhere? How were they put into play in Spain? And how did the events in Spain inspire a resurgence of political strategies in the most recent developments in Greece?

How do the euphoric dimensions of these successes hold up to the grim prospects of a post Fukushima reality? What can we learn about and from the nuclear disaster which has unfolded since March and are there
prospects to use some of this knowledge in our movements?

This Sunday is a special day at 16 Beaver, as we will be attempting to bring together reports on various struggles from North Africa, Spain and Greece, post-Fukushima Japan, and trying to connect them to contemporary struggles right here in New York and the US. The event comes together out of the interest of various individuals and groups here in New York to build upon some of these developments globally, learn from them, and put them into play here.

The event also takes place in the background of various calls to
mobilization, which include a call for a People's Assembly, in front of the bull near Beaver Street, on August 2nd, as well as a call to occupy Wall Street on September 17th, and an effort to mobilize an occupation in Washington beginning on October 6, 2011.

What can be learned from these global experiences within movements here in the US? This afternoon will begin with reports from various individuals speaking on behalf of struggles from specific international contexts and here in New York. Then we will proceed to open up to questions and allow a discussion to unfold.

As a part of the event, we conducted two conversations in preparation.

A few of the organizers of this event conducted an interview with a few of the participants of the General Assembly in Athens.

And we also recorded a conversation with Sabu Khoso about post-Fukushima Japan.

The recordings have been posted as a resource - especially for those friends who live in distant places but are nonetheless inspired,
concerned, and interested in these processes.

_____________________________
2. Some of Sunday's Guests

We are still in the process of confirming people who will be coming and speaking. And of course, we have no idea who will get this invitation and come. But we make an attempt below to give an idea of some people who will be joining us.

New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts
http://nocutsny.wordpress.com/

Antonio Poudereux Velasco lives in Madrid and has participated in the occupation of Puerta del Sol. He is a member of the World Extension Team created during that occupation. He will not speak in this event as a representative of neither that team or #acampadasol, but as an individual. He works as a sound engineer.

Georgia Sagri is an artist and non-employed activist. From early age she has been a member of the Void Network, a cultural, political and
philosophical collective in Athens Greece with the aim the radicalization of every day life, the participation to the emancipatory social struggles, the creation of social centers, self-organized autonomous spaces and the construction of situations in Public Space.

Sabu Kohso is an independent writer and translator, a native of Japan, living in NYC since 1980. He has written three books in Japanese on social movements and progressive culture of NYC in relationship with the
formation of urban space, as well as a book on the geographical and deterritorial lineage of anarchist thought across the world. He has also translated books by Kojin Karatani, Arata Isozaki (Japanese to English), David Graeber and John Holloway (English to Japanese). Being active for many years in establishing a global network of anti-authortaian movements in and out of Japan, Kohso is currently working on the blog Jfissures for the exchange of critical voices between the disaster stricken Japan and elsewhere.

Costas Panayotakis is Associate Professor of Sociology at the New York City College of Technology of the City University of New York. Originally from Greece, he has written many articles on Greece, been interviewed by radio and TV programs in the US and abroad and is the author of Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy, which will be published this fall by Pluto Press.

Luis Moreno-Caballud is a member of the group/assembly Democracia Real Ya - NYC, which is part of the Spanish May-15 movement. He also researches and teaches Spanish contemporary history and culture at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.

Larry Hales is a community activist and fighter. While living in Denver, Larry was one of the founders of Colorado United Communities Against Police Brutality, and an organizer of the Recreate 68 Coalition, organized to protest last year’s Democratic National Convention. In November 2007, Denver police broke into Hales’ house and arrested him on false charges arising from his giving shelter to a victim of police brutality who was out on parole. Months later and after a strong people’s campaign, the charges against Larry were finally dropped. Presently, Larry Hales is an organizer for the Bail Out the People Movement and the youth group Fight Imperialism Stand Together (F.I.S.T.), and a contributing editor with Workers World newspaper.

Doug Singsen is active in the movement against budget cuts in New York City and in the student movement against tuition hikes at the City University of New York (CUNY). He helped organize the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education on March 4, 2010, the Day of Rage Against the Cuts on March 24, 2011, and the recent Bloombergville
occupation. He is a member of New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts and the International Socialist Organization and is a PhD student in the Art History Program at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Mohammed Serbout was born and raised in Morocco from a working family, went to school and studied hard in order to have a better future, but the reality is there are no chances left there, so he decided to participate with the youth in changing the status quo of the actual regime...

Yotam Marom is a member of the Organization for a Free Society and the New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts Coalition, and has been active in the
anti-austerity struggle in New York City, most recently through the Bloombergville occupation. Yotam is a co-founder of Without Walls - a democratic, social-justice oriented educational collective - and has experience in communal living. He is also a writer and musician.

_____________________________
3. First Resolution of the Direct Democracy Assembly in Athens

For a long time decisions have been made for us, without us.

We are workers, unemployed, retirees, youth, who have come to Syntagma Square to fight and struggle for our lives and our future.

We are here because we know that the solutions to our problems can come only from us.

We call all residents of Athens , workers, unemployed and youth, to come to Syntagma Square , and all of society to fill the public squares and to take life into its own hands.

In these public squares we will shape our claims and our demands together.

We call on all workers who are going on strike in the coming days to show up and remain in Syntagma Square .

We will not leave the squares until those who compelled us to come here go away:　

Governments, Troika (EU, ECB and IMF), Banks, IMF Memoranda, and everyone that exploits us.　 We send them the message that the debt is not ours.

DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOW!

EQUALITY - JUSTICE - DIGNITY!

The only struggle that is lost is the one that is never fought!

_____________________________
4. Conversation with 'Some of the Participators of the General Assembly of the Direct Democracy in Athens'

This conversation is an attempt to open up the process of the General Assemblies taking place in Athens on Syntagma Square, like an engine, in order to understand how it developed, and how it works. It touches on the problems they have faced, the barriers of having fixed ideological agendas, the question of restricting media access, of formulating respect, creating the form for a new political speech, drawing lots, voting, making resolutions, taking collective actions, establishing different thematic groups, working groups, allowing conflict and arguments, constructing a non-representative political agency, avoiding demands, ….

For listening to the conversation, please visit:

http://sduk.us/conversations/072511_greece_assembly.mp3

_____________________________
5. Conversation with Sabu Kohso about a post-Fukushima world

This is an attempt to speak with Sabu Kohso, a writer, translator from Japan, living in New York. Since 3-11, Sabu has been working with others to run and maintain jfissures (jfissures.wordpress.com) one of the few websites to attempt to translate pertinent texts into and from Japanese related to Fukushima and connecting it to a global context. This is an impromptu conversation which took place in preparation for Sunday's event. Sabu tries to speak about his own relation to what has happened in Japan, the reflections and fissures within Japanese society, the potential questions which emerge from that experience, and how they might also connect to other historical experiences of struggle in Japan.

For listening to the conversation, please visit:

http://sduk.us/conversations/072711_sabu.mp3

If you are interested in reading some recent texts from Sabu, please read:

Notes for Understanding What is Happening in Japan
http://th-rough.eu/writers/kosho-eng/notes-understanding-what-happening-japan

Fangs Hiding in the Green -- Impressions of Post 3/11 Japan
http://th-rough.eu/writers/kosho-eng/fangs-hiding-green-impressions-post-311-japan

_____________________________
6. Useful Links

http://amesi-dimokratia.org

http://takethesquare.net/

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=174935459243842

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=144937025580428

http://october2011.org/

__________________________________________________
16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th fl.
New York, NY 10004

for directions/subscriptions/info visit:
http://www.16beavergroup.org

TRAINS:
4,5 Bowling Green
R,W Whitehall
2,3 Wall Street
J,Z Broad Street
1,9 South Ferry

Note: Thursday July 28th, At the Grand Openings Return of the Blogs, MOMA

July 28th
At the Grand Openings Return of the Blogs, MOMA

There isn't so much going on today. The lounge with the
leather sofas and the left overs from past events perhaps are here to
point out some kind of process. I call it the vip community lounge.
the planks blogging the blogs so none can really read them. the
security is here. mostly the security. The hypnotized visitors. The
tickets are moving around. Recognize the tempo of screen saver and
stay for a while to watch. Promotion. Sam's signature. I look how they
raise their heads to look at the balloons. Museum. The security
doesn't let people to sit on the sofa and watch the video. Confusion.
Seems that the sofa is part of the installation and no one can sit on.
Good job.

Live Portfolio 2007-2011

Live Portfolio
Saturday, July 23, 2011, 3:00 p.m.- 6:00 p.m., MOMA, The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor.

Georgia Sagri makes a live mix-tape of performance pieces she has presented in NY from 2007-2011. Invited by Sagri a group of friends develop a code ouji demonstration while her brother and activist Tasos Sagris will be answering questions about the current uprising in Greece, addressed by everyone present.





It is the making of the portfolio, its format, its banality of duration by adding the real and the live, like the leaking juices of fresh fruits, sticky fingers, too much nature, smelly and weird. The sounds of pain/ the cracking of fear/ the whispers of pause/ the abominable posture/ hand/ arm/ neck. The expression of the remembering of an incident but not the incident itself. Is that possible? Squeezed among some languages you know, you pretend you know, you want to know. Scratch it, suck mediations, which that could be a type of mimesis. Doing from directions coming from elsewhere. Rather unexpected than improvised. There is no 'as if'. It is the design of the portfolio. Making portfolio and forgetting portfolio. This was only a draft, some other things will come up and you will be noticed. The power point presentation will be totally and extremely burst with lying. "I wasn't expecting something different." Of course nothing will be placed in the correct chronological order. Are you accusing me of narcissism Apple > ?
"I love my i-phone." The i-pad portfolio and the fingernails' padpads on the keypord. Work in the mid of the summer and wonder what social class is. Hot is slow. Touch, skin and the right jeans. As always at the corner with the smoke in the mouth. An electric cigarette. The taste of look. How she moves her eyes when she is trying to be convincing, and how she stretches her neck every time she

Note

Crazyembarrasing
Superuncomfortable
Mindheartfuck
She is allergic to authority and carrots

W.I.P for Women In Prison and Work In Progress (First Episode)

W.I.P for Women In Prison and Work In Progress (First Episode)


The head turns. The arm touches the ground, stopping violently. Movement comes out of the speakers. It starts from zero on the timeline and leads to the end of the loop, its beginning.

Is it the machine that’s in question? Do you obey? Do you try to exist within it, against it, around it? The machine--machina in ancient Rome, mechane in ancient Athens--is still what we call the apparatus of war, all the weapons bought and sold, used and lost during battle: the armor, the gas masks, the Molotov cocktails, the cybernetic networks, prohibitions, negotiations, settlements and the camps (office camps, party regulations, yoga memberships, etc). It is the theater and its apparatus: the entertainer's tricks and special effects, the lights going on and off, the curtains opening and closing, the fake blood, the props and costumes, the fluorescent paint on the masks that pin down the characters, the strings that hold ex-machina gods up in the air ready to turn various histories upside down whenever they settle, finally, for just a second on stage. It is the dubbed sound in Italian Spaghetti Westerns, the actors counting “one, two, three, four, five” instead of speaking sentences. It is Pier Paolo Pasolini adding sound to the film while editing the recorded images. It is Godard's subtitles, his obsession with texts on film and the way he reduces cinema’s speed. It is Roberto Rosellini's remote control gadget for zooming in and his preference for working with amateur actors. It is Maya Deren's cuts and the way she worked with film exposure. It is Jacques Tati’s mime routines, his micro-gestures and their connection to comedia de l'arte.

The machines of theater and the machines of war: they are interchangeable.
“How did it go?”
“Was it successful?”
Machine and tool are one and the same.

There are a million ways to compose and re-articulate a smile, a cry, and the hand holding a glass. A million ways to rehearse and present a cry, a smile, and the hand holding a glass in real time.

They are modules: “the principle behind the distribution of breaks and intervals.”

There is no representation, only presentation and the analysis of the symptom’s mechanisms existing at the moment of the performance.

The tool I use in the performance is my female body. I was born with that body. I could resist it. I could change gender for the performance or pay other people to perform for me. Instead, I insist on presenting myself as I am. The female body with its texts, imagery, history, pain, criticism, revolt. With my female body I can do the gestures of a man and be that. I can be the lion and the fish and the tree and the woman again, another woman perhaps, another posture. I can't pretend I am a non-smoker but I can look like I am a non-smoker. I can't hide my rotten teeth but I can smile in such a way as to camouflage them. That is what I have, simulations.

The women in prison told me that they have learned the techniques and the sensitivities of the State. They told me: “You must move from one point to the other and then back and forth without end.” I do what they told me in their letters. Is it cinema, then, and not performance? It is the war of the war machine, but not the war machine alone. The architectural plans, the social definitions, the prisons, the schools, the asylums, the houses, the offices, the pavements, the public spaces with their park security. It is life under the constant control of the structural, behavioral and moral architects, with their pose of authority and calculated plans. And then there are the ideal citizens, the syncopated rhythms among thousands of them on the streets.

During a riot, though, different politics arise. There are expectations of change, forgotten demands, and the repressed imagination of the lower class. What does it mean to pretend to be a citizen? What does it mean to shout phrases that you don't believe in? What does it mean to shout together with a group of workers? Who are you when you are doing that? Are those your machines of survival your survival kits? Were you born with them or did you just get used to them as you grew up? The Father, the Mother, the Teacher, the Emperor and How am I to obey? When is the right moment to put up the poster and when is the time to go home? Do I want to go to my place or do I want to live at our home?

This is not the end of the text.


Georgia Sagri, New York, 2011





The performance W.I.P (First Episode) was presented as part of the exhibition Skin So Soft, organized by Josh Kline at Gresham's Ghost, 401 Broadway, NY, 6/22/2011, photo by Linda Norden

what I understand that you suggest about space of ease

As far as I can understand what you suggest by space of ease in connection to friendship could be habitus, but maybe we want to avoid the sociological connection of this word. We can use the word's origin which is hexis (έξις in greek) which means possession or disposition (διάθεσης in greek) power to use. The actual translation tends to be too pragmatic which suggests something that could be forcefully learned and then easily forgotten. I think Aristotle's refers to this notion as a having but it is always very controversial of how it is perceived this having. For how I understand it, is a topological, potential and formal term, but when we refer to it in relation to something else outside of himself then it is more as a state of action. An act can be good or bad and that's i think why friends are crucial. Because a friend for good that includes pleasure and benefit but it is not only one or the other, will express the good or bad of your act of the having. Isn't then space of ease the space of friendship that is cultivating truth? Certainly urgency isn't a pleasant feeling but in a moment of urgency wouldn't be urgent for something to be addressed ? For example if I feel sad because something needs to be said, happen, change, I need to say it. If that saying is articulated in a clumsy way it is because perhaps we haven't created a space of ease, space of comfort and pleasure where we don't feel like criminals as you said or we don't feel in survival and I think we both agree on that: I don't want to make you feel bad but I want you to feel free to address the good or the bad of the having.

x
g